Bulgaria

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And yet at Mustapha Pasha a Censor would not allow us to send anything about the ox-wagons. That officer thought the ox-cart was derogatory to the dignity of the army. If we had been able to say that they had such things as motor transport, or steam wagons, he would have cheerfully allowed us to send it.

After Lule Burgas the ox-transport had to do the impossible. It was impossible for it to maintain the food and the ammunition supply of the army at the front, which I suppose must have numbered 250,000 to 300,000 men. That army had got right away from its base, with the one line of railway straddled by the enemy, and with the ox as practically the only means of transport.

The position of the Bulgarian nation towards its Government on the outbreak of the war is, I think, extremely interesting as a lesson in patriotism. Every man fought who could fight. But further, every family put its surplus of goods into the war-chest. The men marched away to the front; and the women of the house loaded up the surplus goods which they had in the house, and brought them for the use of the military authorities on the ox-wagons, which also went to the military authorities to be used on requisition.

A Bulgarian law, not one which was passed on the outbreak of the war—they were far too clever for that—but an Act which was part of the organic law of the country, allowed the military authorities to requisition all surplus food and all surplus goods which could be of value to the army on the outbreak of hostilities. The whole machinery for that had been provided beforehand. But so great was the voluntary patriotism of the people that this machinery practically had not to be used in any compulsory form. Goods were brought in voluntarily, wagons, cart-horses, and oxen, and all the surplus flour and wheat, and—I have the official figures from the Bulgarian Treasurer—the goods which were obtained in this way totalled in value some six million pounds. The Bulgarian people represent half the population of London. The population is poor. Their national existence dates back only half a century. But they are very frugal and saving; that six millions which the Government signed for represented practically all the savings which the Bulgarian people had at the outbreak of the war.

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CHAPTER VII

A sense of grievance was the first fruits of my experience as a war correspondent in Bulgaria. It was the general policy of the Bulgarian army and the Bulgarian military authorities to prevent war correspondents seeing anything of their operations. They wished nothing to interfere with the secrecy of their plans. There were only three British journalists who succeeded, in the ultimate result, in getting to the front and seeing the final battle of the first phase of the war, at Chatalja. There were over a hundred correspondents who attempted to go. Perhaps as I was one of three who succeeded, I do not think I, personally, have any reason to complain. But I found a good deal of vexation in the Bulgarian policy, which was to prevent any knowledge of their plans, their dispositions, their strategy, and their tactics, from getting beyond the small circle of their own General Staff. Even some of their generals in the field were kept in partial ignorance. Officers of high standing, unless they were on the General Staff, knew little of the general plan; they were informed only about the particular operations in which they were engaged.

This policy of secrecy was, however, a good thing from the point of view of getting to know the Bulgarian people. If the military authorities had given me facilities to go with the army and see its operations I should have become familiar with the Headquarters Staff, perhaps with a few regimental officers, but not with the great mass of the army nor with the Bulgarian people generally. But the refusal of facilities to accompany the army cast upon me the responsibility of trying to get through somehow to the front, and in the process of getting through I won to knowledge of the peasant soldiers and their home life.

Ultimately the residuum of my grievance was not with the secretive methods of the Bulgarians—they were wise and necessary—but with the wild fictions which some correspondents thought to be the proper response to that policy of secretiveness.

Returned to Kirk Kilisse from the Bulgarian lines at Chatalja, I amused myself in an odd hour with burrowing among a great pile of newspapers in the Censor's office, and reading here and there the war news from English, French, and Belgian papers.

Dazed, amazed, I recognised that I had seemingly mistaken the duties of a war correspondent. For some six weeks I had been following an army in breathless, anxious chase of facts; wheedling Censors to get some few of those facts into a telegraph office; learning then, perhaps, that the custom at that particular telegraph office was to forward telegrams to Sofia, a ten days' journey, by bullock-wagon and railway, to give them time to mature. Now here, piping hot, were the stories of the war.

