ary, 1916, took the offensive and captured the fortress of
Erzerum, an action which was bound to relieve pressure on the
British. Thus, the Turk who had been led to believe that he was to
regain Egypt and recover some of his lost territory, was simply
losing more. Indeed, after Saloniki, despite the talk to that
effect, the far-seeing Germans neither carried out their threatened
attempt to invade Egypt, nor, as many expected, were they drawn from
the main theatre of war by dispatching troops by rail to Turkey. In
dissipating the allied troops by their threats, they had taken care
not to dissipate their own.

Thus Germany would supply Turkey with officers, and all her
munitions, but she would not risk an army on the other side of
Bulgaria with a long line of communications threatened by the Allies
from Saloniki and Dedeagatch.

The approach of the spring of 1916 found them facing much the same
problem as in the spring of 1915. Despite the territory they had
gained, to ask for peace was to imply that their economic situation
was weaker and their casualties heavier than they were willing to
admit. Even if their economic situation was strong and the reserves
plentiful, any suggestion that they were ready for negotiations must
convince the Allies that they were reaching the end of their
resources. There could be no doubt of Russia's immense reserves of
men. It was only a question with her as to whether or not she could
make them into an efficient army properly equipped and supplied, and
whether or not she would be able to maintain her organization and
railway facilities and sufficient forces at the actual fighting
front to strike a successful blow against her enemies.

On the western front there had been an enormous accession of
munitions during the winter, while the British new army with two
million men yet to go under fire was gradually getting its rifles
and guns. Victory comes in war either when you are exhausted or when
you have taken from the enemy his capital or something of such vital
importance to him that he must yield in order to recover it. Neither
France nor Russia was by any means in that pass. Belgium had merely
become a dead land, a shop within a garden, cut off from all trade,
when it had been a nation of manufacturers and traders.

Germany, unless she were exhausted in men and supplies, could not
consider any peace which did not accord her the results of her
gains, while she was still in possession of