But on the south, allied troops, including a great body of French who had been landed at Saloniki in Greece and made their way northward, disputed the advance of the invaders and at several points drove back the Bulgarians, thus holding the southern territory of Serbia for their ally in the same manner that Flanders was being held by the Allies for Belgium.

Though the Bulgarians had not forgiven the Greeks for anticipating them in the capture of Saloniki in the month of November, the rivalry between them in the following winter and spring had for its stage the territory between the Struma and the Mesta Riversand especially the quadrilateral marked by Kavala and Orphani on the coast and Seres and Drama on the line of railway from Saloniki to Adrianople.

Yet the expansion of Servia to the south over the Macedonian territory she had wrested from Turkey, as legalized in the Treaty of Bukarest, nullified the Austro-Hungarian dream of expansion through Novi Bazar and Macedonia to the Aegean and the development from Saloniki as a base of a great and profitable commerce with all the Near and Middle East.

Frequent threats of the bombardment of Saloniki by the Germans or by the Bulgars were made during January, but up to February 10 the threatened attack had failed to materialize and the Allies were strongly intrenched in a 30-mile arc around the town, while the guns of a powerful fleet of British and French warships commanded the approaches and protected transports and landings.

He demanded only the Macedonian territory which the Greek forces had actually occupied, including Saloniki with an adequate hinterland.