There was the vivid story of the battle of Chatalja. This story was started seven days too soon; had the positions and the armies all wrong; the result all wrong; and the picturesque details were in harmony. But for the purposes of the public it was a very good story of a battle. Those men who, after great hardships, were enabled to see the actual battle found that the poor messages which the Censor permitted them to send took ten days or more in transmission to London. Why have taken all the trouble and expense of going to the front? Buda-Pesth, on the way there, is a lovely city; Bucharest also; and charming Vienna was not at all too far away if you had a good staff-map and a lively military imagination.

In yet another paper there was a vivid picture—scenery, date, Greenwich time, and all to give an air of artistic verisimilitude—of the signing of the Peace armistice. The armistice had not been signed at the time, was not signed for some days after. But it would have been absurd to have waited, since "our special correspondent" had seen it all in advance, right down to the embrace of the Turkish delegate and the Bulgarian delegate, and knew that some of the conditions were that the Turkish commissariat was to feed the Bulgarian troops at Chatalja and the Bulgarian commissariat the Turkish troops in Adrianople. If his paper had waited for the truth that most charming story would never have seen the light.

So, in a little book I shall one day bring out in the "Attractive Occupations" series on "How to be a War Correspondent," I shall give this general advice:

1. Before operations begin, visit the army to which you are accredited, and take notes of the general appearance of officers and men. Also learn a few military phrases of their language. Ascertain all possible particulars of a personal character concerning the generals and chief officers.

2. Return then to a base outside the country. It must have good telegraph communication with your newspaper. For the rest you may decide its locality by the quality of the wine, or the beer, or the cooking.

3. Secure a set of good maps of the scene of operations. It will be handy also to have any books which have been published describing campaigns over the same terrain.

4. Keep in touch with the official bulletins issued by the military authorities from the scene of operations. But be on guard not to become enslaved by them. If, for instance, you wait for official notices of battles, you will be much hampered in your picturesque work. Fight battles when they ought to be fought and how they ought to be fought. The story's the thing.

5. A little sprinkling of personal experience is wise; for example, a bivouac on the battlefield, toasting your bacon at a fire made of a broken-down gun-carriage with a bayonet taken from a dead soldier. Mention the nationality of the bacon. You cannot be too precise in details.

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Ko-Ko's account of the execution of Nankipoo is, in short, the model for the future war correspondent. The other sort of war correspondent, who patiently studied and recorded operations, seems to be doomed. In the nature of things it must be so. The more competent and the more accurate he is, the greater the danger he is to the army which he accompanies. His despatches, published in his newspaper and telegraphed promptly to the other side, give to them at a cheap cost that information of what is going on behind their enemy's screen of scouts which is so vital to tactical, and sometimes to strategical, dispositions. To try to obtain that information an army pours out much blood and treasure; to guard that information an army will consume a full third of its energies in an elaborate system of mystification. A modern army must either banish the war correspondent altogether or subject him to such restrictions of Censorship as to veto honest, accurate, and prompt criticism or record of operations.

The Bulgarian army had not the courage to refuse authorisation to the swarm of journalists which descended upon its headquarters. Editors had argued it out that the small Balkan States, anxious to have a "good press" in Europe, would give correspondents a good show. But the Bulgarian authorities, anxious as they were to conciliate foreign public opinion, dared not allow a free run to the newspaper representatives. Apart from the considerations I have mentioned, which must govern any modern war, there were special reasons why the Bulgarians should be nervous of observation. They were waging war on "forlorn hope" lines with the slenderest resources, with the knowledge that officers and men—especially transport officers—had to do almost the impossible to win through. Further, they had the knowledge that in some cases the correspondents were representing the newspapers (and the Governments, for newspapers and cabinets often work hand in hand on the Continent) of nations which were at the very moment threatening mobilisation against the Balkan States. To have specially excepted Roumanian, Austrian, and German press representatives from permission to see operations would have been impossible. The method was adopted of authorising as many press correspondents as cared to apply, then carefully pocketing them where they could see nothing, and instituting such a rigorous Censorship as to guard effectively against any important facts, gleaned indirectly, leaking out. A few managed to earn enough of the Bulgarian confidence to be allowed to go through to the front and see things. But, even then, the Censorship and the monopoly of the telegraph line for military messages prevented them from despatching anything.

