ALLIES ENTER MONASTIR.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15131, 27 January 1917, Page 5

ALLIES ENTER MONASTIR.

* FRENCH AND RUSSIANS LEAD. HONOUR FOR THE SERVIANS. The allies are in Monastir at last—'here in the heart of the town, Mr Ward Price wrote on ovember 19. Down the streets, black vistas of closed iron shutters, come French cavalry which were the first of the allied troops to enter. They are now maintaining a strict patrol. Their horses’ necks are hung with wreaths of flowers, for the inhabitants, after peeping timidly out from behind their barred windows for a while, have at length ventured out, and are offering posies and garlands to the French and Russian soldiers as they march in. Even to me these signs of welcome have been proffered, for it was my fortune to be the first Englishman to arrive in the town after the first French troops had entered. It was at a quarter past eight o’clock this morning .that the last batalion of Germans marched out to the north. They were seen by French scouts pouring along the Prilep road. A quartet of an hour later the final enemy battery, which had be ;n left in order to protect the rear of the retreating army, limbered up and made off at a fast trot. French cavalry and mounted scouts were close upon its heels as it went. At 9 a. m. the first French company of infantry arrived. They marched past the barracks, still burning, which the enemy had set on/fire during the night. A Russian battalion was with th?tn. The two columns, in fact, came abreast along the load. ' And so Monastir became Serbian again. Though the French and Russian troops have had the privilege of arriving first, they themselves are anxious to admit that it was chiefly the tireless advance of the Serbs among the mountains in the loop of the Tserna River, supported as they have been, of course, by the co-opration of the French infantry and French artillery, that has forced the Bnlgars and- Germans to evacuate the place. “It is thanks to the Serbs that we have won the town,” said a French colonel, who was one of the first to get it The whole of the centre of the town is being reserved as quarters for the Serbians to dispose of as they require, should a triumphal entry of the Serbian Army into their redeemed city be afterwards arranged, and when the inhabitants sent a deputation just now to the headquarters which have been temporarily established, to ask ff they might hoist the French flag they, were told “No,” but that they might hoist the Serbian flag. 1 After a whole year of captivity, Monastir has become free again, and that o.i the very anniversary of the day when the Serbs first won her four years ago from the Turks. By her liberation the Allies in the Balkans have won their first-victory of mark. For Monastir is more than one of the most considerable towns in Serbia ; she is a symbol. What Delhi is to India Monastir is to Macedonia. She is the queen city, a recognised token of Dominion,