We found two officers in the British Observation Post chuckling over the
evening bulletin, which had just been delivered to them. "You have to
read between the lines of Sarrail's 'Evening Hope' if you want to get at
the real facts," said one of them. "It's what it fails to tell you, that
you really want to know. Now, you might be able to gather from this that
all the Balkan Allies have been doing quite a bit of attacking during
the last day or two at various parts of the Front from Doiran west to
Albania, but you have to go between the lines to find that our shifty
Bulgar friend over there gave most of them as good or better than they
gave him all the way. It's sad but true that in this, our 'Great Spring
Offensive,' as the papers at home have talked of it, the whole lot of
us--French, British, Russian, Italian, and even the Serb--have been
fought to a standstill by the Bulgar. Far as I can see, the only gain we
have to show for it is in the casualty lists."

I failed to see just what there was to chuckle about in such an
interpretation of the glowing lines of the evening bulletin, and said as
much.

[Sidenote: Successes of the little Venizelist army.]

"It isn't funny in the least," was the reply, "and it would seem still
less so if we could see at close range some of the things that are lying
out on a hundred miles of these accursed mountain sides as a
consequence of what has happened. But what _did_ strike us as a bit rich
was the fact that, of all the Allies, this little piece of the
Venizelist army, which we have held in leash all winter while we made up
our minds as to whether it would be safe to slip or not, is the only one
of the whole lot of us that has taken all the objectives set for it."