The Balkan Peninsula

The effect of leaving Adrianople in the hands of the enemy was that supplies for the army in the field coming from Bulgaria could travel by one of two routes. They could come through Yamboli to Kirk Kilisse, or they could come through Novi Zagora to Mustapha Pasha by railway, and then to Kirk Kilisse around Adrianople. From Kirk Kilisse to the rail-head at Seleniki, close to Chatalja, they could come not by railway, but by a tramway, a very limited railway. If Adrianople had fallen, the railway would have been open. The Bulgarian railway services had, I think, something over 100 powerful locomotives at the outset of the war, and whilst it was a single line in places, it was an effective line right down to as near Constantinople as they could get.

But, Adrianople being in the hands of the enemy, supplies coming from Yamboli had to travel to Kirk Kilisse by track, mostly by bullock wagon, and that journey took five, six, or seven days. The British Army Medical Detachment, travelling over that road, took seven days. If one took the other road you got to Mustapha Pasha comfortably by railway. And then it was necessary to use bullock or horse transport from Mustapha Pasha to Kirk Kilisse. That journey I took twice; once with an ox wagon, and afterwards with a set of fast horses, and the least period for that journey was five days. From Kirk Kilisse there was a line of light railway joining the main line. But on that line the Bulgarians had only six engines, and, I think, thirty-two carriages; so that, for practical purposes, the railway was of very little use indeed past Mustapha Pasha. Whilst Adrianople was in the hands of the enemy, the Bulgarians had practically no line of communication.

My reason for believing that it was not the original plan of the generals to leave Adrianople "masked" is, that in the first instance I have a high opinion of the generals, and I do not think they could have designed that; but think rather it was forced upon them by the politicians saying, "We must hurry through, we must attempt something, no matter how desperate it is, something decisive." In the second instance, after Adrianople had been attacked in a very half-hearted way, and after the main Bulgarian army had pushed on to the lines of Chatalja, the Bulgarians called in the aid of a Serbian division to help them against Adrianople. I am sure they would not have done that if it had not been their wish to subdue Adrianople. To be forced to invoke Serbian aid was a serious wound to their vanity.

The position of the Bulgarian army on the lines of Chatalja, with Adrianople in the hands of the enemy, was this: that it took practically their whole transport facilities to keep the army supplied with food, and there was no possibility of keeping the army properly supplied with ammunition. So if the Bulgarian generals had really designed to carry the lines of Chatalja without first attacking Adrianople, they miscalculated seriously. But I do not think they did; I think it was a plan forced upon them by political authority, feeling that the war must be pushed to a conclusion somehow. Why the Bulgarians did not take Adrianople quickly in the first place is to be explained simply by the fact that they could not. But if their train of sappers had been of the same kind of stuff as their field artillery, they could have taken Adrianople in the first week of the war. The Bulgarians, however, had no effective siege train. A Press photographer at Mustapha Pasha was very much annoyed because photographs he had taken of guns passing through the town were not allowed to be sent through to his paper. He sent a humorous message to his editor, that he could not send photographs of guns, "it being a military secret that the Bulgarians had any guns." But the reason the Bulgarians did not want photographs taken was that these guns were practically useless for the purpose for which they were intended.

In short, whilst Adrianople stood it was impossible to keep 250,000 men in the field at Chatalja with the guns and ammunition necessary for their work. Therefore the taking of Adrianople should have followed the Battle of Lule Burgas.

A reservation is perhaps necessary. If after Lule Burgas the victorious Bulgarians had been able to push on at once, the fleeing Turks might have been followed to the very walls of Constantinople. If even the flower of the force to the extent of 50,000 men had gone on with all the guns, ammunition, and food possible, the enterprise would probably have succeeded. But one may judge that that too was impossible, in view of the transport position. There was a long pause. Then an attempt was made to do deliberately against an entrenched army what it was thought impossible to do against a fleeing rabble. Reasons of humanity were given to me to explain the hesitation to assault Adrianople. The Bulgarians shrank from the great expenditure of men necessary, from the sacrifice of the Christian population involved. Such reasons would be admirable if truthful; but they are not war.

When the action against the lines of Chatalja was at last opened the Turks had had time to entrench strongly, to recover their wind, to recognise that they had come to the last ditch. On November 17, after the artillery reconnaissance of the position by the Bulgarians, I had slight hope that success would be possible; it looked as if they were short of ammunition, and not well supplied with food. Shells were used very sparingly. When a storm was necessary there was a shower. Even on that day infantrymen were asked to do the work of shrapnel, and valuable lives paid for very slight information. Still, the Turkish artillery work was so poor; their sticking to their trenches was so persistent, that I half anticipated that the night would see a big Bulgarian success on the left flank, making an effective attack on the centre possible with the morning. But by next morning little had been done. That day was spent in a heroic display of infantry courage. Men rushed out from trenches against forts the strength of which was unknown, with practically no artillery backing. Certainly the day was misty, and artillery work could not have been properly effective. If the position was—as I guess it was—that there was no adequate supply of ammunition, the choice of the day was good. If it were possible to succeed with infantry alone it would have been possible on that day and with those men. But it was impossible. That night operations were suspended, and negotiations for peace followed.

