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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Balkan Peninsula, by Frank Fox
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The Balkan Peninsula
+
+Author: Frank Fox
+
+Release Date: May 13, 2012 [EBook #39688]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALKAN PENINSULA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Margo Romberg and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+
+
+
+AGENTS
+
+AMERICA       THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+                64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+AUSTRALASIA   THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
+                205 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE
+
+CANADA        THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
+                ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE, 70 BOND STREET, TORONTO
+
+INDIA         MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
+                MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
+                309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A BALKAN PEASANT]
+
+
+
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+BY
+
+FRANK FOX
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"AUSTRALIA," "BULGARIA," "SWITZERLAND," ETC.
+
+PUBLISHED BY A. & C. BLACK, LTD.
+4, 5, & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.
+
+1915
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book was written in the spring of 1914, just before Germany plunged
+the world into the horrors of a war which she had long prepared, taking
+as a pretext a Balkan incident--the political murder of an Austrian
+prince by an Austrian subject of Serb nationality. Germany having
+prepared for war was anxious for an occasion which would range Austria
+by her side. If Germany had gone to war at the time of the Agadir
+incident, she knew that Italy would desert the Triple Alliance, and she
+feared for Austria's loyalty. A war pretext which made Austria's
+desertion impossible was just the thing for her plans.
+
+It would be impossible to reshape this book so as to bring within its
+range the Great War, begun in the Balkans, and in all human probability
+to be decided finally by battles in the Balkans. I let it go out to the
+public as impressions of the Balkans dated from the end of 1913. It may
+have some value to the student of contemporary Balkan events.
+
+My impressions of the Balkan Peninsula were chiefly gathered during the
+period 1912-13 of the war of the Balkan allies against Turkey, and of
+the subsequent war among themselves. I was war correspondent for the
+London _Morning Post_ during the war against Turkey and penetrated
+through the Balkan Peninsula down to the Sea of Marmora and the lines of
+Chatalja. In war-time peoples show their best or their worst. As they
+appeared during a struggle in which, at first, the highest feelings of
+patriotism were evoked, and afterwards the lowest feelings of greed and
+cruelty, the Balkan peoples left me with a steady affection for the
+peasants and the common folk generally; a dislike and contempt, which
+made few exceptions, for the politicians and priests who governed their
+destinies. Perhaps when they settle down to a more peaceful
+existence--if ever they do--the inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula
+will come to average more their qualities, the common people becoming
+less simple-minded, obedient, chaste, kind: their leaders learning
+wisdom rather than cunning, and getting some sense of the value of truth
+and also some sense of ruth to keep them from setting their countrymen
+at one another's throats. But at the present time the picture which I
+have to put before the reader, with its almost unbelievable
+contradictions of courage and gentleness on the one side and cowardly
+cruelty on the other, is a true one.
+
+The true Balkan States are Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania.
+Roumania is proud to consider herself a Western State rather than a
+semi-Eastern Balkan State, though both her position and her diplomacy
+link her closely with Balkan developments. Turkey, of course, cannot be
+considered in any sense as a Balkan State though she still holds the
+foot of the Balkan Peninsula. Greece has prouder aspirations than to be
+considered one of the struggling nationalities of the Balkans and dreams
+of a revival of the Hellenic Empire. But in considering the Balkan
+Peninsula it is not possible to exclude altogether the Turk, the Greek,
+the Roumanian. My aim will be to give a snapshot picture of the Balkan
+Peninsula, looking at it as a geographical entity for historical
+reference, and to devote more especial attention to the true Balkan
+States.
+
+          FRANK FOX.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.                                                 PAGE
+
+   I. The Vexed Balkans                                 1
+
+  II. The Turk in the Balkans                          19
+
+ III. The Fall of the Turkish Power                    37
+
+  IV. The Wars of 1912-13                              53
+
+   V. A Chapter in Balkan Diplomacy                    78
+
+  VI. The Troubles of a War Correspondent in
+      the Balkans                                      94
+
+ VII. Jottings from my Balkan Travel Book             124
+
+VIII. The Picturesque Balkans                         149
+
+  IX. The Balkan Peoples in Art and Industry          162
+
+   X. The Future of the Balkans                       175
+
+   Index                                              207
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                FACING PAGE
+
+A Balkan Peasant                             _Frontispiece_
+
+Trajan's Column in Rome                                 7
+
+The Walls of Constantinople from the Seven Towers      10
+
+Sancta Sophia, Constantinople                          21
+
+King Peter of Serbia                                   28
+
+King Nicolas of Montenegro                             33
+
+Montenegrin Troops: Weekly Drill and Inspection of
+Weapons                                                35
+
+The King of Roumania                                   39
+
+The Shipka Pass                                        42
+
+King Ferdinand of Bulgaria                             46
+
+King Ferdinand's Bodyguard                             48
+
+Bulgarian Infantry                                     53
+
+Bulgarian Troops leaving Sofia                         60
+
+General Demetrieff, the Conqueror at Lule Burgas       69
+
+Adrianople: A General View                             76
+
+Roumanian Soldiers in Bucharest                        85
+
+Adrianople: View looking across the Great Bridge       88
+
+General View of Stara Zagora, Bulgaria                 92
+
+Sofia: Commercial Road from Commercial Square         101
+
+Bucharest: The Roumanian House of Representatives     108
+
+General Savoff                                        117
+
+Bulgarian Infantry                                    124
+
+Ox Transport in the Balkans                           133
+
+A Balkan Peasant Woman                                136
+
+A Bagpiper                                            140
+
+Some Serbian Peasants                                 149
+
+General View of Sofia                                 156
+
+Bucharest                                             161
+
+A Bulgarian Farm                                      166
+
+Albanian Tribesmen                                    176
+
+Greek Infantry                                        181
+
+Podgorica, upon the Albanian Frontier                 188
+
+_Sketch Map on page xii._
+
+[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA]
+
+
+
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE VEXED BALKANS
+
+
+The Fates were unkind to the Balkan Peninsula. Because of its position,
+it was forced to stand in the path of the greatest racial movements of
+the world, and was thus the scene of savage racial struggles, and the
+depositary of residual shreds of nations surviving from great defeats or
+Pyrrhic victories and cherishing irreconcilable mutual hatreds. As if
+that were not enough of ill fortune imposed by geographical position,
+the great Roman Empire elected to come from its seat in the Italian
+Peninsula to die in the Balkan Peninsula, a long drawn-out death of many
+agonies, of many bloody disasters and desperate retrievals. For all the
+centuries of which history knows a blood-mist has hung over the Balkans;
+and for the centuries before the dawn of written history one may
+surmise that there was the same constant struggle of warring races.
+
+It seems fairly certain that when the Northern peoples moved down from
+their gloomy forests towards the Mediterranean littoral to mingle their
+blood with the early peoples of the Minoan civilisation and to found the
+Grecian and the Roman nations, the chief stream of these fierce hordes
+moved down by the valley of the Danube and debouched on the Balkan
+Peninsula. Doubtless they fought many a savage battle with the
+aborigines in Thessaly and Thrace. Of these battles we have no records,
+and no absolute certainty, indeed, that the Mediterranean shore was
+colonised by a race from the North, though all the facts that we are
+learning now from the researches of modern archaeologists point to that
+conclusion. But whatever the prehistoric state of the Balkan Peninsula,
+the first sure records from written history show it as a vexed area
+peopled by widely different and mutually warring races, and subject
+always to waves of war and invasion from the outside. The Slav historian
+Jireček concludes that the Balkan Peninsula was inhabited at the
+earliest times known to history by many different tribes belonging to
+distinct races--the Thraco-Illyrians, the Thraco-Macedonians, and the
+Thraco-Dacians. At the beginning of the third century, the Slavs made
+their first appearance and, crossing the Danube, came to settle in the
+great plains between the river and the Balkan Mountains. Later, they
+proceeded southwards and formed colonies among the Thraco-Illyrians, the
+Roumanians, and the Greeks. This Slav emigration went on for several
+centuries. In the seventh century of the Christian era a Finno-ugric
+tribe reached the banks of the Danube. This tribe came from the Volga,
+and, crossing Russia, proceeded towards ancient Moesia, where it took
+possession of the north-east territory of the Balkans between the Danube
+and the Black Sea. These were the Bulgars or Volgars, near cousins to
+the Turks who were to come later. The Bulgars assumed the language of
+the Slavs, and some of their customs. The Serbs or Serbians, coming from
+the Don River district had been near neighbours of the Volgars or
+Bulgars (in the Slav languages "B" and "V" have a way of interchanging),
+and were without much doubt closely allied to them in race originally.
+Later, they diverged, tending more to the Slav type, whilst the Bulgars
+approached nearer to the Turk type.
+
+There may be traced, then, in the racial history of the Balkans these
+race types: a Mediterranean people inhabiting the sea-coast and
+possessing a fairly high civilisation, the records of which are being
+explored now in the Cretan excavations; an aboriginal people occupying
+the hinterland of the coast, not so highly cultivated as the coast
+dwellers (who had probably been civilised by Egyptian influences) but
+racially akin to them; a Northern people coming from the shores of the
+Baltic and the North Sea before the period of written history and
+combining ultimately with the people of the coast to found the Grecian
+civilisation, leaving in the hinterland, as they passed towards the sea,
+detachments which formed other mixed tribes, partly aboriginal, partly
+Nordic; various invading peoples of Semitic type from the Levant; the
+Romans, the Goths and the Huns, the Slavs and the Tartars, the Bulgars
+and the Serbs, the Normans, Saracens, and Turks. Because the Balkan
+Peninsula was on the natural path to a warm-water port from the north to
+the south of Europe; because it was on the track of invasion and
+counter-invasion between Asia and Europe, all this mixture of races was
+forced upon it, and as a consequence of the mixture a constant clash of
+warfare. There was, too, a current of more peaceful communication for
+purposes of trade between the Levant and the Black Sea on the one side
+and the peoples of the Baltic Sea on the other side, which flowed in
+part along the Balkan Peninsula.
+
+In _Italy and her Invaders_ Mr. T. Hodgkin suggests:
+
+     During the interval from 540 to 480 B.C. there was a brisk
+     commercial intercourse between the flourishing Greek colonies on
+     the Black Sea, Odessos, Istros, Tyras, Olbia and
+     Chersonesos--places now approximately represented by Varna,
+     Kustendjix, Odessa, Cherson, and Sebastopol--between these cities
+     and the tribes to the northward (inhabiting the country which has
+     been since known as Lithuania), all of whom at the time of
+     Herodotus passed under the vague generic name of Scythians. By this
+     intercourse which would naturally pass up the valleys of the great
+     rivers, especially the Dniester and the Dnieper, and would probably
+     again descend by the Vistula and the Niemen, the settlements of the
+     Goths were reached, and by its means the Ionian letter-forms were
+     communicated to the Goths, to become in due time the magical and
+     mysterious Runes.
+
+     One fact which lends great probability to this theory is that
+     undoubtedly, from very early times, the amber deposits of the
+     Baltic, to which allusion has already been made, were known to the
+     civilised world; and thus the presence of the trader from the
+     South among the settlements of the Guttones or Goths is naturally
+     accounted for. Probably also there was for centuries before the
+     Christian Era a trade in sables, ermines, and other furs, which
+     were a necessity in the wintry North and a luxury of kings and
+     nobles in the wealthier South. In exchange for amber and fur, the
+     traders brought probably not only golden staters and silver
+     drachmas, but also bronze from Armenia with pearls, spices, rich
+     mantles suited to the barbaric taste of the Gothic chieftains. As
+     has been said, this commerce was most likely carried on for many
+     centuries. Sabres of Assyrian type have been found in Sweden, and
+     we may hence infer that there was a commercial intercourse between
+     the Euxine and the Baltic, perhaps 1300 years before Christ.
+
+A few leading facts with dates should give a fairly clear impression of
+the story of the Balkan Peninsula. About 400 B.C. the Macedonian Empire
+was being founded. It represented the uprise of a hinterland Greek
+people over the decayed greatness of the coast-dwelling Greeks. At that
+time the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula was occupied by the Getae
+or Dacians. Phillip of Macedon made an alliance with the Getae.
+Alexander the Great of Macedonia thrashed them to subjection and carried
+a great wave of invasion into Asia from the Balkan Peninsula.
+
+[Illustration: TRAJAN'S COLUMN IN ROME
+
+Commemorates the victories which brought all the Balkan Peninsula under
+the Roman sway]
+
+About the year 110 B.C. the Romans first came to the Balkan Peninsula,
+finding it inhabited as regards the south by the Greek peoples, as
+regards the north by the Getae or Dacians. The southern people were
+quickly subdued: the northern people were never really subdued by the
+Romans until the time of Trajan (the first century of the Christian
+era). He bridged the Danube with a great military bridge at the spot now
+known as Turnu-Severin, and Trajan's Column in Rome commemorated the
+victories which brought all the Balkan Peninsula under the Roman sway.
+Trajan found that the manners and customs of the Dacians were similar to
+those of the Germans. These sturdy Dacians were conquered but not
+exterminated by the Romans. Dacia across the Danube was made into a
+Roman colony, and the present kingdom of Roumania is supposed to
+represent the survival of that colony, which was a mixture of Roman and
+Dacian blood.
+
+In the third century of the Christian era the Goths made their first
+appearance in the Balkan Peninsula. The Roman Empire had then entered
+into its period of decline. The invasions of the Visigoths, the Huns,
+the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, and the Lombards were to come in turn to
+overwhelm the Roman civilisation. The Gothic invasion of the Balkan
+Peninsula was begun in the reign of the Roman Emperor Phillip. Crossing
+the Danube, the Goths ravaged Thrace and laid siege to Marcianople (now
+Schumla) without success. In a later invasion the Goths attacked
+Philippopolis and captured it after a great defeat of the Roman general,
+Decius the younger. Then the Roman Emperor (Decius the elder) himself
+took the field and was defeated and killed in a great battle near the
+mouth of the Danube (A.D. 251). That may be called the decisive date in
+the history of the fall of the Roman Empire. It was destined to retrieve
+that defeat, and to shine with momentary glory again for brief
+intervals, but the destruction of the Emperor and his army by the Goths
+in 251 was the sure presage of the doom of the Roman Power.
+
+One direct result of the battle in which Decius was slain was to bring
+the headquarters of the Roman Empire to the Balkan Peninsula. It was
+found that a better stand could be made against the tide of Gothic
+invasion from a new capital closer to the Scythian frontier.
+Constantinople was planned and built, and became the capital of the
+Roman Empire (A.D. 330), and thus brought to the Balkan stage the death
+throes of the mightiest world-power that history has known. From that
+date it is wise for the sake of clearness to speak of the Roman Empire
+as the Greek Empire, though it was some time after its settlement in
+Constantinople before it became rather Greek than Roman in character.
+
+With the issue between the Goths and the Greek Empire, in which peaceful
+agreements often interrupted for a while fierce campaigns, I cannot deal
+here at any length. It soaked the Balkan Peninsula deep in blood. But it
+was only the first of the horrors that were to mark the death of the
+Empire. Late in the fourth century of the Christian Era there burst into
+the Balkans from the steppes of Astrakhan and the Caucasus--from very
+much the same district that was afterwards to supply the Bulgars and the
+Serbs--the Tartar hordes of the Huns. Of these Huns there is a vivid
+contemporary Gothic account.
+
+     We have ascertained that the nation of the Huns, who surpassed all
+     others in atrocity, came thus into being. When Filimer, fifth king
+     of the Goths after their departure from Sweden, was entering
+     Scythia, with his people, as we have before described, he found
+     among them certain sorcerer-women, whom they called in their native
+     tongue Haliorunnas (or Al-runas), whom he suspected and drove forth
+     from the midst of his army into the wilderness. The unclean spirits
+     that wander up and down in desert places, seeing these women, made
+     concubines of them; and from this union sprang that most fierce
+     people [of the Huns], who were at first little, foul, emaciated
+     creatures, dwelling among the swamps, and possessing only the
+     shadow of human speech by way of language.
+
+     With the Alani especially, who were as good warriors as themselves,
+     but somewhat less brutal in appearance and manner of life, they had
+     many a struggle, but at length they wearied out and subdued them.
+     For, in truth, they derived an unfair advantage from the intense
+     hideousness of their countenances. Nations whom they would never
+     have vanquished in fair fight fled horrified from those
+     frightful--faces I can hardly call them, but rather--shapeless
+     black collops of flesh, with little points instead of eyes. No hair
+     on their cheeks or chins gives grace to adolescence or dignity to
+     age, but deep furrowed scars instead, down the sides of their
+     faces, show the impress of the iron which with characteristic
+     ferocity they apply to every male child that is born among them,
+     drawing blood from its cheeks before it is allowed its first taste
+     of milk. They are little in stature, but lithe and active in their
+     motions, and especially skilful in riding, broad-shouldered, good
+     at the use of the bow and arrows, with sinewy necks, and always
+     holding their heads high in their pride. To sum up, these beings
+     under the form of man hide the fierce nature of the beast!
+
+[Illustration: _Sébah & Joaillier_
+
+THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE FROM THE SEVEN TOWERS]
+
+Not a lovable people the Huns clearly: and the modern peoples who have
+some slight ancestral kinship with them hate to be reminded of the fact.
+I remember the fierce indignation which a French war correspondent
+aroused in Bulgarian breasts by his description--which had eluded the
+censor--of the passage of a great Bulgarian train of ox wagons because
+he compared it to the passage of the Huns.
+
+The Huns were, with the exception of the Persians who had vainly
+attacked the Greek States at an earlier period, the first successful
+Asiatic invaders of Europe. For a full century they ravaged the Empire,
+and the Balkan Peninsula felt the chief force of their barbarian rage.
+By the fifth century the waves of the Hun invasions had died away,
+leaving distinct traces of the Hunnish race in the Balkans. The Gepidae,
+the Lombards, and later the Hungarians and the Tartars then took up the
+task of ravaging the unhappy land which as the chief seat of power of
+the Greek Empire found itself the first objective of every invader
+because of that dignity and yet but poorly protected by that power.
+Constantinople was never taken by these barbarians, but at some periods
+little else than its walls stood secure against their ravages.
+
+Meanwhile the first Saracens had appeared in the Peninsula, curiously
+enough not as invaders nor as enemies, but as mercenary soldiers in the
+army of the Greek Empire fighting against the Goths. To a Gothic
+chronicler we are again indebted for a vivid picture of these Saracens,
+"riding almost naked into battle, their long black hair streaming in the
+wind, wont to spring with a melancholy howl upon their chosen victim in
+battle and to suck his life-blood, biting at his throat." Perhaps the
+Gothic war correspondent of the day studied picturesqueness more than
+accuracy, like some of his modern successors. But, without a doubt, the
+first contact with Asiatics, whether Huns or Saracens, gave to the
+European peoples a horror and a terror which had never been inspired by
+their battles among themselves--battles by no means bloodless or
+merciful. As the Asiatic waves of invasion later developed in strength
+the unhappy Balkan Peninsula was doomed to feel their full force as they
+poured across the Bosphorus from Asia Minor, and across the Danube from
+the north-eastern Asiatic steppes.
+
+It would be vain to attempt to chronicle even in the barest outline all
+the horrors inflicted upon the Balkans from the date of the first
+invasion of the Huns in the fourth century to the first invasion of the
+Turks in the fourteenth century. To say that those ten centuries were
+filled with bloodshed suffices. But they also saw the development of the
+Balkan nationalities of to-day, and cannot therefore be passed over
+without some attention. Let us then glance at each Balkan nation during
+that period.
+
+_Roumania_, inhabited by the people of the old Roman-Dacian colony,
+stood full in the way of the Northern invasions of Goths, of Huns, of
+Hungarians, of Tartars. It was almost submerged. But in the thirteenth
+century the country benefited by the coming of Teutonic and Norman
+knights. The two kingdoms or principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia
+(which, combined, make up modern Roumania) were founded in this century.
+
+_Bulgaria._--In the seventh century Slavs had begun to settle in
+Bulgaria. The Bulgars or Volgars followed. They were akin to the Tartars
+and the Turks. Together Slavs and Bulgars formed the Bulgarian national
+type and founded a very robust nation which was almost constantly at war
+with the Greek Empire (with its capital at Constantinople). At times
+Bulgaria seriously threatened Constantinople and the Greek Empire. A
+boastful inscription in the Church of the Forty Martyrs at Tirnovo, the
+ancient capital of Bulgaria, records:
+
+     In the year 1230, I, John Asên, Czar and Autocrat of the
+     Bulgarians, obedient to God in Christ, son of the old Asên, have
+     built this most worthy church from its foundations, and completely
+     decked it with paintings in honour of the Forty holy Martyrs, by
+     whose help, in the 12th year of my reign, when the Church had just
+     been painted, I set out to Roumania to the war and smote the Greek
+     army and took captive the Czar Theodore Komnenus with all his
+     nobles. And all lands have I conquered from Adrianople to Durazzo,
+     the Greek, the Albanian, and the Serbian land. Only the towns round
+     Constantinople and that city itself did the Franks hold; but these
+     too bowed themselves beneath the hand of my sovereignty, for they
+     had no other Czar but me, and prolonged their days according to my
+     will, as God had so ordained. For without him no word or work is
+     accomplished. To him be honour for ever. Amen.
+
+The wars were carried on under conditions of mutual ferocity which still
+rule in Bulgarian-Grecian conflicts. An incident of one campaign was
+that the Greek Emperor, Basil, the Bulgar-slayer, having captured a
+Bulgarian army, had the eyes torn out of all the men and sent them home
+blinded, leaving, however, one eye to every centurion, so that the poor
+mutilated wretches might have guides. In the early part of the
+fourteenth century a Bulgarian Czar, Michael, almost captured
+Constantinople. He formed a league with the Roumanians and the Greeks
+against the Serbs, who were at the time promising to become the
+paramount power of the peninsula. But Czar Michael was defeated by the
+Serbs and Bulgaria became dependent upon Serbia, which was the position
+of affairs at the time of the first serious Turkish invasion of the
+Balkan Peninsula.
+
+_Serbia._--Invading tribes of Don Cossacks began to come in great
+numbers to the Balkan Peninsula in the sixth century. In the seventh
+century they were encouraged by the Greek Empire to settle in Serbia, on
+condition of paying tribute to Constantinople. They set up a kind of
+aristocratic republic of a Slav type. In the ninth century they began to
+fight with the neighbouring and kindred Bulgarians. Early in the tenth
+century (A.D. 917) the Bulgarians almost effaced Serbia from the map;
+but the Serbs recovered after half a century, only to come shortly
+afterwards under the sway of the Greeks. In the eleventh century the
+Serbians held a very strong position and were able to harass the Greek
+Empire at Constantinople. They entered into friendly relations with the
+Pope of Rome, and for some time contemplated following the Roman rather
+than the Eastern Church. In the twelfth century King Stephen of Serbia
+was a valued ally of the Greek Empire against the Venetians. He
+established Serbia as a European "Power," and the Emperor Frederick
+Barbarossa visited his court at Belgrade. This king was the first of a
+succession of able and brave monarchs, and Serbia enjoyed a period of
+stable prosperity and power unusually lengthy for the Balkans. Except
+for the strife between the Eastern and Roman Catholic Churches for
+supremacy in Serbia, the nation was at peace within her own borders, and
+enjoyed not only a military but an economic predominance in the Balkans.
+Mining and handicrafts were developed, education encouraged, and the
+national organisation reached fully to the average standard of European
+civilisation at the time. By 1275 the Serbs were the chief power in the
+Balkans. They defeated the Greeks, marched right down to the Aegean and
+reached the famous monastery of Mount Athos, to which the first King
+Stephen (Nemanya) had retired in 1195 when he abdicated.
+
+In 1303 the Serbians forgot their quarrel with the Greeks and helped
+them against the Turks, undertaking an invasion of Asia Minor. In 1315
+they again saved the Greek Empire from the Turks. When in 1336 Stephen
+Dushan, the greatest of Serbian kings, who has been compared to Napoleon
+because of his military genius and capacity for statesmanship, came to
+the throne, Bulgaria was under the suzerainty of Serbia, and the Serb
+monarch ruled over all that area comprised within the boundaries of
+Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, and Greece by the recent treaty
+of Bucharest (1913). King Stephen Dushan was not only a great military
+leader, he was also a law-maker and a patron of learning. His death on
+December 13, 1356, at the Gates of Constantinople--he is said to have
+been poisoned--opened the way for the Turkish occupation of the Balkan
+Peninsula. That occupation was made possible in the first instance by
+the mutual jealousies of the Christian peoples of the Balkans. It was
+kept in existence for centuries by the same weaknesses arising from
+jealousy. In 1912 it was swept away in a month because in a spasm of
+common sense the Balkan Christian peoples had united. In 1913 it was in
+part restored because internecine strife had broken out again among the
+Balkan natives recently allied. It will probably continue until the
+lesson of unity is learned again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TURK IN THE BALKANS
+
+
+It seems to be difficult to speak without violent prejudice on the
+subject of the Turk in the Balkans. One school of prejudice insists that
+the Turk is the finest gentleman in the world, who has been always the
+victim and not the oppressor of the Christian peoples by whose side he
+lives, and whose territories he invaded with the best of motives and
+with the minimum of slaughter. The other school of prejudice credits the
+Turk with the most abominable cruelty, treachery, and lust, and will
+hear no good of him. In England the issue is largely a political one. A
+great Liberal campaign was once founded on a Turkish massacre of
+Bulgarians in the Balkans. That made it a party duty for Liberals to be
+pro-Bulgarian and anti-Turk, and almost a party duty for Conservatives
+to find all the Christian and a few ex-Christian virtues in the Turk.
+Before attempting to judge the Turk of to-day, let us see how he stands
+in the light of history. It was in the fourth century that the first
+Saracens came to the Balkan Peninsula as allies of the Greek Empire
+against the Goths. They were thus called in by a Christian Power in the
+first instance. It was not until the fourteenth century that the Turks
+made a serious attempt to occupy the Balkan Peninsula. They were helped
+in their campaign considerably by the Christian Crusaders, who,
+incidentally to their warfare against the Infidel who held the Holy
+Sepulchre, had made war on the Greek Empire, capturing Constantinople,
+and thus weakening the power of Christian Europe at its threshold.
+Bulgaria, too, refused help to the Greeks when the Turkish invasion had
+to be beaten off. The Turks' coming to the Balkans was thus largely due
+to Christian divisions.
+
+[Illustration: _Sébah & Joaillier_
+
+SANCTA SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+Built by Justinian I, consecrated 538, converted into a Mohammedan
+mosque 1453. It is now thought that the design of its famous architect,
+Anthemius of Tralles, was never completed. The minarets and most of the
+erections in the foreground are Turkish]
+
+Without being able at the time to capture Constantinople, the invading
+Turks occupied soon a large tract of the Balkan Peninsula. By 1362 they
+had captured Philippopolis and Eski Zagora, two important centres of
+Bulgaria. It was not a violence to their conscience for some of the
+Bulgarian men after this to join the Turkish army as mercenaries. When
+the sorely-beset Greeks sent the Emperor John Paleologos to appeal for
+help to the Bulgarians, he was seized by them and kept as a prisoner.
+
+A united Balkan Peninsula would have kept off the Turks, no doubt. But a
+set of small nations without any faculty of permanent cohesion, and
+hating and distrusting one another more thoroughly than they did the
+Turk, could do nothing. The Balkan nations of the time, though united
+they would have been really powerful, allowed themselves to be taken in
+detail and crushed under the heels of an invader who was alien in blood
+and in religion. In 1366 the Bulgarians became the vassals of the Turks,
+and the Serbians were defeated at Kossovo. The fall of the Greek Empire
+and the subjugation of Roumania followed in due course, and by the
+seventeenth century the Turks had penetrated to the very walls of
+Vienna. At one time it seemed as if all Europe would fall under the sway
+of Islam, for, as elsewhere than in the Balkans, there were Christian
+States which were treacherous to their faith. But that happily was
+averted. For the Balkan Peninsula, however, there were now to be
+centuries of oppression and religious persecution. It will be convenient
+once again to set forth under three national headings the chief facts
+regarding the Turkish conquest of the Balkans.
+
+_Bulgaria._--By 1366 weakness in the field and civil dissensions had
+brought Bulgaria to the humiliation of becoming the vassal of the Turk.
+In 1393 the Turks, not content with mere suzerainty, occupied Bulgaria
+and converted it into a Turkish province. In 1398 the Hungarians and the
+Wallachians (Roumanians) made a gallant attempt to free Bulgaria from
+the Turkish yoke, but failed. Some of the Bulgarians joined in with
+their Turkish conquerors, abandoned the Christian religion for that of
+Islam, and were the ancestors of what are known to-day as the Pomaks.
+The rest of the people gave a reluctant obedience to the Turkish
+conqueror, preserving their Christian faith, their Slav tongue, and
+their sense of separate nationality. The Greeks, who had come to some
+kind of terms with the Turkish invaders, assisted to bring the Bulgarian
+people under subjection. The Greek church and the Greek tongue rather
+than the Turkish were sought to be imposed upon the Bulgarians. The
+subject people accepted the situation with occasional revolts, but more
+tamely than some other Balkan nations. It was not a general meek
+acquiescence, though it was--possibly by chance, possibly because of the
+fact that a racial relationship existed between conqueror and
+conquered--not so fierce in protest as that of the Serbians. In writing
+that, I do not follow exactly the Bulgarian modern view, which
+represents as much more vivid the sufferings and the protests of the
+Bulgarian people, and ignores altogether the racial relationship which
+existed between Bulgarian and Turk, and enabled a section of the
+Bulgarian nation to fall into line with the conqueror and embrace his
+religion and his habits of life, a relationship which to this day shows
+its traces in the Bulgarian national life. But in Balkan history as
+written locally, there is usually a certain amount of political
+deflection from the facts. A modern Balkan historian, giving what may be
+called the official national account of the times of the Turkish
+domination, says (_Bulgaria of To-day_):
+
+     Had the rulers been of the same race and religion as the
+     vanquished, the subjection might have been more tolerable. Ottoman
+     domination was not, however, a simple political domination.
+     Ottoman tyranny was social as well as political. It was keenly and
+     painfully felt in private as well as in public life; in social
+     liberty, manners and morals; in the free development of national
+     feeling; in short, in the whole scope of human life. According to
+     our present notions, political domination does not infringe upon
+     personal liberty, which is sacred for the conqueror. This is not
+     the case with Turkish rule. The Bulgarians, like the other
+     Christians of the Balkan Peninsula, were, both collectively and
+     individually, slaves. The life, possessions, and honour of private
+     individuals were in constant peril. The bulk of the people, after
+     several generations, calmed down to passivity and inertia. From
+     time to time the more vigorous element, the strongest
+     individualities, protested. Some Bulgarian whose sister had been
+     carried off to the harem of some pasha would take to the mountains
+     and make war on the oppressors. The haidukes and voivodes,
+     celebrated in the national songs, kept up in mountain fastnesses
+     that spirit of liberty which later was to serve as a cement to
+     unite the new Bulgarian nation.
+
+     But it is a noteworthy fact that the Osmanlis, being themselves but
+     little civilised, did not attempt to assimilate the Bulgarians in
+     the sense in which civilised nations try to effect the intellectual
+     and ethnic assimilation of a subject race. Except in isolated
+     cases, where Bulgarian girls or young men were carried off and
+     forced to adopt Mohammedanism, the government never took any
+     general measures to impose Mohammedanism or assimilate the
+     Bulgarians to the Moslems. The Turks prided themselves on keeping
+     apart from the Bulgarians, and this was fortunate for our
+     nationality. Contented with their political supremacy and pleased
+     to feel themselves masters, the Turks did not trouble about the
+     spiritual life of the _rayas_, except to try to trample out all
+     desires for independence. All these circumstances contributed to
+     allow the Bulgarian people, crushed and ground down by the Turkish
+     yoke, to concentrate and preserve its own inner spiritual life.
+     They formed religious communities attached to the churches. These
+     had a certain amount of autonomy, and, beside seeing after the
+     churches, could keep schools. The national literature, full of the
+     most poetic melancholy, handed down from generation to generation
+     and developed by tradition, still tells us of the life of the
+     Bulgarians under the Ottoman yoke. In these popular songs, the
+     memory of the ancient Bulgarian kingdom is mingled with the
+     sufferings of the present hour. The songs of this period are
+     remarkable for the oriental character of their times, and this is
+     almost the sole trace of Moslem influence.
+
+     In spite of the vigilance of the Turks, the religious associations
+     served as centres to keep alive the national feeling.
+
+A conquered people which was allowed to keep up its religious
+institutions (with "a certain amount of autonomy"), and later to found
+national schools ("to keep alive the national feeling"), was not exactly
+ground to the dust. And truth compels the admission that Bulgaria under
+Turkish rule enjoyed a certain amount of material prosperity. When the
+Russian liberators of the nineteenth century came to Bulgaria they
+found the peasants far more comfortable than were the Russian peasants
+of the day. The atrocities in Bulgaria which shocked Europe in 1875 were
+not the continuance of a settled policy of cruelty and rapine. They were
+the ferocious reprisals chiefly of Turkish Bashi-Bazouks (irregulars)
+following upon a Bulgarian rising. The Turks felt that they had been
+making an honest effort to promote the interests of the Bulgarian
+province. They had just satisfied a Bulgarian aspiration by allowing of
+the formation of an independent Bulgarian church, though this meant
+giving grave offence to the Greeks. Probably they felt that they had a
+real grievance against the Bulgars. After the Bulgarian atrocities of
+1875 there ended the Turkish domination of the country.
+
+_Serbia._--In December 1356 the great Serbian king, Stephen Dushan,
+soldier, administrator, and economist, died before the walls of
+Constantinople, and the one hope of the Balkan Peninsula making a stand
+against the Turks was ended. Shortly after, the Turks had occupied
+Adrianople, their first capital in Europe, defeating heavily a combined
+Serbian and Greek army. Later the Serbian forces were again defeated by
+the great Turkish sultan Amurath I., and the Serbian king was killed on
+the battle-field. King Lazar, who succeeded to the Serbian throne, made
+some headway against the invaders, but in 1389, at the Battle of
+Kossovo, the Serbian Empire came tumbling to ruins. The Turkish leader,
+Amurath, was killed in the fight, but his son Bajayet proved another
+Amurath and pressed home the victory. Serbia became a vassal state of
+Turkey.
+
+But there was to be still a period of fierce resistance to the Turk. In
+1413 the Turks, dissatisfied with the attitude of the Serbs, entered
+upon a new invasion of the territory of Serbia. In 1440 Sultan Amurath
+II. again overran the country and conquered it definitely, imposing not
+merely vassalage but armed occupation on its people. John Hunyad, "the
+White Knight of Wallachia," came to the rescue of the Serbs, and Amurath
+II. was driven back. An alliance between Serbs and Hungarians kept the
+Turk at bay for a time, and in 1444 Serbia could claim to be free once
+again. But the respite was a brief one. In 1453 Constantinople fell to
+the Turks, and the full tide of their strengthened and now undivided
+power was turned upon Serbia. A siege of Belgrade in 1457 was repulsed,
+but in 1459 Serbia was conquered and annexed to European Turkey. Lack of
+unity among the Serbs themselves had contributed greatly to the national
+doom, but on the whole the Serbs had put up a gallant fight against the
+Turks. And even now a section of them, the Montenegrins, in their
+mountain fastnesses kept their liberty, and through all the centuries
+that were to follow never yielded to the Crescent.
+
+The condition of the Serbs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was
+very unhappy. They could come to no manner of contentment with Turkish
+rule, and sporadic revolts were frequent. At times the Hungarians from
+the other side of the Danube came to the aid of the revolters, but never
+in such strength as to shake seriously the Turkish power. Very many of
+the Serbs left their country in despair and sought refuge under the
+Austrian flag. To-day a big Serb element, under the flag of
+Austro-Hungaria, is one of the racial difficulties of the Dual
+Monarchy.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+KING PETER OF SERBIA]
+
+The Serb exiles carried to their new homes their old sympathies, and
+largely because of their efforts Austria in 1788 went to the rescue of
+Serbia, and for a brief while the land again was free. But the Turkish
+power returned and Serbia stumbled blindly, painfully through years of
+reprisals, which culminated in the great massacre of Serbs by Turks in
+1804, which, like the Turkish massacre of Bulgarians in 1875, really
+declared the doom of the Turkish power in the country. Following this
+massacre George Petrovic, "Black George," or "_Kara_ George," as the
+Serbians knew him, raised the standard of revolt among his countrymen.
+He was a fierce blood-stained man, this first liberator of the Serbs, a
+man on whose head was the blood of his father and his brother. His grim
+character was fitted for his grim task. The story of that task will come
+better within the scope of a following chapter, which will tell of the
+liberation of the Balkans from the Turks.
+
+_Roumania._--It was not until 1391 that the Turks crossed the Danube and
+attacked the kingdoms of Wallachia and Moldavia, and reduced Wallachia
+to the position of a tributary state. King Mirtsched made a gallant
+fight against the invaders, but the Turks proved too strong. That was
+the beginning of a Turkish dominance of Roumania, which was never so
+complete as that exercised over Bulgaria and Serbia, but left the two
+Roumanian kingdoms of Wallachia and Moldavia as vassal states. Mutual
+jealousy between them prevented effective operations against the Turk,
+and helped to make their vassalage possible. In the fifteenth century
+both kingdoms had great rulers. Wallachia was ruled by Vlad the Impaler,
+an able but cruel man, who seems to have earned the infamy of inventing
+a form of torture still practised in the Balkans as a matter of
+religious proselytising, that of sitting the victim on a sharp stake,
+and leaving him to die slowly as the stake penetrated his body. Moldavia
+had as king Stephen the Great, who has no such ghastly reputation of
+cruelty. But able princes could effect little with communities weakened
+by the luxury of the nobles and the helpless poverty of the serfs.
