Life — October 7, 1915 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

OCTOBER 7, 1915 “While there is Life there's Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY A, Miter, Sec’y ond Treas. 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Office, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C. J. A. Mitcuett, Pres't. HERE is a B) theory that when once the vy Germans begin to 4g cave in they will go like a subway section, whole blocks at a time. There has been, all along, this theory about the great German war machine, that once it began to thrash and rattle, the rapidity of its dissolution would be surprising. And that may be, but after a year and two months of fairly rough usage it is still a going and effective mechanism. Berlin, the paper says, makes little of the new Franco-British rush on the western front. It is related that when the German docks at our Hoboken took fire, a German steamer was loading there. Her captain was warned to get out, but he was perfectly calm and kept on loading. But in the end the sparks from the fire got down into his cargo. He had to slam his hatches on regardless of the men in the hold, and whether his ship was burned up or dragged scorched and smoking into the stream newspapers of that date doubtless recount. Berlin may feel about the new offensive as that German skipper did about the fire, so hard it is for the German mind to appreciate events which do not fulfill the pre- liminary calculations How much the new lunge at the in- vader will amount to cannot be told at this writing, but the success, such i has been welcomed as the most like a victory of anything that has happened on the western front since the battle of the Marne. And the news from Russia is better, and Bulgaria, mobilized, has paused again to see which way the cat will jump, especially since Greece has also mobilized with a ‘view to insuring Proper conduct in Bulgaria. All these activities will cost more lives, many more, but if the time has come in General Joffre’s estimation for a serious effort to drive the Germans back into Germany we shall have real war reading in the papers again, and that will be something, for the war news has been tedious and dispiriting for months past. And of course those activities may hasten the end and pos- sibly bring that unexpected peace in two or three months that Judge Gary has been counting on. With the full strength of the Allies pounding on the western front, and the Russians crowd- ing in again, and the Balkans all ablaze at last, some definite results may reasonably follow. F there were a conundrum, Where if not in Mexico would you least rather belong? the answer would be, In the Balkans. The Balkans may be geographically described as that quarter of Europe which lies between the devil and the deep sea. In any war who- ever wins, the Balkans seem to get the black spot to lose something. Between the Czar and the Sultan and the two Kaisers and sometimes the interests of the far-flung British Empire to boot, it is very unusual political weather when the Balkans do not get some- thing in the neck. They have been very important in the present war, and ever since it began there has been an incessant competi- tion between the Allies and the Teutons to see which could draw an imaginary map of southeastern Europe which would look best to the most Balkans. The Allies would have had the whole family long ago if it had not been for Bulgaria. Bulgaria has bitter griev- ances. Nobody has treated her as was right. Both England and Russia at one time or another have played fast and loose with her to her great detri- ment. She had a good king, Alexander, and a patriot statesman, Stambuloff. Her king ‘was discharged, her statesman murdered. With others of the family —Rumania and Servia—and Greece she whipped the Turk in the recent first Balkan war. Then her allies welched in their agreement with her, and she started in to whip them, but couldn’t. She hates Servia, Greece and Turkey, fears and distrusts Russia, and has a profoundly selfish and ambitious carpet-bag king—Ferdinand—who likes the game of government and is fairly good at it, and is ready to bet the last Bulgarian on his hand. Everybody, -first or last, seems to have cheated Bulgaria. It has not im- proved her disposition. If she goes in with Germany she will either lose with her or live to wish she had, but it is in her favor that with four centuries of experience as a subject of Turkey she is used to hard luck and toughened to misbehavior. No people who have been through what the Bulgarians have been through, including the celebrated atrocities that infuriated Gladstone, should be expected to be good until they have had decent treatment for several generations. T might be well for the Rockefeller “Institute to send an expedition to the Balkans to search for the microbe of war. It abounds there more than comicbooks.com