Meanwhile in other quarters of the theatre of war the Balkan Allies had been doing as well or even better. True, the Montenegrins were not very successful against Scutari (it did not fall until the second phase of the war), and the Greeks had been held up at Janina. But the Serbians had swept the Turks from Old Serbia and from Northern Macedonia in fine style, and had carried through an expedition of great gallantry over the mountains to the Adriatic. As the Bulgarians and Turks stood at bay on opposite ranges of hills within 25 miles of Constantinople, all that was left of Turkish territory in Europe was the little peninsula on which Constantinople stood, the peninsula of Gallipoli, and the towns of Adrianople, Scutari, and Janina. It was certainly high time for the Turk to talk of peace.

War was now interrupted for a time to allow the Balkan Allies who had shown themselves so gallant in war to show their mettle as statesmen and negotiators. It is one of the established facts of history that warlike prowess alone has never made a nation securely great. Within the Balkan Peninsula that was made plain during the invasions of the Goths and the Huns. There was now to be a melancholy modern proof. At the end of 1912 the Balkan States, united and victorious, were in the position to take the Balkan Peninsula for themselves and keep out European interference for the future. They had soon dissipated all this advantage with mutual jealousies and blundering negotiations. Already, before the Peace Conference had actually begun its work, charges and counter-charges of atrocities were bandied about between Bulgar and Greek. A Greek official account set forth the following accusations:

The detailed inquiry with regard to excesses and crimes committed by the Bulgarian army shows that they constitute a cause for the disturbances reported during the first days after the surrender of Salonica. According to this inquiry, the excesses of the Bulgarians can be divided into three categories: (1) damage to property; (2) crimes against the life and honour of private persons, especially Turks; and (3) offences—and these were the less frequent—due to misconceived political interest. In the majority of cases Bulgarian soldiers and peasants gave themselves up to pillaging. At Vassilika, Agiaparaskevi, Apostola, Alihatzilar, Serres, Langada, Asvestohori, Baroritza, Tohanli, Karaburnu, Vardar, Doiran, and Salonica pillaging and thefts of all kinds were committed, the stolen articles including horses, goats, sheep, barley, hay, jewels, and other articles of value, large sums of money, carpets, furniture, clothes, and arms. Attacks were made on Austrian subjects, and the Austrian Consulate in consequence, lodged an energetic protest. Unspeakable outrages were committed at Serres and at the other towns and villages mentioned above. At Doiran, despite the protests of the municipality, the Bulgarians seized and imprisoned the rich Turkish residents, who after having secured their liberty by the payment of enormous ransoms, were ambushed by the Bulgarians and massacred, sixty of them being killed.

The political crimes were of little importance, as the greater number of the Bulgarians ardently desire the maintenance of the Balkan Alliance, especially a Greco-Bulgarian entente, safeguarding their political interests.

On the Bulgarian side just as positive charges against the Greeks were made. It is not my province to attempt to judge as to the truth of the Salonica events, but I quote this official charge as illustrative of the spirit which had come over the Balkan League before the close of 1912.

CHAPTER V

A CHAPTER IN BALKAN DIPLOMACY

Watching through many exciting weeks the course of a Balkan Peace Conference, I had the opportunity of seeing another phase of the Near Eastern character in its various sub-divisions—the Turkish, the Grecian, the Roumanian, the Bulgarian, and the Serbian. It was in certain general characteristics the same character with certain points of difference, ranging from almost purely Oriental through various grades until it reached to a phase which was rather more than half European. In various aspects it was naïve, wily, deceitful, vainglorious, truculent, servile, stubborn, supple. At times it was very trying. Usually it was distinctly amusing. There were some exceptions among the Balkan statesmen, but as a rule they were men of very ordinary ability and very extraordinary conceit. Close association with them dissipated for a time the extremely good impression that Bulgarian, Serbian, Grecian, and Roumanian peasants and officials and traders had made on me, meeting them as soldiers or as wayside hosts.