Some of the correspondents—one in particular—overcame a secretive military system and a harsh Censorship by the use of a skilled imagination and of a friendly telegraph line outside the area of Censorship. At the staff headquarters at Stara Zagora during the early days of the campaign, when we were all straining at the leash to get to the front, waiting and fussing, he was working, reconstructing the operations with maps and a fine imagination, and never allowing his paper to want for news. I think that he was quite prepared to have taken pupils for his new school of war correspondents. Often he would come to me for a yarn—in halting French on both sides—and would explain the campaign as it was being carried on. One eloquent gesture he habitually had—a sweeping motion which brought his arms together as though they were gathering up a bundle of spears, then the hands would meet in an expressive squeeze. "It is that," he said, "it is Napoleonic."

Probably the Censor at this stage did not interfere much with his activities, content enough to allow fanciful descriptions of Napoleonic strategy to go to the outer world. But, in my experience, facts, if one ascertained something independently, were not treated kindly.

"Why not?" I asked the Censor vexedly about one message he had stopped. "It is true."

"Yes, that is the trouble," he said—the nearest approach to a joke I ever got out of a Bulgarian, for they are a sober, God-fearing, and humour-fearing race.

The idea of the Bulgarian Censorship in regard to the privileges and duties of the war correspondent was further illustrated to me on another occasion, when a harmless map of a past phase of the campaign was stopped.

"Then what am I to send?" I asked.

"There are the bulletins," he said.

"Yes, the bulletins which are just your bald official account of week-old happenings which are sent to every news-agency in Europe before we see them!"

"But you are a war correspondent. You can add to them in your own language."

Remembering that conversation, I suspect that at first the Bulgarian Censorship did not object to fairy tales passing over the wires, though the way was blocked for exact observation. An enterprising story-maker had not very serious difficulties at the outset. Afterwards there was a change, and even the writer of fairy stories had to work outside the range of the Censor.

We were all allowed down to Mustapha Pasha, and considered that that was a big step to the front. "For two days or so," we were told, it would be our duty to wait patiently within the town (the battle-ground around Adrianople was about twelve miles distant). Some waited there two months and saw no real operations. The Censorship at Mustapha Pasha was so strict that all private letters had to be submitted, and if they were in English the English Censor insisted that they should be read to him aloud; and he re-read them, again aloud, to see if he had fully grasped their significance. Then they could go if they contained no military information and did not mention guns, oxen, soldiers, roads, mud, dirt, or other tabooed subjects. An amusing "rag" was tried on the Censor there. A sorely tried correspondent wrote a letter of extreme warmth to an imaginary sweetheart. This began "Ducksie Darling," and continued in the same strain for two pages. He waited until there was a full house—the Censors had no private office, but did their censoring in a large room which was open to all the correspondents—and then submitted his ardent outburst. Other press-men did not see the joke at first, and began to sidle out of the room as, like a stream of warm treacle, the love-letter flowed on. But they came back.

"'Ducksie Darling,'" began the writer, "that, you know, is not a military term. It is a phrase of endearment used in England.—'A thousand, thousand kisses'—that has nothing to do with the disposition of troops." So he went through to the honeyed end, the Censor blushing and furious, the audience hilarious.

The Mustapha Pasha Censorship would not allow ox-wagons or reservists to be mentioned, nor officers' names. The Censorship objected, too, for a long time to any mention of the all-pervading mud which was the chief item of interest in the town's life. Yet you might have lost an army division in some of the puddles. (But stop, I am lapsing into the picturesque ways of the new school of correspondents. Actually you could not have lost more than a regiment in the largest mud-puddle.)

Let the position be frankly faced, that if one is with an army in modern warfare, common sense prohibits the authorities from allowing you to see anything, and suggests the further precautions of a strict Censorship and a general hold-up of wires until their military value (and therefore their "news" value) has passed. If your paper wants picturesque stories hot off the grill it is much better not to be with the army (which means, in effect, in the rear of the army), but to write about its deeds from outside the radius of the Censorship.

Perhaps, though, your paper has old-fashioned prejudices in favour of veracity and will be annoyed if your imagination leads you too palpably astray? In that case do not venture to be a war correspondent at all. If you do not invent you will send nothing of value. If you invent you will be reprimanded.

