To the left, caricatures of a fallen King Albert of Belgium, Tsar Nicholas of Russia, President Poincare of France, generic (?) caricatures of an English man and a Japanese soldier, Kings Peter of Serbia, and Nikola of Montenegro engaging in a tug of war, the rope being held on the right by a German (in gray) and an Austro-Hungarian soldier. Between the teams and behind the rope stands the diminutive caped figure of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, all hat, mustache, and chin.
Das Europaische Gleichgewicht 1914The European Equilibrium, 1914
"The morale and the material state of our troops are desperate. Despite all the measures to prevent desertion, the number of troops is plummeting, and they are fleeing en masse. Deserters are fighting against our troops to clear their way to the villages of Istok and Mitrovica. They are selling weapons to the Albanians. Regiments number only a few hundred men. There is only enough food for the troops for another four or five days. All efforts to acquire food have proven useless."
Excerpt from a report by leading Serbian military commanders on December 1, 1915, a day on which they decided not to launch a counter-attack on the invading combined forces of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria, but to obey the November 25 order to retreat through the mountains of Montenegro and Albania to the Adriatic Sea for resupply and evacuation by the Allied fleets. Tens of thousands of Serbs, military and civilian, would die in the retreat, of exposure, starvation, and attacks by bandits and other killers, mostly Albanian.
Serbia's Great War 1914-1918 by Andrej Mitrovic, page 150, copyright © Andrej Mitrovic, 2007, publisher: Purdue University Press, publication date: 2007
1915-12-01, 1915, December, Serbia, retreat, Serbian retreat, Albania