When the Bulgarian progress towards Constantinople was stopped at Chatalja, the Bulgarian authorities favoured negotiations for peace. To this Greece very strenuously, and Serbia more gently, objected. They offered as an alternative suggestion to send aid to the Chatalja lines to help Bulgaria to force things to a conclusion there. But by this time the Balkan Allies were at least as much suspicious of one another as they were hostile to the Turk. The troubles after the fall of Salonica had given a picturesque illustration of the hollowness of the Balkan League. Greece and Bulgaria had raced armies down for the capture of that city, and the Greeks had won in the race by bribing the Turkish commander to surrender to them—the Bulgarians said sourly (an absurd accusation!). Now Bulgarian and Greek were at the point of open war in Salonica, and were doing a little odd killing of one another to keep their hands in practice. Around Adrianople Bulgarian and Serbian were growling at one another, the Bulgarians treating their friends rather badly, so far as I could judge. Both racial sections of the army of siege were inclined to do very little, because each was waiting for the other to begin. Bulgaria, too, was extremely anxious to have no more friendly allied troops in the areas which she had marked out for herself. She was aware that the Greek population of Thrace was agitating for an autonomous Thrace instead of a Bulgarian annexation, and feared that the presence of a Greek army in the province would strengthen this movement.

In the upshot Serbia and Montenegro supported Bulgaria in the signing of an armistice. Greece refused to sign an armistice, but joined in the negotiations for a final peace which opened at the Conference of St. James's, London, in December 1912. This Conference quickly resolved itself into a wonderful acrobatic display of ground and lofty fiction, of strange childish "bluffs," of complicated efforts at mystery which would not deceive a Punch-and-Judy show audience.

In the East and the Near East, the man who wants to buy a horse goes to the market-place in the first instance, and curses publicly all horses and thoughts of horses. He proclaims that he will see his father's tomb defiled before he will ever touch a horse again. Hearing of this, a man who wishes to sell a horse appears in public, and proclaims that the horse he has in his stall is the sun and the moon and the stars of his life: that sooner than part with it he would eat filth and become as a dog. At this stage the negotiations for a bargain are in fair progress. After some days—the East and the Near East is not very thrifty with time—a satisfactory bargain is struck.

The Balkan Peace Conference was carried on very much on those lines. In a London winter atmosphere, among the unimaginative and matter-of-fact London population, the effect was strangely fantastic. In an early stage of the negotiations the Turkish delegates (who were out to gain time in the desperate hope that something would turn up) said one day that they must ask for instructions on some point, about which they were as fully instructed as it was possible to be: said the next sitting day that unfortunately their instructions had not arrived: and the next sitting day that their instructions had arrived but unfortunately they could not decipher some of the words, and must refer to Constantinople again! With all this it was difficult to believe that we lived in a civilised age of telegraphs and newspapers and railway trains. The mind was transported back insensibly to the times of the great Caliph of Bagdad.

Whilst the Turks dallied in the hope that something would turn up, and devoted a painstaking but painfully obvious industry to the task of trying to sow dissensions among the Balkan Allies, these Balkan Allies engaged among themselves in a vigorous Press campaign of mutual abuse and insinuation. The seeds of dissension which the Turk was scattering refused to germinate, because already the field which was sown had a full-grown crop. But the Balkan Allies had one point of elementary common sense. They were resolved to take from the Turk all that was possible before they fell out among themselves as to the division of the spoil. (As it happened, they forgot to take into account the contingency that after the division it would still be within the power of the Turk to seek some revenge if they abandoned their League of Alliance, which alone had made the humiliation of the Turkish Empire possible.)

The first squabble between the Allies was over the appointment of a leader or chief spokesman of the Balkan delegates. If there had been a touch of imagination and real friendliness between them they would have selected the senior Montenegrin delegate in acknowledgment of the gallantry which had kept Montenegro during all the centuries unsubdued by the Turkish invader. Or there were reasons why the chief Greek delegate should have been chosen, as he was Prime Minister in his own country, and therefore the senior delegate in official position. But there was not enough good feeling among the Allies to allow of any such settlement. The delegation was left without an official spokesman and there had to be a roster of Presidents in alphabetical order as the only way to soothe the embittered jealousies of rival allies. That was the first of a series of childish incidents.

Some of the delegates talked with the utmost freedom to the Press: and if what they told was not always accurate it was nearly always interesting. The loathsome wiles of the other Balkan fellow and his black treachery were explained at length. It seemed seriously to be thought that British and European opinion would be influenced by this sort of fulmination in the more irresponsible Press.