Let me give my personal record of "getting to the front" and the net result of the trouble and the expense. I went down to Mustapha Pasha with the great body of war correspondents, and soon recognised that there was no hope of useful work there. The attacking army was at a standstill and a long, wearisome siege—its operations strictly guarded from inspection—was in prospect. I decided to get back to staff headquarters (then at Stara Zagora), and just managed to catch the staff before it moved on to Kirk Kilisse. By threatening to return to London at once I got a promise of leave to join the Third Army and to "see some fighting."

The promise anticipated the actual granting of leave by two days. It would be tedious to record all the little and big difficulties that were then encountered through the reluctance of the military authorities to allow one to get transport or help of any kind. But four days later I was marching out of Mustapha Pasha on the way to Kirk Kilisse by way of Adrianople, a bullock-wagon carrying my baggage, an interpreter trundling my bicycle, I riding a small pony. The interpreter was gloomy and disinclined to face the hardships and dangers (mostly fancied) of the journey. Beside the driver (a Macedonian) marched a soldier with fixed bayonet. Persuasion was necessary to force the driver to undertake the journey, and a friendly transport officer had, with more or less legality, put at my command this means of argument. A mile outside Mustapha Pasha the soldier turned back, and I was left to coax my unwilling helpers on a four days' journey across a war-stricken countryside, swept of all supplies, infested with savage dogs (fortunately well fed by the harvest of the battlefields), liable to ravage by roving bands.

That night I gave the Macedonian driver some jam and some meat to eke out his bread and cheese.

"That is better than having a bayonet poked into your inside," I said, by pantomime. He understood, grinned, and gave no great trouble thereafter, though he was always in a state of pitiable funk when I left the wagon to take a trip within the lines of the besieging forces.

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So to Kirk Kilisse. There I got to General Savoff himself and won not only leave, but a letter of aid to go down to the Third Army at the lines of Chatalja. But by then what must be the final battle of the war was imminent. Every hour of delay was dangerous. To go by cart meant a journey of several days. A military train was available part of the way if I were content to drop interpreter, horse, and baggage and travel with a soldier's load.

That decision was easy enough at the moment—though I sometimes regretted it afterwards when the only pair of riding-breeches I had with me gave out at the knees, and I had to walk the earth ragged—and by train I got to Tchorlu. There a friendly artillery officer helped me to get a cart (springless) and two fast horses. He insisted also on giving me as a patrol, a single Bulgarian soldier, with 200 rounds of ammunition, as Bashi-Bazouks were ranging the country. I objected that I had a revolver, and there was the driver, a Greek. "He would run away," said the officer pleasantly, and the patrol was taken.

It was an unnecessary precaution, though the presence of the soldier was comforting as we entered Silivri at night, the outskirts of the town deserted, the chattering of the driver's teeth audible over the clamour of the cart, the gutted houses ideal refuges for prowling bands. From Silivri to Chatalja there was again no appearance of Bashi-Bazouks. But thought of another danger obtruded as we came near the lines and encountered men from the Bulgarian army suffering from the choleraic dysentery which had then begun its ravages. To one dying soldier by the roadside I gave brandy; and then had to leave him with his mates, who were trying to get him to a hospital. They were sorely puzzled by his cries, his pitiful grimaces. Wounds they knew, and the pain of them they despised. They could not comprehend this disease which took away all the manhood of a stoic peasant, and made him weak in spirit as an ailing child.

From Chatalja, the right flank of the Bulgarian position, I passed along the front to Ermenikioi ("the village of Armenians"), passing the night at Arjenli, near the centre and the headquarters of the ammunition park. That night at Arjenli seemed to make a rough and sometimes perilous journey, which had extended over seven days, worth while.

Arjenli is perched on a high hill, to the west of Ermenikioi. It gave a view of all the Chatalja position—the range of hills stretching from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora, along which the Bulgarians were entrenched, and, beyond the invisible valley, the second range which held the Turkish defence. Over the Turkish lines, like a standard, shone in the clear sky a crescent moon, within its tip a bright star. It seemed an omen, an omen of good to the Turks. My Australian eye instinctively sought for the Southern Cross ranged against it in the sky in sign that the Christian standard held the Heavens too. I sought in vain in those northern latitudes, shivered a little and, as though arguing against a superstitious thought, said to myself: "But there is the Great Bear."

