ALLIES’ RAPID ADVANCE.

The French official bulletin of the array of the East, issued in Paris on Sunday night and published in the later editions of The Daily Telegraph yesterday, showed that the Allied troops had effected a new and important advance. The Bulgarians had been reinforced both by troops of their own and by Germans, and during Friday their rearguards seemed to be offering a strong, and to some extent successful, resistance. But on Saturday this resistance broke down, with the result that the Franco-serbian forces were able to press forward many miles, and when the French communiqué was despatched had already reached points nearly fifty miles north of the original line and about thirty miles inside the Serbogreek frontier as established by the Treaty of London concluded after the first Balkan War in 1912.

Franco-serbian forces had advanced as far as the river Vardar. At one point, Negotin, they were near the junction of that river with the Cerna, while at Demir Kapn, some ten miles south-east of Negotin, they were within twelve miles of the Bulgarian frontier, which here makes a sort of sharp salient into Serbia, with its apex a few miles west of the important town of Strumitza. The latter is about twenty miles east of Demir Kapn, and about ninety miles south-west of Sofia. The Allies on Saturday were within fifteen miles of Voles (Kuprulu), on the main line railway from Salonika to Uskub, thirty miles further north. On the eastern portion of the great bend which the Cerna makes south of Prilep and east of Monastir the Bulgarians were retreating, closely pressed by the Franco-sorbs, who were also pushing forward the advance of their right wing.

The information received during yesterday . shows that the Allied advance, in which the Italian army in the bend of the Cerna. is participating. is being prosecuted with the utmost vigour, and, considering the difficulties of this mountainous country, almost phenomenal rapidity. The Serbians are now directly across the railway from Uskub to Salonika, the main line, of communication in the Vardar Valley. They have also severed the branch line from Gradsko to Prilep, which is a minor communication.

The telegram received last night from the British Commander in Macedonia announces that the expected retreat from the Doiran Vardar sector has begun. The Bulgarians are fleeing up the road to Strumatza, heavily bombed by our aviators. This is the only road by which they can escape, and their lot is therefore not to be envied. They have burnt the station of Hudova, on the Salonika-uskub line, eighteen miles north-west of Doiran. and our troops have already reached a point (Kara-ogular) only six or seven miles from the Bulgarian frontier. They are co-operating with the Greek army, with which they are in touch at Gurincet, twelve miles south of Hudova.

On the Serbian left the Italians are moving forward quickly. They have already reached a point about thirteen miles south of Prilep. The front on which they are operating is roughly twelve miles north-east of Monastir, and they have captured the important height of Mount Bohisto (4,300ft), 15½ miles south of Prilep. During their advance they have liberated sixteen Serbian villages. The front of retreat has now been widened to over ninety miles, and it is by no means certain that physical contact is maintained between the two wings of the Bulgarian army. The Paris Petit Journal, in fact, declares that communication between the two armies has been cut. If this be so, a break-through has been effected in the fullest sense of the expression, and the consequences to the Bui gars may be disastrous in the extreme.