Diplomacy under these conditions was bound to fail. The Turkish position was at the time plainly desperate if only military considerations were taken into account. A united front on the part of the Balkan delegates, combining firmness with some suavity, would have convinced even the procrastinating Turkish mind that the game was up and the only thing to do was to make a peace on lines of "cutting the loss." But the constant quarrels of the Balkan States' representatives between themselves encouraged the Turks day by day to think that a definite split must come between the Allies, and with a split the chance for Turkey to find a way out of her desperate position. As it happened, Turkey played that game too long: and the war was resumed and further heavy bloodshed caused. Then the Peace Conference resumed with Turkey and Bulgaria, apparently very anxious for peace on terms dictated by the Powers: and Greece and Serbia anxious now for delays because they had made up their minds that it was necessary to defend themselves against Bulgaria, and they wished time for their preparations.

Throughout both Conferences Roumania hovered about in the offing waiting confidently for an opportunity for pickings. Roumania had learned well the lesson taught her by European diplomacy after the War of Liberation. Then she had done great work, made enormous sacrifices, and won not rewards but robberies. In the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 she stood apart, risking nothing, and waiting for the exhaustion of the combatants to put in her claims.

The second session of the Balkan Peace Conference came to an abrupt end through practically an ultimatum from the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, that peace with Turkey on the lines determined by the Powers must be signed at once. The Grecian and Serbian delegates saw then that the game of delay could no longer be played, signed the Peace of London, and hurried away to their homes expecting an attack from Bulgaria.

Some strange infatuation drove the Bulgarian leaders at that time to a fit of madness. They had just wrung the last atom of concession from Turkey, and had an enormous undisputed access of territory in Thrace and in eastern Macedonia, with a good coastal frontage on the Aegean. True, they were faced with a demand for a small territorial concession by Roumania, and Greece disputed the right of Bulgaria to an area of northern Macedonia, and Serbia disputed with her over her Macedonian area. It would have been quite within the rules of Balkan diplomacy for Bulgaria to have sought the help of one of her neighbours, so that she might withstand the others. With proper adroitness she might have robbed each in turn with the help of the others. But Bulgaria elected to fight all of them at once. To Roumania she was rude, to Serbia stiff, to Greece provocative. By joining hands with Serbia, which had helped her very gallantly at Adrianople, and was now much injured by the decision of the Powers that she was not to keep the Adriatic territory which she had won in the war, Bulgaria might have coerced Greece and Turkey at least, and perhaps have struck a better bargain with Roumania. But she had conciliation for none.

The events that followed are as tragical as any that I can recall in history. Bulgaria had within a few weeks raised herself to a position which promised her headship of a Balkan Confederation. She might have been the Prussia of a new Empire. Within a few days her blunders, her intolerance, and her bad faith had humbled her to the dust. As soon as she attacked Greece and Serbia—to attack such a combination was absurd—Roumania moved down upon her northern frontier, and the Turk moved up from the south. Neither Roumanian nor Turk were opposed. The whole Bulgarian strength was kept for her late Allies: and yet the Bulgarian forces were decisively routed by both Serbians and Greeks.

Of the dark incidents of that fratricidal war no history will ever tell the truth. No war correspondents nor military attachés accompanied the forces. From the accusations and counter-accusations of the combatants, from the eloquent absence of prisoners, from the ghastly gaps in the ranks of the armies when they returned from the field, it is clear that the war was carried on as a rule without mercy and without chivalry. There was no very plentiful supply of ammunition on either side. That fact enabled the combatants to approach one another more closely and to inflict more savage slaughter. During the course of the war with Turkey the Balkan Allies lost 75,000 slain. During the war between themselves, though it lasted only a few days, it is said that this number was exceeded.

Roumania, whose army though invading Bulgaria engaged in no battle, finally dictated terms of peace. The Peace of Bucharest supplanted the Peace of London. Bulgaria, beaten to the ground, had to give up all that Roumania demanded, and practically all that Greece and Serbia demanded. It was a characteristic incident of Balkan diplomacy that the unhappy Bulgarians, having the idea of conciliating Roumania, conveyed the territory to that state with expressions of joy and gratitude, to which expressions the wily Roumanians gave exactly their true value.

Turkey, meanwhile, had taken full advantage of the opportunity given to her by Bulgaria. Beaten decisively she had had to agree to give up all her European possessions with the exception of those beyond a line drawn from Enos on the Black Sea to Midia on the Aegean. She saw now Bulgaria powerless and calmly marched back, and seized again practically all Thrace, including Adrianople, over which had been fought such great battles, and Kirk Kilisse. The Bulgarians protested, appealed to Europe, to Roumania in vain, then accepted the situation and professed a warm friendship for Turkey. There seemed to be a movement for a joint Turkish-Bulgarian attack upon Greece, which would have put the last touch upon this tragic comedy of the Balkans. But the Powers vetoed this enterprise if ever it were contemplated, and the Balkans for a while, except for a little massacring in Macedonia and Albania, enjoyed an unquiet peace. But the forces of hate and revenge waited latent.

