Part 16

(C)

IMPERIAL AND ROYAL MILITARY COMMAND IN ZAGREB.

PRESS BUREAU, No. 2590. TO THE HIGHER COMMAND OF THE ARMY. HIGHER COMMAND OF THE BALKAN FRONT. ROYAL MILITARY PRESS BUREAU.

ZAGREB, November 2, 1914.

/Ceteris exmissis./

"Thousands of loyal officers and men have fallen victims to the treachery that has penetrated so deeply into the Fatherland and is directed against our enthusiastic, brave and heroically fighting army. It is evident from all the reports of the wounded that no one has been afraid of the enemy troops, but rather of treachery which comes upon them from the front, the left, the right, the rear, from trees and from houses." ...

"Through treachery the foe was and is still made acquainted with every movement of troops, the enemy artillery is helped in every way through signals, so that it can direct upon us a fire that falls like lightning. Light signals, smoke signals, positions of church tower clocks, herds of cows, flocks of geese, imitations of the noises of animals, yellow and black flags, etc. etc., have indicated the strength and movements of troops." ...

SCHEURE, Lieut.-Field-Marshal.

(D)

IMPERIAL AND ROYAL MILITARY COMMAND IN ZAGREB.

PRESS BUREAU, No. 3050.

The Spreading of Disquieting News among the Population.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE IMPERIAL AND ROYAL SECRET COUNCILLOR DR. IVAN BARON SKERLECZ, Ban of the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia.

ZAGREB, November 26, 1914.

(E)

IMPERIAL AND ROYAL MILITARY COMMAND IN ZAGREB.

PRESS BUREAU, No. 3297.

(F)

IMPERIAL AND ROYAL MILITARY COMMAND IN ZAGREB.

PRESS BUREAU, No. 841.

ZAGREB, February 1915.

He explains that harmonious relations did not exist between the military command and the local government, since the former acted without taking into account the political position of any individual, while the latter acted in the reverse fashion.]

HOW THE WAR RAGED IN THE WINTER OF 1914-1915

In the winter of 1914 the Serbian army had been obliged to withdraw, leaving Valjevo to the Austrians. The retrograde movement had to continue; Belgrade was abandoned at the end of November, and the people from those northern and western parts of the country could not resign themselves to waiting for the enemy, after the manner in which he had behaved. Terror-stricken fugitives began to block the roads and to impede the movements of the army. Everywhere was panic. It is remarkable that the Serbian Government at Ni chose this time (November 24) for making to the National Skuptina the first Declaration that they proposed to carry on the War until "we have delivered and united all our brothers who are not yet free, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes." (Later on when old King Peter after many trials managed to reach Durazzo he was given a few hours' notice in which to leave that place; he was also thrust out of Brindisi by the Italians because he declined to repudiate this Declaration.) "Machen Sie Ordnung" would soon be heard. Even the army, unaccustomed to defeat, was losing its self-possession. Putnik, the revered old strategist, declared that he could do no more. No longer in his over-heated room, struggling with asthma, could the famous marshal evolve a plan. And then it happened that General Mii['c], placed in command of the first army, determined, after studying the situation, to risk everything on a last throw. Mii['c] was a quiet, methodical little man, whose optimism was always based on knowledge--in the intervals between Serbia's former campaigns he had won distinction as Professor of Strategy. He now caused 1400 young students, the flower of the nation, to be appointed non-commissioned officers; he likewise produced a most brilliant scheme of operations, so that the whole army was fired with enthusiasm, and so irresistibly did they attack that by December 13 not a single armed Austrian remained in the country. Ernest Haeckel, the great professor, had said at Jena that the native superiority of the German nation conferred on them the right to occupy the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia, excluding from these parts the weaker and inferior peoples who were living there. On December 15 King Peter made a triumphal entry into Belgrade--a Hungarian flag which had floated from the Palace was employed as a carpet on the steps of the cathedral when the King proceeded thither with his generals to give thanks for the miraculous success of Serbia's army. Once more the famous little town, the "white town" that is throned so splendidly above the plain where two wide rivers meet, was in possession of the Serbs. Against this rampart many human waves have broken--Attila and his Huns encamped on the plain, the Ostrogoths appeared, Justinian built the city walls, then came the Avars and Charlemagne and the Franks, the Bulgars, the Byzantines, the Magyars. The white town, Beli Grad or Beograd, which we call Belgrade--Wizzenburch was the old German name--has a glorious past and surely a magnificent future.

When the Serbs came back to Belgrade in December 1914, the total of Austrian prisoners was more numerous than the Serbian combatants. But 35,000 of these prisoners, together with 250,000 Serbs of all ages and 106 Serbian and Allied doctors, were now to succumb to the plague of typhus, which the Austrian troops had carried from Galicia. Hospitals were hurried out from France and Great Britain; heroic work was done by women and by men; doctors operated day and night--in the hospitals the patients were so closely packed that it was impossible to step between them.

"In Skoplje," says Colonel Morrison, who in civil life is senior surgeon to the Queen's Hospital, Birmingham--"in Skoplje a British unit was installed in a large factory accommodating over 1000 medical and surgical patients. Besides their inherent unsuitability the premises were detestably insanitary and the floor space overcrowded to its utmost capacity. On the ground floor I saw 250 men lying on sacks of straw packed closely together, covered only by their ragged uniform under a blanket. Gangrenous limbs and septic compound fractures were common, the stench being overpowering; yet every window was closely shut." He tells how seven out of the members of the British staff went down with typhus. At Uice he found over 700 patients crammed into rooms containing about 500 beds; many were lying on the bare floor; others were on sacks of straw; others on raised wooden platforms in series of six men side by side. Often one would see an elderly warrior, who had been wounded a week or two previously, being jolted along in an ox-cart with several civilians who were suffering from typhus--all trying to find a hospital that could take them in. And meanwhile it was necessary to reorganize the army: all the men between the ages of seventeen and fifty-five were called to the colours, including those whom the doctors had declared to be totally unfit for military service.

THE TREATY OF LONDON, APRIL 1915

On April 26, 1915, the negotiations were concluded between France, Great Britain, Russia and Italy; the Treaty of London was signed and the Italians had become our Allies. By this Treaty we and France and Russia undertook to give them, if we were victorious, a very large increase of territory--over which, by the way, we none of us had any right of disposal.