[Sidenote:  The crisis of the Great War is at hand.]

Germany has taken the great plunge—­the concentration and utilization of her entire resources in man power in a final effort to win.  It is Germany’s last bid for victory before the peace propaganda is launched.  Germany must win or go down to defeat.  But Germany cannot stop.  She must go on and on regardless of cost.  She has expended literally hundreds of thousands of men, not for territorial conquest as the German press has pointed out and emphasized, but to destroy the British army.  What figment of pretense is left if the battle remains indecisive?  None the less, for the Allies as well the situation is serious though not critical.  The crisis of the Great War is truly at hand.  None can doubt the outcome who has any belief in honor and justice among civilized nations.

Copyright, World’s Work, June, 1918.

* * * * *

For many months prior to the end of the war Bulgaria had sought an opportunity to make peace.  The people were wearied with fighting and it was plain to them that a German victory was hopeless.  Finally a complete collapse occurred, King Ferdinand fled, and Bulgaria surrendered, as is described in the following pages.

BULGARIA QUITS

LOTHROP STODDARD

[Sidenote:  “Mitteleuropa” crumbles.]

Bulgaria’s withdrawal from the Teutonic block and her frank capitulation to the Allies is easily the most dramatic episode of the World War.  Almost overnight the massive bridge of “Mitteleuropa” has crumbled at its central span, leaving exhausted Turkey foredoomed to speedy surrender and laying distracted Austria open to the combined assaults of Allied arms and domestic revolution.  So stupendous are the possibilities flowing from the Allies’ September offensive in Macedonia that we are almost tempted to believe that the age of miracles is come again.

[Sidenote:  The war-spirit of Bulgaria weakens.]

Yet in such hours we should clarify our vision by insistent remembrance of Clausewitz’s famous saying that war is but the extension of politics.  For brilliant as was the Franco-Serbian escalade of mid-September, storming successive mountain walls as though they were mere trench lines and shearing through war-hardened Bulgarian divisions like a knife through rotten cheese, there was more than fighting involved.  For the last year and even longer a combination of circumstances had been weaning Bulgaria from her former solidarity with the Central powers, and this disruptive process, proceeding with special rapidity during the last few months, had been steadily sapping the morale of the Bulgarian people and the war-spirit of the Bulgarian soldiery.  From the broader point of view, therefore, the Allies’ Macedonian offensive must be deemed not merely a skilful military operation, but even more a well-timed garnering of fruits ripe for the plucking.  In such masterly combinations of strategy and politics lies the secret of decisive victory.