The city which figured most prominently in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and the intervening diplomacy was Adrianople, the city founded by the Emperor Adrian. It has seen more bloodshed probably than any other city of the world. It was before Adrianople that the Roman Emperor Valerius and his army were destroyed by the Goths, and the fate of the Roman Empire sealed (a.d. 378). It was Adrianople that was first captured by the Turkish invaders of the Balkans to serve as their capital until they could at a later date capture Constantinople. Many sieges and battles it saw until 1912, when the Bulgarians and Serbians gathered around its marshy plains, and after several months of siege finally carried it by assault. Finally it was re-captured by a mere cavalry patrol of the Turks.

Adrianople has its beauties seen from afar. The great mosque with four slender minarets shines out from the midst of gardens and picturesque villas over the wide plain which marks the confluence of the Maritza and the Tchundra Rivers. But on nearer examination Adrianople, like all other Turkish towns, is dirty, unkempt, squalid. Most Turkish towns in the Balkans—Mustapha Pasha on the Maritza was an exception, looking dirty and unattractive from any point of view—have a certain enchantment when they first catch the eye of the traveller. It is the custom of the richer Turks to build their villas on the high ground around a town if there is any, and to surround them with gardens. These embowered houses and the slender fingers pointing skyward of the minarets, give a first impression of ample space, of delicacy in architecture. Closer knowledge discloses the town as a herd of hovels, irregularly set in a sea of mud (in dry weather a dirty heap of dust), with the hilly outskirts alone tolerable.

I regret the wild Balkan diplomacy which doomed that Adrianople should go back to the Turks. The Bulgarians would have made a fine clean city of it: and had a project to canalise the Maritza and bring to the old city of Adrian all the advantages of a seaport. Possibly, that will come in the near future if, in renewing their strength, the Bulgarian nation learn also some sense of diplomacy and moderation in using it.

Now the position is that for the first time for very many years the old principle has been broken that the Turkish tide may retreat but must never advance in Europe. During the negotiations of the first session of the Balkan Peace Conference, the Balkan Committee—a London organisation which exists to befriend the Balkan States—urged:

Any district which should be restored to Turkish rule would be not only beyond the possibility of rehabilitation, but would suffer the second scourge of vengeance.... It would be intolerable that any such districts should meet the fate meted out to Macedonia in 1878. There is no ground for such restoration except the claim arising from the continued Turkish possessions of Adrianople. But compensation for the brief period during which Adrianople may still be defended would be represented by a district adjoining Chatalja, not exceeding, at all events, the vilayet of Constantinople....

It is clearly our duty to call attention to the governing principle laid down by Lord Salisbury that any district liberated from Turkish rule should not be restored to misgovernment.... The ostensible ground for the action of Europe, and particularly of England in 1878, was that the Powers themselves undertook the reform of Turkish government in the restored provinces. They have since that day persistently restrained the small States from undertaking reform or liberation, while notoriously neglecting the task themselves. The promise to undertake reform was regarded in 1878 in many quarters as sincere. But renewed restoration of Christian districts to Turkey to-day would, after the experiences of the past, be devoid of any shred of sincerity....

The restoration of European and civilised populations to Turkish rule would be resented now, not merely by those who have sympathised with the Balkan Committee, but by the entire public, which recognises that the Allies have achieved a feat of arms of which even the greatest Power would be proud.

In 1914 no more was heard of "Lord Salisbury's principle," and in public repute the Balkan States were in a position worse than any they had occupied for half a century. Coming after a successful war such a result condemns most strongly Balkan statesmen and diplomats.

Roumanian diplomacy during 1912-13 was subtle, wily, and unscrupulous, enough to delight a Machiavelli. With all its ethical wickedness it was the most stable element in the wild disorders of 1913; was efficacious in insisting upon peace: and imposed a sort of rough justice on all parties. Grecian diplomacy was of the same character as the Roumanian, but not so supremely able. The difference, it appeared to me, was that the Roumanian sought a grand advantage with a humble air: the Greek would seek an advantage, even a humble one, with a grand air. A lofty dignity sits well on the diplomacy which is backed by great force: there should be something more humble in the bearing of the diplomat relying upon subtle wiles. The Greek is a little too conscious of his heroic past not to spoil a little the working of his otherwise very pliant diplomacy. The Serbian in diplomacy was not so childish as the Bulgarian and a great deal more amiable and modest. Europe has long given the Serbian a bad reputation for bounce and bluster. In the events of 1912-13 he did nothing to earn such ill-repute. His work in the field was done excellently and with little réclame. In Conference he was not aggressive, but moderate, and, in my experience, more truthful than other Balkan types.