+Still, the Roumanians had intervals of victory. In the sixteenth century
+Michael the Brave (whose memory is commemorated by a statue in
+Bucharest) drove the Turks back as far as Adrianople, liberating
+Roumania and Bulgaria. He annexed Moldavia and Transylvania to
+Wallachia, and was in a sense the founder of modern Roumania. But the
+union thus effected was not enduring and the Turkish ascendancy grew
+stronger. The Turkish suzerain forced upon the Roumanian peoples
+governors of the Greek race, who carried on the work of oppression and
+spoliation with an industrious effectiveness quite beyond the capacity
+of the Turk, who at his worst is a fitful and indolent tyrant.
+
+In the last quarter of the seventeenth century the Russian Power began
+to take a close interest in Roumania. In 1711 there was a definite
+Russian-Roumanian alliance. By this time the Roumanians were resolutely
+hostile to the Turkish domination. True, they had been spared most of
+the cruelties which were in Servia a customary and in Bulgaria an
+occasional concomitant of Turkish rule. But they were deeply injured by
+the corrupt, the luxurious, the exacting administration of the Greek
+rulers forced upon them by the Turkish government. Though they suffered
+little from massacre they suffered much from "squeeze." There was not
+only the greed of the Turk but the greed of the intermediate Greek to be
+satisfied. From 1711 until the final liberation of Roumania, Roumanian
+sympathies were generally with the Russians in the frequent wars waged
+by them against Turkey. In 1770 the Russians occupied Roumania and freed
+it for a time from the Turk, but in 1774 the Roumanians went back to
+the Turkish suzerainty. During the Napoleonic wars Russia gave Roumania
+some reason to doubt the disinterestedness of her friendship by annexing
+the rich province of Bessarabia, a part of the natural territory of the
+Roumanian people. The year 1821 saw the outbreak of the Greek war of
+independence, in which Roumania took no part, having as little love for
+the Greek as for the Turk. She won one advantage for herself from the
+war, the right to have her native rulers under Turkish suzerainty. In
+1828, as a result of a Russo-Turkish war, Roumania won almost complete
+freedom, conditional only on tribute being continued to be paid to the
+Sultan. She found a new master, however, in Russia, and was forced to
+keep up a Russian garrison within her borders, nominally as a protection
+against Turkey, really as a safeguard against the growth in her own
+people of a spirit of national independence. The Crimean War (1853)
+freed Roumania from this Russian garrison, and in 1856 the Treaty of
+Paris declared Roumania to be an independent principality under Turkish
+suzerainty.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+KING NICOLAS OF MONTENEGRO]
+
+_Montenegro._--The existence of Montenegro as a separate Balkan state
+dates back to the Battle of Kossovo. The Montenegrin is a Serbian
+Highlander, and whilst the Serbian Empire flourished, claimed for
+himself no separate national entity. When, however, the rest of Serbia
+was subjugated by the Turks, "the Black Mountain" held out, and there
+gathered within its little area of rocky hill fastnesses the free
+remnants of the Serbian race. The story of that little nation is quite
+the most wonderful in all the world. It transcends Sparta, and makes the
+fighting record of the Swiss seem tame. At the height of its power
+Montenegro had a population of perhaps 8000 males, and little source of
+riches from mines, from trade, or even from fertile agricultural land.
+Yet Montenegro kept the Turks from her own territory, and was able at
+times to give valuable help to the rest of Europe in withstanding the
+invasion of Islam.
+
+The system of government instituted was that of a theocratic despotism:
+the head of the nation was its chief bishop, and he had the right to
+nominate a nephew (not a son--as a bishop of the Greek Communion he
+would be celibate) to succeed him. The Montenegrin dynasty was founded
+in 1696 by King Danilo I., and has endured to this day, though recently
+the functions of the chief priest and king have been separated, and the
+present monarch is purely a civil ruler.
+
+It is not possible here to give even the barest mention of the leading
+facts in the proud history of little Montenegro. In the seventeenth
+century she was the valued friend of Venice against the Turks; in the
+eighteenth century she was aided by Peter the Great of Russia; later she
+met without being subdued the warlike power of Napoleon. All the time,
+during every century, every year almost, there was constant warfare with
+the Turks. One campaign lasted without interruption from 1424 to 1436,
+and was marked by over sixty battles. The little population of the patch
+of rocks in the mountains was worn down by this incessant fighting, but
+was recruited by a steady flow of exiles from other parts of the Balkan
+Peninsula, anxious for freedom and for revenge on the Turk. Sometimes
+the tide of battle went sorely against the mountaineers, and almost all
+their country was put under the heel of the Moslem. But always one eyrie
+was kept for the free eagles, and from it they swooped down with renewed
+strength to send the invader once again across their borders. Repeatedly
+the Turk levied great armies for the conquest of Montenegro (once the
+Turkish force reached to the number of 80,000). Repeatedly great
+European Powers which had proffered help or had been begged for help
+failed little Montenegro at a crisis. But never were the stout hearts of
+the Black Mountain quelled. In 1484, when Zablak had to be evacuated and
+the whole nation was confined to the little mountain fortress of
+Cettinje, Ivan the Black offered to his people the choice of ending the
+war and making peace with the Turks. They rejected the idea, and swore
+to stand by the freedom of Montenegro until the last. The oath was never
+broken. Right down to 1832 a free Montenegro faced Turkey. In that year
+the Turks, despairing of an occupation of the country, suggested that
+Montenegro should agree at least to pay tribute. That offer was rejected
+and yet another war entered upon. A war against Austria followed, in
+which the desperate Montenegrins used the type of their printing presses
+to make bullets for the soldiers.
+
+[Illustration: MONTENEGRIN TROOPS
+
+Weekly Drill and Inspection of Weapons]
+
+That there was lead type to be so used shows that the Montenegrins had
+not altogether neglected the arts of peace. In 1493 a printing press had
+been set up in Cettinje and the first Montenegrin book printed in the
+Cyrillic character. During the next century this printing press was
+kept busy with the issue of the Gospels and psalters under the rule of
+the brave Bishop Babylas. The state of Montenegro at this time aroused
+the admiration of the Venetians, and there is extant a book in praise of
+Montenegro written in 1614 by a Venetian noble, Mariano Bolizza.
+
+When the time came for the other Balkan States to throw off the Turkish
+yoke Montenegro was not reluctant to join in the movement for
+liberation, and she was later first in the field in the campaign of
+1912.
+
+This very brief record of the leading facts of Balkan history has now
+brought each of the peoples up to the stage at which the final and
+successful effort was made with the help of Russia to drive the Turks
+out of Balkan territory. The story of that effort will be told in the
+succeeding chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FALL OF THE TURKISH POWER
+
+
+In the nineteenth century the Turkish dominion was pushed back in all
+directions from the Balkan Peninsula. At the dawn of that century
+Montenegro was the only Balkan state entirely free from occupation,
+vassalage, or the duty of tribute to the Sublime Porte. At the close of
+that century Montenegro, Serbia, Roumania, Greece, and Bulgaria were all
+practically free and self-governing.
+
+In 1804, as has been recorded, Kara George in Serbia raised the standard
+of revolt against Turkey. In 1806 the Serbs defeated the Turks in a
+pitched battle, and for a moment Serbia was free. But in 1812 when the
+Turkish power resolved upon a great invasion of Serbia, the heart of
+Kara George failed him and he left his country to its fate, taking
+refuge in Austria. Thus deserted by their leader, the Serbs did not
+abandon the struggle altogether. Milosh Obrenovic stepped to the front
+as the national champion, and though he could make no stand against the
+Turkish troops in the open field he kept up an active revolt from a base
+in the mountains. The contest for national liberty went on with varying
+fortune. Troubles at this time were thickening around Turkey, and
+whenever she was engaged in war with Russia the oppressed nationalities
+within her borders took the opportunity to strike a blow for liberty. By
+1839--it is not possible to make a record of all the dynastic changes
+and revolutions which filled the years 1812-1839--Serbia was practically
+free, with the payment of an annual tribute to Turkey as her only bond.
+During the Crimean War she kept her neutrality as between Russia and
+Turkey. The Treaty of Paris (1856) confirmed her territorial
+independence, subject to the payment of a tribute to Turkey. In 1867 the
+Turkish garrisons were withdrawn from Serbia; but the tribute was still
+left in existence until the date of the Treaty of Berlin.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+THE KING OF ROUMANIA]
+
+Roumania in 1828 (then Wallachia and Moldavia) had won her territorial
+independence of Turkey subject only to payment of a tribute. The Treaty
+of Paris (1856) left her under a nominal suzerainty to Turkey. In 1859
+the two kingdoms united to form Roumania, and in 1866 the late King
+Charles, as the result of a revolution, was elected prince of the united
+kingdom.
+
+Bulgaria had remained a fairly contented Turkish province until the
+rising of 1875, and its cruel suppression by the Bashi-Bazouks. As a
+direct consequence of that massacre European diplomacy turned its
+serious attention to the Balkan Peninsula, and at a Conference demands
+were made upon Turkey for a comprehensive reform applying to Serbia,
+Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. The proposed reform was
+particularly drastic as applied to Bulgaria, which was still in effect
+Turkish territory, whilst all the other districts had achieved a
+practical freedom. It was proposed to create two Bulgarian provinces
+divided into Sandjaks and Kazas as administrative units, these to be
+subdivided into districts. Christian and Mohammedans were to be settled
+homogeneously in these districts. Each district was to have at its head
+a mayor and a district council, elected by universal suffrage, and was
+to enjoy entire autonomy in local affairs. Several districts would form
+a Sandjak with a prefect (_mutessarif_) at its head who was to be
+Christian or Mohammedan, according to the majority of the population of
+the Sandjak. He would be proposed by the Governor-General, and nominated
+by the Porte for four years. Finally, every two Sandjaks were to be
+administered by a Christian Governor-General nominated by the Porte for
+five years, with consent of the Powers. He would govern the province
+with the help of a provincial assembly, composed of representatives
+chosen by the district councils for a term of four years. This assembly
+would nominate an administrative council. The provincial assembly would
+be summoned every year to decide the budget and the redivision of taxes.
+The armed force was to be concentrated in the towns and there would be
+local militia besides. The language of the predominant nationality was
+to be employed, as well as Turkish. Finally, a Commission of
+International Control was to supervise the execution of these reforms.
+
+The Sublime Porte was still haggling about these reforms when Russia
+lost patience and declared war upon Turkey on April 12, 1877. Moving
+through the friendly territory of Roumania, Russia attacked the Turkish
+forces in Bulgarian territory. In that war the Russians found that the
+Turks were a gallant foe, and the issue seemed to hang in the balance
+until Roumania and Bulgaria went actively to the help of the Russian
+forces. The Roumanian aid was exceedingly valuable. Prince Charles
+crossed the Danube at the head of 28,000 foot soldiers and 4000 cavalry.
+He was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the forces against Plevna, and
+his soldiers were chiefly responsible for the taking of the Grivica
+Redoubt which turned the tide of victory against the Turks. The
+Bulgarians did but little during the campaign: it was not possible that
+they should do much seeing that they could only put irregulars in the
+field. Nevertheless some high personal reputations for courage were
+made. During my stay with the Bulgarian army in 1912 I noted that there
+were of the military officers three classes, the men who had graduated
+in foreign military colleges--usually Petrograd,--very smart, very
+insistent on their military dignity, speaking usually three or four
+languages; officers who had been educated at the Military College,
+Sofia; and the older Bulgarian type, dating sometimes from before the
+War of Liberation. Of these last the outstanding figure was General
+Nicolaieff, who as captain of a Bulgarian company rushed a Turkish
+battery beneath Shipka after the Russians had been held up so long that
+they were in despair. A fine stalwart figure General Nicolaieff showed
+when I met him at Yamboli, a hospital base town of which he was military
+commandant. Another soldier of the War of Liberation, a captain in rank,
+I travelled with for a day once between Kirk Kilisse and Chorlu. We
+chummed up and shared a meal of meat balls cooked with onions, rough
+country wine (these from his stores), and dates and biscuits (from my
+stores). He spoke neither English nor French, but a Bulgarian doctor who
+spoke French acted as interpreter, and the old officer, who after long
+entreaty at last had got leave to go down to the front in spite of his
+age, yarned about the hardships and tragedies of the fighting around
+Stara Zagora and the Shipka Pass. Some of the Bulgarians, he said, took
+the field with no other arms than staves and knives, and got their first
+rifles from the dead of the battle-fields.
+
+[Illustration: THE SHIPKA PASS]
+
+Serbia took a hand in this campaign, too, though she hesitated for some
+time, going to the aid of Russia through fear of Austria. Beginning
+late, at a time when the mountains were covered in the winter snows, the
+Serbians suffered severely from the weather, but won notable victories
+at Pirot, at Nish, and at Vranga. The Turks were in full retreat on
+Constantinople when the armistice and Treaty of San Stefano put an end
+to the war.
+
+It seems to be one of the standing rules of Balkan wars and Balkan peace
+treaties that those who do the work shall not reap the reward, and that
+a policy of standing by and waiting is the wisest and most profitable.
+In this Russo-Turkish war the Roumanians had done invaluable work for
+the Russian cause. In return the Treaty of San Stefano robbed them
+shamefully. The Bulgarians had done little, except to stain the arms of
+the allies with a series of massacres of the Turks in reprisal for the
+previous atrocities inflicted upon them by the Bashi-Bazouks. The
+Bulgarians were awarded a tremendous prize of territory. If the grant
+had been confirmed it would have made Bulgaria the paramount power of
+the Balkan Peninsula. By the Treaty of San Stefano, Bulgaria was made
+an autonomous principality subject to Turkey, with a Christian
+government and national militia. The Prince of Bulgaria was to be freely
+chosen by the people and accepted by the Sublime Porte, with the consent
+of the Powers. As regards internal government, it was agreed that an
+assembly of notables, presided over by an Imperial Commissioner and
+attended by a Turkish Commissioner, should meet at Philippopolis or
+Tirnova before the election of the Prince to draw up a constitutional
+statute similar to those of the other Danubian principalities after the
+Treaty of Adrianople in 1830. The boundaries of Bulgaria were to include
+all that is now Bulgaria, and the greater part of Thrace and Macedonia.
+
+The European Congress of Berlin which revised the Treaty of San Stefano
+recognised that the motive of Russia was to create in Bulgaria a vast
+but weak state, which would obediently serve her interests and in time
+fall into her hands: and that the injury proposed to be done to Roumania
+was inspired by a desire to limit the progress of a courageous but an
+unfortunately independent-minded friend. The Congress was suspicious of
+the Bulgarian arrangement, and clipped off much of the territory
+assigned to the new principality. The injury done to Roumania was
+allowed to stand. Then, as in 1912-1913, when Balkan boundaries were
+again under the discussion of an inter-European Conference, the vital
+interests of the great Powers surrounding the Balkan Peninsula were to
+keep its peoples divided and weak. Both Russia and Austria had more or
+less defined territorial ambitions in the Balkans: and it suited neither
+Power to see any one Balkan state rise to such a standard of greatness
+as would enable it to take the lead in a Balkan Union. Especially was it
+not the wish of Austria that any Balkan state should grow to be so
+strong as to kill definitely the hope she cherished of extending down
+the Adriatic and towards the Aegean.
+
+By the Treaty of Berlin, which followed the Congress of Berlin, the
+greater part of the Balkan Peninsula was freed altogether from Turkish
+rule. Roumania and Serbia were relieved from all suggestion of tribute
+or vassalage. Bulgaria was left subject to a tribute (which was very
+quickly afterwards repudiated). Where the Turkish power was left in
+existence in European Turkey it was a threatened existence, for the
+newly freed Christian peoples began at once to conspire to help to
+freedom their nationals left still under Turkish rule. The war of 1912
+began to be prepared in 1878.
+
+There was, however, a period of comparative peace. Roumania, though
+discontented, decided to bide her time. Her prince was crowned king with
+a crown made from the metal of Turkish cannon taken at Plevna. That was
+the only hint that she gave of keeping in mind the greatness of her
+services which had been so poorly rewarded.
+
+Montenegro, whilst deprived of the great and the well-deserved expansion
+which the Treaty of San Stefano offered, had some benefit from the
+Treaty of Berlin. The area of the kingdom was doubled and it won access
+to the Adriatic. A little later the harbour of Dulcigno was ceded to
+Montenegro by Turkey under pressure from the Powers, and she was left
+with only one notable grievance, that of being shut off from Serbia by
+the Sanjak of Novi-Bazar, which Austria secured for Turkey, apparently
+with the idea of one day seizing it on her way down to Salonica.
+
+[Illustration: _Chusseau Flaviens_
+
+KING FERDINAND OF BULGARIA]
+
+Serbia increased her territory by one-fourth under the Treaty of Berlin,
+but was not allowed to extend towards the Adriatic, and, nurturing as
+she did a dream of reviving the old Serbian Empire, was but poorly
+satisfied.
+
+Bulgaria, if it had not been for the promises of the Treaty of San
+Stefano, might have been fairly content with the provisions of the
+Treaty of Berlin. She had been the first nation in the Balkans to yield
+to the Turks. She had allowed her sons to act as mercenary soldiers to
+aid the Turks against other Christians: and during the period of
+oppression she had suffered less than any from the rigours of the
+invader, had protested less than any by force of arms. Yet now she was
+given freedom as a gift won largely by the sacrifices of others. But,
+though having the most reason to be content, Bulgaria was the least
+contented of all the Balkan States. The restless ambition of the people
+guiding her destinies was manifested in an internal revolution which
+displaced the first prince (Alexander of Battenberg) and put on the
+throne the present king (Ferdinand of Coburg). Bulgaria, too, repudiated
+the friendly tutelage which Russia wished to exercise over her
+destinies.
+
+The territorial settlement made by the Berlin Treaty was first broken by
+Bulgaria. That treaty had cut the ethnological Bulgaria into two,
+leaving the southern half as a separate province under the name of
+Eastern Rumelia. In 1885 Eastern Rumelia was annexed to Bulgaria with
+the glad consent of its inhabitants, but in spite of the wishes of
+Russia. Serbia saw in this the threat of a Bulgarian hegemony in the
+Balkans, and demanded some territorial compensation for herself. This
+was refused. War followed. The Bulgarians were victorious at the Battle
+of Slivnitza, an achievement which was in great measure due to the
+organising ability of Prince Alexander. The victory secured Rumelia for
+Bulgaria. But no sense of gratitude to Prince Alexander survived, and
+the Russian intrigue which secured his abdication and flight was
+undoubtedly aided by a large section of the Bulgarian people.
+Stambouloff, a peasant leader of the Bulgarians and its greatest
+personality since the War of Liberation, was faithful to Alexander, but
+was not able to save him.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+KING FERDINAND'S BODYGUARD]
+
+The Bulgarian throne after Alexander's abdication was offered to the
+King of Roumania. The acceptance of the offer would possibly have led to
+a real Balkan Federation. The united power of Roumania and Bulgaria,
+exercised wisely, could have gently pressed the other Balkan peoples
+into a union. That, however, would have suited the aims neither of
+Russia nor of Austria, the two Empires which guided the destinies of the
+Balkans, chiefly in the light of their own selfish ends. The Roumanian
+king refused the throne of Bulgaria, and in 1887 Prince Ferdinand of
+Coburg became Prince of the State. It was not long before he fell out
+with Stambouloff, the able but personally unamenable patriot who chiefly
+had made modern Bulgaria. In the conflict between the two Prince
+Ferdinand proved the stronger. Stambouloff was dismissed from office,
+and in 1895 was assassinated in the streets of Sofia. No attempt was
+made to punish his murderers.
+
+In 1908 Bulgaria shook off the last shred of dependence to Turkey. The
+bold action was the crown of a clever diplomatic intrigue by Prince
+Ferdinand. Since the murder of Stambouloff the Prince had been
+sedulously cultivating in public the friendship of Russia: but that had
+not prevented him carrying to a great pitch of mutual confidence a
+secret understanding with Austria. The Austrian Empire was anxious to
+annex formally the districts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which it had
+long been in occupation. Objection to this would surely have come from
+Russia; but Russia was impotent for the time being after the disastrous
+war with Japan. Just as surely it would come from Serbia which would see
+thus definitely pass over to the one Power, which she had reason to
+fear, a section of Slav-inhabited country clearly connected to the Serbs
+by racial ties. Serbia, it might be expected, would have the support of
+France and England as well as Russia. For Bulgaria the offer to
+neutralise Serbia made to Austria all the difference between an action
+which was a little risky and an action which had no risk at all.
+Bulgaria supported Austria in the annexation, and, as was to have been
+expected, Serbia found protest impossible, since Russia, France, and
+England swallowed the affront to treaty obligations to which they were
+parties. It was Bulgaria's reward to have the support of the Triple
+Alliance in throwing off all fealty and tribute to the Sublime Porte.
+Prince Ferdinand became the Czar Ferdinand of Bulgaria.
+
+Nor was that the end of Bulgarian ambition. The "big" Bulgaria of the
+San Stefano treaty floated before the eyes of her rulers constantly, and
+she began to prepare for a war against Turkey, of which the prize
+should be Thrace and Macedonia. An obstacle in Macedonia was not only
+that the Turks were in occupation, but that the Greeks considered
+themselves entitled to the reversion of the estate. Rivalry between the
+three nations was responsible for the Macedonian horrors, which went on
+from year to year, and made one district of the Balkans a veritable hell
+on earth. These horrors have been set at the door of the "Unspeakable
+Turk." The Turk has quite enough to answer for in the many hideous
+crimes which he has undoubtedly committed. It is not quite just to hold
+him wholly responsible for the terrible state of Macedonia during the
+last few years. Greek and Bulgarian were alike interested in making it
+appear to the world that Turkish rule in Macedonia was impossible. To
+effect this they insisted that rapine and massacre should become normal.
+If the Turk did not wish for massacres he was stirred up to massacres.
+Christian pastors were not prevented by their Christian faith from
+murders of their own people, if it could be certain that the Turks would
+have the discredit of them. Side by side with the atrocities which were
+committed by Turks against Christians and Christians against Turks, the
+two sets of warring Christians, the Bulgarian Exarchates and the Greek
+Patriarchates, attacked one another with a fiendish relentlessness,
+which equalled the most able efforts of the Turks in the way of rape,
+murder, and robbery.
+
+In excuse for part of this, _i.e._ that part which stirred up the Turks
+to atrocities even when they wished to be peaceful, there could be
+pleaded the good object of striving for the end of all Turkish rule in
+Christian districts of the Balkans. The excuse will serve this far: that
+without a doubt a Christian community cannot be governed justly by the
+Turk, and the very strongest of steps are warranted to put an end to
+Turkish domination of a district largely inhabited by Christians. But no
+consideration, even that of exterminating Turkish rule, could justify
+all the Christian atrocities perpetrated in Macedonia: and there is
+certainly no shadow of an excuse for the atrocities with which Bulgarian
+sought to score against Greek and Greek against Bulgarian. The era of
+those atrocities has not yet closed. The Turk has been driven from
+Macedonia, but Greek and Bulgarian continue their feud. For the time the
+Greek is in the ascendant, whilst the Bulgarian broods over a revenge.
+
+[Illustration: BULGARIAN INFANTRY]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE WARS OF 1912-13
+
+
+By 1912, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro had contrived, in
+spite of any past quarrels, in spite of the mutual jealousies even then
+being displayed in the recurring Macedonian massacres, of Christians by
+Christians as well as by Turks, to arrive at a sufficient degree of
+unity to allow them to make war jointly on Turkey. Bulgaria and Serbia
+concluded an offensive and defensive alliance, arranging for all
+contingencies and providing for the division of the spoils which it was
+hoped to win from the Turks. Between Bulgaria and Greece there was no
+such definite alliance, but a military convention only. The division of
+the spoil after the war was left to future determination, both Greek and
+Bulgarian probably having it clearly in his head that he would have all
+his own way after the war or fight the issue out subsequently. A later
+Punch cartoon put this peculiarity of a Balkan alliance with pretty
+satire. Greece and Serbia were discussing what they should do with the
+spoils they were then winning from Bulgaria. "Of course we shall fight
+for them. Are we not allies?" said one of the partners.
+
+I was through the war of 1912 as war correspondent for the London
+_Morning Post_, and followed the fortunes of the main Bulgarian army in
+the Thracian campaign. In this book I do not intend to attempt a history
+of the war but will give some impressions of it which, whilst not
+neglecting any of the chief facts in any part of the theatre of
+operations, will naturally be mainly based on observations with the
+Bulgarians.
+
+First, with regard to the political side of the war, one could not but
+be struck by the exceedingly careful preparation that the Bulgarians had
+made for the struggle. It was no unexpected or sudden war. They had
+known for some time that war was inevitable, having made up their minds
+for a considerable time that the wrongs of their fellow-nationals in
+Macedonia and Thrace would have to be righted by force of arms. Attempts
+on the part of the Powers to enforce reforms in the Christian Provinces
+of Turkey had, in the opinion of the Bulgars, been absolute failures,
+and they had done their best to make them failures, wishing for a
+destroyed Turkey not a reformed Turkey. In their opinion there was
+nothing to hope for except armed intervention on their part against
+Turkey. And, believing that, they had made most careful preparation
+extending over several years for the struggle. That preparation was in
+every sense admirable. For instance, it had extended, so far as I could
+gather, from informants in Bulgaria, to this degree: that they formed
+military camps in winter for the training of their troops. Thus they did
+not train solely in the most favourable time of the year for manœuvres,
+but in the unfavourable weather too, in case that time should prove the
+best for their war. The excellence of their artillery arm, and the proof
+of the scientific training of their officers, prove to what extent their
+training beforehand had gone.
+
+When war became inevitable, the Balkan League having been formed, and
+the time being ripe for the war, Bulgaria in particular, and the Balkan
+States in general, were quite determined that war should be. The Turks
+at this time were inclined to make reforms and concessions; they had an
+inclination to ease the pressure on their Christian subjects in the
+Christian provinces. Perhaps knowing--perhaps not knowing--that they
+were unready for war themselves, but feeling that the Balkan States were
+preparing for war, the Turks were undoubtedly willing to make great
+concessions. But whatever concessions the Turks might have offered, war
+would still have taken place. I do not think one need offer any harsh
+criticism about the Balkan nations for coming to that decision. If you
+have made your preparation for war--perhaps a very expensive
+preparation, perhaps a preparation which has involved very great
+commitments apart from expense--it is not reasonable to suppose that at
+the last moment you will consent to desist from making that war. The
+line which you may have been prepared to take before you made your
+preparations you may not be prepared to take after the preparations have
+been made. And, as the Turks found out afterwards, the terms which were
+offered to them before the outbreak of the war were not the same terms
+as would be listened to after that event.
+
+To a pro-Turk it all will seem a little unscrupulous. But it is after
+the true fashion of diplomacy or warlike enterprise. The simple position
+was that Turkey was obviously a decadent Power; that her territories
+were envied and that if there had not been a real grievance (there was a
+real grievance) one would have been manufactured to justify a war of
+spoliation. It not being necessary to manufacture a grievance, the
+existing one was carefully nursed and stimulated: and when the ripe time
+came for war the unreal pretext that war was the alternative to reform
+and could be avoided by reform was put forward. No reform would have
+stopped the war just as no "reform" would stop, say, San Marino
+attacking the British Empire if she wanted something which the British
+Empire has got and felt that she could get it by an attack.
+
+I do not think that the Balkan League would have withdrawn from the war
+supposing the Turks before the outbreak of the war had offered autonomy
+of the Christian provinces. I was informed in very high quarters, and I
+believe profoundly, that if the Turks had offered so much at that time
+the war would still have taken place.
+
+There is another interesting lesson to be gleaned from the political
+side of this war. At the outset, the Powers, when endeavouring to
+prevent hostilities, made an announcement that, whatever the result of
+the war, no territorial benefit would be allowed to any of the
+participants; that is to say, the Balkan States were informed, on the
+authority of all Europe, that if they did go to war, and if they won
+victories they would be allowed no fruits from those victories. The
+Balkan States recognised, as I think all sensible people must recognise,
+that a victorious army makes its own laws. They treated this _caveat_
+which was issued by the Powers of Europe as a matter to be politely set
+aside; and ignored it.
+
+Political experience seems to show that if a nation, under any
+circumstances, wishes its international rights to be respected, it must
+be ready to fight for them. There is proof from contemporary history in
+the respective fates of Switzerland and Korea. Both nations once stood
+in very much the same position internationally; that their independence
+was, in a sense, guaranteed. Korea's independence was guaranteed by both
+the United States and Great Britain. But the independence of Korea has
+now vanished. Korea could not fight for herself, and nobody was going to
+fight for a nation which could not fight for herself. The independence
+of Switzerland is maintained because Switzerland would be a very thorny
+problem for any Power in search of territory to tackle. In case of an
+attack on Switzerland, that country would be able to help herself and
+her friends.
+
+On the opposite side of the argument, we see the Balkan League entering
+upon a desperate war, warned that they would be allowed no territorial
+advantage from that war, but engaging upon it because they recognised
+that a victorious army makes its own laws.
+
+It was of wonderful value to the Bulgarian generals entering upon this
+war that the whole Bulgarian nation was filled with the martial
+spirit--was, in a sense, wrapped up in the colours. Every male Bulgarian
+citizen was trained to the use of arms. Every Bulgarian citizen of
+fighting age was engaged either at the front or on the lines of
+communication. Before the war, every Bulgarian man, being a soldier, was
+under a soldier's honour; and the preliminaries of the war, the
+preparations for mobilisation in particular, were carried out with a
+degree of secrecy that, I think, astonished every Court and every
+Military Department in Europe. The secret was so well kept that one of
+the diplomatists in Roumania left for a holiday three days before the
+declaration of war, feeling certain that there was to be no war.
+Bulgaria is not governed altogether autocratically, but is a very free
+democracy in some respects. It has a newspaper Press that, on ordinary
+matters, for delightful irresponsibility, might be matched in London.
+Yet not a single whisper of what the nation was designing and planning
+leaked abroad. Because the whole nation was a soldier, and the whole
+nation was under a soldier's honour, secrecy could be kept. No one
+abroad knew anything, either from the babbling of "Pro-Turks," or from
+the newspapers, that a great campaign was being designed.
+
+[Illustration: _Topical Press_
+
+BULGARIAN TROOPS LEAVING SOFIA]
+
+The Secret Service of Bulgaria before the war evidently had been
+excellent. They seemed to know all that was necessary to know about the
+country in which they were going to fight. This very complete knowledge
+of theirs was in part responsible for the arrangements which were made
+between the Balkan Allies for carrying on the war. The Bulgarian people
+had made up their minds to do the lion's share of the work, and to have
+the lion's share of the spoils. They knew quite definitely the state of
+corruption to which the Turkish nation had come. When I reached Sofia,
+the Bulgarians told me they were going to be in Constantinople three
+weeks after the declaration of war. That was the view that they took of
+the possibilities of the campaign. And they kept their programme as far
+as Chatalja fairly closely.
+
+The view of the Bulgarians as to the ultimate result of the war, and
+what they had designed should be the division of spoil after the war, I
+gathered from various classes in Bulgaria, speaking not only with
+politicians but with bankers, trading people, and others. They concluded
+that the Turk was going to be driven out of Europe, at any rate, as far
+as Constantinople. They considered that Constantinople was too great a
+prize for the Bulgarian nation, or for the Balkan States, and that
+Constantinople would be left as an international city, to be governed by
+a commission of the Great Powers. Bulgaria was, then, to have
+practically all Turkey-in-Europe--the province of Thrace, and a large
+part of Macedonia as far as the city of Salonica. Constantinople was to
+be left, with a small territory, as an international city, and the
+Bulgarian boundary was to stretch as far as Salonica. Salonica, they
+admitted, was desired very much by the Bulgarians, and also very much by
+the Greeks; and the Bulgarian idea in regard to Salonica before the war
+was that it would be best to make it a free Balkan city, governed by all
+the Balkan States in common, and a free port for all the Balkan States.
+Then the frontier of Greece was to extend very much to the north, and
+Greece was to be allowed all the Aegean Islands. The Serbian frontier
+was to extend to the eastward and the southward, and what is now the
+autonomous province of Albania (the creation of which has been insisted
+on by the Powers) was to be divided between Montenegro and Servia.
+
+That division would have left the Bulgarians with the greatest spoil of
+the war. They would have had entry on to the Sea of Marmora; they would
+have controlled, perhaps, one side of the Dardanelles (but I believe
+they thought that the Dardanelles might also be left to a commission of
+the Powers). It needed great confidence and exact knowledge as to the
+state of the Turkish Army to allow plans of that sort to have been not
+only formed, but to be generally talked about.
+
+It must be tragical now for a patriotic Bulgarian to compare these high
+anticipations with the actual results of the war, and to reflect that at
+one time he had three-fourths of his hopes secure and then sacrificed
+all by straining after the remainder.
+
+The Bulgarian mobilisation--effected after lengthy preparation with
+perfect success and complete secrecy--was a triumph of military
+achievement. It emphasises a point often urged, that when a whole nation
+is wrapt up in the colours, when every citizen is a soldier and taught
+the code of patriotic honour of the soldier--then at a time of crisis,
+spies, grumblers, critics are impossible. Bulgaria, as I have said, is
+very democratic. Unlike Roumania, where a landed aristocracy survived
+Turkish rule, the whole nation is of peasants or the sons and grandsons
+of peasants. The nobles, the wealthy, the intellectuals were
+exterminated by the Turk. Yet the strategy of the war suffered nothing
+from the democracy of the people. They acted with a unity, a secrecy,
+and a loyalty to the flag that no despotism could rival.
+
+The mobilisation was effected on very slender resources. Official
+statistics--perhaps for a reason--are silent regarding the growth of
+railway material since 1909. But in that year there were only 155
+locomotives in the country. As soon as war was anticipated these
+provident and determined people set to amassing railway material, and
+one railway official, without giving exact figures, talked of
+locomotives being added by "fifties" at a time. I doubt that. But
+perhaps there were between 200 and 225 locomotives in Bulgaria in
+October 1912, though one military attaché gave me the figure at 193. It
+was a slender stock, in any case, on which to move 350,000 men and to
+keep them in supplies. But the people contributed all their horses,
+mules, and oxen to the war fund. Soldiers were willing and able to walk
+great distances, and within a few days all the armies were over the
+frontier.
+
+The Bulgarians, by the way, began the war with a _moratorium_. (The week
+of the declaration of hostilities, meeting some personages notable in
+European finance, they ridiculed for this reason the idea of the war
+being anything but a dismal failure from the point of view of the Balkan
+States.) It was necessary to win in a hurry if they were to win at all.
+They could take the field only because of the magnificent spirit of
+their population. They could not keep the field indefinitely under any
+circumstances.
+
+The main line of communication was through Yamboli, and here the chief
+force was massed whilst exploratory work was carried on towards
+Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse. I believe that originally the capture of
+Adrianople was the first grand object of the campaign, and that a
+modification was made later either for political or military reasons, or
+for a mixture of both. Up to the point at which Adrianople was invested
+from the north, Kirk Kilisse captured, and the cavalry sent raiding
+south-west to attack the Turk's lines of communication and to feel for
+his field army, an excellent plan of campaign was followed. If the main
+Bulgarian army had then swung over from Kirk Kilisse and had made a
+resolute--and, under the circumstances, almost certainly
+victorious--effort to rush Adrianople the natural course, from a
+military point of view, would have been followed. The one risk involved
+was that the Turkish field army would come up from the south and force a
+battle under the walls of Adrianople, aided by a sortie from the
+garrison. But the experience of Kirk Kilisse and the following battles
+argued against this. There would have been, one may judge, ample time
+allowed to subdue Adrianople with an army flushed by its success at Kirk
+Kilisse, operating against a garrison thoroughly despondent at the
+moment.
+
+Kirk Kilisse, it must be noted in passing, was a vastly overrated
+fortress. The Turks, I believe, valued it highly. The Bulgarians
+triumphantly quoted a German opinion that it could withstand a German
+army for three months. As a matter of fact, whilst it was a valuable
+base for an enterprising field army, surrounded as it was by natural
+features of great strength, it was not a real fortress at all. Still,
+the moral effect of its capture was great, and on the flood of that
+success the Bulgarian army could have entered Adrianople if it had been
+willing to make the necessary great sacrifice of infantry.
+
+A second sound--and more enterprising, and therefore probably better
+course--was that which I thought at the time was being followed, to
+pursue the Turks fleeing from Kirk Kilisse, to search out their field
+army, give it a thrashing, and then swing back to subdue Adrianople. But
+neither of these courses was followed. Kirk Kilisse was not followed up
+vigorously in the first instance. After its capture the Bulgarian army
+rested three days. During that time the fleeing Turks had won back some
+of their courage, had come back in their tracks, recovered many of the
+guns they had abandoned, and the battles of Ivankeui and Yanina--battles
+in which the Bulgarian losses were very heavy--were necessary to do over
+again work which had been already once accomplished. This criticism must
+be read in the light of the fact that I am totally ignorant of the
+transport position in the Bulgarian Third Army at the time. General
+Demetrieff had made a wonderful dash over the wild country between
+Yamboli and Kirk Kilisse, carrying an army over a track which took a
+military attaché six days to traverse on horseback, and a hospital train
+seven days to traverse by ox wagon. He might at the time have been
+seriously short of ammunition, though Kirk Kilisse renewed his food and
+forage supplies.
+
+After three days the Bulgarians moved on. Ivankeui and Yanina were won,
+and the pursuit continued until Lule Burgas, where the Turkish army in
+the field was decisively defeated and driven with great slaughter
+towards Chorlu, where its second stand was expected. That expectation
+was not realised. The flight continued to Chatalja. This was the
+turning-point of the campaign. Up to now the Bulgarian success had been
+complete. If now Adrianople had been made the main objective, with a
+small "holding" force left at Chorlu, the entry into Constantinople
+would possibly have been realised. But the decision was made to "mask"
+Adrianople and to push on with all available force towards
+Constantinople.