For by this time I had come to sympathise thoroughly with the Bulgarian army and its cause. The soldiers were such good fellows: their steadiness, their sense of justice, their kindness were so remarkable. Just an incident of the camp at Arjenli to illustrate this. It was on the Friday night of November 15, and on the morrow we expected the decisive battle of the war. At Arjenli (which was a little to the rear of the Bulgarian lines) was the ammunition park of the artillery, guarded by a small body of troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Tchobanoff. Coming towards the front from Tchorlu, the fall of night and the weariness of my horses had compelled me to halt at the village, and this officer and Dr. Neytchef gave me a warm welcome to their little Mess.

There are six members, and for all, to sleep and to eat, one room. Three are officers, three have no commissions. With this nation in arms that is not an objection to a common table. Discipline is strict, but officers and soldiers are men and brothers when out of the ranks. Social position does not govern military position. I found sometimes the University professor and the bank manager without commissions, the peasant proprietor an officer. The whole nation had poured out its manhood for the war, from farm, field, factory, shop, bank, university, and consulting-room.

Here at Arjenli on the eve of the decisive battle, I think over early incidents of the campaign. It is a curious fact that in all Bulgaria I have met but one man who was young enough and well enough to fight and who had not enlisted. He had become an American subject, I believe, and so could not be compelled to serve. In America he had learned to be an "International Socialist," and so he did not volunteer. I believe he was unique. With half the population of London, Bulgaria had put 350,000 trained men under arms.

We eat our simple meal of goat's flesh stewed with rice. Then, smoking cigarettes made of the tobacco of the district, Colonel Tchobanoff and I talk over the position as well as my bad French will allow. He is serene and cheerful. His chief care is to impress upon me the fact that in making war the Bulgarians had not been influenced by dynastic considerations nor by military ambition. It was a war dictated not by a Court circle or a military clique, but by the irresistible wish of the people.

Whilst we were talking the sound of a rifle shot came up from the village. A junior officer was sent out to make inquiries. Soon he returned with two soldiers leading between them a Turkish prisoner.

I learn the facts. The Turk had tried to rush past a sentry standing guard over the ammunition park. The sentry had fired, had not hit the man, but had grappled with him afterwards and taken him prisoner.

I nerved myself to see the Turk shot out of hand. The rules of war warranted it. He had tried to rush a sentry on guard over an important military station. But the Bulgarian officers decided to hear his story, and a kind of informal court-martial was constituted. The proceedings, which were in Turkish, were translated to me, as I was acting in a way as friend of the accused to "see fair play."

The Turk's story was clear enough. He had lived in Arjenli all his life and was not a soldier. When the Turkish army had evacuated the district he had not left with them, but had stayed in his old village. That night he had gone out of his hut to the village well. Returning, a sentry had challenged him, and he had become frightened and tried to run away.

It was clear that the man was telling the truth. The Bulgarians believed him, and let him go with a warning. This showed justice and courage, and a good "nerve" too. In some armies, I suspect, the Turk would have been shot, or hanged first and left to explain afterwards, if he could. And this was among the Bulgarians, who some insist are a bloodthirsty, cut-throat race, with no sense of justice or of mercy!

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CHAPTER VIII

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Peter was interesting as illustrating the transition stage between the Bulgarian peasant (for whom I have the heartiest admiration) and the Bulgarian statesman, diplomat, "personage" (for whom I have not—generally speaking and with particular exceptions—nearly so much admiration). He had not lost the peasant virtues. He was loyal, plucky, patriotic. But he had lost the good health and the practical knowledge of life of the peasant stock from which he sprang.

