In the Balkans, which has helped to paralyze the Constantinople government, has put an end. The Calkans have once more become for the Germans a secondary theater if operations; they have been compelled to return to their original plan, and to ask, as before, the declaration of war, which enemy they must rush to, that on the west or that on the east.

For the second time, they have come to the conclusion that the enemy to be beaten is that of the west. No doubt they considered that Russia, by reason of its immense distances from the frontiers, would require a long time for us to complete subjection, and that even then Great Britain and France would have no reason to confess themselves beaten without having themselves lost their armies. That is the meaning of the battle of Verdun, in that act the German general staff admits that the past has brought them nothing decisive, nothing even assured, and that they must, so to speak, start the war again. 