+
+In considering this decision it is easy to be misled by giving
+Adrianople merely the value of a fortress in the rear, holding a
+garrison capable of some offensive, necessitating the detachment of a
+large holding force. But that was not the position. Actually Adrianople
+straddled the only practical line of communication for effective
+operations against the enemy's capital. The railway from Bulgaria to
+Constantinople passed through Adrianople. Excepting that line of
+railway, there was no other railroad, and there was no other carriage
+road, one might say, for the Turk did not build roads. Once across the
+Turkish frontier there were tracks, not roads.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL DEMETRIEFF, THE CONQUEROR AT LULE BURGAS]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+ADRIANOPLE
+
+A general view, showing the Mosque of Sultan Selim on the left and the
+Old Mosque on the right]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+ROUMANIAN SOLDIERS IN BUCHAREST]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+ADRIANOPLE
+
+View looking across the Great Bridge]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+GENERAL VIEW OF STARA ZAGORA, BULGARIA]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+SOFIA
+
+Commercial Road from Commercial Square]
+
+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."
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+BUCHAREST
+
+The Roumanian House of Representatives]
+
+It was a beautiful story, and why should any one let loose a brutal
+bulldog of a fact and point out that King Ferdinand during the
+campaign lived in temporary palaces at Stara Zagora and Kirk Kilisse,
+and when he travelled on a visit to some point near the front it was
+usually by motor-car?
+
+In a paper of another nationality there was a vivid story of the battle
+of Chatalja. This story started the battle 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-Pest, 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 battle-field, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The Mustapha Pasha censorship would not allow ox wagons, reservists, or
+Serbians 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.
+
+Here is 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 stand-still, 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 battle-fields), liable to
+ravage by roving bands.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL SAVOFF]
+
+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.
+
+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 Chorlu. There a friendly artillery officer helped me to
+get a cart (springless) and two fast horses. He insisted also on giving
+me a patrol, a single Bulgarian soldier, with 200 rounds of ammunition,
+as Bashi-Bazouks were ranging the country.
+
+It was an unnecessary precaution, though the presence of the soldier was
+comforting as we entered Silviri 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
+Silviri 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. The Commander,
+an artillery officer, welcomed me to a little mess which the Bulgarian
+officers and non-commissioned officers (six in all) had set up in a
+clean room of a village house. We had dinner, "Turkish fashion,"
+squatting round a dish of stewed goat and rice, and then smoked
+excellent cigarettes through the evening hours as we looked out on the
+Chatalja lines.
+
+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."
+
+Now there had been "good copy" in the journey. At Arjenli I happened to
+be the witness of a vivid dramatic scene (more stirring than any battle
+incident). It was a splendid incident, showing the high courage and
+_moral_ of these peasant soldiers at an anxious time. To have witnessed
+it, participated in it, was personal reward sufficient for a week of
+toil and anxiety. To my paper, too, the reader might say, it was of some
+value, if properly told and given to the London reader the next morning,
+the day before the battle of Chatalja.
+
+Yes. But it was the next afternoon before I could get to a telegraph
+office within the Bulgarian lines. Then the censor said any long message
+was hopeless. I was allowed to send a bare 100 words. They reached
+London eight days later, a week after the battle had been fought, when
+London was interested no longer in anything but the armistice
+negotiations. The reason was that the single telegraph line was
+monopolised for military business. My account of the battle of Chatalja
+reached London a full fortnight after the event, though I had the
+advantage of the highest influence to expedite the message.
+
+Thus from a daily-newspaper point of view all the expense, toil, danger
+were wasted.
+
+Summing up, an accurate and prompt Press service as war correspondent
+with the Bulgarian army was impossible, because--
+
+1. The Bulgarian authorities were keen that correspondents should see
+nothing.
+
+2. A rigid first censorship checked a full record of what little was
+seen.
+
+3. The first censorship being passed, despatches often had still to pass
+a second censorship at Staff headquarters, a third censorship at Sofia.
+
+4. Despatches passing through Roumania underwent another censorship
+there, and yet another in Austria, possibly yet others in other European
+countries.
+
+5. In addition to these censorship delays the Bulgarian authorities made
+newspaper messages yield precedence to military messages, and at the
+front this meant that Press messages were sent on by mail (ox transport
+most of the way) to the Staff headquarters or the capital.
+
+6. In the meanwhile the imaginative accounts written nearer Fleet Street
+had been published, and the accurate news was "dead" from a point of
+public interest.
+
+Most of these conditions will rule over all future wars. Therefore I
+conclude that the day of the war correspondent--in the sense of a
+truthful observer of a campaign--has gone, and he died with the Balkan
+War. He can only survive if newspapers are willing to incur the very
+great expense of sending out war correspondents not for the news, day by
+day, but for what observation and criticism they could supply after the
+campaign was over. To a daily newspaper such matter is almost valueless,
+especially as during the progress of the campaign the correspondents of
+the "new" school would be at work with their many inventions, raising
+the hair of the public and the circulation of their journals with bright
+feats of imagination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+JOTTINGS FROM MY BALKAN TRAVEL BOOK
+
+
+These observations I will quote from my diary during 1912 in
+illustration of phases of Balkan character, dating them at the time and
+place that they were made.
+
+Belgrade, _October 21_.--The declaration of war has not set the Serbians
+singing in the streets. In the chief café there is displayed a great war
+map. Young soldiers not yet sent to the front lounge about in all the
+cafés and are lionised by the older men. They are the only signs of war.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+BULGARIAN INFANTRY]
+
+The patriotic Serbian illustrates his case against the Turk by taking
+you for a ramble around his capital. The old Turkish quarters of the
+town are made up of narrow unpaved muddy lanes lined with low hovels.
+The modern Serbian town has handsome buildings markedly Russian in
+architecture, electric trams, and wood-blocked pavements. Near the
+railway station one side of a street is as the Turks left it and shows a
+row of hovels: the other side is occupied by a great school. The shops,
+because it is war-time and business is largely suspended, are mostly
+closed. But a few remain open with reduced staffs. The goods displayed
+are as a rule woefully expensive when they are not of local origin.
+Landlocked Serbia, surrounded by commercially hostile countries, finds
+imports expensive. British goods are very much favoured, but are hard to
+obtain.
+
+The Serbians speak bitterly of the efforts of Austria "to strangle them
+commercially." "Whenever they wish to put diplomatic pressure upon us,"
+said one Serbian to me, "they discover that swine fever has broken out
+in our country and stop our exports of pigs and bacon--our chief lines
+of export. What can we do? Once, in retaliation, we found that we
+suspected a consignment of Austrian linen goods of carrying swine fever
+and stopped it on the frontier. It almost caused war."
+
+Nish (Serbia), _October 22_.--A military train carrying some members of
+the army and Staff has brought also a band of war correspondents this
+far. We were a merry but rather a hungry lot. The train has been sixteen
+hours on the journey, and as we started at 6 a.m. most of us did not
+bring any stores of food except such as were packed away and
+inaccessible in the big baggage. The wayside refreshment rooms are swept
+clean of all food. Finally we manage to obtain some bread, and five
+hungry correspondents in one carriage eat at it without enthusiasm,
+whilst in a corner sits a Serbian officer having a good meal of sausage
+and onions and bread. We make remarks, a little envious, a little
+jocose, in English, on his selfishness. "He is a greedy pig, anyhow,"
+said one, putting the final cap on our grumbles. The Serbian officer had
+not betrayed by a smile or a frown that he understood but now in good
+English he remarked: "Perhaps you gentlemen will be so kind as to share
+this with me." We all laughed and he laughed then: and we took a little
+of the sausage, and liked that Serbian rather well: and no reference was
+made to what had gone before. At nightfall we stop at Nish and all my
+Press comrades leave the train to go on in the rear of the Serbian army.
+I push on to Sofia. Clearly these Balkan peoples are not quite so
+savage as I had thought once.
+
+Sofia, _October 24_.--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 has gone to fight who could fight.
+But further, every family has 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 a law 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 has not had 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--those goods which were obtained in this way
+totalled in value some six million pounds. That represented the surplus
+goods, beyond those necessary for consumption by the Bulgarian people,
+at the outset of the war. The numbers of the Bulgarian people represent
+half the population of London. The peasant population is very 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. I am told that the gold supply in the
+Bulgarian Treasury at the declaration of war was only three million
+pounds. So that there was an army of 350,000 men put into the field, and
+only three million pounds as the gold supply.
+
+Kirk Kilisse, _November 7_.--The extraordinary simplicity of the
+commissariat has helped the Bulgarian generals a great deal. The men
+have had bread and cheese, sometimes even bread alone; and that was
+accounted a satisfactory ration. When meat and other things could be
+obtained, they were obtained; but there were long periods when the
+Bulgarian soldier had nothing but bread and water. The water,
+unfortunately, he took wherever he could get it, by the side of the
+route at any stream he could find. There was no attempt to ensure a pure
+water supply for the army. I do not think that, without that simplicity
+of commissariat, it would have been possible for the Bulgarian forces to
+have got as far as they did. There was an entire absence of tinned
+foods. As I travelled in the trail of the Bulgarian army, I found it
+impossible to imagine that an army had passed that way, because there
+was none of the litter which is usually left by an army. It was not that
+they cleared away their rubbish with them; it simply did not exist.
+Their bread and cheese seems to be a good fighting diet.
+
+Seleniki, _November 13_.--The transport was, naturally, the great
+problem which faced the generals. I have seen here (Seleniki, which is
+the point at which the rail-head is), within 30 miles of Constantinople
+as the crow flies, ox wagons which have come from the Shipka Pass in the
+north of Bulgaria. I asked one driver how long it had been on the road;
+he told me three weeks. He was carrying food down to the front. The way
+the ox wagons were used for transport was a marvel of organisation. A
+transport officer at Mustapha Pasha, with whom I became very friendly,
+was lyrical in his praise of the ox wagon. It was, he said, the only
+thing that stuck to him during the war. The railway got choked, and even
+the horse failed, but the ox never failed. There were thousands of ox
+wagons crawling across the country. They do not walk, they crawl, like
+an insect, with an irresistible crawl. It reminds you of those armies of
+soldier ants which move across Africa, eating everything which they come
+across, and stopping at nothing. I had an ox wagon coming from Mustapha
+Pasha to Kirk Kilisse, and we went over the hills and down through the
+valleys, and stopped for nothing--we never had to unload once. And one
+could sleep in those ox wagons. There is no jolting and pulling at the
+traces, such as you get with a harnessed horse. The ox wagon moved
+slowly; but it always moved. If the ox transport had not been as
+perfectly organised, and if the oxen had not been as patiently enduring
+as they proved to be, the Bulgarian army must have perished by
+starvation. 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.
+
+But after Lule Burgas, the ox transport has had to do the impossible. It
+is impossible for it to maintain the food and the ammunition supply of
+the army at the front, which I suppose must number 250,000 to 300,000
+men. That army has 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.
+
+Arjenli (Turkey), _November 15, 1912_.--It is Friday, and we expect
+to-morrow the Battle of Chatalja. In the little Turkish village of
+Arjenli, situated on a high hill a little to the rear of the Bulgarian
+lines, is the ammunition park of the artillery, guarded by a small body
+of troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Tchobanoff. Coming towards the front
+from Chorlu, the fall of night and the weariness of my horses have
+compelled me to halt at Arjenli, and this officer and Dr. Neytchef give
+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 has 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. But there was in the nation one good Socialist
+who knew that war was an evil thing, and that it was better to sit
+down meekly under tyranny than to take up arms.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+OX TRANSPORT IN THE BALKANS]
+
+I followed in the track of the victorious Third Army as it came down
+through the border mountains on to Kirk Kilisse, then to Lule Burgas,
+then past Chorlu to the Chatalja lines. At Arjenli I had overtaken them
+in time to see the final battle, and now sat looking out on the
+entrenched armies, talking over the position with a serene and cheerful
+artillery officer. The past week had been one of hardship and horrors.
+From Chorlu the road was lined with the bodies of the Turkish dead,
+still awaiting burial. Entering the Bulgarian lines on their right flank
+that morning, I had tried in vain to succour a soldier dying of the
+choleraic dysentery which had begun its ravages. But here in the middle
+of the battle line the atmosphere of noble confidence is inspiriting.
+The horrors of war vanish; only its glory shows. The men around me feel
+that they are engaged in a just war. They know that everything that man
+can do has been done. Proudly, cheerfully, they await the issue.
+
+During the evening, a Turk suspected of being a spy is brought in for
+trial. He had attempted to rush past one of the sentries guarding the
+ammunition wagons. He is given a patient hearing, is able to establish
+his innocence, and is allowed to go. There is no feeling of panic or
+injustice among these Bulgarians. I see the trial and its end (having
+been asked to act as friend of the accused).
+
+It is to-day forty days since the mobilisation. At the call this trained
+nation was in arms in a day. The citizen soldiers hurried to the depots
+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 depot 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 depot 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, early in November, 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.
+
+Later, 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 battle-fields. 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.
+There was no daunting these trained patriots.
+
+These and a score of other pictures pass through my mind and explain
+Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas, and give confidence for the battle to
+come. Here was a people ranged for battle with the steady nerves and the
+stolid courage that come from tilling the soil, with the skill and the
+discipline that come from adequate training, with the fervent faith of a
+great patriotism. I have talked with Turkish prisoners and found
+infantrymen who had been sent to the front after two days' training,
+gunners who had been drafted into a battery after ten days' drill. Such
+soldiers can only march to defeat.
+
+[Illustration: A BALKAN PEASANT WOMAN]
+
+Ermenikioi (Headquarters of the Third Bulgarian Army), _November 17
+(Sunday)_.--The Battle of Chatalja has been opened. To-day, General
+Demetrieff rode out with his Staff to the battle-field whilst the bells
+of a Christian church in this little village rang. The day was spent
+in artillery reconnaissance, the Bulgarian guns searching the Turkish
+entrenchments to discover their real strength. Only once during the day
+was the infantry employed; and then it was rather to take the place of
+artillery than to complete work begun by artillery. It seems to me that
+the Bulgarian forces have not enough big gun ammunition at the front.
+They are ten days from their base, and shells must come up by ox wagon
+the greater part of the way.
+
+Ermenikioi, _November 18_.--This was a wild day on the Chatalja hills.
+Driving rain and mist swept over from the Black Sea, and at times
+obscured all the valley across which the battle raged. With but slight
+support from the artillery, the Bulgarian infantry was sent again and
+again up to the Turkish entrenchments. Once a fort was taken but had to
+be abandoned again. The result of the day's fighting is indecisive. The
+Bulgarian forces have driven in the Turkish right flank a little, but
+have effected nothing against the central positions which bar the road
+to Constantinople. It is clear that the artillery is not well enough
+supplied with ammunition. There is a sprinkle of shells when there
+should be a flood. Gallant as is the infantry, it cannot win much
+ground faced by conditions such as the Light Brigade met at Balaclava.
+
+Ermenikioi, _November 19_.--Operations have been suspended. Yesterday's
+cold and bitter weather has fanned to an epidemic the choleraic
+dysentery which had been creeping through the trenches. The casualties
+in the fighting had been heavy. "But for every wounded man who comes to
+the hospitals," Colonel Jostoff, the Chief of the Staff, tells me,
+"there are ten who say 'I am ill.'" The Bulgarians recognise bitterly
+that in their otherwise fine organisation there has been one flaw, the
+medical service. Among this nation of peasant proprietors--sturdy,
+abstemious, moral, living in the main on whole-meal bread and
+water--illness was so rare that the medical service was but little
+regarded. Up to Chatalja confidence in the rude health of the peasants
+was justified. They passed through cold, hunger, fatigue, and kept
+healthy. But ignorant of sanitary discipline, camped among the filthy
+Turkish villages, the choleraic dysentery passed from the Turkish
+trenches to theirs. There are 30,000 cases of illness, and the healthy
+for the first time feel fear as they see the torments of the sick. The
+Bulgarians recognise that there must be a pause in the fighting whilst
+the hospital and sanitary service is reorganised.
+
+Kirk Kilisse, _December 1_.--It seems certain now that peace must be
+declared, and that the dream of driving the Turk right out of Europe
+must be abandoned. These peasant peoples of the Balkans have done
+wonderful things, but they have stumbled on one point--the want of
+knowledge of sanitary science. I have seen only one attempt at a clean
+camp since I have been in the field, and that was a Serbian camp, north
+of Adrianople.
+
+With the Bulgarian army there was not, at any stage of the campaign up
+to the Battle of Chatalja--that is, until after the outbreak of
+cholera--any precaution, to my knowledge, taken to secure a clean water
+supply, or clean camping-grounds, or to take the most elementary
+precautions against the outbreak of disease in the army. The medical
+service was almost as bad. I have seen much of the hospital work at Kirk
+Kilisse after the armistice; and it has been deplorable to see the fine
+fellows whose lives were sacrificed, or whose limbs were sacrificed,
+through neglect of medical knowledge. I am sure the Bulgarians would
+have saved many hundreds of lives if there had been anything like a
+proper medical service at the front.
+
+At Chatalja the chief reason given for the stoppage of operations was
+the ravages of disease in the Bulgarian lines. The illness was of a
+choleraic type; it had, as usual, a profound moral as well as physical
+effect. The courage of the men broke down before this visitation. The
+victims howled with pain and terror, though the same men would withstand
+serious wounds without a complaint or a wincing.
+
+The Turks are blamed for the outbreak in the Bulgarian lines. It is more
+than probable that their villages, inexpressibly filthy; the prisoners
+taken from their ranks; the infection of the soil abandoned by them,
+were contributing causes.
+
+[Illustration: A BAGPIPER]
+
+But it must be stated frankly that the almost complete absence of any
+sanitary discipline or precaution in the Bulgarian lines at this place
+earned for them all the diseases that afflict mankind. So far as I can
+ascertain after careful investigation, there were no sanitary police; no
+attempts to secure and safeguard a pure water supply; no latrine
+regulations. I have seen the Bulgarian soldiers drinking from streams
+running through battle-fields, though a few feet away were swollen
+carcases. I have seen no attempt in the field at a proper latrine
+service. Some hundreds of thousands of peasant soldiers, accustomed to
+the simplest life on their own farms, were collected together and left
+practically without sanitary discipline. The details can be filled in
+without my setting them forth in print. There is one fact, however, to
+be recorded of a pleasant character. In all investigations of the
+hospital services I never found a case of any malady arising from vice.
+There was also a complete absence of drunkenness. This might be ascribed
+to the want of means to obtain alcohol. But in Turkey there was an
+abundance of wines and spirits, and some beer in the captured villages
+and towns; it led, however, to no orgies.
+
+Naturally, the Bulgarian peasant is wonderfully healthy. His food is
+rough whole-meal bread and cheese; his occasional luxuries, a dish of
+the sour milk which is so well known in London, a little alcohol on
+Sunday, some sweet stuff, and, rarely, grilled meat or meat soup with
+vegetables. It is possible to judge that his alimentary tract differs
+widely from that of the Western European. I should say he was almost
+immune from enteric, unless attacked by a very virulent infection. He
+can live on bread and water alone without serious inconvenience for
+lengthy periods. His blood is very pure, and ordinarily heals in a way
+that astonished the British surgeons.
+
+Here, then, was the best of material from an army medical point of view.
+Given the roughest food, the simplest sanitary precautions, and
+ordinarily good field dressing, and the army would have marched without
+disease and the wounded would have dropped out of the firing line for a
+few days only. But there were no sanitary precautions; hence disease.
+The hospital service as regards the first aid in the field was pitiably
+deficient; hence serious and unnecessary losses of wounded. Without
+seeking to pile up a record of horrors, I cite a few individual
+instances to illustrate bad methods. At the front, punctured bayonet
+wounds were closely bandaged--in some cases stitched up--without
+provision for irrigation, without even proper cleansing. This led to
+gangrene and often caused the sacrifice of a life or of a limb (which,
+to these peasants, was almost as great a loss as that of life: their
+feeling against amputations was very strong, and if they understood
+that amputation was intended, they sometimes begged to be "killed
+instead"). Bullet wounds also were often plugged up on the field. When
+proper treatment was at last available, it was sometimes too late to
+avoid death or amputation. No treatment at all on the field would have
+been preferable to this well-intentioned but shocking ignorance.
+
+Of the purely Bulgarian hospitals those at Kirk Kilisse are very
+deficient: at Philippopolis, however, there were excellent Bulgarian
+hospitals, and also at Sofia. The Russian hospital at Kirk Kilisse is
+very good. The British Red Cross Hospital, under Major E. T. F. Birrell,
+of the R.A.M.C., is excellently organised, has the fullest possible
+equipment, and tries to specialise in serious cases. It is subjected
+locally (as is the Russian hospital) to the criticism that by insisting
+on perfection of system it unduly restricts its salvage work: that, in
+short, it could deal with far more patients if it consented to more
+"rough-and-ready" methods. I record this criticism, and acknowledge that
+it is based on facts. Yet it may be urged on the other side that it was
+ultimately far more useful to have a model hospital to show how things
+should be done than to sacrifice that valuable lesson for the sake of
+striving to cope in rough-and-ready fashion with the flood of wounded.
+This hospital gives interesting proof that Great Britain is an Empire,
+not an island nation. I first encountered three of its doctors in a
+café. One was from the Mother Country, one from the West Indies, one an
+Australian friend, who set at once to talking of gum trees and of
+Melbourne University. Then a non-commissioned officer attached to the
+hospital--most of its Staff are army men--is a Canadian, who had had war
+experience in South Africa. His comments on the Bulgarian wounded are
+full of sympathy. "These chaps," he said, "take their gruel better even
+than the Tommies. The Tommy takes his all right, but he 'grouses' about
+it. These chaps never grumble. One of them had to have a very painful
+dressing. He winced a little. A comrade at once laughed at him. 'Ah,' he
+said, 'you learn new kinds of dancing here.'" Nurses endorse this
+evidence about the Bulgarian soldiers' patience, though one stated that
+she found the officers sometimes to be rather neurasthenic.
+
+On the whole, the Bulgarian army is not strong on science. In spade
+work it was not good. I saw no perfect trenches--never a drained trench.
+Undrained trenches caused some increase of mortality and of sickness. It
+is uncomfortable to stay for days, or even hours, in a trench which the
+rain has partly filled with water. In no case that I saw were there
+trenches with overhead protection against howitzer fire. Except at the
+Chatalja lines and around Adrianople the trenches were, of course,
+intended to be of a very temporary use, and would naturally not be
+elaborate. Gun-pits and emplacements were usually fairly good. It was
+the custom to dig a pit, or to put up a little sod wall for the
+gun-limber (most of the artillery work was from concealed and prepared
+positions). At Chatalja the trenches were masked with the stalks of the
+Turkish tobacco plants--about the only instance I saw of masking. It was
+rare to see a trench zigzagged as a precaution against enfilading fire.
+The Turkish trenches I saw were hopelessly bad.
+
+Sofia, _December 6, 1912_.--Sofia, in spite of the great victories which
+have been won, is neither joyous nor contented. The failure of the siege
+of Adrianople seems to rest heavy upon the people: and there are gloomy
+stories of the extent of the losses of the nation's manhood. So far no
+lists of killed and wounded have been published. "The Mass at St.
+Sofia," which was the battle-cry of the first days of the war, is
+clearly not a possibility now. Some mystery attaches to the movements of
+the king. It is said that he had made a vow that he would not return to
+Sofia until a victorious peace was signed. The embittered relations with
+the Greeks, the signs of disagreement with the Serbians, suggest gloomy
+possibilities of future troubles.
+
+Belgrade, _December 8, 1912_.--With the exception of the army before
+Adrianople, the Serbians have finished their share of the war with
+Turkey. Belgrade is satisfied, but not over-elated. Across the Danube, a
+broad gloomy waste of dun waters under the winter mists, a division of
+the Austrian army is mobilised. There is a fear, almost an expectation,
+that Austria will make war. But there seems neither panic nor war-fever
+in the city.
+
+Business is creeping back to the normal state. At the Ministry for War
+there are to be seen pathetic scenes as parents and other relatives seek
+tidings of the soldiers. An old father, himself a captain of reserves,
+hears that his only son, a lieutenant, has been killed, and bursts into
+tears and tells to all around his sorrow. But generally tragic news is
+received stoically. Amid the congratulations on the results of the
+Allies' efforts there is an under-current of resolution to make a better
+bargain with Bulgaria than the _ante bellum_ partition treaty proposed.
+Reports of envious and rude treatment of the Serbian army before
+Adrianople are current in the street: and there is some talk of
+recalling the men. This is the irresponsible talk of men in the street
+only: the authorities are very correct in their attitude towards "our
+friend and ally," and express themselves as confident that Bulgaria of
+her own volition will suggest better terms for her partner in the war.
+
+A Serbian politician, who patiently endures my bad French or makes a
+brave effort to talk in English, a tongue which he is learning to speak
+and can read quite well, politely excuses the English for being such bad
+linguists. "For you English who have all the poetry, all the romance,
+all the science, all the philosophy a man may want in your own language,
+it is not necessary to learn any other. For us in the Balkans, we must
+learn other languages or remain ignorant of much that goes on in the
+world."
+
+In truth the Balkan peoples are astonishing linguists. It is not at all
+a rare thing to find that a man can speak Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek,
+Turkish, and French. Often he adds either English or German to this
+list. Bulgarian and Serbian, of course, are but differing dialects of
+Russian--a Russian can make himself understood in both tongues though he
+knows only Russian. But the grammar of one differs from that of the
+other, and many of the words are different. The Balkan people who know
+Turkish know it usually in its colloquial and spoken form and not the
+literary language, which is very difficult to understand thoroughly
+because it is really a blending of three languages.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+SOME SERBIAN PEASANTS]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE PICTURESQUE BALKANS
+
+
+It is difficult to dissociate the Balkans with bloodshed and disorder.
+Insensibly the mind is tempted at every turn to direct attention to the
+last battle or the future campaign which can be seen threatening. But if
+the storm-racked peninsula could be granted a term of peaceful
+development, there is no doubt at all but that it would be much favoured
+by voyagers seeking picturesque beauty and wishing to go over the fields
+which have been the scenes of some of the greatest events in history.
+Mountain resorts to rival those of Switzerland, spas to match those of
+Germany and Austria, autumn and winter seaside beaches of great beauty
+and fine sunny climate--all these exist in the Balkan Peninsula, and
+need only to be known, and to be known as peaceful, to attract
+tourists.
+
+The Adriatic coast has charms of rugged coast-lines and bright waters;
+the Black Sea littoral, though flat and sandy, has a warm sunny summer
+or autumn climate; the Aegean is a sea of brilliant purples and rosy
+mists, in which air, rock, and water mingle to greet the eye with a
+great opal jewel. A November sunset on the Sea of Marmora gave to my
+eyes such a feast of suffused colour as I had not seen since I left the
+shores of the southern Pacific. The rocky hills had the rich red of the
+Jersey cliffs, but the sea and sky were incomparably warmer and deeper
+in tone. Across the sea the shores of distant Asia shone dimly through
+two veils of mist, one of the tenderest rose, the other of the palest
+gold. The greater part of the Greek coast has the same deliciousness of
+colour in autumn and in summer.
+
+A few travellers bolder than the ordinary search out nowadays the shores
+of the Adriatic, the beautiful coast of Greece, and even the margin of
+the Sea of Marmora in quest of beauty and relief from the tedium of
+civilisation. But they must face poor means of communication (though to
+Constantinople and to Trieste there is an excellent train service) and
+scanty accommodation of any kind--almost none of good quality. Within a
+very few years, if the Balkans could settle down to peace and the
+legalised plunder of foreign visitors--a pursuit which is as profitable
+as brigandage and far more comfortable,--the seaside resorts that would
+spring up within Balkan territories would of themselves provide a
+handsome revenue. The shores of the Aegean and of the Sea of Marmora in
+particular would attract tourists wearied of the air of hackneyed
+sameness which comes after a while to pervade seaside haunts in Italy
+and France.
+
+From another attraction the Balkan States could hope for a great tourist
+traffic. I have caught but fleeting glimpses of the Balkan range and of
+the Rhodopes and the Serbian mountains, but have seen enough to know
+that they offer boundless delights to the climber, to the seeker after
+winter sports, and to the lover of the picturesque; and the Swiss Alps
+in these days are overcrowded, and the Tyrolean mountains and the
+Carpathians begin to receive a big overflow of people who have a taste
+for heights that are not covered with hotels and funicular railways. But
+the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula offer prospects, I believe, of
+greater beauty, certainly of greater wildness, than any other ranges of
+Europe. Of the Rhodope mountains, in particular, one gets the most
+alluring accounts from the rare travellers who have explored them. Seen
+by the passing voyager as they stand guard with their farthest spurs
+over Philippopolis, they suggest that no account of their charm could be
+too glowing. I have promised myself one autumn or summer a month in this
+range, exploring its flower-filled valleys and its wild cliffs, shining
+through an air which seems now of rose and now of violet.
+
+For winter sports the Serbian, Montenegrin, and Albanian mountains, as
+well as the chief Balkan range, promise well. I believe that it was part
+of the plan of Bulgarian reorganisation after the war, which King
+Ferdinand had in his mind, to set up great winter hotels in the
+mountains of his kingdom. The other Balkan States could with advantage
+give hospitality to similar plans. Provided that security is
+assured--and the Balkan peasant is in my experience the
+gentlest-mannered kind who ever cut throats in a wholesale way at the
+call of a mischief-maker--visitors to the mountains of the Balkan
+Peninsula would find the wildness, the uncouthness of the surrounding
+national life, very attractive. The picturesque national costumes, the
+national music, wild and uncanny, the strange national dances, all add
+to the fascination of the savage scenery. In an age when a fog of dreary
+sameness comes over all the civilised world, the Balkans have a great
+asset in their primitivism. Theirs is not a wholly European
+civilisation; indeed, except in the capital cities, it is not chiefly a
+European civilisation. Everywhere there is a touch of the mystery, the
+fatalism, the desert-bred wildness of the Asiatic steppes. For centuries
+the hand of the Turk has been heavy on the land, and a strong stream of
+his blood courses still through the veins of most of the Balkan peoples.
+It is not the East this Balkan Peninsula, but it is not the West, nor
+will be for some generations.
+
+There is yet another possible means of attracting great streams of
+visitors to the Balkan regions. Throughout the mountains there are
+numberless medicinal springs. In Serbia and Bulgaria the water of two
+springs is being exploited for table use, and in Bulgaria the warm
+medicinal springs are being developed for bathing resorts. At Sofia
+there are now in course of erection great public baths which will be
+equal to any in Europe when they are completed. In the mountains above
+Sofia warm springs are being utilised, and quite a large spa village has
+grown up. King Ferdinand, who has a fine commercial instinct whatever
+the failures of his war diplomacy, has done good service to his kingdom
+by developing its baths and springs.
+
+The plain country of the Balkan Peninsula is but little attractive.
+Under the Turkish rule nearly all plantations of trees were destroyed,
+and a general air of desolation was maintained. Since the Turk left,
+cultivation and development have been on strictly utilitarian lines, and
+there has been little chance for gardens or woods. The eye of the
+voyager misses them, and misses also the sight of castles, churches, or
+great buildings. The dreariness of the plain is unrelieved by forests.
+The rivers flow sullenly along without a bordering of trees. The
+Thracian plain--the greater part of which has now gone back to Turkey
+and thus lost hope of a redemption of its really fertile soil--is in
+particular desolate and forbidding. But even there, and more frequently
+in the plain country of Bulgaria and Serbia, there is now and again a
+charming village in some dell with adornment of trees and gardens. The
+average village, however, is a collection of hovels, their roofs lying
+so close to the ground that they seem to be rather burrows than huts,
+their aspect suggesting that they are hiding themselves and their
+inhabitants from the eye of a possible ravager.
+
+Desolate as this plain country is, it has its attractions at dawn and
+sunset in the clear colourfull air of the Balkan Peninsula; and where
+the hill slopes, denuded of their forests, have been covered over by a
+dense oak scrub the autumn aspect of the plain at sunset is incomparably
+lovely. The scrub, when the first of the autumn frosts come, blazes out
+in such scarlet and gold as cannot be imagined in the moist and soft
+climate of England. With the setting of the sun and the coming of the
+violet night the earth's carpet seems to be here smouldering, there
+burning, a sea of lambent fire so bright that you look to see its
+burgeoning reflected in the sky.
+
+I should advise the tourist wishing to see the Balkan Peninsula at its
+best to choose the fall of the year for a visit. In the summer there is
+great heat and dust and plague of flies. In the winter travel is
+impossible with any comfort except along the railway lines, and the
+whole Peninsula is frost-bound. The spring is a beautiful season at its
+later end, but not at the time of the thaw.
+
+As to the route for a voyage there are several alternatives. One may
+take the Oriental Express through to Constantinople and work a way up
+the Balkan Peninsula from there: or take train to Trieste and approach
+the Balkans by the Adriatic side: or, taking the Oriental Express, leave
+it at Bucharest and journey from there to Sofia: or, taking the Oriental
+Express, leave it at Belgrade, making that the starting-point for a
+riding trip. Certainly to enjoy the country one must leave the railways
+and journey on horseback or by cart over the wilder tracks. An
+interpreter who speaks English can be engaged in any one of the
+capitals. The hire of horses, oxen, and carts is very cheap, if you are
+properly advised by your interpreter and pay the local rates only.
+Forage, too, is cheap: and so is "the food of the country," i.e. bread,
+cheese, bacon, and goat and sheep flesh. Most civilised luxuries of food
+can be obtained in the capitals and bigger towns, but they are dear.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+SOFIA
+
+General view, looking towards the Djumala Pass (45 miles away). Taken
+from the front of Parliament House, showing monument of Alexander II,
+known in Bulgaria as the "Tsar Liberator"]
+
+Let me suggest a few typical Balkan tours.
+
+Take train to Belgrade: then go by Danube steamer to Widdin. From Widdin
+to Sofia go by rail, and then back to Belgrade on horseback, sending
+on heavy luggage by rail, but making at Nish on the way a depot of
+provisions and linen.
+
+Take train to Bucharest. Go from there to Stara Zagora on horseback,
+crossing the Roumanian frontier at Roustchouk, going over the trail of
+the Russian Army of Liberation and seeing the Balkan mountain passes.
+
+Take train to Sofia, and from there to Yamboli. At Yamboli go on
+horseback (in the track of the Bulgarian Third Army of 1912) to Kirk
+Kilisse, Lule Burgas, Chorlu, Silivri (on the Sea of Marmora), and
+Constantinople. A somewhat wild trip this would be, but quite
+practicable. The most comfortable way to travel would be to take ox
+wagons for the luggage and the camping outfit. That would restrict the
+day's march to twenty miles. The horses--(diverging to look at scenery
+and battle-fields)--would do about thirty miles a day.
+
+Take train to Constantinople, and from there boat to Salonica. Go on
+horseback from Salonica to Belgrade. This would show the most disturbed
+part of the Balkan Peninsula and some of its wildest scenery.
+
+Take train to Philippopolis, and from there go on horseback and with ox
+wagons for a tour of the Rhodope mountains.
+
+Of course it is possible to take much tamer tours of the Balkans.
+Practically all the big towns are connected with the European railway
+systems. But you would see, thus, towns and not the country. The Balkan
+towns are to my eye very dreary. There are practically no fine old
+buildings, for in the Turkish occupation the greater number of these
+were destroyed. The modern buildings have rarely any character. The
+churches, usually of the Slav school of architecture, alone relieve the
+monotony of economical imitations of French and British buildings. In
+Belgrade, it is true, there has been an effort to carry the Slav note
+farther, and some of the commercial and public buildings show a Moscow
+influence.
+
+Mr. Noel Buxton, M.P., that most enthusiastic admirer of the Bulgarians,
+can carry his enthusiasm so far as to admire Sofia. He wrote recently
+(_With the Bulgarian Staff_):
+
+     Few sights can be more inspiring to the lover of liberty and
+     national progress than a view of Sofia from the hill where the
+     great seminary of the national church overlooks the plain. There at
+     your feet is spread out the unpretentious seat of a government
+     which stands for the advance of European order in lands long
+     blighted with barbarism. Here resides, and is centred, the virile
+     force of a people which has advanced the bounds of liberty. From
+     here, symbolised by the rivers and roads running down on each side,
+     has extended, and will further extend, the power of modern
+     education, of unhampered ideas, of science, and of humanity. From
+     this magnificent view-point Sofia stretches along the low hill with
+     the dark background of the Balkan beyond. Against that background
+     now stands out the new embodiment of Bulgarian and Slavonic energy,
+     genius, and freedom of mind, the great cathedral, with its vast
+     golden domes brilliantly standing out from the shade behind them.
+     In no other capital is a great church shown to such effect, viewed
+     from one range of hills against the mountainous slopes of another.
+     It is a building which, with its marvellous mural paintings, would
+     in any capital form an object of world interest, but which, in the
+     capital of a tiny peasant State, supremely embodies that breadth of
+     mind which
+
+              ... rejects the lore
+    Of nicely calculated less or more.
+
+But I think that that is a too kindly view. What makes the Balkan
+capitals additionally dreary is that there is no "society" in the
+European sense. The Turkish idea of keeping the womenfolk in the harem
+survives to the extent that woman is not supposed to frequent places of
+entertainment, to receive or to pay visits. In Bulgaria the women are
+secluded with an almost Turkish strictness: in Serbia, not quite so
+strictly, but still strictly.
+
+Bucharest is quite another story; but Bucharest would rather resent
+being called a Balkan city. There is no seclusion of the very charming
+Roumanian women, and the atmosphere of the city is a little more than
+gay. Plant a section of Paris, a section including Montmartre, into the
+middle of an enlargement of the old quarter of Belgrade, and that is
+Bucharest. It is the one Balkan city which has a luxurious and to an
+extent polished aristocracy.
+
+Some of the smaller towns are slightly more interesting--Philippopolis,
+for instance, in a position of great natural beauty--but the average
+Balkan town must be set down as squalid. Its centres of social interest
+are the cafés, where men who have the leisure assemble to drink coffee
+made in the Turkish fashion, tea made in the Russian fashion, and
+occasionally _vodka_, which is the usual alcoholic stimulant. Tobacco is
+smoked mostly in the form of cigarettes. Excellent (and cheap)
+cigarettes are supplied by the government _Régies_ in Serbia and
+Bulgaria.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+BUCHAREST]
+
+The wise tourist will keep clear of the Balkan towns apart from the
+actual capitals, and will carry his food and lodging with him. Under
+these circumstances a good standard of ease can be maintained if a train
+of ox wagons sufficient to the size of the party is enlisted. Ladies can
+travel with fair comfort in an ox wagon. As regards the danger of Balkan
+travel, in my experience--and that was during war-time--there is none.