The Bulgarian on the land lives a laborious life, bread and cheese his usual sole food, with a little meat as a rare treat, and a glass of vodka as his indulgence for Sundays and feast days only. Marrying early he is astonishingly fecund. Transfer him to town life and he soon shows a weakening in physical fibre. The streets sap away his field-bred health. A more elaborate diet attacks the soundness of his almost bovine digestion. There is no greater contrast between the Bulgarian peasant on the land, physically the healthiest type one could imagine, and the Bulgarian town resident, who has not yet learned to adapt himself to the conditions of closely hived life and shows a marked susceptibility to dyspepsia, phthisis, and neurasthenia. The Bulgarian peasant has the nerves, the digestion of an ox. The Bulgarian town-dweller, the son or grandson of that peasant, might pass often for the tired-out progeny of many generations of city workers.

Peter could not serve in the army because his lungs were affected. That was why he was available as my secretary-servant. Peter was, as regards any practical knowledge of life, the most pathetically useless young man one could imagine. He could make coffee, after the Turkish fashion, and had equipped himself for a long campaign with a most elaborate coffee machine, all glass and gimcrackery, which of course did not survive one day's travel. But he had not brought food nor cooking pots nor knife nor fork nor spoon: no blankets had he, and no change of clothing—just the coffee-pot, a picture of a saint, and an out-of-date book of Bulgarian statistics, which he solemnly presented to me, with his name affectionately inscribed on the fly-leaf. I dared not throw it away, and so had to carry its useless bulk about with me until Peter and I parted. In addition to his lack of equipment, Peter could not roll a rug, make a bed, or fend for himself in any way.

The Bulgarian peasant in his life on the land is on the whole a very clever chap as regards the practical things of existence. During the campaign I noticed how he made himself very comfortable. Whenever he was stationed as a guard for a railway bridge or in any other semi-permanent post, he half-dug, half-thatched himself an excellent shelter. He made use for food supplies of every scrap of eatable stuff that came his way, and could do wonders in the manipulation and repair of an ox-cart. But clearly these simple skills do not survive town life. Peter was only one example of many that I encountered. The problem that troubles Bulgaria to-day and will trouble her for some time to come is that of finding from her almost exclusively peasant population enough statesmen, lawyers, priests, teachers, leaders generally who will have substituted for peasant virtues and peasant abilities the savoir faire of the cultivated European. They show a tendency to lose the one before they gain the other.

My life with Peter was brief. He was such a good fellow that I was quite willing to retain him, even though I had to be the servant really, and his services were only useful as interpreter. But his health improved. Possibly the better food and the open-air regime that I insisted upon were responsible. Peter became healthy enough to do something for the army and, of course, he went away to do that something. Though he had become a good deal devoted to me his chief devotion was to his country. I honoured him for deserting me.

Incidents of the mobilisation of the troops showed this strong and general patriotic ardour. At the call this trained nation was in arms in a day. The citizen soldiers hurried to the depôts for their arms and uniforms. In one district the rumour that mobilisation had been authorised was bruited abroad a day before the actual issue of the orders, and the depôt was besieged by the peasants who had rushed in from their farms. The officer in charge could not give out the rifles, so the men lit fires, got food from the neighbours, and camped around the depôt until they were armed. Some navvies received their mobilisation orders on returning to their camp after ten hours' work at railway-building. They had supper and marched through the night to their respective headquarters. For one soldier, the march was twenty-four miles. The railway carriages were not adequate to bring all the men to their assigned centres. Some rode on the steps, on the roofs of carriages, on the buffers even.

At Stara Zagora I noted a mother of the people who had come to see some Turkish prisoners just brought in from Mustapha Pasha. To one she gave a cake. "They are hungry," she said. This woman had five men at the war, her four sons in the fighting-line, her husband under arms guarding a line of communication. She had sent them proudly. It was the boast of the Bulgarian women that not a tear was shed at the going away of the soldiers.

At a little village outside Kirk Kilisse a young civil servant, an official of the Foreign Office, spoke of the war whilst we ate a dish of cheese and eggs. "It is a war," he said, "of the peasants and the intellectuals. It is not a war made by the politicians or the soldiers of the staff. That would be impossible. In our nation every soldier is a citizen and every citizen a soldier. There could not be a war, unless it were a war desired by the people. In my office it was with rage that some of the clerks heard that they must stay at Sofia, and not go to the front. We were all eager to take arms."