CHAPTER VI

THE TROUBLES OF A WAR CORRESPONDENT IN THE BALKANS

Being a war correspondent with the Bulgarian army gave one far better opportunities of studying Balkan scenery and natural characteristics than war operations. After getting through to Staff headquarters at Stara Zagora and to Mustapha Pasha, which was about twelve miles from the operations against Adrianople, I found myself a kind of prisoner of the censor, and recall putting my complaint into writing on November 7:

It is the dullest of posts, this, at the tail of an army which is moving forward and doing brave deeds whilst we are cooped up by the censor, thirsting for news, and given an occasional bulletin which tells us just what it is thought that we should be told. True, we are not prisoners exactly. We may go out within a mile radius. That is the rule which must be faithfully kept under pain of being sent back to headquarters. Perhaps, now and again, a desperate correspondent, thinking that it would not be such a sad thing after all to be sent back to headquarters, takes a generous view of what a mile is. (Perhaps he has been used to Irish miles, which are of the elastic kind; short when you pay a car fare, long, very long, at other times.) But, supposing, with great energy and at dread risk of being sent back to headquarters a correspondent has walked one mile and one yard; or his horse, which cannot read notices, has unwittingly carried him on; and supposing that he has made all kinds of brilliant observations, analysing a speck of shining metal showing there, a puff of smoke elsewhere, a flash, or a scar on the earth, still there remains the censor. A courteous gentleman is the censor, with a manner even deferential. He cuts off the head of your news with the most malignant courtesy. "I am sorry, my dear sir, but that refers to movements of troops; it is forbidden. And that might be useful to the enemy. Ah, that observation is excellent; but it cannot go."

Afterwards, there remains in your mind an impression of your wickedness in having troubled so amiable a gentleman, and on your telegraph form nothing, just nothing. Of course, if you like, you can pass along the camp chatter, the stories brought in by Greeks anxious to curry favour, the descriptions of the capture of Constantinople by peasants whose first cousins were staying at the Pera Hotel the day it happened. The censor is too wise a gentleman to interfere with the harmless amusement of sending that on. It does not harm; it may entertain somebody.

So at the rear of the army, which is making the Christian arm more respected than it has been for some time in this Balkan Peninsula, we sit and growl. Those of us who are convinced that we possess that supreme capacity of a general "to see what is going on behind the next hill" are particularly sad. There are so many precious observations being wasted, theories which cannot be expressed, sagacious "I told you so's" which are smothered. We are at the rear of an army, and endless trains of transport move on; and if we can by chance catch the sound of a distant gun we are happy for a day, since it suggests the real thing. Some of us are optimists, and feel sure that we shall go forward in a day or two; that we shall be allowed to see the bombardment of Adrianople; if not that, then its capture; if not that, then something. Others are pessimists, and have gone home.

It is easy to understand the anxiety of the Bulgarians. They are engaged in a big war. They know that some of the Great Powers are watching its progress with something more than interest and something less than sympathy. It is their impression that they can beat the Turks; but that afterwards they may have to meet an attempt to neutralise their victory. So they are anxious to mask every detail of their organisation. Secrecy applies to the past as well as to the present and the future. But it is very irritating; and one goes home, or holds on in the hope that something better will come after a time.

Meanwhile one may learn a little of the country and its people—this country which has been riven by many wars. The map—with its names in several languages—gives indications of the wounds they inflicted. In Bulgaria, too, it shows how determined is the nationality of the people who have within a generation reasserted their right to be a nation. They permit no Turkish names to remain on their maps. Not only do the Arabic characters go, but also the Turkish names. Eski Sagrah, for example, gives place to the title it has on the best English maps. "Sagrah" means in Turkish a "dell," a place sheltered by a wood. "Eski" means "old." The Bulgarian has changed that to Stara Zagora, Bulgarian words with exactly the same significance. He wishes to wipe away all traces of the defiling hand of the Turk from his country, though tolerant of his Turkish fellow-subjects.

Almost completely he succeeds, but not quite completely. The Turkish sweetmeats, the Turkish coffee keep their hold on the taste of the people, and away from the towns, among the peasants who till rich fields with wooden ploughs, there remain traces of the Eastern disregard for time. But even in the country the people are waking up to modern ideas, aroused in part by the American "drummer" selling agricultural machinery. But in his city of Sofia, "the little Paris," as he likes to hear it called, and in his towns the Bulgarian has become keen and bustling. He rather aspires to be thought Parisian in manner. A "middle class" begins to grow up. The Bulgarian prospers mightily as a trader, and when he makes money he devotes his son to a profession, to the staff of the army, the law, to public life. Also the Bulgarian is keen to add manufacturing industries to his agricultural resources, and there are cotton mills and other factories springing up in different places. The Bulgarian has a great faith in himself. Thinking over what he has done within forty years, it is easy to share that belief and to think of him one day with a great seaport on the Mediterranean aspiring to a place in the family council of Europe.