+Serbian peasant, Bulgarian peasant, Greek peasant, Turkish peasant,
+alike are amiable and obliging fellows, if they do not feel in duty
+bound to cut your throat on some theological or political point. Being
+strangers, tourists would have no theology and no politics. So much for
+the inhabitants. The officials, provided passports are clear and the
+precaution is taken of getting letters at the capital from the
+authorities of the country you are travelling through, will be helpful.
+The one district that might be a little dangerous is that corner of
+Macedonia where Greek and Bulgar are always playing against one another
+the old game of massacre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BALKAN PEOPLES IN ART AND INDUSTRY
+
+
+The five centuries of Turkish domination, during which all the arts and
+most of the crafts were neglected in the Balkan Peninsula, killed nearly
+completely the ancient civilisations of the Greeks, the Serbs, and the
+Bulgars. But a few traces of the old culture survive to this day as
+mournful and tattered relics of the greatness of those departed Empires.
+The old Bulgarian Empire, combining a Slav with a Turconian element; the
+old Serbian Empire, almost purely Slav but influenced a little by
+Italian and Grecian influence, evolved in the days of its greatness the
+beginnings of a national literature and national architecture. In Serbia
+particularly was there a strong and promising growth of humane culture,
+and the greatest of the Serbian rulers, Stephen Dushan (14th century),
+whose death before the walls of Constantinople at the beginning of the
+Turkish invasions gave up the Balkan Peninsula to the Crescent, left as
+one monument to his name a well-reasoned code of laws. He was throughout
+his reign a sincere friend of learning. In Bulgaria during the 10th
+century, under the Czar Simeon, there was a brief efflorescence of
+learning. Montenegro, which alone of the Balkan States kept its head
+unbowed before the Turk, was a busy centre of literary effort in the
+16th century. Under the stress of constant war, however, the arts of
+peace died down almost completely in the Balkans until the Liberation of
+the peoples in the 19th century. During the interval, however, the
+peasants in their homes kept up some little knowledge of the traditions
+of their forefathers' greatness. Legends were passed down from father to
+son in chants set to a rough music. In these chants, too, were recorded
+the deeds of heroism which marked the ever-recurring revolts against the
+Turk.
+
+What survives to-day from this period of oppression is a very
+characteristic national music, melancholy usually, as might be expected,
+but of arresting sweetness; and an art of peasant-applied decoration,
+which recalls the earlier and more primitive forms of Byzantine Art.
+Balkan tapestries, Balkan carpets, Balkan embroideries, woven or
+stitched by the peasant women, have a note of barbaric boldness in
+design and colour which distinguishes them at once from the peasant work
+of other countries.
+
+This applied art in decoration is wisely fostered by the various
+governments, and there is liberal encouragement also given to modern
+art. Especially is this the case in Bulgaria. The impression I have got
+from seeing picture collections in the Balkans is that the local artists
+have learned foreign methods without adding any national bent of their
+own, and contrive to give a native character to their pictures only when
+they make the choice of some particularly horrible subject. Yet there
+should come a vigorous art as well as a vigorous literature one day from
+these Balkan States. There the mysticism, the melancholy, the
+transcendentalism of the Slav is mixed with the fatalism of the Turk,
+and the vivacity of the Greek and the Roumanian in the national types.
+Byzantine traditions, Slav traditions, classic Greek traditions, Roman
+traditions mingle to influence this composite character, the two former
+predominating, but the two latter having a very definite power. It
+should be rich soil for talent, even for genius.
+
+Interesting opportunities were given in the Southern Slav Art
+Exhibitions of 1904 and 1906 (the first at Belgrade, the second at
+Sofia) to note the trend of art in the Balkans. At those Exhibitions
+Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, and Slavonian arts were represented. The
+Croatian pictures--I follow a trustworthy guide in stating this--showed
+a high degree of technical skill, not distinguishable from Austrian art
+in character: the Slavonian pictures were also technically good, but of
+a more impressionist character: the Serbian pictures imitated in
+technique the Old Masters, but took their subjects almost exclusively
+from Serbian history: the Bulgarian pictures had no national
+characteristic in style, but usually sought to be transcriptions of some
+form of Bulgarian life of the day.
+
+Summing up the art position in the Balkans, it can be fairly said that
+before the outbreak of the last great war very good progress had been
+made for the few years since the Liberation from the Turks. A wise
+policy for the future would be to encourage as much as possible the
+peasant arts and crafts which are distinctive, and not to seek to
+impose too much of modern art education, which may stifle national
+influences and inflict a sterile sameness.
+
+Balkan industry varies greatly with the height of the country, as well
+as with the racial type. The mountaineers are usually lacking in steady
+industry: the peoples of the plain are usually exceptionally hard
+workers. Very many emigrants from the Balkans go to the United States to
+work there in the mines, and on works of railway construction, for a
+term of years. The Bulgarian will come back from the United States with
+£300 saved up, and settle down in his native village as farmer or
+trader. The Serbian will come back with £200 saved up, but with a wider
+knowledge of United States life, and he will settle down as pastoralist
+or farmer, but not as trader. The Albanian or Montenegrin will come back
+with little or no money, but with a wonderful armoury of silver-adorned
+weapons and much other personal decoration. So graced, the mountaineer
+will have no difficulty in marrying the girl of his choice, and she will
+do most of the work that is needed thereafter, whilst he attends to the
+hunting and the fighting. The Greek and the Roumanian go abroad,
+preferably as traders, and afterwards elect to stay abroad, though it
+is to be recorded in proof of modern Greek patriotism that in 1912 there
+was a steady flow of Greeks from all parts of the world coming back to
+their native land to fight in the army.
+
+[Illustration: A BULGARIAN FARM]
+
+Considered industrially the Bulgarian is the best type in the Balkans.
+He is a steady, tireless worker on the soil; takes to factory life
+amiably; and has in a very strongly marked degree "the road-making
+talent."
+
+A very valuable index to national character is provided by a people's
+roads. The most successful Imperial governors, the Romans, were also
+builders of the finest roads the world has known. The British people
+have been good road-builders as well as good Empire-makers; the French
+people, too, and every other people who at any time have done big
+enduring work in the government of the world. If a nation is not a good
+road-building nation it will not go far: and the converse is probably
+true. On this road-building test the Bulgarians have a prosperous future
+indicated, for they are very pertinacious and skilful road-builders.
+During the 1912 war I noticed that despite all other pre-occupations
+they were pushing roads forward at every possible opportunity. The
+Turks going back to Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse found a great number of
+roads built or building--the first serious efforts in that direction
+since the downfall of the Roman Empire.
+
+The Bulgarian's chief occupation is agriculture. The system of land
+tenures is that of peasant ownership. There are no large estates and
+very few non-occupying landlords. The chief crops are wheat, barley,
+maize, rice (around Philippopolis), tobacco, and roses. The tobacco is
+of as good quality, almost, as that of Turkey. The Bulgarian Government
+encourages the culture of tobacco by distributing seed, free of cost,
+among the planters, by setting a bounty on the export tariff, and by
+authorising the Bulgarian National Bank to consent to loans on the
+surety of certificates granted to the planters until they are able to
+dispose of their crops advantageously.
+
+Tobacco culture is carried on chiefly in the south and in the provinces
+of Silistria and Kustendil. The area of the plantations is estimated at
+3000 hectares. The province of Haskovo has the greatest yield; then
+follows Philippopolis, with 300,000 kilograms; Kustendil and Silistria,
+210,000 kilograms. According to approximate calculations based on
+various statistics, three-fourths of the tobacco crop of Bulgaria is
+consumed by the inhabitants and only a quarter is exported.
+
+The rose crop is next in importance after tobacco. The roses are used
+exclusively for the distilling of attar of roses. The rose gardens are
+limited to 148 parishes of the provinces of Philippopolis and Stara
+Zagora, and occupy a total area of 5094 hectares. The quantity and
+quality of the attar depend very much on the weather at the time of
+bloom and gathering. The roses most cultivated in Bulgaria are the red
+rose (_Rosa damascena_) and the white rose (_Rosa alba_). The best
+gardens are at Kazanlik, Karlovo, Klissoura, and Stara Zagora. The
+distilling of the attar is now a Government monopoly. The cultivation of
+beetroot has been introduced recently and is confined to the province of
+Sofia. The sugar refinery near Sofia utilises the whole crop for local
+consumption.
+
+It is interesting to note in connection with Balkan agriculture that as
+far back as 1863 the much-abused Turk had actually adopted the very
+modern idea of an agricultural _Credit Foncier_ system in the Balkans!
+In that year Midhat Pasha, Governor of the Danubian Vilayet, prepared a
+scheme for the creation of banks, to assist the rural population. The
+scheme having been approved by the Turkish Government, several of these
+banks were established. The peasants were allowed to repay in kind the
+loans which were advanced to them, the banks themselves selling the
+agricultural products. With the object of increasing the capital of the
+banks, a special tax was introduced obliging the farmers to hand every
+year to these institutions part of their produce in kind.
+
+When it was realised that these banks were of great service to the rural
+population, to which they advanced money at 12 per cent
+interest--instead of 30-100 per cent, as the usurers generally did--the
+Turkish Government extended the reform to the whole Turkish Empire, and
+obliged the peasants to create similar banks in all the district
+centres. According to their statutes one-third of the net profits of
+these banks was destined for works of public utility, such as bridges,
+roads, fountains, schools, etc., while the remaining two-thirds went to
+increase the capital of the banks.
+
+During the Russo-Turkish war several of these banks lost their funds,
+the functionaries of the Turkish Government having carried away all the
+cash, as well as the securities and other property belonging to the
+banks' clients. After the war the debtors refused to pay, and only part
+of the property of the banks was restored, by means of the issue of new
+bonds. For that unfortunate end the war is rather to be blamed than the
+Turk. This _Credit Foncier_ system is pretty clear proof that the
+Turkish power was not always cruel and rapacious, since so sensible a
+reform was set on foot in one of the Christian provinces under the
+Sublime Porte.
+
+Apart from the industries of the soil, Bulgaria has a small mining
+population and an increasing factory population. The Protective tariff
+is used freely to encourage young industries, and there is an effort
+just now to set up cotton-spinning as a national enterprise.
+
+Serbia had a mixed pastoral and agricultural population up to the
+outbreak of the war of 1912, with pig-raising as the greatest of the
+national industries. By the Treaty of Bucharest she has, however,
+acquired much new territory, and is now probably predominantly an
+agricultural country. She has, too, great mineral resources at present,
+but they are little developed, and fine forests which only need an
+improvement of the means of communication to be commercially a big
+asset. The Serbian is not so steadily devoted to his work as the
+Bulgarian: his is the pastoral as opposed to the agricultural character.
+Nevertheless he has a reasonable faculty of industry. As is the case in
+Bulgaria the bulk of the land is held by peasant proprietors. These are
+organised into communes very much on the Russian system. It is an
+interesting fact that though in Serbia there is almost the same degree
+as in Bulgaria of seclusion of the women of the nation, a Serbian woman
+may be the head of the village commune, and, as such, exercise a very
+real authority.
+
+Both in Bulgaria and Serbia the rights of the commune are very jealously
+safeguarded. The central government must take no part in the
+administration of the communes, or maintain any agents of its own to
+interfere with their affairs. The commune forms the basis of the State
+fabric and enjoys a complete autonomy. It is the smallest unit in the
+administrative organisation of the country. Every district is subdivided
+into communes, which are either urban or rural. The commune is a
+corporation. Every subject must belong to a commune and figure in its
+registers, the laws not tolerating the state of vagrancy. The members of
+the Commune Council are elected by universal suffrage, in the same way
+and subject to the same precautions as the members of the National
+Assembly. In passing it may be observed that theoretically the
+governments of the Balkan States are free democracies. Practically they
+are oligarchies tempered by assassination, which is still a favoured
+political weapon.
+
+The Serbian has not much of the commercial faculty: and people of other
+nations manage very many of the businesses in Serbia.
+
+The Montenegrin is willing to be a worker if it does not interfere with
+his manly amusements of warfare. His occupations are pastoral and
+agricultural pursuits and the chase. The Albanian is not content to be a
+worker at all under any conditions. His occupations are dancing and
+swaggering whilst his womenfolk carry on the bulk of the primitive
+pastoral and agricultural work.
+
+It is not possible to hope for much industrial or commercial progress in
+Albania. But in Serbia and Bulgaria there are rich opportunities for
+enterprise and capital provided that an era of peace could be reckoned
+upon. It is the uncertainty on that point that will stand in the way of
+future Balkan development. When after the Treaty of London the Balkan
+League fell to pieces there was incurred, in addition to other
+sacrifices, a serious loss of confidence on the part of European
+capital.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FUTURE OF THE BALKANS
+
+
+We have seen that a blood-mist has hung over the Balkans during all the
+centuries that history knows. Nature set up there lists for the great
+contests of races--on the path from the cold north of Europe to the warm
+south; on the path from Asia to Europe; and each great campaign left
+behind it shreds of devastated peoples. These shreds of peoples dwelling
+in the Balkans to-day have a blood-thirst as an inescapable heritage.
+Turk, Bulgar, Serb, Roumanian, Greek--they may hold the peace for a
+time, and some may try to think that they are friends with others; but
+all have something of hate or fear or contempt for the others, and all
+prepare in peace for the next fight.
+
+The Fates making the Balkan Peninsula the battle-ground of empires and
+races, the field of last stands, the refuge of residual fragments of
+peoples, imposed upon it its bloody tradition. Under other conditions,
+Serb or Bulgar or Greek or Turk or Roumanian left to themselves might
+have made happier history. For all these races can be human, reasonable,
+companionable. I have seen something of all of them in following a
+Balkan campaign as a war correspondent (not following always as the
+sheltered guest of an army, but forcing a solitary path through the
+peasant population), and in watching the wonderful acrobatic lying of a
+Balkan Peace Conference have seen thus the best and the worst of them. I
+have been an unofficial member of a Bulgarian court-martial; the guest
+of a dozen and more Bulgarian and Serbian army outposts, dependent often
+for food and shelter on the kindness of peasant soldiers; for days have
+held at the mercy of Balkan peasants my life and my property; have been
+mistaken for a wandering Turk twice, and have never suffered violence,
+rudeness, or the loss of a pennyworth. For the peasants, the commonfolk
+of all the Balkan peoples, I have come thus to a hearty liking; their
+priests and politicians (with a few exceptions), a different feeling.
+Knowing that the massacre is the national sport in many districts of
+the Balkans; that at the outbreak of the 1912 war the death-rate by
+violence actually decreased in some quarters because the killing was
+systematised a little and put under a sort of regulation; that always
+Turks and Exarchate Christians and Patriarchate Christians are plotting
+against one another new raids and murders, still I maintain that, if
+left to themselves, if freed from the prompting of priests and
+politicians the Balkan peasants of any race are quite decent folk. So I
+wish heartily that there was fair reason to hope for peace and happiness
+for them. Is there fair reason? To that question a study of the races
+and the personalities can give clues for an answer.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+ALBANIAN TRIBESMEN]
+
+The Bulgarian is dour, dull, a little greedy, honest, very industrious.
+He is almost as much a Turk as a Slav. (I was told that during the
+Turkish occupation a Bulgarian mother finding herself with child after
+violence by a Turk brought up the child with her family, whilst a
+Serbian mother under the same circumstances killed the infant at birth.)
+The Bulgarian is very moral, marrying at an early age.
+
+The Bulgarian peasant soldiers were very honest and loyal. At Mustapha
+Pasha one night, being short of food, I tried to get bread at the
+military bakery (all bread and flour having been requisitioned for the
+army). I offered a soldier up to five francs for a loaf without tempting
+him to sell it. Finally I had to get bread as a charity by declaring
+that I was actually in want of it for food. Later, travelling between
+Silivri and Chatalja, I encountered four Bulgarian foot soldiers who had
+become separated from their regiment and were starving. They asked for
+food and I gave them all I could spare, enough for two meals. One of the
+men produced a purse and took out some coppers wishing to pay.
+
+Travelling across Thrace (then in Bulgarian occupation), I often put up
+at some military post, being invited to become a member of the little
+mess--usually an official or two and four or five non-commissioned
+officers. Nearly always I had the same experience, that I was made free
+of the stewed goat and rice, or the dish of eggs and flour, or the bread
+and cheese of the Bulgarians, and when I wished to add from my stores
+chocolate and biscuits and dates, just a scrap or two would be taken. I
+could see the men's eyes hungering for the delicacies, but nothing would
+induce them to take anything material from my stores.
+
+The Bulgarian peasant soldier and officer I found, in short, to be a
+gentleman. Yet nationally Bulgaria is not "a gentleman," and has come to
+its present sorry state, I believe, largely on that account. The old
+Bulgarian aristocracy was exterminated by the Turks. The surviving
+Bulgarian peasantry has not yet been able to produce another
+aristocracy. It is the more cunning rather than the more worthy son of
+the peasant who wins to a sort of an education--often abroad--and
+becomes the lawyer, politician, official. In very many cases he carries
+with him into a higher stratum of society few of his peasant virtues and
+all of his peasant faults. He gets an overweening pride in his own
+acuteness. He becomes arrogant, "too-clever-by-half," and intrigue
+teaches him cruelty. I can contrast vividly two Bulgarian types in a
+noted diplomat, who fancied himself a Bismarck and had about the wits of
+an office boy, and an old peasant captain with whom I travelled from
+Kirk Kilisse to Chorlu. Generalising, the "leading men" in Bulgaria are
+of a poor type (there are exceptions), the leading priests of a still
+poorer type; the people themselves are a sound people, and when the
+ambitious among them contrive to preserve their peasant virtues through
+the ordeal of education they will become a great people.
+
+The Bulgarian did not seem to me naturally cruel. All the time that I
+was with the main army I saw no trace of outrage or cruelty. I did see
+several instances of curt and merciful justice.
+
+I arrived one night at the Tchundra River alone, having gone forward
+from my ox cart because the miserable Macedonian driver and the still
+more miserable Bulgarian servant I had (I suspect he was in training for
+the diplomatic service) could not be induced to do a fair day's march. A
+vedette outpost of five men held the bridge. They took me--as I judged
+from their gestures rather than from their language, of which I
+understood only one word, "Turc"--for a Turk. But they let me stay
+unmolested at their camp fire for an hour until an officer who spoke
+French appeared. I could give several similar instances. Never did I
+feel nervous in the least when making my way alone through the country
+in Bulgarian occupation (most of the time I was alone, for after a while
+I dropped my Macedonian and my Bulgarian servant).
+
+[Illustration: _See page_ 190
+
+GREEK INFANTRY]
+
+The Turk I found disappointing. I had pictured a romantic individual
+with a Circassian harem, a stable of Arab steeds, and a fierce and
+warlike manner. I found the Turk to be rather a shabby individual;
+monogamous usually (but with the free and easy ideas as to his rights
+over Christian women which are almost consequent upon his philosophy of
+life, and cause most of the trouble when the Turk lives by the side of a
+Christian population); much addicted to sweetmeats--his shops were full
+of Scotch lollies and English biscuits. Certainly most of the Turks I
+have encountered were prisoners or dwelling in conquered country. But,
+making all allowance for that, the traditional fiery Turk of martial
+fame no longer exists, I should say, in European Turkey. The Turkish
+prisoners in the hands of the Bulgarians seemed to be glad to have
+arrived at a fate which meant regular food. In old Bulgaria I found
+Turks living quite contentedly under Christian rule, and in many cases
+following menial occupations. The boot-blacks in the streets were Turks,
+the porters were Turks.
+
+I had a Turkish driver for five days once from Kirk Kilisse to Mustapha
+Pasha. The first hour of our acquaintance he won my heart by telling me
+(through an interpreter) that since his horses had been requisitioned by
+the Bulgarians, he had not been able to get proper food for them, and he
+embraced his ponies, which were really in rather good condition. I
+applauded the noble Turk and his love for horses, and bought tobacco for
+him which he welcomed with tears of joy, as he had been without it for
+long. The horses carried the cart a gallant thirty miles that day, and
+we camped at a burned-out village. Mr. Turk set himself to enjoy a smoke
+over the fire. My own supper I prepared, and gave him some to eke out
+his bread and cheese, and then told him to water and feed the horses.
+Because the well was 400 yards away and the tobacco was sweet and the
+fire comforting, the Turk had no wish to do this, but was ready to let
+them go through the night without food or water. I had to threaten to
+flog him (and to start to do it) before he would attend to the horses.
+Yet after that incident I slept in the cart without a thought that the
+Turk would consider himself offended and cut my throat. As a matter of
+fact the touch of the whip did not rankle with him, and at Mustapha
+Pasha when, the journey ended, I gave him a little money for himself,
+Mr. Turk prostrated himself in gratitude.
+
+I believe that the warlike virtues have died out of the Turk in Europe.
+Of other nation-making and nation-maintaining qualities he has none. In
+all Turkey from the borders of Bulgaria to the lines of Chatalja, I
+found no roads, no street lamps, no drainage, no water supply (I was not
+in Adrianople). Except for a few agricultural peasants I found nowhere
+the Turk doing any useful work. In a characteristic Turkish town the
+shops were kept by Greeks, the industries carried on by Greeks,
+Macedonians, and Bulgarians. The Turk was the tax-collector, the
+official, the soldier, and did none of these things well. That acute
+observer of the Turkish character, Mr. L. March Phillips, in his book
+_In the Desert_ upholds that the Turk is impossible as a civilising
+force:
+
+     Or, for a third example, come to the craggy hills of Southern
+     Albania, and mix, if but for half an hour, with the armed
+     shepherds, as wild and intractable as their own crags, or as the
+     gaunt dogs which guard their flocks from the wolves, and whose
+     attentions to strangers you are apt to find such a nuisance. You
+     will understand from the first glance at the men more of the
+     interminable Balkan difficulty than newspapers and books can ever
+     teach you. These are the fellows who swoop down from their peaks on
+     the mixed races of the plains and carry fire and slaughter through
+     village and valley. Their natural aptitude for fighting and
+     foraging, for bearing things with a strong hand, for cowing the
+     weak and feeble, for vindicating the old "might is right" theory,
+     is written all over them. You see it in their gait, glance, walk,
+     and manner, you hear it in every accent of their voice, you feel it
+     in their individuality and presence.
+
+     These are specimens of the Moslem type, the type that stops short
+     at the virile virtues, that makes the best host and worst neighbour
+     in the world, that has many splendid qualities to recommend it, but
+     to which all that makes life profound and inexhaustible is a dead
+     letter. It is the most strongly marked and salient type I have ever
+     met with. There is the Moslem walk, the Moslem scowl, the Moslem
+     courtesy, the Moslem dignity, the Moslem carriage and attitudes and
+     features, the Moslem composure, and the Moslem fury. All these
+     traits and characteristics, inspired by the same temper, expressing
+     the same ideal, conspire to depict a figure so notable that you
+     must be a dull observer indeed if you cannot pick him out from a
+     mixed crowd as you would pick out a Chinaman in the London streets.
+
+     Some people say it is the religion that creates the type. "There,"
+     they say of Mohammedanism, "is a religion that breeds men." It
+     would be truer, I think, to say that Mohammedanism recommends
+     itself to men at a certain stage of their development, and has for
+     that stage a natural affinity. Every race goes through a time when
+     the virile estimate of life and the splendour of self-assertion
+     seem the finest things possible. It is at this time it is open to
+     the attack of El Islam. The Moslem religion answers all its needs
+     at this stage, and lays good hold of it, and having once laid hold
+     of it, it sanctifies the ideas belonging to this stage, and so
+     tends to restrict the race to it. There is no instance on record of
+     a people having embraced Mohammedanism and afterwards achieving a
+     complete, or what gives promise of ever becoming a complete,
+     civilisation.
+
+During my stay in the Balkans I found no certain evidence of Turkish
+cruelty. There was plenty of evidence offered by the Bulgarians, but it
+usually smelt of the lamp of some patriotic journalist of Sofia. Once
+near Mustapha Pasha--when all the war correspondents were cooped up
+under strict censorship, prevented from seeing any of the operations
+around Adrianople--the Bulgarians found it necessary to burn a village
+for strategic reasons. The chance was offered to the Press photographers
+of seeing this, if it were represented in their pictures as the
+atrocious burning of a village by the Turks. I believe that the offer
+was accepted by some. The "atrocities" by Turks, regularly recorded by
+the Bulgarian Press Bureau were, as far as the main theatre of
+operations was concerned, founded on similar evidence. During its first
+phase I believe that the war was very humanely conducted on all sides.
+In Macedonia, of course, there were some deplorable atrocities, but I
+believe the normal massacre conditions there were rather bettered than
+otherwise by the outbreak of war.
+
+To sum up the Turk, I do not think he will survive for long in Europe.
+As a matter of hard fact there really are not many real Turks left in
+Europe.
+
+The Serbian, with his highlander the Montenegrin, is a far more engaging
+personality than the Bulgarian. He lacks the stubborn, dour courage of
+his neighbour, but he has more _élan_. In military life the Bulgarian
+would supply incomparable infantry, the Serbians be superior in
+artillery and cavalry. In social life the Serbian is convivial and
+hospitable. Whilst the Bulgarian wishes to go to bed early that he may
+get up early and push the road he is making along a little farther, the
+Serbian will keep you at his dinner-table drinking and singing until far
+into the morning. He is not troubling about a road.
+
+When the Serbian army came to help the Bulgarians in the siege of
+Adrianople, the contrast between the two armies and the two camps was
+great. The Serbian men were smarter, better equipped, their quarters
+cleaner, and from their mess tents would come by night the sound of
+revelry. One might imagine Roundheads and Cavaliers camping side by
+side.
+
+The Allies did not fraternise. For that I blamed the Bulgarians. The
+positions in regard to the Serbian aid at Adrianople, as I understood
+it, was this: that originally the Bulgarians engaged to help the
+Serbians in their campaign, but this was found not to be necessary: that
+the Bulgarians, later, asked for aid against Adrianople, and it was
+promptly given without any conditions being imposed, though there then
+already existed in the Serbian mind a desire to modify the territorial
+partition arrangement they had with Bulgaria and this request for aid
+might have been taken as a good opportunity for raising that question. I
+believe those to be the facts, but since in Balkan diplomacy it is
+always a matter of finding out the truth of comparing and weighing and
+deducing from a series of lies, I cannot state them with absolute
+certainty. If they are true, the Serbians behaved like gentlemen in not
+raising against an ally an awkward question at a time when help was
+asked. Quite certainly the Bulgarian authorities behaved like boors to
+their Serbian friends. Things were made as unpleasant as was reasonably
+possible for them in all kinds of niggling ways around Adrianople. The
+Serbians behaved well under great provocation.
+
+During the first sessions of the Balkan Peace Conference I had
+opportunities of observing the same good behaviour on the part of the
+Serbians. Bulgarian diplomacy was, as usual, very exasperating. It was
+not only that Bulgaria was insisting on having the hide, horn, and hoofs
+of Turkey, but also on rubbing salt into her bare carcase. The Turkish
+delegates approached the Serbians--whose territorial demands as far as
+Turkey was concerned were satisfied, but who had a pending controversy
+with the Bulgarians--hoping to get some moral support against Bulgaria
+and being prepared to offer something in return. The Serbian attitude
+was sharply loyal, to stand by Bulgaria absolutely in regard to the
+Turkish frontier. Serbians have not been always popular in Great
+Britain, I know; but I am not alone among those who have come into
+recent contact with Balkan affairs who found them to be the best of the
+Balkan peoples.
+
+[Illustration: _See page_ 194
+
+PODGORICA, UPON THE ALBANIAN FRONTIER]
+
+The Greek is even more engaging and hospitable than the Serbian; but his
+fluent, flexible, subtle nature does not inspire full confidence. At
+the outset of the last Balkan war there was one thing that all were sure
+of: that the Greeks would not fight. All were wrong. The Greeks did
+exceedingly well in the field, even allowing that they sometimes shaped
+their campaign quite as much by considerations of jealousy of their
+allies as of hostility to the common enemy. But it is a fact that the
+Greek has usually more stomach for politics than for fighting, and that
+his subtle nature allows him to live comfortably in a state of
+subjection, which would irk a more robust mind. He is by instinct a
+trader: and a trader is not an uncompromising patriot as a rule.
+
+The Greeks live side by side with the Turks in Turkey with fair comfort.
+At Kirk Kilisse, after the Bulgarian occupation, a deputation came to me
+from the Greeks to assure me that they would much prefer to live under
+the Turk than under the Bulgar: and asking that England should be urged
+to support autonomy for Thrace. Well, the Turks are back at Kirk
+Kilisse, and I suppose my Greek friends are happy. Eloquent, courteous,
+kind folk they were. I stayed in the house of one for some days, and
+will remember always the gracious kindness of the man and his wife. I
+had to leave one morning at four to catch a troop train which would
+carry me a few miles towards the front. The couple were up and had a
+fire and tea ready for me. As I had a fever at the time, and a long
+laborious journey ahead, the whole Greek race seemed good that morning.
+
+Later at Chorlu after I had got permission from the military commandant
+to go forward to Chatalja, and he had helped me to hire a cart and
+horses and to stock up my provisions, the permission was withdrawn
+because Bashi-Bazouks were raiding along the line of communication. I
+might go later, he said, when a body of troops was moving. I objected
+that time was precious; and I had my revolver, and there was the driver.
+
+"Ah," he said sweetly, "he is a Greek. He will run away."
+
+After that manner the Bulgarians always spoke of the Greeks. In this
+case the Bulgarian was possibly right. I finally coaxed permission to go
+forward, on condition that I took a patrol of one Bulgarian soldier, and
+I was allowed to borrow a rifle and some ammunition. We met no
+Bashi-Bazouks: but whilst the Bulgarian palpably was quite content to
+enter into a plan to give the Bashi-Bazouks a chance of showing
+themselves at nightfall, the Greek liked the adventure not at all.
+(Perhaps on the whole he was justified. But I was desperately eager for
+a "story," and with the Turkish regulars running away so consistently,
+to encounter irregulars suggested no real danger.)
+
+On that journey, at a little village which I cannot name between Silivri
+and Chatalja, the population was largely Greek. Some of the Greeks,
+after the Turks had fled before the Bulgarians, had discarded the fez
+and were wearing Bulgarian caps. Others held to the fez, but had marked
+on it with white chalk a cross. I formed the opinion that if by the
+fortune of war the Turks came back, those crosses would be rubbed out.
+The Greek can be very pliant undoubtedly, when he is in contact with a
+dominant people. The other side to his character--that of a hot-headed,
+argumentative, boisterous Donnybrook Fair patriotism--is developed in
+his own country where it is fed with memories of the historic greatness
+of his race.
+
+The Roumanian--the fourth national type in the Balkans to which I shall
+refer--very closely resembles the Greek in most respects. Like the
+Greeks the Roumanians are subtle, flexible, engaging. They are a
+singularly good-looking race, and Roumanian girls are sought after in
+marriage a great deal. A Serbian politician explaining to me what he
+called "a nice national balance," pointed out that the Serbians rather
+despised trade and finance. The Roumanian, therefore, came into Serbia
+to make money as shopkeeper and financier. Then the young Serbian man
+married the rich Roumanian's daughter and thus the Serbian money was
+still kept in the country.
+
+The instinct for trade has a very marked effect on the politics of the
+Balkans. The Serbian has no love for trade: the Montenegrin despises it
+quite. The Greek and the Roumanian are very keen traders with an
+inclination to escape from manual work as soon as they can. The
+Bulgarian is a trader and also fond of productive industry. So "as two
+of a trade never agree," neither Greek nor Roumanian can get on as well
+with the Bulgarian as with the Serbian.
+
+The Roumanian national polity differs greatly from the Greek, though the
+two racial types are very similar. Whilst Greece has a stormy and
+disorderly democracy, Roumania is ruled practically by an oligarchy--an
+oligarchy which during the past twelve months has won to an achievement
+which would have delighted the old Florentine Republic. Without losing a
+soldier, almost without spending a crown, Roumania has won a great tract
+of territory and established herself as the paramount power of the
+Balkans. It was a victory of unscrupulous and patient resoluteness which
+is a classic of its kind, and it was made possible by the oligarchic
+system of Roumania. The Montenegrin does not need to be considered
+separately: he is the "Highlander" of the Serbian and shares Serbian
+language, customs, and character with such modifications as the
+conditions of his mountain life impose. But the Albanian, the largely
+Mohammedan mountain type to which the jealousies of Europe have agreed
+to give a separate nationality and a separate kingdom, calls for some
+attention. The Albanian is the wildest of the Balkan types, and his
+country the most primitive. It has had no period of civilisation, and
+can hardly be said to promise to have. Its existence as a nation in 1914
+was due to the fact that the German Powers wished to have a footing in
+the Balkans for intrigue. "The creation of Albania dealt a death-blow
+to the Balkan League," said a cynical Austrian diplomatist recently. He
+was right: and the creation of Albania undertaken at the instance of
+Austria had no other purpose from the first, though it was disguised
+under the plea of anxiety for the national rights of the Albanians, wild
+catamarans of the hills, odd specimens of whom one may encounter in many
+parts of the Balkans acting as dragomans. The Albanian has many savage
+virtues. He is a picturesque fellow as he swaggers about with a
+silver-decorated armoury stuck in his waist-belt: and he is truly
+faithful to a master. But he has not the barest elements of a national
+organisation; and the Austrian Prince of Albania did not find a single
+house within all his dominion which would satisfy the housing needs of a
+respectable London clerk.
+
+Describing the march across Albania to the Adriatic coast during the
+recent war a Serbian officer wrote:
+
+     It is only by travelling as we did that real facts can be learned.
+     We who had only known the Turks by hearsay had a certain respect
+     for them. At present I feel but contempt and disgust. To think that
+     they should have held these lands for five hundred years, and kept
+     them absolutely wild and uncultivated! Prishtina, Jakovitsa, and
+     Prizrend are in every respect behind Mirigevo [a village some
+     miles outside Belgrade]. There are neither bridges nor roads, nor
+     decent dwellings to be met with in the Sanjak. Of the dirt I cannot
+     trust myself to speak. The "Ujumat" (Prefecture) of Prizrend,
+     residence of the Mutessarif, is in such a filthy condition that I
+     could not sit there for more than five minutes together. All around
+     the sofras (tables) were rags, remnants of food, tufts of dogs'
+     hair, etc., for these ate and slept with their masters....
+
+     The people are humble, cowed, moving out-of-doors rarely, and then
+     huddled together like a herd of cattle.... The peasants run to kiss
+     our hands, and bow down to the ground, but they are too frightened
+     to give a sensible answer to a plain question. They speak Serbian,
+     it is true, and cross themselves as Christians, but otherwise bear
+     little resemblance to our peasant folk. They have lived no better
+     than their masters, for themselves and their pigs share the same
+     apartment! If the pigs were let loose the Turks were sure to kill
+     them, so they were hidden indoors. The first use they made of the
+     liberty we gave them was to hunt the pigs into the open air, and
+     how the poor beasts enjoyed it! One could not help laughing at
+     their antics as they chased each other, while the children ran to
+     keep them from escaping to the woods. But the cows and oxen defy
+     description. They are like our calves, only the shape is queer. I
+     saw no vegetables anywhere. The staple diet is maize. From our
+     frontier to the sea it is the same tale of misery, helplessness,
+     and dirt. In Prizrend, after every rainfall, the people drink muddy
+     water in which none of our soldiers would care to wash. When we
+     boiled it a thick scum came on the top, which we skimmed off! This
+     is the water used by a town of 40,000 citizens; and really one felt
+     that authorities like the Turks should not be allowed to live any
+     longer. Now we feel that it is a disgrace to us to have delayed so
+     long in coming to the deliverance of our brothers in bondage just
+     outside our doors. Better late than never.
+
+     As for the independence of Albania, it would be a comical, if it
+     were not a sinister, idea. Whoever speaks of a national sense in
+     these savage hordes is either untruthful or ignorant. The Serbians
+     of this region make no distinction, as we do, between the Turks and
+     the Mohammedan Albanians. I could not get them to understand that
+     the latter were in reality brethren of the Christian Albanians with
+     whom they live in amity. I pointed out that these Mohammedans could
+     not speak a word of Turkish, but that did not help. The Serbians
+     insist that they are Turks all the same. And for all practical
+     purposes they are right. The Christian Albanians are called by
+     their race brethren "Catholics," and are hated and persecuted by
+     them just as the Serbians are hated and persecuted. The "Catholics"
+     loathe the Mohammedans and deny that they are of the same
+     nationality. But the fact remains that they speak the same
+     language. The Catholics welcomed us with joy, rendered us every
+     possible service, and often refused to accept payment. They are
+     eager to assist in our operations, acted as scouts for us, and
+     brought us precious information. Sometimes they acted on their own
+     initiative, captured, and killed their Mohammedan co-nationalists
+     without first consulting us.... The priests are the most
+     embittered. These jealous "fratres" told us they longed for a
+     Christian Government, and that the project of a united Albania was
+     insensate.... Ismail Kemal's proclamation has irritated the priests
+     about here. They will not for a moment consider a union with the
+     Mohammedan tribes or submission to a Moslem leader like Ismail. On
+     the other hand, if we evacuate this country, a terrible fate awaits
+     the Catholics....
+
+     Here I have made acquaintance with the Montenegrin troops, rather
+     different from ours! They get leave to go home and see after their
+     wives and children whenever they ask it, and lax discipline does
+     not seem to affect their heroism. They fight like lions, but do
+     nothing else except shoot birds and fish in the interval. Every
+     ship that touches here is greeted with a volley, though ammunition
+     is sometimes scarce, but the Montenegrin can better spare bread
+     than shot. He will do nothing but fight, and ships often remain
+     unladen here for days, because there are few Albanians in the place
+     to do the work. My soldiers carry sacks and burdens of all kinds to
+     and from the ships, and the Montenegrins laugh at them and say: "Is
+     that how you fight, Brother Shumadinats?" [Shumadia is a forest in
+     the centre of the Kingdom of Serbia.] They are amused to see our
+     men one day unshaven; they are most particular themselves to shave
+     each day whatever happens. The priests alone wear a beard, for they
+     are not supposed to fight.... The Montenegrin soldiers' wives come
+     once a week to look after their husbands, wash the linen, and help
+     to clean up....