At Nova Zagora, travelling by a troop train carrying reserves to the front, I crossed a train bringing wounded from the battlefields. For some hours both trains were delayed. The men going to the front were decorated with flowers as though going to a feast. They filled the waiting time by dancing to the music of the national bagpipes, and there joined in the dance such of the wounded as could stand on their feet.

At Mustapha Pasha I arrived one night from Stara Zagora with a great body of correspondents. With me I had brought about a week's supply of food, leaving other supplies with my heavy baggage. But on the train journey, taking up a full day, this supply disappeared. No one else seemed to have food supplies handy, and I fed all I could, including a Bulgarian bishop (who showed his gratitude afterwards by "cutting me dead" when it was in his power to do me a slight favour). When we reached Mustapha Pasha it was to find no hotels, lodging-houses, cafés, or stores. All the food supplies had been requisitioned by the Bulgarian military authorities. There was plenty of food in the town but none could be bought. I tried to get a loaf of bread from a military bakery, offering to the soldier in charge up to five francs for a loaf. He was sturdily proof against bribes. But subsequently I was given a loaf for nothing on the ground that I was "in distress"; as indeed I was, though with £100 in my pocket.

Between Silivri and Ermenikioi, travelling with a fine equipment for the time being—a cart and two good horses and a full supply of food, purchased at Tchorlu and Silivri—I was eating lunch by the roadside when four Bulgarian soldiers came up and with signs told me that they were starving, and asked for food. They had become separated from their regiment and, I gathered, had had no food for two days. They were armed with rifles and bayonets and could have taken from me all they needed if they had wished. But that thought did not seem to have entered their heads. I gave them a meal and a little bread and cheese to see them on their way. One of these poor peasant soldiers fumbled in his purse and brought out some coppers, wishing to pay for what he had had.

Repeatedly in my travels I would come at nightfall to some little vedette outpost and be made welcome of the officers' Mess. That meant sharing their meal, whatever it was,—a very poor one sometimes. After the main dish I would bring out dates and biscuits, of which I had a small store, to find usually that the Bulgarian officers would refuse to trench upon my supplies, as I was going forward "to the front" and would need them. That was not the attitude of savages but of gentlemen.

These and a score of similar incidents showed me the Bulgarian national character as kind, honest, patient, courageous. They made it impossible for me to believe that by nature these people are invariably cruel, rapacious, murderous. That in cases of Balkan massacres and outrages the Bulgarian people have not been always the victims, and have not been always blameless, I know. It is impossible to shut one's eyes to the fact that something survives of the traditions of cruelty and reprisal existing in the Balkans of the Middle Ages. In this Balkan peninsula there is always a smell of blood in the nostrils, a mist of blood in the eyes. The Bulgarians have taken their part in many incidents which seem to deny the existence of Christian civilisation.

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But I speak of the people as I found them, and I came away from the Balkans confident that my life and property would always be safe with Bulgarian peasants, provided that I made no movement to begin trouble. I came away, too, with a high idea of their essential soundness as a nation and their certainty of a great future. Allowances have to be made for the hostility of circumstances. As is insisted by the Bulgarians, when the little nation started to restore its old home life, everything had to be replaced. "It was not only the political conditions which had altered, but social life itself. At a moment's notice, and practically out of nothing, a new administration had to be organised and the diverse organs of the national life to be improvised. Hardly anything valuable of the preceding regime could be utilised. In this connection, it is interesting to observe the different fortunes of a conquered province. When a province which had formed part of a civilised country passes to a nation equally civilised, one may say that in many respects the change is an unimportant one, because in such a case the conqueror retains almost all the institutions, the only difference being that in the future they work in the name of the new sovereign authority. The political condition of such a province is the only thing which is affected, the administrative and judicial system and the wealth continuing as before. On the other hand, if one attempted to form a modern state out of a country which has been devastated for centuries, or if one tried to transform a Turkish province into a country after the pattern of the European States, every step would be strewn with obstacles, and there would be nothing of the former state of things that could be utilised. In such a case, the only thing to be done would be to borrow from other nations the experience which they have accumulated during their long efforts, and to transplant it into the desolated land. This is practically what happened in Bulgaria, and it is only by taking into account the exceptionally difficult conditions in which the Principality found itself on the morrow of its liberation that one will be able to appreciate the efforts displayed and the result obtained."