Afterwards, when by dint of hard begging, hard travelling, hard living, and some hard swearing, I had forced my way through to the front, I concluded that with the exception of Mustapha Pasha—where the Second Army had failed at its task and was set to work on a dull siege, and was consequently very bad-tempered—the famous censorship of the Bulgarian Army was not so vexatious to the correspondents as to their editors. The censors were usually polite, and tried to make a difficult position agreeable.

When the correspondents were despatched it was thought that the Balkan States, needing a "good Press," would be fairly kind. The expectation was realised in the case of the Montenegrins and the Greeks. The Serbians allowed the correspondents to see nothing. The Bulgarian idea was to allow nothing to be seen and nothing to be despatched except the "Te Deums." It was an aggravation of the Japanese censorship, and if it is accepted as a model for future combatant States the "war correspondent" will become extinct. I am not disposed to claim that an army in the field should carry on its operations under the eyes of newspaper correspondents; and there were special circumstances in regard to the campaign of the Bulgarian army (which was a desperate rush against a big people of a little people operating with the slenderest of resources) that made a severe censorship absolutely necessary. But, that allowed, there are still some points of criticism justified.

One correspondent, and one only, was exempted from censorship, and he was not at the front but at Sofia. His special position as an informal member of the Cabinet led to a concession which, to a man of honour, was more of a responsibility than a privilege. At the outset the Russian and French correspondents were highly favoured, and two English correspondents—who were working jointly—were granted passes of credit to all the armies. That privilege was afterwards granted to me towards the end of the war. It should have been granted to all or none. A censorship which is harsh but has no favouritism may be criticised, but it cannot be held suspect. Throughout the campaign there was some favouritism, the Russians having first place, the French next, the English and Americans next, the Italians, Germans, Austrians, and others coming last. The differentiation between nations was comprehensible enough, in view of the political situation in Europe, but differentiations between different papers of equal standing of the same country cannot be defended. As I ended the campaign one of the three favoured English correspondents, I speak on this point without bitterness. Indeed, I found no valid grounds for abusing the censorship until just as I was leaving Sofia, when I found that some of my messages from Kirk Kilisse to the Morning Post had been seriously (and, it would seem, deliberately) mutilated after they had passed the censor. They were of some importance as sent—one the first account from the Bulgarian side of the battle of Chatalja, the other a frank statement of the position following that battle, which I did not submit to the censor until after close consultation with high authority, and which was passed then with some modifications, and, after being passed, was mutilated until it had little or no meaning.

In lighter vein I may record some of the humours of the censorship, mostly from Mustapha Pasha, where the Second Army was held up and everybody was in the worst of tempers. Mustapha Pasha would not allow ox wagons to be mentioned, would not allow photographs of reservists to be sent forward because they were not in full uniform, would not allow the fact that Serbian troops were before Adrianople to be recorded. Indeed, the censorship there was full of strange prohibitions. Going down to Mustapha Pasha I noticed aeroplane equipment. The censor objected to that being recorded then, though two days after the official bulletin trumpeted the fact.

At Mustapha Pasha the custom was after the war correspondent had written a despatch to bring it to the censor, who held his court in a room surrounded by a crowd of correspondents. The censor insisted that the correspondent should read the despatch aloud to him. Then the censor read it over again aloud to him to make sure that all heard. Thus we all learned how the other man's imagination was working, and telegraphing was reduced to a complete farce. Private letters had to pass through the same ordeal, and one correspondent, with a turn of humour, wrote an imaginary private letter full of the most fervent love messages, which was read out to a furiously blushing censor and to a batch of journalists, who at first did not see the joke and tried to look as if they were not listening. I have described the early days of Mustapha Pasha. Later, when most of the men had gone away, conditions improved.

The "second censorship"—the most disingenuous and condemnable part of the Bulgarian system—was applied with full force to Mustapha Pasha. After correspondents, who were forbidden to go a mile out of the town and forbidden to talk with soldiers, had passed their pitiful little messages through the censor, those messages were not telegraphed, but posted on to the Staff headquarters and then censored again, sometimes stopped. Certes, the treasures of strategical observation and vivid description thus lost were not very great, but the whole proceeding was unfair and underhand. The censor's seal once affixed a message should go unchanged. Otherwise it might be twisted into actual false information.

In almost all cases the individual censors were gentlemen, and personally I never had trouble with any of them; but the system was faulty at the outset, inasmuch as it was not frank, and was made worse when it became necessary to change the plan of campaign and abandon the idea of capturing Adrianople. Then the Press correspondents who had been allowed down to Mustapha Pasha in the expectation that after two days they would be permitted to follow the victorious army into Adrianople, had to be kept in that town, and had to be prevented from knowing anything of what was going on. The courageous course would have been to have put them under a definite embargo for a period. That was not followed, and the same end was sought by a series of irritating tricks and evasions. The facts argue against the continuance of the war correspondent. An army really can never be sure of its victory until the battle is over. If it allows the journalists to come forward to see an expected victory and the victory does not come, then awkward facts are necessarily disclosed, and the moving back of those correspondents is tantamount to a confession of a movement of retreat. If I were a general in the field I should allow no war correspondents with the troops except reliable men, who would agree to see the war out, to send no despatches until the conclusion of an operation, and to observe any interdiction which might be necessary then. Under these circumstances there would be very few correspondents, but there would be no deceit and no ill-feeling.

The holding up of practically all private telegraphic messages by the authorities at the front was a real grievance. It was impossible to communicate with one's office to get instructions. One correspondent, arriving at Sofia at the end of the campaign, found that he had been recalled a full month before. The unnecessary mystery about the locality of Staff headquarters added to the difficulty of keeping in touch with one's office.

The Bulgarian people made some "bad friends" on the Press because of the censorship; but the sore feeling was not always justifiable. The worst that can be said is that the military authorities did in rather a weak and disingenuous way what they should have had the moral courage to do in a firm way at the outset. The Bulgarian enterprise against the Turks was so audacious, the need of secrecy in regard to equipment was so pressing, that there was no place for the journalist. Under the circumstances a nation with more experience of affairs and more confidence in herself would have accredited no correspondents. Bulgaria sought the same end as that which would have served secrecy by an evasive way. Englishmen, with centuries of greatness to give moral courage, may not complain too harshly when the circumstances of this new-come nation are considered.

When the army of Press correspondents were gathered, it was seen that there were several Austrians and Roumanians, and these countries were at the time threatening mobilisation against the Balkan States. It was impossible to expect that the Bulgarian forces should allow Roumanian journalists and Austrian journalists to see anything of their operations which might be useful to Austria or Roumania in a future campaign. Yet it would not have been proper to have allowed correspondents other than the Austrians and Roumanians to go to the front, because that would perhaps have created a diplomatic question, which would have increased the tension. It certainly would have given offence to Austria and to Roumania. It would have been said that there was an idea that war was intended against those nations; and diplomacy was anxious to avoid giving expression to any such idea. The military attachés were in exactly the same position.

There were the Austrian attaché and the Roumanian attaché, and their duty was to report to their Governments all they could find out that would be to the advantage of the military forces of their Governments. The Bulgarians naturally would not allow the Roumanian nor the Austrian attaché to see anything of what went on. The attachés were even worse treated than the correspondents, because, as the campaign developed, the Bulgarians got to understand that some of us were trustworthy, and we were given certain facilities for seeing. But we were still without facilities for the despatch of what we had seen. But the military attachés were kept right in the rear all the time. They were taken over the battle-fields after the battles had been fought, so that they might see what victories had been gained by the Bulgarians.

The Bulgarians were much strengthened in their attitude towards the war correspondents by the fact that they admitted receiving much help in their operations from the news published in London and in French newspapers from the Turkish side. The Turkish army, when the period of rout began, was in the position that it was able to exercise little check on its war correspondents; and the Bulgarians had everything which was recorded as being done in the Turkish army sent on to them. They said it was a great help to them. I think the outlook for war correspondents in the future is a gloomy one, and the outlook for the military attaché also. In the future, no army carrying on anything except minor operations with savage nations, no army whose interests might be vitally affected by information leaking out, is likely to allow military attachés or war correspondents to see anything at all.

The Balkan War probably will close the book of the war correspondent. It was in the wars of the "Near East" that that book was first opened in the modern sense. Some of the greatest achievements of the craft were in the Crimean War, the various Turco-Russian wars, and the Greco-Turkish struggle. It is an incidental proof of the popularity of the Balkan Peninsula as a war theatre that the history of the profession of the war correspondent would be a record almost wholly of wars in the Near East.

Certainly if the "war correspondent" is to survive he will need to be of a new type. I came to that conclusion when I returned to Kirk Kilisse from the Bulgarian lines at Chatalja, and had 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, dismayed, I recognised that I had altogether 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 touching prose poem about King Ferdinand following his troops to the front in a military train, which was his temporary palace. One part of the carriage, serving as his bed-chamber, was taken up with a portrait of his mother, and to that picture he looked ever for encouragement, for advice, for praise. Had there been that day a "Te Deum" for a great victory? He looked at the picture and added, "Te Matrem."