But it was not only at the moment of the victorious offensive that the Eastern expedition justified itself. Even in the preceding period of long and enervating suspense, the presence of the Allied armies in Macedonia had an importance which was far from indifferent with regard to the general economy of the war. Owing to causes which we shall subsequently examine, the Army of the Orient[1] had not been able to carry out the task originally assigned to it of bringing aid to invaded Serbia and saving her from her extreme ruin, and it was therefore believed that that army had no longer any _raison d’être_. The truth, however, is very different, because for months and years it mounted guard in the Balkans, preventing the Central Empires from reaching Salonica and invading Old Greece,[2] where they might have established innumerable new submarine bases and thus dominated the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean. This would have rendered any traffic with Egypt and consequently with India and Australia practically impossible, that is to say, with some of the most important sources of supply for the whole of the Entente and particularly for Italy. If the Army of the Orient was enmeshed amidst the marshes and arid rocks of Macedonia, on the other hand that Army nailed down the whole of the Bulgarian Army, consisting of close on three-quarters of a million men,[3] amply provided with artillery both Bulgarian and German, throughout the whole of the war, and for a time certain German and Turkish divisions as well, forces which might themselves have been employed elsewhere. Incidentally, the operations in Albania against the Austrians could not have been maintained without the support of the Army of the Orient on its right.