In one particular there is to a British observer a marked failing in the Bulgarian character: the Bulgars are very nervous to "keep up appearances" and that makes them appear snobbish and deceitful at times. They are ashamed of poverty, a little ashamed, too, of their natural manners. Always they wish to put the best face on things before the world. If a Bulgarian understood that you recognised any crudeness anywhere he liked to pretend that it was not a usual thing but a temporary circumstance due to the war. I got quite tired of hearing "La guerre comme la guerre" murmured to me by apologetic Bulgarians wanting to pretend that under normal circumstances his countrymen always had the best of table silver and napery.

One incident (which left nothing but amiable memories) of a day's march north of Adrianople I can recall illustrating this desire to keep up appearances. After an anxious day I had got to a Bulgarian camp, was welcomed by an officer and brought around to a little hut where the mess was established. My new-made friend knocked at the door and explained things in Bulgarian. I heard a scuffle and could not help seeing through the window two young officers who were comfortably enjoying supper with their coats off rushing to get into full uniform. Until they were dressed properly there was no admittance to the stranger. That showed on the whole a good feeling of pride: but sometimes Bulgarian sensitiveness to criticism and desire to appear grand was a little trying. I suppose, however, it is natural in a "new" people.

In most things, however, the Bulgarian is intensely practical. That sturdy panegyrist of the Bulgars, Mr. Noel Buxton, M.P., insists upon this practicality even when its effects were notably absent:

It calls for a more affectionate eye towards the Bulgar people than I possess to be blind to the fact that in their medical and sanitary arrangements for the campaign against the Turks they were woefully deficient. The excuse of ignorance is the only one that will serve. The only alternative to that would be a complete recklessness for life. In the Bulgarian camps sanitary precautions were absolutely lacking, and on the battlefields the provision for dealing with the wounded was shockingly inadequate. When I came back from Chatalja to Kirk Kilisse, King Ferdinand sent his private secretary for me as an independent witness of the state of things at the front. I took the occasion to acquaint His Majesty frankly with the ghastly consequences that had followed from the absence of all precautions to ensure a wholesome water supply, from the neglect of latrine regulations in the camps and other failures in the medical and sanitary service. I had no reason to feel that my frankness was resented, and I believe that (too late in the day) an effort at reform was made. Certainly since then there has been reform, and if Bulgaria should unhappily have to enter upon another campaign probably the medical and sanitary services will be brought to a high pitch of organisation.

Yes, the Bulgarian is very practical in mind but he has suffered, and has yet to suffer again perhaps, from lack of experience to instruct his practical mind. If the national pride would allow of it, an excellent thing for Bulgaria would be to import half a dozen skilled officials from, say, England and France to nurse her departments through the stage of infancy. The nation has plenty of natural genius but makes mistakes through inexperience.

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CHAPTER IX

When the war between the Balkan States and the Turkish Empire was brought to a close for the time being by an armistice signed on the battlefield of Chatalja, to which Bulgaria, Servia, and Turkey were parties, and by the summoning of the Conference of London, to which Greece also was a party, the prospects for Bulgaria's future were singularly bright. As a power in the Balkans Turkey had ceased to exist. She had been driven out of all Albania, Macedonia, Epirus, and Thrace, except that beleaguered garrisons held the fortresses of Scutari, Janina, and Adrianople and the Dardanelles forts, whilst behind the lines of Chatalja a small area of Turkish territory remained under the Crescent. The area held by the Bulgarian armies was greater at this time than the territory assigned to her by the Treaty of San Stefano, and promised to be extended as the result of the peace negotiations. In the war which had just been waged the exploits of Bulgarian arms had attracted the widest attention in Europe. Public opinion in most of the capitals of the world assigned the future hegemony of the Balkan Peninsula to the Bulgarian nation. But all this fair-seeming prospect was the prelude to one of the greatest national tragedies in history.

I cannot better preface a relation of the facts of that tragedy than by giving a summary of the position early in 1914, as it was given anonymously by a noted Bulgarian diplomat to the National Review. He wrote: