IT is characteristic of Mr. Lloyd George that, when his mind once seizes hold of an idea, he is wholly possessed with it until either he can bring it to accomplishment or he is fully convinced of its impracticability. It was so with regard to this great scheme of outflanking the Central Powers by an attack from the Near East. The more he reflected upon it the more there seemed to lie in this plan one great chance of bringing a speedy decision to the war. But, for better or for worse, the reinforcements were now being directed to the Western Front; and the policy of the Western Allies was more and more concentrated on that sphere of offence and defence—France, from absorption in her immediate danger, and Great Britain for her instinctive military preference for campaigning nearer to her sacred seas. Out-voted in that larger proposal, Mr. Lloyd George now fell back on a smaller design. The cautious diplomacy of the Allies had shrunk from the large, bold strokes necessary for combining the Balkan States as an eastern wing of our offensive against the Central Powers; their military chiefs had hesitated to supply the means. Never at that stage did the Governments of the Allies fully realise the full proportionate value of the Balkan States in the vast scheme of the great European struggle. But it was soon clear that, if the Western Powers were inclined to leave the Balkan States to themselves, the Central Powers had no such intention. Quite early in the war Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill scented the danger of German intrigue in the Balkans, and the vast lure of that easy “corridor” to the East offered by the trans-Balkan railway system. In September 1914 they induced the Foreign Office to send the Buxton brothers to Sofia; and the proposals which those delegates brought back in January 1915 played an important part in the negotiations of February.[64] Some time before the end of January 1915, indeed, the British Government got to know that Germany was already preparing a large army for the invasion of Serbia. Mr. Lloyd George instantly realised the gravity and urgency of this peril. It was largely due to his initiative that a note was sent to Greece and Rumania, urging those states to come to the assistance of Serbia. No note was sent to Bulgaria. It was already dimly realised that this State was being drawn into the far-flung net of the Central Powers. The “Prussia of the Balkans” presented too rich a field to be left unharvested by the needy gleaners of Germany. The anxious and hard-pressed diplomats of Berlin, seeking eagerly for friends in a world growing more and more hostile, were already tapping at the doors of Sofia, offering golden and honeyed gifts to a State which had fed too long on the east wind.