+
+There is, of course, a certain amount of Serb intolerance in that
+letter, but it represents on the whole the truth.
+
+So much for the different nations of the Balkans. The personalities of
+the Peninsula might provide a happy solution for the problems which the
+conflict of these mutually antipathetic racial elements create: for
+there is no fact more clear than that the general interest of the
+countries could best be served by a wise policy of compromise and
+co-operation, bringing its different elements together as the Swiss were
+brought together by a geographical rather than a racial reason. But
+unfortunately there are no personalities alike honest in outlook and
+great in power.
+
+Four able and far-seeing men I have met in the Balkans: M. Nikolitch,
+President of the Serbian Parliament; General Demetrieff, Commander of
+the Third Army (which won the most notable Bulgarian victories), now
+commanding a Russian army; M. Venizuelos, Prime Minister of Greece; M.
+Take Jonescu, of the Roumanian Cabinet. All men of power, none seemingly
+has sufficient strength to impose his will not alone on his own country,
+but on the other Balkan States, and weld them into a Confederation which
+would be held together by a sense of common interests and common
+dangers.
+
+King Ferdinand of Bulgaria has kept for years the centre of the Balkan
+stage to the European onlooker; and is still a great enough figure to
+give pause to those Bulgarian Nationalists who would exact from him
+reprisal for the terrible misfortunes of their country. But he is a man
+of audacity rather than of courage, and his ambition has been always
+more personal than national--to be Czar of the Balkans rather than to be
+the maker of a Balkan nation. Gifted with a great deal of diplomatic
+ability and with a soaring imagination, King Ferdinand has a serious
+obstacle in his personal timidity. To play a gambler's game one must be
+prepared at times to take the great risk. But King Ferdinand has many
+fears. He fears, for instance, infectious diseases morbidly, and the
+thought of a germ in the track could turn him from the highest of
+enterprises. Perhaps it was the fear of disease rather than of wounds
+that kept him so much in the rear of his army during the 1912 campaign
+against Turkey. But whatever the cause, his absence from the front
+showed a serious weakness of character in a man who aspired to carve out
+an empire for himself. The Bulgarian authorities, deceiving the Press
+almost as assiduously for the purpose as for the false representation
+that all the destruction of the Turkish forces was ascribable to the
+Bulgarian arms, gave to Europe inspiriting pictures of His Majesty
+following close on the heels of his soldiers in a military train which
+served him as a palace. The fact was that the ambitious but timid king
+kept very well to the rear, at Stara Zagora first and afterwards at Kirk
+Kilisse, with a great entourage of secret police. And when armistice
+negotiations were in progress he kept separate from his Cabinet as well
+as from his army. Affable in manner, industrious, pertinacious, well
+aware of the advantage of advertisement (my first meeting with His
+Majesty was due to the fact that he mistook my map case for a camera,
+and sent for me to photograph him while he stood on the bridge over the
+Maritza at Mustapha Pasha), of high ability, King Ferdinand did great
+things for his adopted country, but showed a fatal weakness of character
+when he had drunk deep of the wine of success. It is the fashion to
+blame him wholly now for the wild attack on Serbia and Greece. He may
+have been in part the victim of his advisers' folly in that. But without
+much doubt he could have vetoed the fatal move, if he had known his army
+from personal observation, if he had been down to the lines at Chatalja,
+and had looked closely into the besieging forces around Adrianople.
+Common sense would have told him that the attack on his allies was
+hopeless, if strength of character had not told him that it was wicked.
+But he neither knew the facts nor understood the ethics of the position.
+
+General Demetrieff, Commander of the Third Bulgarian Army, the victor of
+Kirk Kilisse and of Lule Burgas, the reluctant attacker at Chatalja,
+impressed me as a man of fine character. For some few days I was a
+member of the officers' mess at Erminekioi, which was the headquarters
+of the Staff before the lines of Chatalja, and had the chance of seeing
+much of the general. He struck one as a frank, courageous man. He
+answered questions truthfully or not at all, and was notably kind to the
+very small group of correspondents who had got through to the front. His
+personal staff worshipped him, and told with pride that most of the
+staff work with him on the battle-field was under fire. When it was
+clear that the attack at Chatalja had failed, General Demetrieff neither
+attempted to tell falsehoods nor shut himself off from visitors. He
+ascribed the cessation of the attack to the outbreak of cholera in the
+Bulgarian lines (and the statement was probably in his mind not only the
+truth but all the truth: in any case one could not expect him to
+disclose the shortage of big gun ammunition): was avowedly disconsolate
+but not in the least discouraged. I cannot imagine General Demetrieff
+having any hand in the making of the second Balkan war against the
+Serbians and Greeks, and think that the Bulgarians had in him a man of
+honesty and courage as well as of great military skill. No other general
+of the Bulgarian Army impressed me in the same way, certainly not
+General Savoff.
+
+Of the Bulgarian politicians, M. Gueshoff, Prime Minister at the
+outbreak of the first war, and M. Daneff, chief Bulgarian delegate at
+the Peace Conference and Prime Minister at the outbreak of the second
+war, had the chief parts in the glories and tragedies of 1912-13. M.
+Gueshoff seemed a well-meaning but weak man. He was fond of insisting
+upon his English education and of advancing that as a proof of his
+complete candour. I imagine that he played no directing part in the
+drama of his country's sudden rise to power and more sudden fall, but
+did just as his king directed, sometimes probably under protest. M.
+Daneff was a more virile man, and his force of character, with little
+guidance from experience, of liberal education, or from wise purpose,
+had much to do with the downfall of Bulgaria. Of the Balkan Peace
+Conference which met first in London in December 1912, M. Daneff
+attempted from the outset to be dictator. He never lost a chance of
+being rude to an opponent or fulsome to a supporter. He diplomatised by
+pronunciamento and made a vigorous use of the minor newspaper Press with
+the idea of overawing the chancelleries of Europe. I am sure that the
+British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had nearly as much amusement
+as chagrin from the incidents of the Conference. Just when the Turkish
+delegates were being gently coaxed up to drink the hemlock, Bulgaria
+would publicly dance a wild triumph of joy, and announce that the very
+last drop had to be absorbed or Bulgaria would not be satisfied. When
+the Turkish delegates were thus startled away and all the pressure of
+European diplomacy was being brought to bear upon the Turkish Government
+to bring them back to the point, Bulgaria threatened publicly to break
+up the Conference and resume the war. Europe was given a short
+time-limit in which to act.
+
+M. Venizuelos, Prime Minister of Greece, has proved in his own country a
+great capacity for good government and wise diplomacy. There was a
+strong movement made at the outset of the Balkan Peace Conference to
+have him appointed head of the Balkan delegation. Success in that would
+have made the chances of peace better; and probably he had an
+expectation of being chosen as being the senior in official rank of all
+those present. But the jealousy and distrust of Greece was great: and M.
+Venizuelos did not prove himself the man of genius who could overcome
+the handicap which his nationality imposed. True, the task was almost
+impossible. But still nearer to the impossible would it be now to unite
+again the warring factions in the Balkans. M. Venizuelos, of the highest
+talent though he be, will not be the maker of a Balkan Confederation.
+
+M. Nikolitch, President of the Serbian Parliament, is an amiable and
+clever man with far more culture than is usual in the Balkans. He has
+translated English classics into the Serbian tongue, and is an
+industrious student of social and political philosophy. But he has
+nothing of the brute force that is needed to control the warring
+passions of the Balkan States. As the Minister of a Balkan Union to a
+great Power he would be admirable, for he has tact and wit, and a
+knowledge of the value of truth. When it was made plain that Austria was
+to have her way and Serbia no territory on the Adriatic, the
+disappointment of Serbia was bitter: and there was some special blame of
+Great Britain that she "had not considered her obvious interests," and
+brought this friendly little state to the sea. M. Nikolitch had the
+diplomat's faculty of taking a defeat smilingly. "The most unhappy thing
+about it," he said to me, "is that now Serbia will not have England on
+her frontier." It was a neat touch to speak of the sea as British
+territory.
+
+There remains to be considered M. Take Jonescu, who is credited with the
+chief share in the unscrupulous diplomacy which has made Roumania for
+the while paramount in the Balkans. It was certainly a masterpiece of
+Machiavellianism, applying the tenets of "The Prince" with cold
+precision, and marks its author as the master mind of the Balkans
+to-day. Give such a man a good soldier people to follow him and an
+honest purpose, and a Balkan Confederation might be achieved, with some
+further blood-letting perhaps. But it is not possible to believe that
+the Roumanians, frivolous, pleasure-loving, untenacious, could impose
+their will for long upon the coarser-fibred but more virile Slavs of the
+Peninsula.
+
+No, there is not a personality in the Balkans to-day at once forceful
+enough, honest enough, and skilful enough to give the Peninsula a union
+which would enable it by means of a bold decision now to ensure internal
+peace and freedom from outside interference. A great man could build up
+a greater Switzerland, perhaps, of the Slavs, the Greeks, and the
+Roumanians in the Balkan Peninsula with Great Britain, Russia, and
+France as joint sponsors for the freedom of the new Federation. But one
+hardly dares to hope for such a happy ending to the long miserable story
+of the Balkans.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Adrian, Emperor, 89
+
+Adrianople, 14, 65, 68
+  description of, 90
+  Turkish occupation of, 26
+
+Adriatic coast, 150
+  Sea, 45
+
+Aegean Islands, 62
+  Sea, 45
+
+Alani, the, 10
+
+Albania, 14, 17, 62
+  condition of, 194
+
+Albanian character, 173, 193
+  massacres, 89
+  mountains, 152
+
+Alexander of Battenberg. _See_ Alexander of Bulgaria
+
+Alexander, King of Bulgaria, 47
+  abdication of, 48
+
+Alexander the Great, 6
+
+American war correspondents, 99
+
+Amurath I., Sultan of Turkey, 27
+
+Amurath II., Sultan of Turkey, 27
+
+Architecture, 158
+
+Arjenli, 131
+
+Armenia, 6
+
+Art, applied, 163, 164
+  modern, 164, 165
+
+Arts and crafts, 162
+
+Asia Minor, invasion of, 17
+
+Asiatic invasions, 11, 12
+
+Assyria, 6
+
+Astrakhan, 9
+
+Austria, 28
+  and Serbia's trade, 125
+
+Austrian ambitions in the Balkans, 45, 46, 49
+  war correspondents, 99, 105
+
+Autonomy of the Christian Provinces, 57
+
+
+Bajayet, Sultan of Turkey, 27
+
+Balkan Alliance, 18, 21, 45, 53, 55, 57, 59, 74, 174, 194
+  possibilities of, 82
+
+Balkan casualties in the war, 87, 88
+  character, 124
+  Committee, the, 91
+  development, 174
+  diplomacy, 56, 57
+  disunion, 75-77, 79
+  mountains, 3, 151
+
+Balkan Peace Conference, 1912, 75, 78, 80, 81, 176, 188
+  second phase, 84, 85
+  spokesman, 83
+
+Balkan peasants, 176
+  peoples as linguists, 148
+  politicians, 176
+  priests, 176
+  statesmen, 78, 92
+  War of 1912, 46, 54, 107
+  War resumed, 84
+  women, 159
+
+Baltic Sea, 4, 6
+
+Banking, 168, 170
+
+Bashi-Bazouks, 26, 39, 43, 190
+
+Basil, the Bulgar-slayer, 14
+
+Beetroot cultivation, 169
+
+Belgrade, 16, 124, 146
+  siege of, 27
+
+Bessarabia, 32
+
+Birrell, Major E. T. F., R.A.M.C., 143
+
+Bishop Babylas of Montenegro, 36
+
+Black Sea, 3, 5, 120
+  littoral, 150
+
+Blood-mist, the, 175
+
+Bosnia, 39, 49
+
+British Army Medical Detachment, 69
+  opinion, 83
+  Red Cross Hospital, 143
+  surgeons, 142
+
+Bucharest, 30, 109
+
+Buda-Pest, 109
+
+Bulgaria, 13, 22, 37
+  an autonomous principality, 44
+  beaten, 88
+  boundaries of (1830), 44
+  foreign influences in, 97
+  government of, 40
+  liberation of, 30
+  under Serbian rule, 17
+  a Turkish province, 22, 25
+  and universal suffrage, 40
+  at war, 127, 128
+
+_Bulgaria of To-day_, extract from, 23
+
+Bulgarian ambitions, 61
+  aristocracy, 179
+  army of 1912, 41
+  atrocities, 43
+  atrocities in Macedonia, 51
+  autonomy, 40
+  blunders, 86, 87
+  censorship. _See_ Censorship
+  character, 177-180
+  church, 26
+  commissariat, 69-73, 128
+  crops, 168
+  diplomacy, 85-87, 188
+  diplomatic intrigues, 49
+  Exarchates, 52
+  finance, 64, 168
+  generals, 59
+  hegemony, 48
+  hospitals, 143
+  industry, 167
+  medical service, 138, 139
+  military tactics, 66-71
+  mobilisation, 59, 63, 134
+  peace negotiations, 79
+  peasants, 141
+  preparedness for war, 55, 127
+  Press Bureau, 185
+  revolt of 1875, 39, 47
+  Secret Service, 60
+  system of land tenures, 168
+  War of Liberation, 42
+  women, 135
+
+Bulgars, 3, 4, 9, 11, 13
+
+Buxton, Mr. Noel, M.P., 158
+
+Byzantine art, 164
+  traditions, 164
+
+
+Cafés, 160
+
+Carpets, 164
+
+Caucasus, the, 9
+
+Censorship, the, 94, 98, 100, 101, 115, 121
+  humours of the, 100
+  the second, 102
+
+Cettinje, 35
+
+Charles, King of Roumania, 39, 41
+
+Chatalja, 61, 68, 117
+
+Cherson, 5
+
+Chersonesos, 5
+
+Choleraic dysentery, 133, 138
+
+Chorlu, 68
+
+Churches. _See_ Architecture
+
+Congress of Berlin, 44, 45
+
+Constantinople, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 20, 26, 43, 61, 62, 137
+  fall of, 27, 89, 90
+
+Cotton-spinning, 171
+
+_Credit Foncier_ system, 169, 171
+
+Cretan excavations, 4
+
+Crimean War, 32, 38, 107
+
+Crusaders, the, 20
+
+Cyrillic characters, 35
+
+
+Dacians, 6, 7
+
+Daneff, M., 202
+
+Danilo I., King of Montenegro, 33
+
+Danube, 2, 3, 7, 28, 146
+
+Dardanelles, the, 62
+
+Decius the elder, 8
+
+Decius the younger, 8
+
+Demetrieff, General, 67, 136, 198, 201
+
+Disease, ravages of, 140
+
+Dnieper River, 5
+
+Dniester River, 5
+
+Don Cossacks, 15
+
+Don River, 3
+
+Dual Monarchy, problems of, 28
+
+Dulcigno, 46
+
+Durazzo, 14
+
+
+Eastern Church, 16
+
+Eastern Rumelia, 48
+
+Egyptian influences, 4
+
+Embroideries, 164
+
+Emigration, 166
+
+English war correspondents, 99
+
+Enos, 88
+
+Ermenikioi, 136, 138, 201
+
+Eski Sagrah, 96, 97
+
+Eski Zagora, 20
+
+European capital, 174
+  diplomacy, 39, 40
+  diplomacy and Roumania, 85
+  finance, 64
+  policy, 50, 55
+  policy in 1912-13, 45
+  Powers, interest of, 96
+  Powers, intervention of, 58
+
+Euxine, 6
+
+Exarchate Christians, 177
+
+
+Ferdinand, Czar of Bulgaria, 47, 49, 50, 108, 152, 154
+  his character, 198-201
+
+Ferdinand of Coburg. _See_ Ferdinand of Bulgaria
+
+Filimer, King of the Goths, 9
+
+Finno-ugric tribe, 3
+
+Forty Holy Martyrs of Bulgaria, 14
+
+Fratricidal war, 87
+
+Frederick Barbarossa, 16
+
+French war correspondents, 99
+
+
+Gallipoli, Peninsula of, 75
+
+Geographical position, 1
+
+Gepidae, 11
+
+German Powers, 193
+
+German war correspondents, 99
+
+Getae. _See_ Dacians
+
+Goths, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 20
+  invasions of, 75
+
+Greco-Bulgarian disunion, 79
+  _entente_, 76
+
+Greco-Turkish wars, 107
+
+Greece, 37
+
+Greek atrocities in Macedonia, 51
+  character, 188-191
+  church, 22
+  civilisation, 4
+  coast, 150
+  diplomacy, 93
+  Empire, 2, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 20
+  Empire, fall of, 21
+  governors in Roumania, 31
+  official report, 76
+  Patriarchates, 52
+  patriotism, 167
+  Prime Minister. _See_ Venizuelos
+  traditions, 164
+  war of independence, 82
+
+Greeks, 3
+
+Grey, Sir Edward, 85, 203
+
+Grivica Redoubt, 41
+
+Gueshoff, M., 202
+
+Guttones. _See_ Goths
+
+
+Haskovo, province of, 168
+
+Health resorts, 153
+
+Herodotus, 5
+
+Herzegovina, 39, 49
+
+History, Early, 3, 4
+
+Hodgkin, Mr. T., 5
+
+Hospital services, 141, 142
+
+Hungarians, 11, 13, 28
+
+Huns, 4, 7, 11, 13
+  invasions of, 9, 75
+  origin of, 9, 10
+
+
+"International Socialist," 132
+
+Ionian letter-forms, 5
+
+Istros, 5
+
+Italian Peninsula, 1
+  war correspondents, 99
+
+Ivan the Black, of Montenegro, 35
+
+Ivankeui, battle of, 67
+
+
+Janina, 75
+
+Japanese censorship, 98
+
+Jireček, 2
+
+John Asên, Czar of Bulgaria, 14
+
+John Hunyad, 27
+
+John Paleologos, Emperor of Greece, 21
+
+Jonescu, M. Take, 198, 205
+
+Jostoff, Colonel, 138
+
+Journalism, 108-110
+
+
+"Kara George." _See_ Petrovic
+
+Kirk Kilisse, 42, 65, 139
+
+Korea, 58
+
+Kossova, 21
+  battle of, 27, 33
+
+Kustendil, 168
+
+Kustendjix, 5
+
+
+Lazar, King of Serbia, 27
+
+Levant, the, 4, 5
+
+Liberation, progress since the, 165
+
+Lithuania, 5
+
+Lombards, 8, 11
+
+London Morning Post, 54, 100
+
+"Lord Salisbury's principle," 93
+
+Lule Burgas, 68
+  battle of, 72
+
+
+Macedonia, 44, 74
+  atrocities in, 51, 52, 53
+  Empire of, 6
+  massacres in, 51, 89
+
+Marcianople. _See_ Schumla
+
+Mariano Bolizza, 36
+
+Maritza River, 90
+
+Marmora, Sea of, 62, 120, 150
+
+"Mass at St. Sofia," 146
+
+Massacre, the national sport, 177
+
+Medicinal springs, 153
+
+Mediterranean littoral, 2
+  Sea, 4
+
+Michael, Czar of Bulgaria, 15
+
+Michael the Brave, of Roumania, 30
+
+Midhat Pasha, 169, 170
+
+Midia, 88
+
+Military attachés, 105, 107
+
+Milosh Obrenovic of Serbia, 38
+
+Mineral resources in Serbia, 172
+
+Minoan civilisation, 2
+
+Moesia, 3
+
+Mohammedanism, 24
+
+Moldavia, 13, 29, 38
+
+Montenegrin character, 173, 193
+  printing press, 35, 36
+  resistance of Turks, 34, 35
+  war with Austria, 35
+  war with Turkey, 35
+
+Montenegro, 17, 28, 32, 33, 37, 46
+
+Montenegro, government of, 33
+
+_Morning Post_, the. _See_ London
+
+Mount Athos, monastery of, 16
+
+Music, national, 163
+
+
+Napoleon, 17, 34
+
+Napoleonic strategy, 113
+  wars, 32
+
+Near East, the, 107
+
+Near Eastern character, 78
+
+Neytchef, Dr., 131
+
+Nicolaieff, General, 42
+
+Niemen River, 5
+
+Nikolitch, M., 198, 204
+
+Nish, 43, 125, 126
+
+Nordic tribes, 4
+
+Norman knights, 13
+
+Normans, 4
+
+Northern invasions, 13
+  peoples, 2
+
+North Sea, 4
+
+Nova Sagora, 135
+
+Novi-Bazar, 46
+
+
+Odessa, 5
+
+Odessos, 5
+
+Olbia, 5
+
+Old Serbia, 74
+
+Oriental Express, 156
+
+Ostrogoths, 7
+
+Ottoman. _See_ Turks
+
+Ox wagons, 130, 131
+
+
+Patriarchate Christians, 177
+
+Peace Conference. _See under_ Balkan
+
+Peace of Bucharest, 88
+
+Peace of London, 85, 88
+
+Persians, 11
+
+Peter the Great of Russia, 34
+
+Petrovic, George, 29, 37
+
+Philip of Macedon, 6
+
+Philippopolis, 8, 44
+  capture of, 20
+
+Phillip, Roman Emperor, 8
+
+Pig-raising, 171
+
+Pirot, 43
+
+Plevna, 41, 46
+
+Pomaks, 22
+
+Prehistoric state, 2
+
+Press influence, 83, 84
+
+Protective tariff, 171
+
+_Punch_ cartoon, 54
+
+
+Religious proselytising, 30
+
+Rhodopes, the, 151, 152, 158
+
+Roads, 167
+
+Roman Church, 16
+  civilisation, 8
+  Empire, 1, 2, 89, 168
+
+Roman Empire, decline of, 7
+  fall of, 8
+  traditions, 164
+
+Romans, 4, 7
+
+Rose cultivation, 169
+
+Roumania, 7, 13, 22, 29, 37
+  Greek governors in, 31
+  an independent principality, 32
+  King of, 48, 49
+  liberation of, 30, 31
+  Russian garrison in, 32
+  subjugation of, 2
+  a Turkish province, 29
+
+Roumanian character, 191, 192
+  diplomacy, 92
+  independence, 38
+  war correspondents, 105
+  women, 160
+
+Roumanians, 3
+
+Runes, 5
+
+Russian ambitions in the Balkans, 44, 45, 49
+  garrison in Roumania, 32
+  hospital at Kirk Kilisse, 143
+  intrigue in Bulgaria, 48
+  liberators of Bulgaria, 25
+  Power, 31
+  war correspondents, 99
+
+Russo-Japanese War, effect of, 50
+
+Russo-Roumanian alliance, 31
+
+Russo-Turkish War of 1828, 32
+  of 1877, 41, 43, 170
+
+
+Salonica, 46, 62, 76, 79
+
+Sanitary arrangements, absence of, 140, 141, 142
+
+Saracens, 4, 12, 20
+
+Savoff, General, 117, 202
+
+Schumla, 8
+
+Scutari, 74, 75
+
+Scythia, 5, 8, 9
+
+Seaside resorts, 150, 151
+
+Sebastopol, 5
+
+Seleniki, 129
+
+Semitic invasions, 4
+
+Serbia, 15, 17, 26, 37
+  as a European Power, 16
+  local government in, 172
+  Turkish garrisons withdrawn, 38
+  a Turkish province, 27
+
+Serbian character, 186-188
+  contest for liberty, 38
+  diplomacy, 93
+  emigration to Austria, 28
+  Empire, 33
+  Empire, fall of, 27
+  forests, 172
+  Highlanders, 33
+  increase of territory, 46
+  liberation, 37
+  mineral resources, 172
+  mountains, 151
+  trade, Austria and, 125
+  women, 172
+
+Serbians, 3, 4, 9
+
+Serbo-Hungarian Alliance, 27
+
+Servians. _See_ Serbians
+
+Shipka Pass, 42, 129
+
+Silistria, 168
+
+Simeon of Bulgaria, 163
+
+Slav traditions, 164
+
+Slavs, 3, 4
+
+Slivnitza, battle of, 48
+
+Sofia, 61, 145
+  the Military College, 42
+
+Southern Slav Art Exhibition, 165
+
+Stambouloff, 48
+  assassination of, 49
+
+Stara Zagora, 42
+
+Stephen Dushan, King of Serbia, 16, 17, 26, 162
+
+Stephen the Great, of Moldavia, 30
+
+Sweden, 6, 9
+
+Switzerland, 58
+
+
+Tapestries, 164
+
+Tartars, 4, 11, 13
+
+Tchobanoff, Lieutenant-Colonel, 131
+
+Tchorlu, 42
+
+Tchundra River, 90
+
+Teutonic knights, 13
+
+Theodore Komnenus, Czar of Greece, 14
+
+Thessaly, 2
+
+Thrace, 2, 8, 44, 51
+  an autonomous, 80
+
+Thracian campaign, 54
+  plain, 154
+
+Thraco-Dacians, 3
+
+Thraco-Illyrians, 3
+
+Thraco-Macedonians, 3
+
+Tirnova, 44
+  Church of the Forty Martyrs, 14
+
+Tobacco cultivation, 168
+
+Tourist possibilities, 151, 152
+
+Trade, Early, 5
+
+Trajan, 7
+
+Transylvania, 30
+
+Travel facilities, 155-158
+  risks, 161
+
+Treaty of Adrianople (1830), 44
+
+Treaty of Berlin, 38, 45, 46
+
+Treaty of Bucharest (1913), 17, 171
+
+Treaty of London, 174
+
+Treaty of Paris (1856), 32, 38, 39
+
+Treaty of San Stefano, 43, 44, 46, 47, 50
+
+Trenches, 145
+
+Triple Alliance, the, 50
+
+Turco-Russian wars, 107
+
+Turkey-in-Europe, 61
+
+Turkish Army, 106
+  atrocities, 19, 26, 29, 31, 52
+  character, 181-186
+  corruption, 61
+  cruelty, 185
+  delegates at the Conference, 188
+  domination in Bulgaria, 23, 24, 25
+  entrenchments, 137
+  invasion, first, 15
+  occupation, 17, 20, 158
+  offer of reform, 56
+  Power in Europe, decline of, 45
+  prisoners, 136
+  procrastination at the Peace Conference, 81, 84
+  rally, 88
+  rule in Bulgaria, end of, 26
+  rule in Serbia, 28
+  spy incident, 133
+  tyranny, 24
+  villages, 138
+
+Turks, 3, 4, 13
+  before Vienna, 21
+
+Turnu-Severin, 7
+
+Tyras, 5
+
+
+Unity of Balkans. _See_ Balkan Alliance
+
+
+Valerius, Emperor, 89
+
+Vandals, 7
+
+Varna, 5
+
+Venetians, 16
+
+Venice 34
+
+Venizuelos, M., 83, 198, 203, 204
+
+Vienna, 109
+  siege of, 21
+
+Villages, the, 154
+
+Visigoths, 7
+
+Vistula River, 5
+
+Vlad the Impaler, of Wallachia, 30
+
+Volga River, 3
+
+Volgars. _See_ Bulgars
+
+Vranga, 43
+
+
+Wallachia, 13, 29
+
+Wallachians. _See_ Roumanians
+
+War correspondent, the, 98, 99, 102, 103, 107, 126, 185
+  advice to, 110
+  new school, 107, 108, 113
+  passing of the, 122
+  a personal record, 116
+
+War of Liberation, 85
+
+Winter sports, 152
+
+
+Yamboli, 42, 65, 69
+
+Yanina, battle of, 67
+
+
+Zablack, 35
+
+
+THE END
+
+_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW SERIES OF COLOUR BOOKS
+
+EACH CONTAINING 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+
+_Large Square Demy 8vo._ Price =7/6= net each. _Bound in Cloth._
+
+(_By Post_, 8/-)
+
+
+BULGARIA. By Frank Fox.
+
+This book will give to the reader an adequate idea of a wild and
+little-known corner of Europe, but to those who look upon Bulgaria as a
+place of endless massacres and savage inhospitality the book will bring
+many surprises. The Bulgarian artist shows us a land in which
+civilisation is evident and art not unknown. The Australian author (who
+was with the Bulgarian Army as correspondent for the London _Morning
+Post_ during the former Balkan War) writes of a people whom he found
+usually courteous, gentle, and worthy. His personal experiences of the
+Bulgarian peasantry are vividly interesting, and hardly less interesting
+is the brief sketch of the early history of Bulgaria, the country where
+the Roman Empire met its doom.
+
+
+ITALY. By Frank Fox.
+
+Messrs. A. & C. Black have published many books on the various cities of
+Italy with colour illustrations. But before this they have not offered
+to the public a handy volume giving a general idea of the country which
+was the cradle of Christian civilisation. Whether to tourists who
+contemplate a visit to Italy or to those who cannot hope for that
+pleasure, _Italy_ will be welcome. The author has left to the vivid
+pictures the main task of describing Italian scenery, and devoted most
+of his text to telling of the spirit of the people and showing how the
+Italy of to-day is linked up with the Italy of the Roman Republic and
+the Italy of the Renaissance.
+
+
+SWITZERLAND. By Frank Fox.
+
+This volume will give to the reader a good knowledge not only of the
+scenery of Europe's playground but of the Swiss people and their life. A
+little nation which has supplied Europe at various times with bands of
+both heroes and waiters, which is celebrated alike for generous
+hospitality to refugees and the most strictly commercial hospitality to
+tourists, has a paradoxical aspect whatever way it is regarded. The
+author seeks to describe rather than to explain the Swiss, but gives a
+closely compressed record of their early history as some key to the
+curiously contradictory elements of their national character.
+
+
+ENGLAND. By Frank Fox.
+
+The task of describing England was for good reason given to a visitor to
+the Mother Country. It will be found that Mr. Frank Fox has done his
+work well. A stranger to England will have his attention drawn to the
+features of her life which are most characteristic: residents in England
+will find interest in studying an impression of their country from a
+sympathetic Australian observer. Within a very small compass there is a
+bright living picture of England, her history, her institutions, her
+people, her green country-side, her historic monuments.
+
+
+FRANCE. By Gordon Home.
+
+Mr. Gordon Home's chapters cover many aspects of French life, and give
+the reader a comprehensive vision of the land from Boulogne to Mentone
+and Bayonne. Political life, home life in town and country, the duel,
+marriage arrangements, the navy, architecture, the doctor, the priest,
+the _midinette_, the constitution, the great rivers, the
+watering-places, hunting, vine-growing, and school life are a few of the
+many topics that come in orderly sequence in the book. After reading the
+volume and studying the pictures, even those who know France well will
+probably understand some aspects of it more clearly, and those who have
+yet to cross the English Channel will go there understanding much that
+might otherwise puzzle them.
+
+
+AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. By G. E. Mitton.
+
+It was through Austria-Hungary that the great crisis in Europe arose.
+Yet how few people know anything about the country, although both in the
+matter of national history and scenery Austria-Hungary is well worth
+considering. Its story of romance, its scenery is not behind any in
+Europe, though, except for the Tyrol and the Dolomites, it is far from
+well known. In the reconstruction of political frontiers which will
+necessarily follow the War, the races of the Dual Monarchy will have to
+be taken into account, and it is essential to know something of them if
+we would be abreast of the times.
+
+
+Published by A. & C. BLACK, Ltd., 4, 5, & 6 Soho Square, London, W.
+
+
+
+
+OTHER BOOKS ON
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+
+CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+Painted by WARWICK GOBLE
+
+Described by Prof. ALEXANDER VAN MILLINGEN, D.D.
+
+CONTAINING 62 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+
+_Published at_ =20/-= _net, now offered at_ =7/6= _net_ (_by post_, 8/-)
+
+     "Mr. Goble has succeeded in a difficult task. He has 'caught the
+     glory' of the Queen of Cities, and, in the wealth of material for
+     choice, has seized on those features which, though the most skilful
+     pencil can convey them only inadequately, best represent their
+     wonderful variety to those who have never seen them."--_Daily
+     Chronicle._
+
+
+GREECE: MONTENEGRO: TURKEY
+
+In the "Peeps at Many Lands" Series
+
+EACH CONTAINING 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+
+_Large Square Crown 8vo, bound in Cloth._
+
+(_By post_, 1/11)      Price =1/6= net each      (_By post_, 1/11)
+
+     This series of little travel books for young people who are of an
+     age to be interested in the countries of the world and their
+     peoples has steadily grown on account of its wide popularity. Each
+     book is written in a simple and very attractive style, and thus the
+     child gains valuable instruction and a vivid interest in countries,
+     great cities, and peoples through the sheer pleasure of reading and
+     by examining the beautiful illustrations. The youthful reader
+     becomes absorbed in descriptions of how children work and play, and
+     in the way of living, in the various countries of the world.
+
+     The volumes are handsomely bound and splendidly illustrated in
+     colour.
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF THE ALLIED NATIONS
+
+A SERIES OF ESSAYS BY
+
+PAUL STUDER, M.A., Professor of the Romance Languages in the University
+of Oxford.
+
+ALEXIS ALADIN, Ex-member of the Russian Duma.
+
+PAUL HAMELIUS, D. és L., Professor of English Literature in the
+University of Liège.
+
+J. H. LONGFORD, B.A., Professor of Japanese in the University of London.
+
+R. W. SETON-WATSON, D. Litt., New College, Oxford; Author of _The
+Southern Slav Question_, etc.
+
+SIDNEY LOW, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford, Lecturer on Imperial and
+Colonial History, King's College, London University; Author of _The
+Governance of England_, _A Vision of India_, etc.
+
+Edited, with an Introduction and Appendix, by SIDNEY LOW
+
+_Crown 8vo._      Price =2/6= net      _Cloth._
+
+(_By post_, 2/10)
+
+     "No student, or even casual lover of books, and certainly no
+     patriot, should hesitate to read this remarkable little
+     volume."--_Daily Express._
+
+     "A valuable supplement to the books relating to the negotiations
+     preceding the war and to the campaign itself."--_Aberdeen Journal._
+
+
+Published by A. & C. BLACK, Ltd., 4, 5, & 6 Soho Square, London, W.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+Both "Serbia" and "Servia", "country-side" and "countryside" are found
+in this text.
+
+At p. 54, the phrase "I was through the war" may be an error for "I went
+through the war", but has been left unchanged.
+
+There is only one typo: "howevre" (on p. 21) has been changed to
+"however".
+
+Four words in the index have a different spelling from that used in the
+text. Kossovo, Nova Zagora, Chorlu and Zablak are indexed as "Kossova",
+"Nova Sagora", "Tchorlu" and "Zablack" respectively. These spellings
+have been left unchanged.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Balkan Peninsula, by Frank Fox
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALKAN PENINSULA ***
+
+***** This file should be named 39688-0.txt or 39688-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Balkan Peninsula, by Frank Fox
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The Balkan Peninsula
+
+Author: Frank Fox
+
+Release Date: May 13, 2012 [EBook #39688]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALKAN PENINSULA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Margo Romberg and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+
+
+
+AGENTS
+
+AMERICA       THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+                64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+AUSTRALASIA   THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
+                205 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE
+
+CANADA        THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
+                ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE, 70 BOND STREET, TORONTO
+
+INDIA         MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
+                MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
+                309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A BALKAN PEASANT]
+
+
+
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+BY
+
+FRANK FOX
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"AUSTRALIA," "BULGARIA," "SWITZERLAND," ETC.
+
+PUBLISHED BY A. & C. BLACK, LTD.
+4, 5, & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.
+
+1915
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book was written in the spring of 1914, just before Germany plunged
+the world into the horrors of a war which she had long prepared, taking
+as a pretext a Balkan incident--the political murder of an Austrian
+prince by an Austrian subject of Serb nationality. Germany having
+prepared for war was anxious for an occasion which would range Austria
+by her side. If Germany had gone to war at the time of the Agadir
+incident, she knew that Italy would desert the Triple Alliance, and she
+feared for Austria's loyalty. A war pretext which made Austria's
+desertion impossible was just the thing for her plans.
+
+It would be impossible to reshape this book so as to bring within its
+range the Great War, begun in the Balkans, and in all human probability
+to be decided finally by battles in the Balkans. I let it go out to the
+public as impressions of the Balkans dated from the end of 1913. It may
+have some value to the student of contemporary Balkan events.
+
+My impressions of the Balkan Peninsula were chiefly gathered during the
+period 1912-13 of the war of the Balkan allies against Turkey, and of
+the subsequent war among themselves. I was war correspondent for the
+London _Morning Post_ during the war against Turkey and penetrated
+through the Balkan Peninsula down to the Sea of Marmora and the lines of
+Chatalja. In war-time peoples show their best or their worst. As they
+appeared during a struggle in which, at first, the highest feelings of
+patriotism were evoked, and afterwards the lowest feelings of greed and
+cruelty, the Balkan peoples left me with a steady affection for the
+peasants and the common folk generally; a dislike and contempt, which
+made few exceptions, for the politicians and priests who governed their
+destinies. Perhaps when they settle down to a more peaceful
+existence--if ever they do--the inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula
+will come to average more their qualities, the common people becoming
+less simple-minded, obedient, chaste, kind: their leaders learning
+wisdom rather than cunning, and getting some sense of the value of truth
+and also some sense of ruth to keep them from setting their countrymen
+at one another's throats. But at the present time the picture which I
+have to put before the reader, with its almost unbelievable
+contradictions of courage and gentleness on the one side and cowardly
+cruelty on the other, is a true one.
+
+The true Balkan States are Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania.
+Roumania is proud to consider herself a Western State rather than a
+semi-Eastern Balkan State, though both her position and her diplomacy
+link her closely with Balkan developments. Turkey, of course, cannot be
+considered in any sense as a Balkan State though she still holds the
+foot of the Balkan Peninsula. Greece has prouder aspirations than to be
+considered one of the struggling nationalities of the Balkans and dreams
+of a revival of the Hellenic Empire. But in considering the Balkan
+Peninsula it is not possible to exclude altogether the Turk, the Greek,
+the Roumanian. My aim will be to give a snapshot picture of the Balkan
+Peninsula, looking at it as a geographical entity for historical
+reference, and to devote more especial attention to the true Balkan
+States.
+
+          FRANK FOX.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.                                                 PAGE
+
+   I. The Vexed Balkans                                 1
+
+  II. The Turk in the Balkans                          19
+
+ III. The Fall of the Turkish Power                    37
+
+  IV. The Wars of 1912-13                              53
+
+   V. A Chapter in Balkan Diplomacy                    78
+
+  VI. The Troubles of a War Correspondent in
+      the Balkans                                      94
+
+ VII. Jottings from my Balkan Travel Book             124
+
+VIII. The Picturesque Balkans                         149
+
+  IX. The Balkan Peoples in Art and Industry          162
+
+   X. The Future of the Balkans                       175
+
+   Index                                              207
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                FACING PAGE
+
+A Balkan Peasant                             _Frontispiece_
+
+Trajan's Column in Rome                                 7
+
+The Walls of Constantinople from the Seven Towers      10
+
+Sancta Sophia, Constantinople                          21
+
+King Peter of Serbia                                   28
+
+King Nicolas of Montenegro                             33
+
+Montenegrin Troops: Weekly Drill and Inspection of
+Weapons                                                35
+
+The King of Roumania                                   39
+
+The Shipka Pass                                        42
+
+King Ferdinand of Bulgaria                             46
+
+King Ferdinand's Bodyguard                             48
+
+Bulgarian Infantry                                     53
+
+Bulgarian Troops leaving Sofia                         60
+
+General Demetrieff, the Conqueror at Lule Burgas       69
+
+Adrianople: A General View                             76
+
+Roumanian Soldiers in Bucharest                        85
+
+Adrianople: View looking across the Great Bridge       88
+
+General View of Stara Zagora, Bulgaria                 92
+
+Sofia: Commercial Road from Commercial Square         101
+
+Bucharest: The Roumanian House of Representatives     108
+
+General Savoff                                        117
+
+Bulgarian Infantry                                    124
+
+Ox Transport in the Balkans                           133
+
+A Balkan Peasant Woman                                136
+
+A Bagpiper                                            140
+
+Some Serbian Peasants                                 149
+
+General View of Sofia                                 156
+
+Bucharest                                             161
+
+A Bulgarian Farm                                      166
+
+Albanian Tribesmen                                    176
+
+Greek Infantry                                        181
+
+Podgorica, upon the Albanian Frontier                 188
+
+_Sketch Map on page xii._
+
+[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA]
+
+
+
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE VEXED BALKANS
+
+
+The Fates were unkind to the Balkan Peninsula. Because of its position,
+it was forced to stand in the path of the greatest racial movements of
+the world, and was thus the scene of savage racial struggles, and the
+depositary of residual shreds of nations surviving from great defeats or
+Pyrrhic victories and cherishing irreconcilable mutual hatreds. As if
+that were not enough of ill fortune imposed by geographical position,
+the great Roman Empire elected to come from its seat in the Italian
+Peninsula to die in the Balkan Peninsula, a long drawn-out death of many
+agonies, of many bloody disasters and desperate retrievals. For all the
+centuries of which history knows a blood-mist has hung over the Balkans;
+and for the centuries before the dawn of written history one may
+surmise that there was the same constant struggle of warring races.
+
+It seems fairly certain that when the Northern peoples moved down from
+their gloomy forests towards the Mediterranean littoral to mingle their
+blood with the early peoples of the Minoan civilisation and to found the
+Grecian and the Roman nations, the chief stream of these fierce hordes
+moved down by the valley of the Danube and debouched on the Balkan
+Peninsula. Doubtless they fought many a savage battle with the
+aborigines in Thessaly and Thrace. Of these battles we have no records,
+and no absolute certainty, indeed, that the Mediterranean shore was
+colonised by a race from the North, though all the facts that we are
+learning now from the researches of modern archaeologists point to that
+conclusion. But whatever the prehistoric state of the Balkan Peninsula,
+the first sure records from written history show it as a vexed area
+peopled by widely different and mutually warring races, and subject
+always to waves of war and invasion from the outside. The Slav historian
+Jirecek concludes that the Balkan Peninsula was inhabited at the
+earliest times known to history by many different tribes belonging to
+distinct races--the Thraco-Illyrians, the Thraco-Macedonians, and the
+Thraco-Dacians. At the beginning of the third century, the Slavs made
+their first appearance and, crossing the Danube, came to settle in the
+great plains between the river and the Balkan Mountains. Later, they
+proceeded southwards and formed colonies among the Thraco-Illyrians, the
+Roumanians, and the Greeks. This Slav emigration went on for several
+centuries. In the seventh century of the Christian era a Finno-ugric
+tribe reached the banks of the Danube. This tribe came from the Volga,
+and, crossing Russia, proceeded towards ancient Moesia, where it took
+possession of the north-east territory of the Balkans between the Danube
+and the Black Sea. These were the Bulgars or Volgars, near cousins to
+the Turks who were to come later. The Bulgars assumed the language of
+the Slavs, and some of their customs. The Serbs or Serbians, coming from
+the Don River district had been near neighbours of the Volgars or
+Bulgars (in the Slav languages "B" and "V" have a way of interchanging),
+and were without much doubt closely allied to them in race originally.
+Later, they diverged, tending more to the Slav type, whilst the Bulgars
+approached nearer to the Turk type.
+
+There may be traced, then, in the racial history of the Balkans these
+race types: a Mediterranean people inhabiting the sea-coast and
+possessing a fairly high civilisation, the records of which are being
+explored now in the Cretan excavations; an aboriginal people occupying
+the hinterland of the coast, not so highly cultivated as the coast
+dwellers (who had probably been civilised by Egyptian influences) but
+racially akin to them; a Northern people coming from the shores of the
+Baltic and the North Sea before the period of written history and
+combining ultimately with the people of the coast to found the Grecian
+civilisation, leaving in the hinterland, as they passed towards the sea,
+detachments which formed other mixed tribes, partly aboriginal, partly
+Nordic; various invading peoples of Semitic type from the Levant; the
+Romans, the Goths and the Huns, the Slavs and the Tartars, the Bulgars
+and the Serbs, the Normans, Saracens, and Turks. Because the Balkan
+Peninsula was on the natural path to a warm-water port from the north to
+the south of Europe; because it was on the track of invasion and
+counter-invasion between Asia and Europe, all this mixture of races was
+forced upon it, and as a consequence of the mixture a constant clash of
+warfare. There was, too, a current of more peaceful communication for
+purposes of trade between the Levant and the Black Sea on the one side
+and the peoples of the Baltic Sea on the other side, which flowed in
+part along the Balkan Peninsula.
+
+In _Italy and her Invaders_ Mr. T. Hodgkin suggests:
+
+     During the interval from 540 to 480 B.C. there was a brisk
+     commercial intercourse between the flourishing Greek colonies on
+     the Black Sea, Odessos, Istros, Tyras, Olbia and
+     Chersonesos--places now approximately represented by Varna,
+     Kustendjix, Odessa, Cherson, and Sebastopol--between these cities
+     and the tribes to the northward (inhabiting the country which has
+     been since known as Lithuania), all of whom at the time of
+     Herodotus passed under the vague generic name of Scythians. By this
+     intercourse which would naturally pass up the valleys of the great
+     rivers, especially the Dniester and the Dnieper, and would probably
+     again descend by the Vistula and the Niemen, the settlements of the
+     Goths were reached, and by its means the Ionian letter-forms were
+     communicated to the Goths, to become in due time the magical and
+     mysterious Runes.
+
+     One fact which lends great probability to this theory is that
+     undoubtedly, from very early times, the amber deposits of the
+     Baltic, to which allusion has already been made, were known to the
+     civilised world; and thus the presence of the trader from the
+     South among the settlements of the Guttones or Goths is naturally
+     accounted for. Probably also there was for centuries before the
+     Christian Era a trade in sables, ermines, and other furs, which
+     were a necessity in the wintry North and a luxury of kings and
+     nobles in the wealthier South. In exchange for amber and fur, the
+     traders brought probably not only golden staters and silver
+     drachmas, but also bronze from Armenia with pearls, spices, rich
+     mantles suited to the barbaric taste of the Gothic chieftains. As
+     has been said, this commerce was most likely carried on for many
+     centuries. Sabres of Assyrian type have been found in Sweden, and
+     we may hence infer that there was a commercial intercourse between
+     the Euxine and the Baltic, perhaps 1300 years before Christ.
+
+A few leading facts with dates should give a fairly clear impression of
+the story of the Balkan Peninsula. About 400 B.C. the Macedonian Empire
+was being founded. It represented the uprise of a hinterland Greek
+people over the decayed greatness of the coast-dwelling Greeks. At that
+time the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula was occupied by the Getae
+or Dacians. Phillip of Macedon made an alliance with the Getae.
+Alexander the Great of Macedonia thrashed them to subjection and carried
+a great wave of invasion into Asia from the Balkan Peninsula.
+
+[Illustration: TRAJAN'S COLUMN IN ROME
+
+Commemorates the victories which brought all the Balkan Peninsula under
+the Roman sway]
+
+About the year 110 B.C. the Romans first came to the Balkan Peninsula,
+finding it inhabited as regards the south by the Greek peoples, as
+regards the north by the Getae or Dacians. The southern people were
+quickly subdued: the northern people were never really subdued by the
+Romans until the time of Trajan (the first century of the Christian
+era). He bridged the Danube with a great military bridge at the spot now
+known as Turnu-Severin, and Trajan's Column in Rome commemorated the
+victories which brought all the Balkan Peninsula under the Roman sway.
+Trajan found that the manners and customs of the Dacians were similar to
+those of the Germans. These sturdy Dacians were conquered but not
+exterminated by the Romans. Dacia across the Danube was made into a
+Roman colony, and the present kingdom of Roumania is supposed to
+represent the survival of that colony, which was a mixture of Roman and
+Dacian blood.
+
+In the third century of the Christian era the Goths made their first
+appearance in the Balkan Peninsula. The Roman Empire had then entered
+into its period of decline. The invasions of the Visigoths, the Huns,
+the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, and the Lombards were to come in turn to
+overwhelm the Roman civilisation. The Gothic invasion of the Balkan
+Peninsula was begun in the reign of the Roman Emperor Phillip. Crossing
+the Danube, the Goths ravaged Thrace and laid siege to Marcianople (now
+Schumla) without success. In a later invasion the Goths attacked
+Philippopolis and captured it after a great defeat of the Roman general,
+Decius the younger. Then the Roman Emperor (Decius the elder) himself
+took the field and was defeated and killed in a great battle near the
+mouth of the Danube (A.D. 251). That may be called the decisive date in
+the history of the fall of the Roman Empire. It was destined to retrieve
+that defeat, and to shine with momentary glory again for brief
+intervals, but the destruction of the Emperor and his army by the Goths
+in 251 was the sure presage of the doom of the Roman Power.
+
+One direct result of the battle in which Decius was slain was to bring
+the headquarters of the Roman Empire to the Balkan Peninsula. It was
+found that a better stand could be made against the tide of Gothic
+invasion from a new capital closer to the Scythian frontier.
+Constantinople was planned and built, and became the capital of the
+Roman Empire (A.D. 330), and thus brought to the Balkan stage the death
+throes of the mightiest world-power that history has known. From that
+date it is wise for the sake of clearness to speak of the Roman Empire
+as the Greek Empire, though it was some time after its settlement in
+Constantinople before it became rather Greek than Roman in character.
+
+With the issue between the Goths and the Greek Empire, in which peaceful
+agreements often interrupted for a while fierce campaigns, I cannot deal
+here at any length. It soaked the Balkan Peninsula deep in blood. But it
+was only the first of the horrors that were to mark the death of the
+Empire. Late in the fourth century of the Christian Era there burst into
+the Balkans from the steppes of Astrakhan and the Caucasus--from very
+much the same district that was afterwards to supply the Bulgars and the
+Serbs--the Tartar hordes of the Huns. Of these Huns there is a vivid
+contemporary Gothic account.
+
+     We have ascertained that the nation of the Huns, who surpassed all
+     others in atrocity, came thus into being. When Filimer, fifth king
+     of the Goths after their departure from Sweden, was entering
+     Scythia, with his people, as we have before described, he found
+     among them certain sorcerer-women, whom they called in their native
+     tongue Haliorunnas (or Al-runas), whom he suspected and drove forth
+     from the midst of his army into the wilderness. The unclean spirits
+     that wander up and down in desert places, seeing these women, made
+     concubines of them; and from this union sprang that most fierce
+     people [of the Huns], who were at first little, foul, emaciated
+     creatures, dwelling among the swamps, and possessing only the
+     shadow of human speech by way of language.
+
+     With the Alani especially, who were as good warriors as themselves,
+     but somewhat less brutal in appearance and manner of life, they had
+     many a struggle, but at length they wearied out and subdued them.
+     For, in truth, they derived an unfair advantage from the intense
+     hideousness of their countenances. Nations whom they would never
+     have vanquished in fair fight fled horrified from those
+     frightful--faces I can hardly call them, but rather--shapeless
+     black collops of flesh, with little points instead of eyes. No hair
+     on their cheeks or chins gives grace to adolescence or dignity to
+     age, but deep furrowed scars instead, down the sides of their
+     faces, show the impress of the iron which with characteristic
+     ferocity they apply to every male child that is born among them,
+     drawing blood from its cheeks before it is allowed its first taste
+     of milk. They are little in stature, but lithe and active in their
+     motions, and especially skilful in riding, broad-shouldered, good
+     at the use of the bow and arrows, with sinewy necks, and always
+     holding their heads high in their pride. To sum up, these beings
+     under the form of man hide the fierce nature of the beast!
+
+[Illustration: _S�bah & Joaillier_
+
+THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE FROM THE SEVEN TOWERS]
+
+Not a lovable people the Huns clearly: and the modern peoples who have
+some slight ancestral kinship with them hate to be reminded of the fact.
+I remember the fierce indignation which a French war correspondent
+aroused in Bulgarian breasts by his description--which had eluded the
+censor--of the passage of a great Bulgarian train of ox wagons because
+he compared it to the passage of the Huns.
+
+The Huns were, with the exception of the Persians who had vainly
+attacked the Greek States at an earlier period, the first successful
+Asiatic invaders of Europe. For a full century they ravaged the Empire,
+and the Balkan Peninsula felt the chief force of their barbarian rage.
+By the fifth century the waves of the Hun invasions had died away,
+leaving distinct traces of the Hunnish race in the Balkans. The Gepidae,
+the Lombards, and later the Hungarians and the Tartars then took up the
+task of ravaging the unhappy land which as the chief seat of power of
+the Greek Empire found itself the first objective of every invader
+because of that dignity and yet but poorly protected by that power.
+Constantinople was never taken by these barbarians, but at some periods
+little else than its walls stood secure against their ravages.
+
+Meanwhile the first Saracens had appeared in the Peninsula, curiously
+enough not as invaders nor as enemies, but as mercenary soldiers in the
+army of the Greek Empire fighting against the Goths. To a Gothic
+chronicler we are again indebted for a vivid picture of these Saracens,
+"riding almost naked into battle, their long black hair streaming in the
+wind, wont to spring with a melancholy howl upon their chosen victim in
+battle and to suck his life-blood, biting at his throat." Perhaps the
+Gothic war correspondent of the day studied picturesqueness more than
+accuracy, like some of his modern successors. But, without a doubt, the
+first contact with Asiatics, whether Huns or Saracens, gave to the
+European peoples a horror and a terror which had never been inspired by
+their battles among themselves--battles by no means bloodless or
+merciful. As the Asiatic waves of invasion later developed in strength
+the unhappy Balkan Peninsula was doomed to feel their full force as they
+poured across the Bosphorus from Asia Minor, and across the Danube from
+the north-eastern Asiatic steppes.
+
+It would be vain to attempt to chronicle even in the barest outline all
+the horrors inflicted upon the Balkans from the date of the first
+invasion of the Huns in the fourth century to the first invasion of the
+Turks in the fourteenth century. To say that those ten centuries were
+filled with bloodshed suffices. But they also saw the development of the
+Balkan nationalities of to-day, and cannot therefore be passed over
+without some attention. Let us then glance at each Balkan nation during
+that period.
+
+_Roumania_, inhabited by the people of the old Roman-Dacian colony,
+stood full in the way of the Northern invasions of Goths, of Huns, of
+Hungarians, of Tartars. It was almost submerged. But in the thirteenth
+century the country benefited by the coming of Teutonic and Norman
+knights. The two kingdoms or principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia
+(which, combined, make up modern Roumania) were founded in this century.
+
+_Bulgaria._--In the seventh century Slavs had begun to settle in
+Bulgaria. The Bulgars or Volgars followed. They were akin to the Tartars
+and the Turks. Together Slavs and Bulgars formed the Bulgarian national
+type and founded a very robust nation which was almost constantly at war
+with the Greek Empire (with its capital at Constantinople). At times
+Bulgaria seriously threatened Constantinople and the Greek Empire. A
+boastful inscription in the Church of the Forty Martyrs at Tirnovo, the
+ancient capital of Bulgaria, records:
+
+     In the year 1230, I, John As�n, Czar and Autocrat of the
+     Bulgarians, obedient to God in Christ, son of the old As�n, have
+     built this most worthy church from its foundations, and completely
+     decked it with paintings in honour of the Forty holy Martyrs, by
+     whose help, in the 12th year of my reign, when the Church had just
+     been painted, I set out to Roumania to the war and smote the Greek
+     army and took captive the Czar Theodore Komnenus with all his
+     nobles. And all lands have I conquered from Adrianople to Durazzo,
+     the Greek, the Albanian, and the Serbian land. Only the towns round
+     Constantinople and that city itself did the Franks hold; but these
+     too bowed themselves beneath the hand of my sovereignty, for they
+     had no other Czar but me, and prolonged their days according to my
+     will, as God had so ordained. For without him no word or work is
+     accomplished. To him be honour for ever. Amen.
+
+The wars were carried on under conditions of mutual ferocity which still
+rule in Bulgarian-Grecian conflicts. An incident of one campaign was
+that the Greek Emperor, Basil, the Bulgar-slayer, having captured a
+Bulgarian army, had the eyes torn out of all the men and sent them home
+blinded, leaving, however, one eye to every centurion, so that the poor
+mutilated wretches might have guides. In the early part of the
+fourteenth century a Bulgarian Czar, Michael, almost captured
+Constantinople. He formed a league with the Roumanians and the Greeks
+against the Serbs, who were at the time promising to become the
+paramount power of the peninsula. But Czar Michael was defeated by the
+Serbs and Bulgaria became dependent upon Serbia, which was the position
+of affairs at the time of the first serious Turkish invasion of the
+Balkan Peninsula.
+
+_Serbia._--Invading tribes of Don Cossacks began to come in great
+numbers to the Balkan Peninsula in the sixth century. In the seventh
+century they were encouraged by the Greek Empire to settle in Serbia, on
+condition of paying tribute to Constantinople. They set up a kind of
+aristocratic republic of a Slav type. In the ninth century they began to
+fight with the neighbouring and kindred Bulgarians. Early in the tenth
+century (A.D. 917) the Bulgarians almost effaced Serbia from the map;
+but the Serbs recovered after half a century, only to come shortly
+afterwards under the sway of the Greeks. In the eleventh century the
+Serbians held a very strong position and were able to harass the Greek
+Empire at Constantinople. They entered into friendly relations with the
+Pope of Rome, and for some time contemplated following the Roman rather
+than the Eastern Church. In the twelfth century King Stephen of Serbia
+was a valued ally of the Greek Empire against the Venetians. He
+established Serbia as a European "Power," and the Emperor Frederick
+Barbarossa visited his court at Belgrade. This king was the first of a
+succession of able and brave monarchs, and Serbia enjoyed a period of
+stable prosperity and power unusually lengthy for the Balkans. Except
+for the strife between the Eastern and Roman Catholic Churches for
+supremacy in Serbia, the nation was at peace within her own borders, and
+enjoyed not only a military but an economic predominance in the Balkans.
+Mining and handicrafts were developed, education encouraged, and the
+national organisation reached fully to the average standard of European
+civilisation at the time. By 1275 the Serbs were the chief power in the
+Balkans. They defeated the Greeks, marched right down to the Aegean and
+reached the famous monastery of Mount Athos, to which the first King
+Stephen (Nemanya) had retired in 1195 when he abdicated.
+
+In 1303 the Serbians forgot their quarrel with the Greeks and helped
+them against the Turks, undertaking an invasion of Asia Minor. In 1315
+they again saved the Greek Empire from the Turks. When in 1336 Stephen
+Dushan, the greatest of Serbian kings, who has been compared to Napoleon
+because of his military genius and capacity for statesmanship, came to
+the throne, Bulgaria was under the suzerainty of Serbia, and the Serb
+monarch ruled over all that area comprised within the boundaries of
+Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, and Greece by the recent treaty
+of Bucharest (1913). King Stephen Dushan was not only a great military
+leader, he was also a law-maker and a patron of learning. His death on
+December 13, 1356, at the Gates of Constantinople--he is said to have
+been poisoned--opened the way for the Turkish occupation of the Balkan
+Peninsula. That occupation was made possible in the first instance by
+the mutual jealousies of the Christian peoples of the Balkans. It was
+kept in existence for centuries by the same weaknesses arising from
+jealousy. In 1912 it was swept away in a month because in a spasm of
+common sense the Balkan Christian peoples had united. In 1913 it was in
+part restored because internecine strife had broken out again among the
+Balkan natives recently allied. It will probably continue until the
+lesson of unity is learned again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TURK IN THE BALKANS
+
+
+It seems to be difficult to speak without violent prejudice on the
+subject of the Turk in the Balkans. One school of prejudice insists that
+the Turk is the finest gentleman in the world, who has been always the
+victim and not the oppressor of the Christian peoples by whose side he
+lives, and whose territories he invaded with the best of motives and
+with the minimum of slaughter. The other school of prejudice credits the
+Turk with the most abominable cruelty, treachery, and lust, and will
+hear no good of him. In England the issue is largely a political one. A
+great Liberal campaign was once founded on a Turkish massacre of
+Bulgarians in the Balkans. That made it a party duty for Liberals to be
+pro-Bulgarian and anti-Turk, and almost a party duty for Conservatives
+to find all the Christian and a few ex-Christian virtues in the Turk.
+Before attempting to judge the Turk of to-day, let us see how he stands
+in the light of history. It was in the fourth century that the first
+Saracens came to the Balkan Peninsula as allies of the Greek Empire
+against the Goths. They were thus called in by a Christian Power in the
+first instance. It was not until the fourteenth century that the Turks
+made a serious attempt to occupy the Balkan Peninsula. They were helped
+in their campaign considerably by the Christian Crusaders, who,
+incidentally to their warfare against the Infidel who held the Holy
+Sepulchre, had made war on the Greek Empire, capturing Constantinople,
+and thus weakening the power of Christian Europe at its threshold.
+Bulgaria, too, refused help to the Greeks when the Turkish invasion had
+to be beaten off. The Turks' coming to the Balkans was thus largely due
+to Christian divisions.
+
+[Illustration: _S�bah & Joaillier_
+
+SANCTA SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+Built by Justinian I, consecrated 538, converted into a Mohammedan
+mosque 1453. It is now thought that the design of its famous architect,
+Anthemius of Tralles, was never completed. The minarets and most of the
+erections in the foreground are Turkish]
+
+Without being able at the time to capture Constantinople, the invading
+Turks occupied soon a large tract of the Balkan Peninsula. By 1362 they
+had captured Philippopolis and Eski Zagora, two important centres of
+Bulgaria. It was not a violence to their conscience for some of the
+Bulgarian men after this to join the Turkish army as mercenaries. When
+the sorely-beset Greeks sent the Emperor John Paleologos to appeal for
+help to the Bulgarians, he was seized by them and kept as a prisoner.
+
+A united Balkan Peninsula would have kept off the Turks, no doubt. But a
+set of small nations without any faculty of permanent cohesion, and
+hating and distrusting one another more thoroughly than they did the
+Turk, could do nothing. The Balkan nations of the time, though united
+they would have been really powerful, allowed themselves to be taken in
+detail and crushed under the heels of an invader who was alien in blood
+and in religion. In 1366 the Bulgarians became the vassals of the Turks,
+and the Serbians were defeated at Kossovo. The fall of the Greek Empire
+and the subjugation of Roumania followed in due course, and by the
+seventeenth century the Turks had penetrated to the very walls of
+Vienna. At one time it seemed as if all Europe would fall under the sway
+of Islam, for, as elsewhere than in the Balkans, there were Christian
+States which were treacherous to their faith. But that happily was
+averted. For the Balkan Peninsula, however, there were now to be
+centuries of oppression and religious persecution. It will be convenient
+once again to set forth under three national headings the chief facts
+regarding the Turkish conquest of the Balkans.
+
+_Bulgaria._--By 1366 weakness in the field and civil dissensions had
+brought Bulgaria to the humiliation of becoming the vassal of the Turk.
+In 1393 the Turks, not content with mere suzerainty, occupied Bulgaria
+and converted it into a Turkish province. In 1398 the Hungarians and the
+Wallachians (Roumanians) made a gallant attempt to free Bulgaria from
+the Turkish yoke, but failed. Some of the Bulgarians joined in with
+their Turkish conquerors, abandoned the Christian religion for that of
+Islam, and were the ancestors of what are known to-day as the Pomaks.
+The rest of the people gave a reluctant obedience to the Turkish
+conqueror, preserving their Christian faith, their Slav tongue, and
+their sense of separate nationality. The Greeks, who had come to some
+kind of terms with the Turkish invaders, assisted to bring the Bulgarian
+people under subjection. The Greek church and the Greek tongue rather
+than the Turkish were sought to be imposed upon the Bulgarians. The
+subject people accepted the situation with occasional revolts, but more
+tamely than some other Balkan nations. It was not a general meek
+acquiescence, though it was--possibly by chance, possibly because of the
+fact that a racial relationship existed between conqueror and
+conquered--not so fierce in protest as that of the Serbians. In writing
+that, I do not follow exactly the Bulgarian modern view, which
+represents as much more vivid the sufferings and the protests of the
+Bulgarian people, and ignores altogether the racial relationship which
+existed between Bulgarian and Turk, and enabled a section of the
+Bulgarian nation to fall into line with the conqueror and embrace his
+religion and his habits of life, a relationship which to this day shows
+its traces in the Bulgarian national life. But in Balkan history as
+written locally, there is usually a certain amount of political
+deflection from the facts. A modern Balkan historian, giving what may be
+called the official national account of the times of the Turkish
+domination, says (_Bulgaria of To-day_):
+
+     Had the rulers been of the same race and religion as the
+     vanquished, the subjection might have been more tolerable. Ottoman
+     domination was not, however, a simple political domination.
+     Ottoman tyranny was social as well as political. It was keenly and
+     painfully felt in private as well as in public life; in social
+     liberty, manners and morals; in the free development of national
+     feeling; in short, in the whole scope of human life. According to
+     our present notions, political domination does not infringe upon
+     personal liberty, which is sacred for the conqueror. This is not
+     the case with Turkish rule. The Bulgarians, like the other
+     Christians of the Balkan Peninsula, were, both collectively and
+     individually, slaves. The life, possessions, and honour of private
+     individuals were in constant peril. The bulk of the people, after
+     several generations, calmed down to passivity and inertia. From
+     time to time the more vigorous element, the strongest
+     individualities, protested. Some Bulgarian whose sister had been
+     carried off to the harem of some pasha would take to the mountains
+     and make war on the oppressors. The haidukes and voivodes,
+     celebrated in the national songs, kept up in mountain fastnesses
+     that spirit of liberty which later was to serve as a cement to
+     unite the new Bulgarian nation.
+
+     But it is a noteworthy fact that the Osmanlis, being themselves but
+     little civilised, did not attempt to assimilate the Bulgarians in
+     the sense in which civilised nations try to effect the intellectual
+     and ethnic assimilation of a subject race. Except in isolated
+     cases, where Bulgarian girls or young men were carried off and
+     forced to adopt Mohammedanism, the government never took any
+     general measures to impose Mohammedanism or assimilate the
+     Bulgarians to the Moslems. The Turks prided themselves on keeping
+     apart from the Bulgarians, and this was fortunate for our
+     nationality. Contented with their political supremacy and pleased
+     to feel themselves masters, the Turks did not trouble about the
+     spiritual life of the _rayas_, except to try to trample out all
+     desires for independence. All these circumstances contributed to
+     allow the Bulgarian people, crushed and ground down by the Turkish
+     yoke, to concentrate and preserve its own inner spiritual life.
+     They formed religious communities attached to the churches. These
+     had a certain amount of autonomy, and, beside seeing after the
+     churches, could keep schools. The national literature, full of the
+     most poetic melancholy, handed down from generation to generation
+     and developed by tradition, still tells us of the life of the
+     Bulgarians under the Ottoman yoke. In these popular songs, the
+     memory of the ancient Bulgarian kingdom is mingled with the
+     sufferings of the present hour. The songs of this period are
+     remarkable for the oriental character of their times, and this is
+     almost the sole trace of Moslem influence.
+
+     In spite of the vigilance of the Turks, the religious associations
+     served as centres to keep alive the national feeling.
+
+A conquered people which was allowed to keep up its religious
+institutions (with "a certain amount of autonomy"), and later to found
+national schools ("to keep alive the national feeling"), was not exactly
+ground to the dust. And truth compels the admission that Bulgaria under
+Turkish rule enjoyed a certain amount of material prosperity. When the
+Russian liberators of the nineteenth century came to Bulgaria they
+found the peasants far more comfortable than were the Russian peasants
+of the day. The atrocities in Bulgaria which shocked Europe in 1875 were
+not the continuance of a settled policy of cruelty and rapine. They were
+the ferocious reprisals chiefly of Turkish Bashi-Bazouks (irregulars)
+following upon a Bulgarian rising. The Turks felt that they had been
+making an honest effort to promote the interests of the Bulgarian
+province. They had just satisfied a Bulgarian aspiration by allowing of
+the formation of an independent Bulgarian church, though this meant
+giving grave offence to the Greeks. Probably they felt that they had a
+real grievance against the Bulgars. After the Bulgarian atrocities of
+1875 there ended the Turkish domination of the country.
+
+_Serbia._--In December 1356 the great Serbian king, Stephen Dushan,
+soldier, administrator, and economist, died before the walls of
+Constantinople, and the one hope of the Balkan Peninsula making a stand
+against the Turks was ended. Shortly after, the Turks had occupied
+Adrianople, their first capital in Europe, defeating heavily a combined
+Serbian and Greek army. Later the Serbian forces were again defeated by
+the great Turkish sultan Amurath I., and the Serbian king was killed on
+the battle-field. King Lazar, who succeeded to the Serbian throne, made
+some headway against the invaders, but in 1389, at the Battle of
+Kossovo, the Serbian Empire came tumbling to ruins. The Turkish leader,
+Amurath, was killed in the fight, but his son Bajayet proved another
+Amurath and pressed home the victory. Serbia became a vassal state of
+Turkey.
+
+But there was to be still a period of fierce resistance to the Turk. In
+1413 the Turks, dissatisfied with the attitude of the Serbs, entered
+upon a new invasion of the territory of Serbia. In 1440 Sultan Amurath
+II. again overran the country and conquered it definitely, imposing not
+merely vassalage but armed occupation on its people. John Hunyad, "the
+White Knight of Wallachia," came to the rescue of the Serbs, and Amurath
+II. was driven back. An alliance between Serbs and Hungarians kept the
+Turk at bay for a time, and in 1444 Serbia could claim to be free once
+again. But the respite was a brief one. In 1453 Constantinople fell to
+the Turks, and the full tide of their strengthened and now undivided
+power was turned upon Serbia. A siege of Belgrade in 1457 was repulsed,
+but in 1459 Serbia was conquered and annexed to European Turkey. Lack of
+unity among the Serbs themselves had contributed greatly to the national
+doom, but on the whole the Serbs had put up a gallant fight against the
+Turks. And even now a section of them, the Montenegrins, in their
+mountain fastnesses kept their liberty, and through all the centuries
+that were to follow never yielded to the Crescent.
+
+The condition of the Serbs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was
+very unhappy. They could come to no manner of contentment with Turkish
+rule, and sporadic revolts were frequent. At times the Hungarians from
+the other side of the Danube came to the aid of the revolters, but never
+in such strength as to shake seriously the Turkish power. Very many of
+the Serbs left their country in despair and sought refuge under the
+Austrian flag. To-day a big Serb element, under the flag of
+Austro-Hungaria, is one of the racial difficulties of the Dual
+Monarchy.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+KING PETER OF SERBIA]
+
+The Serb exiles carried to their new homes their old sympathies, and
+largely because of their efforts Austria in 1788 went to the rescue of
+Serbia, and for a brief while the land again was free. But the Turkish
+power returned and Serbia stumbled blindly, painfully through years of
+reprisals, which culminated in the great massacre of Serbs by Turks in
+1804, which, like the Turkish massacre of Bulgarians in 1875, really
+declared the doom of the Turkish power in the country. Following this
+massacre George Petrovic, "Black George," or "_Kara_ George," as the
+Serbians knew him, raised the standard of revolt among his countrymen.
+He was a fierce blood-stained man, this first liberator of the Serbs, a
+man on whose head was the blood of his father and his brother. His grim
+character was fitted for his grim task. The story of that task will come
+better within the scope of a following chapter, which will tell of the
+liberation of the Balkans from the Turks.
+
+_Roumania._--It was not until 1391 that the Turks crossed the Danube and
+attacked the kingdoms of Wallachia and Moldavia, and reduced Wallachia
+to the position of a tributary state. King Mirtsched made a gallant
+fight against the invaders, but the Turks proved too strong. That was
+the beginning of a Turkish dominance of Roumania, which was never so
+complete as that exercised over Bulgaria and Serbia, but left the two
+Roumanian kingdoms of Wallachia and Moldavia as vassal states. Mutual
+jealousy between them prevented effective operations against the Turk,
+and helped to make their vassalage possible. In the fifteenth century
+both kingdoms had great rulers. Wallachia was ruled by Vlad the Impaler,
+an able but cruel man, who seems to have earned the infamy of inventing
+a form of torture still practised in the Balkans as a matter of
+religious proselytising, that of sitting the victim on a sharp stake,
+and leaving him to die slowly as the stake penetrated his body. Moldavia
+had as king Stephen the Great, who has no such ghastly reputation of
+cruelty. But able princes could effect little with communities weakened
+by the luxury of the nobles and the helpless poverty of the serfs.
+Still, the Roumanians had intervals of victory. In the sixteenth century
+Michael the Brave (whose memory is commemorated by a statue in
+Bucharest) drove the Turks back as far as Adrianople, liberating
+Roumania and Bulgaria. He annexed Moldavia and Transylvania to
+Wallachia, and was in a sense the founder of modern Roumania. But the
+union thus effected was not enduring and the Turkish ascendancy grew
+stronger. The Turkish suzerain forced upon the Roumanian peoples
+governors of the Greek race, who carried on the work of oppression and
+spoliation with an industrious effectiveness quite beyond the capacity
+of the Turk, who at his worst is a fitful and indolent tyrant.
+
+In the last quarter of the seventeenth century the Russian Power began
+to take a close interest in Roumania. In 1711 there was a definite
+Russian-Roumanian alliance. By this time the Roumanians were resolutely
+hostile to the Turkish domination. True, they had been spared most of
+the cruelties which were in Servia a customary and in Bulgaria an
+occasional concomitant of Turkish rule. But they were deeply injured by
+the corrupt, the luxurious, the exacting administration of the Greek
+rulers forced upon them by the Turkish government. Though they suffered
+little from massacre they suffered much from "squeeze." There was not
+only the greed of the Turk but the greed of the intermediate Greek to be
+satisfied. From 1711 until the final liberation of Roumania, Roumanian
+sympathies were generally with the Russians in the frequent wars waged
+by them against Turkey. In 1770 the Russians occupied Roumania and freed
+it for a time from the Turk, but in 1774 the Roumanians went back to
+the Turkish suzerainty. During the Napoleonic wars Russia gave Roumania
+some reason to doubt the disinterestedness of her friendship by annexing
+the rich province of Bessarabia, a part of the natural territory of the
+Roumanian people. The year 1821 saw the outbreak of the Greek war of
+independence, in which Roumania took no part, having as little love for
+the Greek as for the Turk. She won one advantage for herself from the
+war, the right to have her native rulers under Turkish suzerainty. In
+1828, as a result of a Russo-Turkish war, Roumania won almost complete
+freedom, conditional only on tribute being continued to be paid to the
+Sultan. She found a new master, however, in Russia, and was forced to
+keep up a Russian garrison within her borders, nominally as a protection
+against Turkey, really as a safeguard against the growth in her own
+people of a spirit of national independence. The Crimean War (1853)
+freed Roumania from this Russian garrison, and in 1856 the Treaty of
+Paris declared Roumania to be an independent principality under Turkish
+suzerainty.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+KING NICOLAS OF MONTENEGRO]
+
+_Montenegro._--The existence of Montenegro as a separate Balkan state
+dates back to the Battle of Kossovo. The Montenegrin is a Serbian
+Highlander, and whilst the Serbian Empire flourished, claimed for
+himself no separate national entity. When, however, the rest of Serbia
+was subjugated by the Turks, "the Black Mountain" held out, and there
+gathered within its little area of rocky hill fastnesses the free
+remnants of the Serbian race. The story of that little nation is quite
+the most wonderful in all the world. It transcends Sparta, and makes the
+fighting record of the Swiss seem tame. At the height of its power
+Montenegro had a population of perhaps 8000 males, and little source of
+riches from mines, from trade, or even from fertile agricultural land.
+Yet Montenegro kept the Turks from her own territory, and was able at
+times to give valuable help to the rest of Europe in withstanding the
+invasion of Islam.
+
+The system of government instituted was that of a theocratic despotism:
+the head of the nation was its chief bishop, and he had the right to
+nominate a nephew (not a son--as a bishop of the Greek Communion he
+would be celibate) to succeed him. The Montenegrin dynasty was founded
+in 1696 by King Danilo I., and has endured to this day, though recently
+the functions of the chief priest and king have been separated, and the
+present monarch is purely a civil ruler.
+
+It is not possible here to give even the barest mention of the leading
+facts in the proud history of little Montenegro. In the seventeenth
+century she was the valued friend of Venice against the Turks; in the
+eighteenth century she was aided by Peter the Great of Russia; later she
+met without being subdued the warlike power of Napoleon. All the time,
+during every century, every year almost, there was constant warfare with
+the Turks. One campaign lasted without interruption from 1424 to 1436,
+and was marked by over sixty battles. The little population of the patch
+of rocks in the mountains was worn down by this incessant fighting, but
+was recruited by a steady flow of exiles from other parts of the Balkan
+Peninsula, anxious for freedom and for revenge on the Turk. Sometimes
+the tide of battle went sorely against the mountaineers, and almost all
+their country was put under the heel of the Moslem. But always one eyrie
+was kept for the free eagles, and from it they swooped down with renewed
+strength to send the invader once again across their borders. Repeatedly
+the Turk levied great armies for the conquest of Montenegro (once the
+Turkish force reached to the number of 80,000). Repeatedly great
+European Powers which had proffered help or had been begged for help
+failed little Montenegro at a crisis. But never were the stout hearts of
+the Black Mountain quelled. In 1484, when Zablak had to be evacuated and
+the whole nation was confined to the little mountain fortress of
+Cettinje, Ivan the Black offered to his people the choice of ending the
+war and making peace with the Turks. They rejected the idea, and swore
+to stand by the freedom of Montenegro until the last. The oath was never
+broken. Right down to 1832 a free Montenegro faced Turkey. In that year
+the Turks, despairing of an occupation of the country, suggested that
+Montenegro should agree at least to pay tribute. That offer was rejected
+and yet another war entered upon. A war against Austria followed, in
+which the desperate Montenegrins used the type of their printing presses
+to make bullets for the soldiers.
+
+[Illustration: MONTENEGRIN TROOPS
+
+Weekly Drill and Inspection of Weapons]
+
+That there was lead type to be so used shows that the Montenegrins had
+not altogether neglected the arts of peace. In 1493 a printing press had
+been set up in Cettinje and the first Montenegrin book printed in the
+Cyrillic character. During the next century this printing press was
+kept busy with the issue of the Gospels and psalters under the rule of
+the brave Bishop Babylas. The state of Montenegro at this time aroused
+the admiration of the Venetians, and there is extant a book in praise of
+Montenegro written in 1614 by a Venetian noble, Mariano Bolizza.
+
+When the time came for the other Balkan States to throw off the Turkish
+yoke Montenegro was not reluctant to join in the movement for
+liberation, and she was later first in the field in the campaign of
+1912.
+
+This very brief record of the leading facts of Balkan history has now
+brought each of the peoples up to the stage at which the final and
+successful effort was made with the help of Russia to drive the Turks
+out of Balkan territory. The story of that effort will be told in the
+succeeding chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FALL OF THE TURKISH POWER
+
+
+In the nineteenth century the Turkish dominion was pushed back in all
+directions from the Balkan Peninsula. At the dawn of that century
+Montenegro was the only Balkan state entirely free from occupation,
+vassalage, or the duty of tribute to the Sublime Porte. At the close of
+that century Montenegro, Serbia, Roumania, Greece, and Bulgaria were all
+practically free and self-governing.
+
+In 1804, as has been recorded, Kara George in Serbia raised the standard
+of revolt against Turkey. In 1806 the Serbs defeated the Turks in a
+pitched battle, and for a moment Serbia was free. But in 1812 when the
+Turkish power resolved upon a great invasion of Serbia, the heart of
+Kara George failed him and he left his country to its fate, taking
+refuge in Austria. Thus deserted by their leader, the Serbs did not
+abandon the struggle altogether. Milosh Obrenovic stepped to the front
+as the national champion, and though he could make no stand against the
+Turkish troops in the open field he kept up an active revolt from a base
+in the mountains. The contest for national liberty went on with varying
+fortune. Troubles at this time were thickening around Turkey, and
+whenever she was engaged in war with Russia the oppressed nationalities
+within her borders took the opportunity to strike a blow for liberty. By
+1839--it is not possible to make a record of all the dynastic changes
+and revolutions which filled the years 1812-1839--Serbia was practically
+free, with the payment of an annual tribute to Turkey as her only bond.
+During the Crimean War she kept her neutrality as between Russia and
+Turkey. The Treaty of Paris (1856) confirmed her territorial
+independence, subject to the payment of a tribute to Turkey. In 1867 the
+Turkish garrisons were withdrawn from Serbia; but the tribute was still
+left in existence until the date of the Treaty of Berlin.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+THE KING OF ROUMANIA]
+
+Roumania in 1828 (then Wallachia and Moldavia) had won her territorial
+independence of Turkey subject only to payment of a tribute. The Treaty
+of Paris (1856) left her under a nominal suzerainty to Turkey. In 1859
+the two kingdoms united to form Roumania, and in 1866 the late King
+Charles, as the result of a revolution, was elected prince of the united
+kingdom.
+
+Bulgaria had remained a fairly contented Turkish province until the
+rising of 1875, and its cruel suppression by the Bashi-Bazouks. As a
+direct consequence of that massacre European diplomacy turned its
+serious attention to the Balkan Peninsula, and at a Conference demands
+were made upon Turkey for a comprehensive reform applying to Serbia,
+Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. The proposed reform was
+particularly drastic as applied to Bulgaria, which was still in effect
+Turkish territory, whilst all the other districts had achieved a
+practical freedom. It was proposed to create two Bulgarian provinces
+divided into Sandjaks and Kazas as administrative units, these to be
+subdivided into districts. Christian and Mohammedans were to be settled
+homogeneously in these districts. Each district was to have at its head
+a mayor and a district council, elected by universal suffrage, and was
+to enjoy entire autonomy in local affairs. Several districts would form
+a Sandjak with a prefect (_mutessarif_) at its head who was to be
+Christian or Mohammedan, according to the majority of the population of
+the Sandjak. He would be proposed by the Governor-General, and nominated
+by the Porte for four years. Finally, every two Sandjaks were to be
+administered by a Christian Governor-General nominated by the Porte for
+five years, with consent of the Powers. He would govern the province
+with the help of a provincial assembly, composed of representatives
+chosen by the district councils for a term of four years. This assembly
+would nominate an administrative council. The provincial assembly would
+be summoned every year to decide the budget and the redivision of taxes.
+The armed force was to be concentrated in the towns and there would be
+local militia besides. The language of the predominant nationality was
+to be employed, as well as Turkish. Finally, a Commission of
+International Control was to supervise the execution of these reforms.
+
+The Sublime Porte was still haggling about these reforms when Russia
+lost patience and declared war upon Turkey on April 12, 1877. Moving
+through the friendly territory of Roumania, Russia attacked the Turkish
+forces in Bulgarian territory. In that war the Russians found that the
+Turks were a gallant foe, and the issue seemed to hang in the balance
+until Roumania and Bulgaria went actively to the help of the Russian
+forces. The Roumanian aid was exceedingly valuable. Prince Charles
+crossed the Danube at the head of 28,000 foot soldiers and 4000 cavalry.
+He was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the forces against Plevna, and
+his soldiers were chiefly responsible for the taking of the Grivica
+Redoubt which turned the tide of victory against the Turks. The
+Bulgarians did but little during the campaign: it was not possible that
+they should do much seeing that they could only put irregulars in the
+field. Nevertheless some high personal reputations for courage were
+made. During my stay with the Bulgarian army in 1912 I noted that there
+were of the military officers three classes, the men who had graduated
+in foreign military colleges--usually Petrograd,--very smart, very
+insistent on their military dignity, speaking usually three or four
+languages; officers who had been educated at the Military College,
+Sofia; and the older Bulgarian type, dating sometimes from before the
+War of Liberation. Of these last the outstanding figure was General
+Nicolaieff, who as captain of a Bulgarian company rushed a Turkish
+battery beneath Shipka after the Russians had been held up so long that
+they were in despair. A fine stalwart figure General Nicolaieff showed
+when I met him at Yamboli, a hospital base town of which he was military
+commandant. Another soldier of the War of Liberation, a captain in rank,
+I travelled with for a day once between Kirk Kilisse and Chorlu. We
+chummed up and shared a meal of meat balls cooked with onions, rough
+country wine (these from his stores), and dates and biscuits (from my
+stores). He spoke neither English nor French, but a Bulgarian doctor who
+spoke French acted as interpreter, and the old officer, who after long
+entreaty at last had got leave to go down to the front in spite of his
+age, yarned about the hardships and tragedies of the fighting around
+Stara Zagora and the Shipka Pass. Some of the Bulgarians, he said, took
+the field with no other arms than staves and knives, and got their first
+rifles from the dead of the battle-fields.
+
+[Illustration: THE SHIPKA PASS]
+
+Serbia took a hand in this campaign, too, though she hesitated for some
+time, going to the aid of Russia through fear of Austria. Beginning
+late, at a time when the mountains were covered in the winter snows, the
+Serbians suffered severely from the weather, but won notable victories
+at Pirot, at Nish, and at Vranga. The Turks were in full retreat on
+Constantinople when the armistice and Treaty of San Stefano put an end
+to the war.
+
+It seems to be one of the standing rules of Balkan wars and Balkan peace
+treaties that those who do the work shall not reap the reward, and that
+a policy of standing by and waiting is the wisest and most profitable.
+In this Russo-Turkish war the Roumanians had done invaluable work for
+the Russian cause. In return the Treaty of San Stefano robbed them
+shamefully. The Bulgarians had done little, except to stain the arms of
+the allies with a series of massacres of the Turks in reprisal for the
+previous atrocities inflicted upon them by the Bashi-Bazouks. The
+Bulgarians were awarded a tremendous prize of territory. If the grant
+had been confirmed it would have made Bulgaria the paramount power of
+the Balkan Peninsula. By the Treaty of San Stefano, Bulgaria was made
+an autonomous principality subject to Turkey, with a Christian
+government and national militia. The Prince of Bulgaria was to be freely
+chosen by the people and accepted by the Sublime Porte, with the consent
+of the Powers. As regards internal government, it was agreed that an
+assembly of notables, presided over by an Imperial Commissioner and
+attended by a Turkish Commissioner, should meet at Philippopolis or
+Tirnova before the election of the Prince to draw up a constitutional
+statute similar to those of the other Danubian principalities after the
+Treaty of Adrianople in 1830. The boundaries of Bulgaria were to include
+all that is now Bulgaria, and the greater part of Thrace and Macedonia.
+
+The European Congress of Berlin which revised the Treaty of San Stefano
+recognised that the motive of Russia was to create in Bulgaria a vast
+but weak state, which would obediently serve her interests and in time
+fall into her hands: and that the injury proposed to be done to Roumania
+was inspired by a desire to limit the progress of a courageous but an
+unfortunately independent-minded friend. The Congress was suspicious of
+the Bulgarian arrangement, and clipped off much of the territory
+assigned to the new principality. The injury done to Roumania was
+allowed to stand. Then, as in 1912-1913, when Balkan boundaries were
+again under the discussion of an inter-European Conference, the vital
+interests of the great Powers surrounding the Balkan Peninsula were to
+keep its peoples divided and weak. Both Russia and Austria had more or
+less defined territorial ambitions in the Balkans: and it suited neither
+Power to see any one Balkan state rise to such a standard of greatness
+as would enable it to take the lead in a Balkan Union. Especially was it
+not the wish of Austria that any Balkan state should grow to be so
+strong as to kill definitely the hope she cherished of extending down
+the Adriatic and towards the Aegean.
+
+By the Treaty of Berlin, which followed the Congress of Berlin, the
+greater part of the Balkan Peninsula was freed altogether from Turkish
+rule. Roumania and Serbia were relieved from all suggestion of tribute
+or vassalage. Bulgaria was left subject to a tribute (which was very
+quickly afterwards repudiated). Where the Turkish power was left in
+existence in European Turkey it was a threatened existence, for the
+newly freed Christian peoples began at once to conspire to help to
+freedom their nationals left still under Turkish rule. The war of 1912
+began to be prepared in 1878.
+
+There was, however, a period of comparative peace. Roumania, though
+discontented, decided to bide her time. Her prince was crowned king with
+a crown made from the metal of Turkish cannon taken at Plevna. That was
+the only hint that she gave of keeping in mind the greatness of her
+services which had been so poorly rewarded.
+
+Montenegro, whilst deprived of the great and the well-deserved expansion
+which the Treaty of San Stefano offered, had some benefit from the
+Treaty of Berlin. The area of the kingdom was doubled and it won access
+to the Adriatic. A little later the harbour of Dulcigno was ceded to
+Montenegro by Turkey under pressure from the Powers, and she was left
+with only one notable grievance, that of being shut off from Serbia by
+the Sanjak of Novi-Bazar, which Austria secured for Turkey, apparently
+with the idea of one day seizing it on her way down to Salonica.
+
+[Illustration: _Chusseau Flaviens_
+
+KING FERDINAND OF BULGARIA]
+
+Serbia increased her territory by one-fourth under the Treaty of Berlin,
+but was not allowed to extend towards the Adriatic, and, nurturing as
+she did a dream of reviving the old Serbian Empire, was but poorly
+satisfied.
+
+Bulgaria, if it had not been for the promises of the Treaty of San
+Stefano, might have been fairly content with the provisions of the
+Treaty of Berlin. She had been the first nation in the Balkans to yield
+to the Turks. She had allowed her sons to act as mercenary soldiers to
+aid the Turks against other Christians: and during the period of
+oppression she had suffered less than any from the rigours of the
+invader, had protested less than any by force of arms. Yet now she was
+given freedom as a gift won largely by the sacrifices of others. But,
+though having the most reason to be content, Bulgaria was the least
+contented of all the Balkan States. The restless ambition of the people
+guiding her destinies was manifested in an internal revolution which
+displaced the first prince (Alexander of Battenberg) and put on the
+throne the present king (Ferdinand of Coburg). Bulgaria, too, repudiated
+the friendly tutelage which Russia wished to exercise over her
+destinies.
+
+The territorial settlement made by the Berlin Treaty was first broken by
+Bulgaria. That treaty had cut the ethnological Bulgaria into two,
+leaving the southern half as a separate province under the name of
+Eastern Rumelia. In 1885 Eastern Rumelia was annexed to Bulgaria with
+the glad consent of its inhabitants, but in spite of the wishes of
+Russia. Serbia saw in this the threat of a Bulgarian hegemony in the
+Balkans, and demanded some territorial compensation for herself. This
+was refused. War followed. The Bulgarians were victorious at the Battle
+of Slivnitza, an achievement which was in great measure due to the
+organising ability of Prince Alexander. The victory secured Rumelia for
+Bulgaria. But no sense of gratitude to Prince Alexander survived, and
+the Russian intrigue which secured his abdication and flight was
+undoubtedly aided by a large section of the Bulgarian people.
+Stambouloff, a peasant leader of the Bulgarians and its greatest
+personality since the War of Liberation, was faithful to Alexander, but
+was not able to save him.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+KING FERDINAND'S BODYGUARD]
+
+The Bulgarian throne after Alexander's abdication was offered to the
+King of Roumania. The acceptance of the offer would possibly have led to
+a real Balkan Federation. The united power of Roumania and Bulgaria,
+exercised wisely, could have gently pressed the other Balkan peoples
+into a union. That, however, would have suited the aims neither of
+Russia nor of Austria, the two Empires which guided the destinies of the
+Balkans, chiefly in the light of their own selfish ends. The Roumanian
+king refused the throne of Bulgaria, and in 1887 Prince Ferdinand of
+Coburg became Prince of the State. It was not long before he fell out
+with Stambouloff, the able but personally unamenable patriot who chiefly
+had made modern Bulgaria. In the conflict between the two Prince
+Ferdinand proved the stronger. Stambouloff was dismissed from office,
+and in 1895 was assassinated in the streets of Sofia. No attempt was
+made to punish his murderers.
+
+In 1908 Bulgaria shook off the last shred of dependence to Turkey. The
+bold action was the crown of a clever diplomatic intrigue by Prince
+Ferdinand. Since the murder of Stambouloff the Prince had been
+sedulously cultivating in public the friendship of Russia: but that had
+not prevented him carrying to a great pitch of mutual confidence a
+secret understanding with Austria. The Austrian Empire was anxious to
+annex formally the districts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which it had
+long been in occupation. Objection to this would surely have come from
+Russia; but Russia was impotent for the time being after the disastrous
+war with Japan. Just as surely it would come from Serbia which would see
+thus definitely pass over to the one Power, which she had reason to
+fear, a section of Slav-inhabited country clearly connected to the Serbs
+by racial ties. Serbia, it might be expected, would have the support of
+France and England as well as Russia. For Bulgaria the offer to
+neutralise Serbia made to Austria all the difference between an action
+which was a little risky and an action which had no risk at all.
+Bulgaria supported Austria in the annexation, and, as was to have been
+expected, Serbia found protest impossible, since Russia, France, and
+England swallowed the affront to treaty obligations to which they were
+parties. It was Bulgaria's reward to have the support of the Triple
+Alliance in throwing off all fealty and tribute to the Sublime Porte.
+Prince Ferdinand became the Czar Ferdinand of Bulgaria.
+
+Nor was that the end of Bulgarian ambition. The "big" Bulgaria of the
+San Stefano treaty floated before the eyes of her rulers constantly, and
+she began to prepare for a war against Turkey, of which the prize
+should be Thrace and Macedonia. An obstacle in Macedonia was not only
+that the Turks were in occupation, but that the Greeks considered
+themselves entitled to the reversion of the estate. Rivalry between the
+three nations was responsible for the Macedonian horrors, which went on
+from year to year, and made one district of the Balkans a veritable hell
+on earth. These horrors have been set at the door of the "Unspeakable
+Turk." The Turk has quite enough to answer for in the many hideous
+crimes which he has undoubtedly committed. It is not quite just to hold
+him wholly responsible for the terrible state of Macedonia during the
+last few years. Greek and Bulgarian were alike interested in making it
+appear to the world that Turkish rule in Macedonia was impossible. To
+effect this they insisted that rapine and massacre should become normal.
+If the Turk did not wish for massacres he was stirred up to massacres.
+Christian pastors were not prevented by their Christian faith from
+murders of their own people, if it could be certain that the Turks would
+have the discredit of them. Side by side with the atrocities which were
+committed by Turks against Christians and Christians against Turks, the
+two sets of warring Christians, the Bulgarian Exarchates and the Greek
+Patriarchates, attacked one another with a fiendish relentlessness,
+which equalled the most able efforts of the Turks in the way of rape,
+murder, and robbery.
+
+In excuse for part of this, _i.e._ that part which stirred up the Turks
+to atrocities even when they wished to be peaceful, there could be
+pleaded the good object of striving for the end of all Turkish rule in
+Christian districts of the Balkans. The excuse will serve this far: that
+without a doubt a Christian community cannot be governed justly by the
+Turk, and the very strongest of steps are warranted to put an end to
+Turkish domination of a district largely inhabited by Christians. But no
+consideration, even that of exterminating Turkish rule, could justify
+all the Christian atrocities perpetrated in Macedonia: and there is
+certainly no shadow of an excuse for the atrocities with which Bulgarian
+sought to score against Greek and Greek against Bulgarian. The era of
+those atrocities has not yet closed. The Turk has been driven from
+Macedonia, but Greek and Bulgarian continue their feud. For the time the
+Greek is in the ascendant, whilst the Bulgarian broods over a revenge.
+
+[Illustration: BULGARIAN INFANTRY]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE WARS OF 1912-13
+
+
+By 1912, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro had contrived, in
+spite of any past quarrels, in spite of the mutual jealousies even then
+being displayed in the recurring Macedonian massacres, of Christians by
+Christians as well as by Turks, to arrive at a sufficient degree of
+unity to allow them to make war jointly on Turkey. Bulgaria and Serbia
+concluded an offensive and defensive alliance, arranging for all
+contingencies and providing for the division of the spoils which it was
+hoped to win from the Turks. Between Bulgaria and Greece there was no
+such definite alliance, but a military convention only. The division of
+the spoil after the war was left to future determination, both Greek and
+Bulgarian probably having it clearly in his head that he would have all
+his own way after the war or fight the issue out subsequently. A later
+Punch cartoon put this peculiarity of a Balkan alliance with pretty
+satire. Greece and Serbia were discussing what they should do with the
+spoils they were then winning from Bulgaria. "Of course we shall fight
+for them. Are we not allies?" said one of the partners.
+
+I was through the war of 1912 as war correspondent for the London
+_Morning Post_, and followed the fortunes of the main Bulgarian army in
+the Thracian campaign. In this book I do not intend to attempt a history
+of the war but will give some impressions of it which, whilst not
+neglecting any of the chief facts in any part of the theatre of
+operations, will naturally be mainly based on observations with the
+Bulgarians.
+
+First, with regard to the political side of the war, one could not but
+be struck by the exceedingly careful preparation that the Bulgarians had
+made for the struggle. It was no unexpected or sudden war. They had
+known for some time that war was inevitable, having made up their minds
+for a considerable time that the wrongs of their fellow-nationals in
+Macedonia and Thrace would have to be righted by force of arms. Attempts
+on the part of the Powers to enforce reforms in the Christian Provinces
+of Turkey had, in the opinion of the Bulgars, been absolute failures,
+and they had done their best to make them failures, wishing for a
+destroyed Turkey not a reformed Turkey. In their opinion there was
+nothing to hope for except armed intervention on their part against
+Turkey. And, believing that, they had made most careful preparation
+extending over several years for the struggle. That preparation was in
+every sense admirable. For instance, it had extended, so far as I could
+gather, from informants in Bulgaria, to this degree: that they formed
+military camps in winter for the training of their troops. Thus they did
+not train solely in the most favourable time of the year for manoeuvres,
+but in the unfavourable weather too, in case that time should prove the
+best for their war. The excellence of their artillery arm, and the proof
+of the scientific training of their officers, prove to what extent their
+training beforehand had gone.
+
+When war became inevitable, the Balkan League having been formed, and
+the time being ripe for the war, Bulgaria in particular, and the Balkan
+States in general, were quite determined that war should be. The Turks
+at this time were inclined to make reforms and concessions; they had an
+inclination to ease the pressure on their Christian subjects in the
+Christian provinces. Perhaps knowing--perhaps not knowing--that they
+were unready for war themselves, but feeling that the Balkan States were
+preparing for war, the Turks were undoubtedly willing to make great
+concessions. But whatever concessions the Turks might have offered, war
+would still have taken place. I do not think one need offer any harsh
+criticism about the Balkan nations for coming to that decision. If you
+have made your preparation for war--perhaps a very expensive
+preparation, perhaps a preparation which has involved very great
+commitments apart from expense--it is not reasonable to suppose that at
+the last moment you will consent to desist from making that war. The
+line which you may have been prepared to take before you made your
+preparations you may not be prepared to take after the preparations have
+been made. And, as the Turks found out afterwards, the terms which were
+offered to them before the outbreak of the war were not the same terms
+as would be listened to after that event.
+
+To a pro-Turk it all will seem a little unscrupulous. But it is after
+the true fashion of diplomacy or warlike enterprise. The simple position
+was that Turkey was obviously a decadent Power; that her territories
+were envied and that if there had not been a real grievance (there was a
+real grievance) one would have been manufactured to justify a war of
+spoliation. It not being necessary to manufacture a grievance, the
+existing one was carefully nursed and stimulated: and when the ripe time
+came for war the unreal pretext that war was the alternative to reform
+and could be avoided by reform was put forward. No reform would have
+stopped the war just as no "reform" would stop, say, San Marino
+attacking the British Empire if she wanted something which the British
+Empire has got and felt that she could get it by an attack.
+
+I do not think that the Balkan League would have withdrawn from the war
+supposing the Turks before the outbreak of the war had offered autonomy
+of the Christian provinces. I was informed in very high quarters, and I
+believe profoundly, that if the Turks had offered so much at that time
+the war would still have taken place.
+
+There is another interesting lesson to be gleaned from the political
+side of this war. At the outset, the Powers, when endeavouring to
+prevent hostilities, made an announcement that, whatever the result of
+the war, no territorial benefit would be allowed to any of the
+participants; that is to say, the Balkan States were informed, on the
+authority of all Europe, that if they did go to war, and if they won
+victories they would be allowed no fruits from those victories. The
+Balkan States recognised, as I think all sensible people must recognise,
+that a victorious army makes its own laws. They treated this _caveat_
+which was issued by the Powers of Europe as a matter to be politely set
+aside; and ignored it.
+
+Political experience seems to show that if a nation, under any
+circumstances, wishes its international rights to be respected, it must
+be ready to fight for them. There is proof from contemporary history in
+the respective fates of Switzerland and Korea. Both nations once stood
+in very much the same position internationally; that their independence
+was, in a sense, guaranteed. Korea's independence was guaranteed by both
+the United States and Great Britain. But the independence of Korea has
+now vanished. Korea could not fight for herself, and nobody was going to
+fight for a nation which could not fight for herself. The independence
+of Switzerland is maintained because Switzerland would be a very thorny
+problem for any Power in search of territory to tackle. In case of an
+attack on Switzerland, that country would be able to help herself and
+her friends.
+
+On the opposite side of the argument, we see the Balkan League entering
+upon a desperate war, warned that they would be allowed no territorial
+advantage from that war, but engaging upon it because they recognised
+that a victorious army makes its own laws.
+
+It was of wonderful value to the Bulgarian generals entering upon this
+war that the whole Bulgarian nation was filled with the martial
+spirit--was, in a sense, wrapped up in the colours. Every male Bulgarian
+citizen was trained to the use of arms. Every Bulgarian citizen of
+fighting age was engaged either at the front or on the lines of
+communication. Before the war, every Bulgarian man, being a soldier, was
+under a soldier's honour; and the preliminaries of the war, the
+preparations for mobilisation in particular, were carried out with a
+degree of secrecy that, I think, astonished every Court and every
+Military Department in Europe. The secret was so well kept that one of
+the diplomatists in Roumania left for a holiday three days before the
+declaration of war, feeling certain that there was to be no war.
+Bulgaria is not governed altogether autocratically, but is a very free
+democracy in some respects. It has a newspaper Press that, on ordinary
+matters, for delightful irresponsibility, might be matched in London.
+Yet not a single whisper of what the nation was designing and planning
+leaked abroad. Because the whole nation was a soldier, and the whole
+nation was under a soldier's honour, secrecy could be kept. No one
+abroad knew anything, either from the babbling of "Pro-Turks," or from
+the newspapers, that a great campaign was being designed.
+
+[Illustration: _Topical Press_
+
+BULGARIAN TROOPS LEAVING SOFIA]
+
+The Secret Service of Bulgaria before the war evidently had been
+excellent. They seemed to know all that was necessary to know about the
+country in which they were going to fight. This very complete knowledge
+of theirs was in part responsible for the arrangements which were made
+between the Balkan Allies for carrying on the war. The Bulgarian people
+had made up their minds to do the lion's share of the work, and to have
+the lion's share of the spoils. They knew quite definitely the state of
+corruption to which the Turkish nation had come. When I reached Sofia,
+the Bulgarians told me they were going to be in Constantinople three
+weeks after the declaration of war. That was the view that they took of
+the possibilities of the campaign. And they kept their programme as far
+as Chatalja fairly closely.
+
+The view of the Bulgarians as to the ultimate result of the war, and
+what they had designed should be the division of spoil after the war, I
+gathered from various classes in Bulgaria, speaking not only with
+politicians but with bankers, trading people, and others. They concluded
+that the Turk was going to be driven out of Europe, at any rate, as far
+as Constantinople. They considered that Constantinople was too great a
+prize for the Bulgarian nation, or for the Balkan States, and that
+Constantinople would be left as an international city, to be governed by
+a commission of the Great Powers. Bulgaria was, then, to have
+practically all Turkey-in-Europe--the province of Thrace, and a large
+part of Macedonia as far as the city of Salonica. Constantinople was to
+be left, with a small territory, as an international city, and the
+Bulgarian boundary was to stretch as far as Salonica. Salonica, they
+admitted, was desired very much by the Bulgarians, and also very much by
+the Greeks; and the Bulgarian idea in regard to Salonica before the war
+was that it would be best to make it a free Balkan city, governed by all
+the Balkan States in common, and a free port for all the Balkan States.
+Then the frontier of Greece was to extend very much to the north, and
+Greece was to be allowed all the Aegean Islands. The Serbian frontier
+was to extend to the eastward and the southward, and what is now the
+autonomous province of Albania (the creation of which has been insisted
+on by the Powers) was to be divided between Montenegro and Servia.
+
+That division would have left the Bulgarians with the greatest spoil of
+the war. They would have had entry on to the Sea of Marmora; they would
+have controlled, perhaps, one side of the Dardanelles (but I believe
+they thought that the Dardanelles might also be left to a commission of
+the Powers). It needed great confidence and exact knowledge as to the
+state of the Turkish Army to allow plans of that sort to have been not
+only formed, but to be generally talked about.
+
+It must be tragical now for a patriotic Bulgarian to compare these high
+anticipations with the actual results of the war, and to reflect that at
+one time he had three-fourths of his hopes secure and then sacrificed
+all by straining after the remainder.
+
+The Bulgarian mobilisation--effected after lengthy preparation with
+perfect success and complete secrecy--was a triumph of military
+achievement. It emphasises a point often urged, that when a whole nation
+is wrapt up in the colours, when every citizen is a soldier and taught
+the code of patriotic honour of the soldier--then at a time of crisis,
+spies, grumblers, critics are impossible. Bulgaria, as I have said, is
+very democratic. Unlike Roumania, where a landed aristocracy survived
+Turkish rule, the whole nation is of peasants or the sons and grandsons
+of peasants. The nobles, the wealthy, the intellectuals were
+exterminated by the Turk. Yet the strategy of the war suffered nothing
+from the democracy of the people. They acted with a unity, a secrecy,
+and a loyalty to the flag that no despotism could rival.
+
+The mobilisation was effected on very slender resources. Official
+statistics--perhaps for a reason--are silent regarding the growth of
+railway material since 1909. But in that year there were only 155
+locomotives in the country. As soon as war was anticipated these
+provident and determined people set to amassing railway material, and
+one railway official, without giving exact figures, talked of
+locomotives being added by "fifties" at a time. I doubt that. But
+perhaps there were between 200 and 225 locomotives in Bulgaria in
+October 1912, though one military attach� gave me the figure at 193. It
+was a slender stock, in any case, on which to move 350,000 men and to
+keep them in supplies. But the people contributed all their horses,
+mules, and oxen to the war fund. Soldiers were willing and able to walk
+great distances, and within a few days all the armies were over the
+frontier.
+
+The Bulgarians, by the way, began the war with a _moratorium_. (The week
+of the declaration of hostilities, meeting some personages notable in
+European finance, they ridiculed for this reason the idea of the war
+being anything but a dismal failure from the point of view of the Balkan
+States.) It was necessary to win in a hurry if they were to win at all.
+They could take the field only because of the magnificent spirit of
+their population. They could not keep the field indefinitely under any
+circumstances.
+
+The main line of communication was through Yamboli, and here the chief
+force was massed whilst exploratory work was carried on towards
+Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse. I believe that originally the capture of
+Adrianople was the first grand object of the campaign, and that a
+modification was made later either for political or military reasons, or
+for a mixture of both. Up to the point at which Adrianople was invested
+from the north, Kirk Kilisse captured, and the cavalry sent raiding
+south-west to attack the Turk's lines of communication and to feel for
+his field army, an excellent plan of campaign was followed. If the main
+Bulgarian army had then swung over from Kirk Kilisse and had made a
+resolute--and, under the circumstances, almost certainly
+victorious--effort to rush Adrianople the natural course, from a
+military point of view, would have been followed. The one risk involved
+was that the Turkish field army would come up from the south and force a
+battle under the walls of Adrianople, aided by a sortie from the
+garrison. But the experience of Kirk Kilisse and the following battles
+argued against this. There would have been, one may judge, ample time
+allowed to subdue Adrianople with an army flushed by its success at Kirk
+Kilisse, operating against a garrison thoroughly despondent at the
+moment.
+
+Kirk Kilisse, it must be noted in passing, was a vastly overrated
+fortress. The Turks, I believe, valued it highly. The Bulgarians
+triumphantly quoted a German opinion that it could withstand a German
+army for three months. As a matter of fact, whilst it was a valuable
+base for an enterprising field army, surrounded as it was by natural
+features of great strength, it was not a real fortress at all. Still,
+the moral effect of its capture was great, and on the flood of that
+success the Bulgarian army could have entered Adrianople if it had been
+willing to make the necessary great sacrifice of infantry.
+
+A second sound--and more enterprising, and therefore probably better
+course--was that which I thought at the time was being followed, to
+pursue the Turks fleeing from Kirk Kilisse, to search out their field
+army, give it a thrashing, and then swing back to subdue Adrianople. But
+neither of these courses was followed. Kirk Kilisse was not followed up
+vigorously in the first instance. After its capture the Bulgarian army
+rested three days. During that time the fleeing Turks had won back some
+of their courage, had come back in their tracks, recovered many of the
+guns they had abandoned, and the battles of Ivankeui and Yanina--battles
+in which the Bulgarian losses were very heavy--were necessary to do over
+again work which had been already once accomplished. This criticism must
+be read in the light of the fact that I am totally ignorant of the
+transport position in the Bulgarian Third Army at the time. General
+Demetrieff had made a wonderful dash over the wild country between
+Yamboli and Kirk Kilisse, carrying an army over a track which took a
+military attach� six days to traverse on horseback, and a hospital train
+seven days to traverse by ox wagon. He might at the time have been
+seriously short of ammunition, though Kirk Kilisse renewed his food and
+forage supplies.
+
+After three days the Bulgarians moved on. Ivankeui and Yanina were won,
+and the pursuit continued until Lule Burgas, where the Turkish army in
+the field was decisively defeated and driven with great slaughter
+towards Chorlu, where its second stand was expected. That expectation
+was not realised. The flight continued to Chatalja. This was the
+turning-point of the campaign. Up to now the Bulgarian success had been
+complete. If now Adrianople had been made the main objective, with a
+small "holding" force left at Chorlu, the entry into Constantinople
+would possibly have been realised. But the decision was made to "mask"
+Adrianople and to push on with all available force towards
+Constantinople.
+
+In considering this decision it is easy to be misled by giving
+Adrianople merely the value of a fortress in the rear, holding a
+garrison capable of some offensive, necessitating the detachment of a
+large holding force. But that was not the position. Actually Adrianople
+straddled the only practical line of communication for effective
+operations against the enemy's capital. The railway from Bulgaria to
+Constantinople passed through Adrianople. Excepting that line of
+railway, there was no other railroad, and there was no other carriage
+road, one might say, for the Turk did not build roads. Once across the
+Turkish frontier there were tracks, not roads.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL DEMETRIEFF, THE CONQUEROR AT LULE BURGAS]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+ADRIANOPLE
+
+A general view, showing the Mosque of Sultan Selim on the left and the
+Old Mosque on the right]
+
+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 na�ve, 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.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+ROUMANIAN SOLDIERS IN BUCHAREST]
+
+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 _attach�s_ 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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+ADRIANOPLE
+
+View looking across the Great Bridge]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+GENERAL VIEW OF STARA ZAGORA, BULGARIA]
+
+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 _r�clame_. 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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+SOFIA
+
+Commercial Road from Commercial Square]
+
+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 attach�s were in
+exactly the same position.
+
+There were the Austrian attach� and the Roumanian attach�, 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
+attach� to see anything of what went on. The attach�s 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
+attach�s 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 attach� 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 attach�s 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."
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+BUCHAREST
+
+The Roumanian House of Representatives]
+
+It was a beautiful story, and why should any one let loose a brutal
+bulldog of a fact and point out that King Ferdinand during the
+campaign lived in temporary palaces at Stara Zagora and Kirk Kilisse,
+and when he travelled on a visit to some point near the front it was
+usually by motor-car?
+
+In a paper of another nationality there was a vivid story of the battle
+of Chatalja. This story started the battle 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-Pest, 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 battle-field, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The Mustapha Pasha censorship would not allow ox wagons, reservists, or
+Serbians 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.
+
+Here is 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 stand-still, 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 battle-fields), liable to
+ravage by roving bands.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL SAVOFF]
+
+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.
+
+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 Chorlu. There a friendly artillery officer helped me to
+get a cart (springless) and two fast horses. He insisted also on giving
+me a patrol, a single Bulgarian soldier, with 200 rounds of ammunition,
+as Bashi-Bazouks were ranging the country.
+
+It was an unnecessary precaution, though the presence of the soldier was
+comforting as we entered Silviri 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
+Silviri 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. The Commander,
+an artillery officer, welcomed me to a little mess which the Bulgarian
+officers and non-commissioned officers (six in all) had set up in a
+clean room of a village house. We had dinner, "Turkish fashion,"
+squatting round a dish of stewed goat and rice, and then smoked
+excellent cigarettes through the evening hours as we looked out on the
+Chatalja lines.
+
+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."
+
+Now there had been "good copy" in the journey. At Arjenli I happened to
+be the witness of a vivid dramatic scene (more stirring than any battle
+incident). It was a splendid incident, showing the high courage and
+_moral_ of these peasant soldiers at an anxious time. To have witnessed
+it, participated in it, was personal reward sufficient for a week of
+toil and anxiety. To my paper, too, the reader might say, it was of some
+value, if properly told and given to the London reader the next morning,
+the day before the battle of Chatalja.
+
+Yes. But it was the next afternoon before I could get to a telegraph
+office within the Bulgarian lines. Then the censor said any long message
+was hopeless. I was allowed to send a bare 100 words. They reached
+London eight days later, a week after the battle had been fought, when
+London was interested no longer in anything but the armistice
+negotiations. The reason was that the single telegraph line was
+monopolised for military business. My account of the battle of Chatalja
+reached London a full fortnight after the event, though I had the
+advantage of the highest influence to expedite the message.
+
+Thus from a daily-newspaper point of view all the expense, toil, danger
+were wasted.
+
+Summing up, an accurate and prompt Press service as war correspondent
+with the Bulgarian army was impossible, because--
+
+1. The Bulgarian authorities were keen that correspondents should see
+nothing.
+
+2. A rigid first censorship checked a full record of what little was
+seen.
+
+3. The first censorship being passed, despatches often had still to pass
+a second censorship at Staff headquarters, a third censorship at Sofia.
+
+4. Despatches passing through Roumania underwent another censorship
+there, and yet another in Austria, possibly yet others in other European
+countries.
+
+5. In addition to these censorship delays the Bulgarian authorities made
+newspaper messages yield precedence to military messages, and at the
+front this meant that Press messages were sent on by mail (ox transport
+most of the way) to the Staff headquarters or the capital.
+
+6. In the meanwhile the imaginative accounts written nearer Fleet Street
+had been published, and the accurate news was "dead" from a point of
+public interest.
+
+Most of these conditions will rule over all future wars. Therefore I
+conclude that the day of the war correspondent--in the sense of a
+truthful observer of a campaign--has gone, and he died with the Balkan
+War. He can only survive if newspapers are willing to incur the very
+great expense of sending out war correspondents not for the news, day by
+day, but for what observation and criticism they could supply after the
+campaign was over. To a daily newspaper such matter is almost valueless,
+especially as during the progress of the campaign the correspondents of
+the "new" school would be at work with their many inventions, raising
+the hair of the public and the circulation of their journals with bright
+feats of imagination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+JOTTINGS FROM MY BALKAN TRAVEL BOOK
+
+
+These observations I will quote from my diary during 1912 in
+illustration of phases of Balkan character, dating them at the time and
+place that they were made.
+
+Belgrade, _October 21_.--The declaration of war has not set the Serbians
+singing in the streets. In the chief caf� there is displayed a great war
+map. Young soldiers not yet sent to the front lounge about in all the
+caf�s and are lionised by the older men. They are the only signs of war.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+BULGARIAN INFANTRY]
+
+The patriotic Serbian illustrates his case against the Turk by taking
+you for a ramble around his capital. The old Turkish quarters of the
+town are made up of narrow unpaved muddy lanes lined with low hovels.
+The modern Serbian town has handsome buildings markedly Russian in
+architecture, electric trams, and wood-blocked pavements. Near the
+railway station one side of a street is as the Turks left it and shows a
+row of hovels: the other side is occupied by a great school. The shops,
+because it is war-time and business is largely suspended, are mostly
+closed. But a few remain open with reduced staffs. The goods displayed
+are as a rule woefully expensive when they are not of local origin.
+Landlocked Serbia, surrounded by commercially hostile countries, finds
+imports expensive. British goods are very much favoured, but are hard to
+obtain.
+
+The Serbians speak bitterly of the efforts of Austria "to strangle them
+commercially." "Whenever they wish to put diplomatic pressure upon us,"
+said one Serbian to me, "they discover that swine fever has broken out
+in our country and stop our exports of pigs and bacon--our chief lines
+of export. What can we do? Once, in retaliation, we found that we
+suspected a consignment of Austrian linen goods of carrying swine fever
+and stopped it on the frontier. It almost caused war."
+
+Nish (Serbia), _October 22_.--A military train carrying some members of
+the army and Staff has brought also a band of war correspondents this
+far. We were a merry but rather a hungry lot. The train has been sixteen
+hours on the journey, and as we started at 6 a.m. most of us did not
+bring any stores of food except such as were packed away and
+inaccessible in the big baggage. The wayside refreshment rooms are swept
+clean of all food. Finally we manage to obtain some bread, and five
+hungry correspondents in one carriage eat at it without enthusiasm,
+whilst in a corner sits a Serbian officer having a good meal of sausage
+and onions and bread. We make remarks, a little envious, a little
+jocose, in English, on his selfishness. "He is a greedy pig, anyhow,"
+said one, putting the final cap on our grumbles. The Serbian officer had
+not betrayed by a smile or a frown that he understood but now in good
+English he remarked: "Perhaps you gentlemen will be so kind as to share
+this with me." We all laughed and he laughed then: and we took a little
+of the sausage, and liked that Serbian rather well: and no reference was
+made to what had gone before. At nightfall we stop at Nish and all my
+Press comrades leave the train to go on in the rear of the Serbian army.
+I push on to Sofia. Clearly these Balkan peoples are not quite so
+savage as I had thought once.
+
+Sofia, _October 24_.--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 has gone to fight who could fight.
+But further, every family has 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 a law 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 has not had 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--those goods which were obtained in this way
+totalled in value some six million pounds. That represented the surplus
+goods, beyond those necessary for consumption by the Bulgarian people,
+at the outset of the war. The numbers of the Bulgarian people represent
+half the population of London. The peasant population is very 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. I am told that the gold supply in the
+Bulgarian Treasury at the declaration of war was only three million
+pounds. So that there was an army of 350,000 men put into the field, and
+only three million pounds as the gold supply.
+
+Kirk Kilisse, _November 7_.--The extraordinary simplicity of the
+commissariat has helped the Bulgarian generals a great deal. The men
+have had bread and cheese, sometimes even bread alone; and that was
+accounted a satisfactory ration. When meat and other things could be
+obtained, they were obtained; but there were long periods when the
+Bulgarian soldier had nothing but bread and water. The water,
+unfortunately, he took wherever he could get it, by the side of the
+route at any stream he could find. There was no attempt to ensure a pure
+water supply for the army. I do not think that, without that simplicity
+of commissariat, it would have been possible for the Bulgarian forces to
+have got as far as they did. There was an entire absence of tinned
+foods. As I travelled in the trail of the Bulgarian army, I found it
+impossible to imagine that an army had passed that way, because there
+was none of the litter which is usually left by an army. It was not that
+they cleared away their rubbish with them; it simply did not exist.
+Their bread and cheese seems to be a good fighting diet.
+
+Seleniki, _November 13_.--The transport was, naturally, the great
+problem which faced the generals. I have seen here (Seleniki, which is
+the point at which the rail-head is), within 30 miles of Constantinople
+as the crow flies, ox wagons which have come from the Shipka Pass in the
+north of Bulgaria. I asked one driver how long it had been on the road;
+he told me three weeks. He was carrying food down to the front. The way
+the ox wagons were used for transport was a marvel of organisation. A
+transport officer at Mustapha Pasha, with whom I became very friendly,
+was lyrical in his praise of the ox wagon. It was, he said, the only
+thing that stuck to him during the war. The railway got choked, and even
+the horse failed, but the ox never failed. There were thousands of ox
+wagons crawling across the country. They do not walk, they crawl, like
+an insect, with an irresistible crawl. It reminds you of those armies of
+soldier ants which move across Africa, eating everything which they come
+across, and stopping at nothing. I had an ox wagon coming from Mustapha
+Pasha to Kirk Kilisse, and we went over the hills and down through the
+valleys, and stopped for nothing--we never had to unload once. And one
+could sleep in those ox wagons. There is no jolting and pulling at the
+traces, such as you get with a harnessed horse. The ox wagon moved
+slowly; but it always moved. If the ox transport had not been as
+perfectly organised, and if the oxen had not been as patiently enduring
+as they proved to be, the Bulgarian army must have perished by
+starvation. 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.
+
+But after Lule Burgas, the ox transport has had to do the impossible. It
+is impossible for it to maintain the food and the ammunition supply of
+the army at the front, which I suppose must number 250,000 to 300,000
+men. That army has 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.
+
+Arjenli (Turkey), _November 15, 1912_.--It is Friday, and we expect
+to-morrow the Battle of Chatalja. In the little Turkish village of
+Arjenli, situated on a high hill a little to the rear of the Bulgarian
+lines, is the ammunition park of the artillery, guarded by a small body
+of troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Tchobanoff. Coming towards the front
+from Chorlu, the fall of night and the weariness of my horses have
+compelled me to halt at Arjenli, and this officer and Dr. Neytchef give
+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 has 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. But there was in the nation one good Socialist
+who knew that war was an evil thing, and that it was better to sit
+down meekly under tyranny than to take up arms.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+OX TRANSPORT IN THE BALKANS]
+
+I followed in the track of the victorious Third Army as it came down
+through the border mountains on to Kirk Kilisse, then to Lule Burgas,
+then past Chorlu to the Chatalja lines. At Arjenli I had overtaken them
+in time to see the final battle, and now sat looking out on the
+entrenched armies, talking over the position with a serene and cheerful
+artillery officer. The past week had been one of hardship and horrors.
+From Chorlu the road was lined with the bodies of the Turkish dead,
+still awaiting burial. Entering the Bulgarian lines on their right flank
+that morning, I had tried in vain to succour a soldier dying of the
+choleraic dysentery which had begun its ravages. But here in the middle
+of the battle line the atmosphere of noble confidence is inspiriting.
+The horrors of war vanish; only its glory shows. The men around me feel
+that they are engaged in a just war. They know that everything that man
+can do has been done. Proudly, cheerfully, they await the issue.
+
+During the evening, a Turk suspected of being a spy is brought in for
+trial. He had attempted to rush past one of the sentries guarding the
+ammunition wagons. He is given a patient hearing, is able to establish
+his innocence, and is allowed to go. There is no feeling of panic or
+injustice among these Bulgarians. I see the trial and its end (having
+been asked to act as friend of the accused).
+
+It is to-day forty days since the mobilisation. At the call this trained
+nation was in arms in a day. The citizen soldiers hurried to the depots
+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 depot 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 depot 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, early in November, 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.
+
+Later, 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 battle-fields. 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.
+There was no daunting these trained patriots.
+
+These and a score of other pictures pass through my mind and explain
+Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas, and give confidence for the battle to
+come. Here was a people ranged for battle with the steady nerves and the
+stolid courage that come from tilling the soil, with the skill and the
+discipline that come from adequate training, with the fervent faith of a
+great patriotism. I have talked with Turkish prisoners and found
+infantrymen who had been sent to the front after two days' training,
+gunners who had been drafted into a battery after ten days' drill. Such
+soldiers can only march to defeat.
+
+[Illustration: A BALKAN PEASANT WOMAN]
+
+Ermenikioi (Headquarters of the Third Bulgarian Army), _November 17
+(Sunday)_.--The Battle of Chatalja has been opened. To-day, General
+Demetrieff rode out with his Staff to the battle-field whilst the bells
+of a Christian church in this little village rang. The day was spent
+in artillery reconnaissance, the Bulgarian guns searching the Turkish
+entrenchments to discover their real strength. Only once during the day
+was the infantry employed; and then it was rather to take the place of
+artillery than to complete work begun by artillery. It seems to me that
+the Bulgarian forces have not enough big gun ammunition at the front.
+They are ten days from their base, and shells must come up by ox wagon
+the greater part of the way.
+
+Ermenikioi, _November 18_.--This was a wild day on the Chatalja hills.
+Driving rain and mist swept over from the Black Sea, and at times
+obscured all the valley across which the battle raged. With but slight
+support from the artillery, the Bulgarian infantry was sent again and
+again up to the Turkish entrenchments. Once a fort was taken but had to
+be abandoned again. The result of the day's fighting is indecisive. The
+Bulgarian forces have driven in the Turkish right flank a little, but
+have effected nothing against the central positions which bar the road
+to Constantinople. It is clear that the artillery is not well enough
+supplied with ammunition. There is a sprinkle of shells when there
+should be a flood. Gallant as is the infantry, it cannot win much
+ground faced by conditions such as the Light Brigade met at Balaclava.
+
+Ermenikioi, _November 19_.--Operations have been suspended. Yesterday's
+cold and bitter weather has fanned to an epidemic the choleraic
+dysentery which had been creeping through the trenches. The casualties
+in the fighting had been heavy. "But for every wounded man who comes to
+the hospitals," Colonel Jostoff, the Chief of the Staff, tells me,
+"there are ten who say 'I am ill.'" The Bulgarians recognise bitterly
+that in their otherwise fine organisation there has been one flaw, the
+medical service. Among this nation of peasant proprietors--sturdy,
+abstemious, moral, living in the main on whole-meal bread and
+water--illness was so rare that the medical service was but little
+regarded. Up to Chatalja confidence in the rude health of the peasants
+was justified. They passed through cold, hunger, fatigue, and kept
+healthy. But ignorant of sanitary discipline, camped among the filthy
+Turkish villages, the choleraic dysentery passed from the Turkish
+trenches to theirs. There are 30,000 cases of illness, and the healthy
+for the first time feel fear as they see the torments of the sick. The
+Bulgarians recognise that there must be a pause in the fighting whilst
+the hospital and sanitary service is reorganised.
+
+Kirk Kilisse, _December 1_.--It seems certain now that peace must be
+declared, and that the dream of driving the Turk right out of Europe
+must be abandoned. These peasant peoples of the Balkans have done
+wonderful things, but they have stumbled on one point--the want of
+knowledge of sanitary science. I have seen only one attempt at a clean
+camp since I have been in the field, and that was a Serbian camp, north
+of Adrianople.
+
+With the Bulgarian army there was not, at any stage of the campaign up
+to the Battle of Chatalja--that is, until after the outbreak of
+cholera--any precaution, to my knowledge, taken to secure a clean water
+supply, or clean camping-grounds, or to take the most elementary
+precautions against the outbreak of disease in the army. The medical
+service was almost as bad. I have seen much of the hospital work at Kirk
+Kilisse after the armistice; and it has been deplorable to see the fine
+fellows whose lives were sacrificed, or whose limbs were sacrificed,
+through neglect of medical knowledge. I am sure the Bulgarians would
+have saved many hundreds of lives if there had been anything like a
+proper medical service at the front.
+
+At Chatalja the chief reason given for the stoppage of operations was
+the ravages of disease in the Bulgarian lines. The illness was of a
+choleraic type; it had, as usual, a profound moral as well as physical
+effect. The courage of the men broke down before this visitation. The
+victims howled with pain and terror, though the same men would withstand
+serious wounds without a complaint or a wincing.
+
+The Turks are blamed for the outbreak in the Bulgarian lines. It is more
+than probable that their villages, inexpressibly filthy; the prisoners
+taken from their ranks; the infection of the soil abandoned by them,
+were contributing causes.
+
+[Illustration: A BAGPIPER]
+
+But it must be stated frankly that the almost complete absence of any
+sanitary discipline or precaution in the Bulgarian lines at this place
+earned for them all the diseases that afflict mankind. So far as I can
+ascertain after careful investigation, there were no sanitary police; no
+attempts to secure and safeguard a pure water supply; no latrine
+regulations. I have seen the Bulgarian soldiers drinking from streams
+running through battle-fields, though a few feet away were swollen
+carcases. I have seen no attempt in the field at a proper latrine
+service. Some hundreds of thousands of peasant soldiers, accustomed to
+the simplest life on their own farms, were collected together and left
+practically without sanitary discipline. The details can be filled in
+without my setting them forth in print. There is one fact, however, to
+be recorded of a pleasant character. In all investigations of the
+hospital services I never found a case of any malady arising from vice.
+There was also a complete absence of drunkenness. This might be ascribed
+to the want of means to obtain alcohol. But in Turkey there was an
+abundance of wines and spirits, and some beer in the captured villages
+and towns; it led, however, to no orgies.
+
+Naturally, the Bulgarian peasant is wonderfully healthy. His food is
+rough whole-meal bread and cheese; his occasional luxuries, a dish of
+the sour milk which is so well known in London, a little alcohol on
+Sunday, some sweet stuff, and, rarely, grilled meat or meat soup with
+vegetables. It is possible to judge that his alimentary tract differs
+widely from that of the Western European. I should say he was almost
+immune from enteric, unless attacked by a very virulent infection. He
+can live on bread and water alone without serious inconvenience for
+lengthy periods. His blood is very pure, and ordinarily heals in a way
+that astonished the British surgeons.
+
+Here, then, was the best of material from an army medical point of view.
+Given the roughest food, the simplest sanitary precautions, and
+ordinarily good field dressing, and the army would have marched without
+disease and the wounded would have dropped out of the firing line for a
+few days only. But there were no sanitary precautions; hence disease.
+The hospital service as regards the first aid in the field was pitiably
+deficient; hence serious and unnecessary losses of wounded. Without
+seeking to pile up a record of horrors, I cite a few individual
+instances to illustrate bad methods. At the front, punctured bayonet
+wounds were closely bandaged--in some cases stitched up--without
+provision for irrigation, without even proper cleansing. This led to
+gangrene and often caused the sacrifice of a life or of a limb (which,
+to these peasants, was almost as great a loss as that of life: their
+feeling against amputations was very strong, and if they understood
+that amputation was intended, they sometimes begged to be "killed
+instead"). Bullet wounds also were often plugged up on the field. When
+proper treatment was at last available, it was sometimes too late to
+avoid death or amputation. No treatment at all on the field would have
+been preferable to this well-intentioned but shocking ignorance.
+
+Of the purely Bulgarian hospitals those at Kirk Kilisse are very
+deficient: at Philippopolis, however, there were excellent Bulgarian
+hospitals, and also at Sofia. The Russian hospital at Kirk Kilisse is
+very good. The British Red Cross Hospital, under Major E. T. F. Birrell,
+of the R.A.M.C., is excellently organised, has the fullest possible
+equipment, and tries to specialise in serious cases. It is subjected
+locally (as is the Russian hospital) to the criticism that by insisting
+on perfection of system it unduly restricts its salvage work: that, in
+short, it could deal with far more patients if it consented to more
+"rough-and-ready" methods. I record this criticism, and acknowledge that
+it is based on facts. Yet it may be urged on the other side that it was
+ultimately far more useful to have a model hospital to show how things
+should be done than to sacrifice that valuable lesson for the sake of
+striving to cope in rough-and-ready fashion with the flood of wounded.
+This hospital gives interesting proof that Great Britain is an Empire,
+not an island nation. I first encountered three of its doctors in a
+caf�. One was from the Mother Country, one from the West Indies, one an
+Australian friend, who set at once to talking of gum trees and of
+Melbourne University. Then a non-commissioned officer attached to the
+hospital--most of its Staff are army men--is a Canadian, who had had war
+experience in South Africa. His comments on the Bulgarian wounded are
+full of sympathy. "These chaps," he said, "take their gruel better even
+than the Tommies. The Tommy takes his all right, but he 'grouses' about
+it. These chaps never grumble. One of them had to have a very painful
+dressing. He winced a little. A comrade at once laughed at him. 'Ah,' he
+said, 'you learn new kinds of dancing here.'" Nurses endorse this
+evidence about the Bulgarian soldiers' patience, though one stated that
+she found the officers sometimes to be rather neurasthenic.
+
+On the whole, the Bulgarian army is not strong on science. In spade
+work it was not good. I saw no perfect trenches--never a drained trench.
+Undrained trenches caused some increase of mortality and of sickness. It
+is uncomfortable to stay for days, or even hours, in a trench which the
+rain has partly filled with water. In no case that I saw were there
+trenches with overhead protection against howitzer fire. Except at the
+Chatalja lines and around Adrianople the trenches were, of course,
+intended to be of a very temporary use, and would naturally not be
+elaborate. Gun-pits and emplacements were usually fairly good. It was
+the custom to dig a pit, or to put up a little sod wall for the
+gun-limber (most of the artillery work was from concealed and prepared
+positions). At Chatalja the trenches were masked with the stalks of the
+Turkish tobacco plants--about the only instance I saw of masking. It was
+rare to see a trench zigzagged as a precaution against enfilading fire.
+The Turkish trenches I saw were hopelessly bad.
+
+Sofia, _December 6, 1912_.--Sofia, in spite of the great victories which
+have been won, is neither joyous nor contented. The failure of the siege
+of Adrianople seems to rest heavy upon the people: and there are gloomy
+stories of the extent of the losses of the nation's manhood. So far no
+lists of killed and wounded have been published. "The Mass at St.
+Sofia," which was the battle-cry of the first days of the war, is
+clearly not a possibility now. Some mystery attaches to the movements of
+the king. It is said that he had made a vow that he would not return to
+Sofia until a victorious peace was signed. The embittered relations with
+the Greeks, the signs of disagreement with the Serbians, suggest gloomy
+possibilities of future troubles.
+
+Belgrade, _December 8, 1912_.--With the exception of the army before
+Adrianople, the Serbians have finished their share of the war with
+Turkey. Belgrade is satisfied, but not over-elated. Across the Danube, a
+broad gloomy waste of dun waters under the winter mists, a division of
+the Austrian army is mobilised. There is a fear, almost an expectation,
+that Austria will make war. But there seems neither panic nor war-fever
+in the city.
+
+Business is creeping back to the normal state. At the Ministry for War
+there are to be seen pathetic scenes as parents and other relatives seek
+tidings of the soldiers. An old father, himself a captain of reserves,
+hears that his only son, a lieutenant, has been killed, and bursts into
+tears and tells to all around his sorrow. But generally tragic news is
+received stoically. Amid the congratulations on the results of the
+Allies' efforts there is an under-current of resolution to make a better
+bargain with Bulgaria than the _ante bellum_ partition treaty proposed.
+Reports of envious and rude treatment of the Serbian army before
+Adrianople are current in the street: and there is some talk of
+recalling the men. This is the irresponsible talk of men in the street
+only: the authorities are very correct in their attitude towards "our
+friend and ally," and express themselves as confident that Bulgaria of
+her own volition will suggest better terms for her partner in the war.
+
+A Serbian politician, who patiently endures my bad French or makes a
+brave effort to talk in English, a tongue which he is learning to speak
+and can read quite well, politely excuses the English for being such bad
+linguists. "For you English who have all the poetry, all the romance,
+all the science, all the philosophy a man may want in your own language,
+it is not necessary to learn any other. For us in the Balkans, we must
+learn other languages or remain ignorant of much that goes on in the
+world."
+
+In truth the Balkan peoples are astonishing linguists. It is not at all
+a rare thing to find that a man can speak Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek,
+Turkish, and French. Often he adds either English or German to this
+list. Bulgarian and Serbian, of course, are but differing dialects of
+Russian--a Russian can make himself understood in both tongues though he
+knows only Russian. But the grammar of one differs from that of the
+other, and many of the words are different. The Balkan people who know
+Turkish know it usually in its colloquial and spoken form and not the
+literary language, which is very difficult to understand thoroughly
+because it is really a blending of three languages.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+SOME SERBIAN PEASANTS]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE PICTURESQUE BALKANS
+
+
+It is difficult to dissociate the Balkans with bloodshed and disorder.
+Insensibly the mind is tempted at every turn to direct attention to the
+last battle or the future campaign which can be seen threatening. But if
+the storm-racked peninsula could be granted a term of peaceful
+development, there is no doubt at all but that it would be much favoured
+by voyagers seeking picturesque beauty and wishing to go over the fields
+which have been the scenes of some of the greatest events in history.
+Mountain resorts to rival those of Switzerland, spas to match those of
+Germany and Austria, autumn and winter seaside beaches of great beauty
+and fine sunny climate--all these exist in the Balkan Peninsula, and
+need only to be known, and to be known as peaceful, to attract
+tourists.
+
+The Adriatic coast has charms of rugged coast-lines and bright waters;
+the Black Sea littoral, though flat and sandy, has a warm sunny summer
+or autumn climate; the Aegean is a sea of brilliant purples and rosy
+mists, in which air, rock, and water mingle to greet the eye with a
+great opal jewel. A November sunset on the Sea of Marmora gave to my
+eyes such a feast of suffused colour as I had not seen since I left the
+shores of the southern Pacific. The rocky hills had the rich red of the
+Jersey cliffs, but the sea and sky were incomparably warmer and deeper
+in tone. Across the sea the shores of distant Asia shone dimly through
+two veils of mist, one of the tenderest rose, the other of the palest
+gold. The greater part of the Greek coast has the same deliciousness of
+colour in autumn and in summer.
+
+A few travellers bolder than the ordinary search out nowadays the shores
+of the Adriatic, the beautiful coast of Greece, and even the margin of
+the Sea of Marmora in quest of beauty and relief from the tedium of
+civilisation. But they must face poor means of communication (though to
+Constantinople and to Trieste there is an excellent train service) and
+scanty accommodation of any kind--almost none of good quality. Within a
+very few years, if the Balkans could settle down to peace and the
+legalised plunder of foreign visitors--a pursuit which is as profitable
+as brigandage and far more comfortable,--the seaside resorts that would
+spring up within Balkan territories would of themselves provide a
+handsome revenue. The shores of the Aegean and of the Sea of Marmora in
+particular would attract tourists wearied of the air of hackneyed
+sameness which comes after a while to pervade seaside haunts in Italy
+and France.
+
+From another attraction the Balkan States could hope for a great tourist
+traffic. I have caught but fleeting glimpses of the Balkan range and of
+the Rhodopes and the Serbian mountains, but have seen enough to know
+that they offer boundless delights to the climber, to the seeker after
+winter sports, and to the lover of the picturesque; and the Swiss Alps
+in these days are overcrowded, and the Tyrolean mountains and the
+Carpathians begin to receive a big overflow of people who have a taste
+for heights that are not covered with hotels and funicular railways. But
+the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula offer prospects, I believe, of
+greater beauty, certainly of greater wildness, than any other ranges of
+Europe. Of the Rhodope mountains, in particular, one gets the most
+alluring accounts from the rare travellers who have explored them. Seen
+by the passing voyager as they stand guard with their farthest spurs
+over Philippopolis, they suggest that no account of their charm could be
+too glowing. I have promised myself one autumn or summer a month in this
+range, exploring its flower-filled valleys and its wild cliffs, shining
+through an air which seems now of rose and now of violet.
+
+For winter sports the Serbian, Montenegrin, and Albanian mountains, as
+well as the chief Balkan range, promise well. I believe that it was part
+of the plan of Bulgarian reorganisation after the war, which King
+Ferdinand had in his mind, to set up great winter hotels in the
+mountains of his kingdom. The other Balkan States could with advantage
+give hospitality to similar plans. Provided that security is
+assured--and the Balkan peasant is in my experience the
+gentlest-mannered kind who ever cut throats in a wholesale way at the
+call of a mischief-maker--visitors to the mountains of the Balkan
+Peninsula would find the wildness, the uncouthness of the surrounding
+national life, very attractive. The picturesque national costumes, the
+national music, wild and uncanny, the strange national dances, all add
+to the fascination of the savage scenery. In an age when a fog of dreary
+sameness comes over all the civilised world, the Balkans have a great
+asset in their primitivism. Theirs is not a wholly European
+civilisation; indeed, except in the capital cities, it is not chiefly a
+European civilisation. Everywhere there is a touch of the mystery, the
+fatalism, the desert-bred wildness of the Asiatic steppes. For centuries
+the hand of the Turk has been heavy on the land, and a strong stream of
+his blood courses still through the veins of most of the Balkan peoples.
+It is not the East this Balkan Peninsula, but it is not the West, nor
+will be for some generations.
+
+There is yet another possible means of attracting great streams of
+visitors to the Balkan regions. Throughout the mountains there are
+numberless medicinal springs. In Serbia and Bulgaria the water of two
+springs is being exploited for table use, and in Bulgaria the warm
+medicinal springs are being developed for bathing resorts. At Sofia
+there are now in course of erection great public baths which will be
+equal to any in Europe when they are completed. In the mountains above
+Sofia warm springs are being utilised, and quite a large spa village has
+grown up. King Ferdinand, who has a fine commercial instinct whatever
+the failures of his war diplomacy, has done good service to his kingdom
+by developing its baths and springs.
+
+The plain country of the Balkan Peninsula is but little attractive.
+Under the Turkish rule nearly all plantations of trees were destroyed,
+and a general air of desolation was maintained. Since the Turk left,
+cultivation and development have been on strictly utilitarian lines, and
+there has been little chance for gardens or woods. The eye of the
+voyager misses them, and misses also the sight of castles, churches, or
+great buildings. The dreariness of the plain is unrelieved by forests.
+The rivers flow sullenly along without a bordering of trees. The
+Thracian plain--the greater part of which has now gone back to Turkey
+and thus lost hope of a redemption of its really fertile soil--is in
+particular desolate and forbidding. But even there, and more frequently
+in the plain country of Bulgaria and Serbia, there is now and again a
+charming village in some dell with adornment of trees and gardens. The
+average village, however, is a collection of hovels, their roofs lying
+so close to the ground that they seem to be rather burrows than huts,
+their aspect suggesting that they are hiding themselves and their
+inhabitants from the eye of a possible ravager.
+
+Desolate as this plain country is, it has its attractions at dawn and
+sunset in the clear colourfull air of the Balkan Peninsula; and where
+the hill slopes, denuded of their forests, have been covered over by a
+dense oak scrub the autumn aspect of the plain at sunset is incomparably
+lovely. The scrub, when the first of the autumn frosts come, blazes out
+in such scarlet and gold as cannot be imagined in the moist and soft
+climate of England. With the setting of the sun and the coming of the
+violet night the earth's carpet seems to be here smouldering, there
+burning, a sea of lambent fire so bright that you look to see its
+burgeoning reflected in the sky.
+
+I should advise the tourist wishing to see the Balkan Peninsula at its
+best to choose the fall of the year for a visit. In the summer there is
+great heat and dust and plague of flies. In the winter travel is
+impossible with any comfort except along the railway lines, and the
+whole Peninsula is frost-bound. The spring is a beautiful season at its
+later end, but not at the time of the thaw.
+
+As to the route for a voyage there are several alternatives. One may
+take the Oriental Express through to Constantinople and work a way up
+the Balkan Peninsula from there: or take train to Trieste and approach
+the Balkans by the Adriatic side: or, taking the Oriental Express, leave
+it at Bucharest and journey from there to Sofia: or, taking the Oriental
+Express, leave it at Belgrade, making that the starting-point for a
+riding trip. Certainly to enjoy the country one must leave the railways
+and journey on horseback or by cart over the wilder tracks. An
+interpreter who speaks English can be engaged in any one of the
+capitals. The hire of horses, oxen, and carts is very cheap, if you are
+properly advised by your interpreter and pay the local rates only.
+Forage, too, is cheap: and so is "the food of the country," i.e. bread,
+cheese, bacon, and goat and sheep flesh. Most civilised luxuries of food
+can be obtained in the capitals and bigger towns, but they are dear.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+SOFIA
+
+General view, looking towards the Djumala Pass (45 miles away). Taken
+from the front of Parliament House, showing monument of Alexander II,
+known in Bulgaria as the "Tsar Liberator"]
+
+Let me suggest a few typical Balkan tours.
+
+Take train to Belgrade: then go by Danube steamer to Widdin. From Widdin
+to Sofia go by rail, and then back to Belgrade on horseback, sending
+on heavy luggage by rail, but making at Nish on the way a depot of
+provisions and linen.
+
+Take train to Bucharest. Go from there to Stara Zagora on horseback,
+crossing the Roumanian frontier at Roustchouk, going over the trail of
+the Russian Army of Liberation and seeing the Balkan mountain passes.
+
+Take train to Sofia, and from there to Yamboli. At Yamboli go on
+horseback (in the track of the Bulgarian Third Army of 1912) to Kirk
+Kilisse, Lule Burgas, Chorlu, Silivri (on the Sea of Marmora), and
+Constantinople. A somewhat wild trip this would be, but quite
+practicable. The most comfortable way to travel would be to take ox
+wagons for the luggage and the camping outfit. That would restrict the
+day's march to twenty miles. The horses--(diverging to look at scenery
+and battle-fields)--would do about thirty miles a day.
+
+Take train to Constantinople, and from there boat to Salonica. Go on
+horseback from Salonica to Belgrade. This would show the most disturbed
+part of the Balkan Peninsula and some of its wildest scenery.
+
+Take train to Philippopolis, and from there go on horseback and with ox
+wagons for a tour of the Rhodope mountains.
+
+Of course it is possible to take much tamer tours of the Balkans.
+Practically all the big towns are connected with the European railway
+systems. But you would see, thus, towns and not the country. The Balkan
+towns are to my eye very dreary. There are practically no fine old
+buildings, for in the Turkish occupation the greater number of these
+were destroyed. The modern buildings have rarely any character. The
+churches, usually of the Slav school of architecture, alone relieve the
+monotony of economical imitations of French and British buildings. In
+Belgrade, it is true, there has been an effort to carry the Slav note
+farther, and some of the commercial and public buildings show a Moscow
+influence.
+
+Mr. Noel Buxton, M.P., that most enthusiastic admirer of the Bulgarians,
+can carry his enthusiasm so far as to admire Sofia. He wrote recently
+(_With the Bulgarian Staff_):
+
+     Few sights can be more inspiring to the lover of liberty and
+     national progress than a view of Sofia from the hill where the
+     great seminary of the national church overlooks the plain. There at
+     your feet is spread out the unpretentious seat of a government
+     which stands for the advance of European order in lands long
+     blighted with barbarism. Here resides, and is centred, the virile
+     force of a people which has advanced the bounds of liberty. From
+     here, symbolised by the rivers and roads running down on each side,
+     has extended, and will further extend, the power of modern
+     education, of unhampered ideas, of science, and of humanity. From
+     this magnificent view-point Sofia stretches along the low hill with
+     the dark background of the Balkan beyond. Against that background
+     now stands out the new embodiment of Bulgarian and Slavonic energy,
+     genius, and freedom of mind, the great cathedral, with its vast
+     golden domes brilliantly standing out from the shade behind them.
+     In no other capital is a great church shown to such effect, viewed
+     from one range of hills against the mountainous slopes of another.
+     It is a building which, with its marvellous mural paintings, would
+     in any capital form an object of world interest, but which, in the
+     capital of a tiny peasant State, supremely embodies that breadth of
+     mind which
+
+              ... rejects the lore
+    Of nicely calculated less or more.
+
+But I think that that is a too kindly view. What makes the Balkan
+capitals additionally dreary is that there is no "society" in the
+European sense. The Turkish idea of keeping the womenfolk in the harem
+survives to the extent that woman is not supposed to frequent places of
+entertainment, to receive or to pay visits. In Bulgaria the women are
+secluded with an almost Turkish strictness: in Serbia, not quite so
+strictly, but still strictly.
+
+Bucharest is quite another story; but Bucharest would rather resent
+being called a Balkan city. There is no seclusion of the very charming
+Roumanian women, and the atmosphere of the city is a little more than
+gay. Plant a section of Paris, a section including Montmartre, into the
+middle of an enlargement of the old quarter of Belgrade, and that is
+Bucharest. It is the one Balkan city which has a luxurious and to an
+extent polished aristocracy.
+
+Some of the smaller towns are slightly more interesting--Philippopolis,
+for instance, in a position of great natural beauty--but the average
+Balkan town must be set down as squalid. Its centres of social interest
+are the caf�s, where men who have the leisure assemble to drink coffee
+made in the Turkish fashion, tea made in the Russian fashion, and
+occasionally _vodka_, which is the usual alcoholic stimulant. Tobacco is
+smoked mostly in the form of cigarettes. Excellent (and cheap)
+cigarettes are supplied by the government _R�gies_ in Serbia and
+Bulgaria.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+BUCHAREST]
+
+The wise tourist will keep clear of the Balkan towns apart from the
+actual capitals, and will carry his food and lodging with him. Under
+these circumstances a good standard of ease can be maintained if a train
+of ox wagons sufficient to the size of the party is enlisted. Ladies can
+travel with fair comfort in an ox wagon. As regards the danger of Balkan
+travel, in my experience--and that was during war-time--there is none.
+Serbian peasant, Bulgarian peasant, Greek peasant, Turkish peasant,
+alike are amiable and obliging fellows, if they do not feel in duty
+bound to cut your throat on some theological or political point. Being
+strangers, tourists would have no theology and no politics. So much for
+the inhabitants. The officials, provided passports are clear and the
+precaution is taken of getting letters at the capital from the
+authorities of the country you are travelling through, will be helpful.
+The one district that might be a little dangerous is that corner of
+Macedonia where Greek and Bulgar are always playing against one another
+the old game of massacre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BALKAN PEOPLES IN ART AND INDUSTRY
+
+
+The five centuries of Turkish domination, during which all the arts and
+most of the crafts were neglected in the Balkan Peninsula, killed nearly
+completely the ancient civilisations of the Greeks, the Serbs, and the
+Bulgars. But a few traces of the old culture survive to this day as
+mournful and tattered relics of the greatness of those departed Empires.
+The old Bulgarian Empire, combining a Slav with a Turconian element; the
+old Serbian Empire, almost purely Slav but influenced a little by
+Italian and Grecian influence, evolved in the days of its greatness the
+beginnings of a national literature and national architecture. In Serbia
+particularly was there a strong and promising growth of humane culture,
+and the greatest of the Serbian rulers, Stephen Dushan (14th century),
+whose death before the walls of Constantinople at the beginning of the
+Turkish invasions gave up the Balkan Peninsula to the Crescent, left as
+one monument to his name a well-reasoned code of laws. He was throughout
+his reign a sincere friend of learning. In Bulgaria during the 10th
+century, under the Czar Simeon, there was a brief efflorescence of
+learning. Montenegro, which alone of the Balkan States kept its head
+unbowed before the Turk, was a busy centre of literary effort in the
+16th century. Under the stress of constant war, however, the arts of
+peace died down almost completely in the Balkans until the Liberation of
+the peoples in the 19th century. During the interval, however, the
+peasants in their homes kept up some little knowledge of the traditions
+of their forefathers' greatness. Legends were passed down from father to
+son in chants set to a rough music. In these chants, too, were recorded
+the deeds of heroism which marked the ever-recurring revolts against the
+Turk.
+
+What survives to-day from this period of oppression is a very
+characteristic national music, melancholy usually, as might be expected,
+but of arresting sweetness; and an art of peasant-applied decoration,
+which recalls the earlier and more primitive forms of Byzantine Art.
+Balkan tapestries, Balkan carpets, Balkan embroideries, woven or
+stitched by the peasant women, have a note of barbaric boldness in
+design and colour which distinguishes them at once from the peasant work
+of other countries.
+
+This applied art in decoration is wisely fostered by the various
+governments, and there is liberal encouragement also given to modern
+art. Especially is this the case in Bulgaria. The impression I have got
+from seeing picture collections in the Balkans is that the local artists
+have learned foreign methods without adding any national bent of their
+own, and contrive to give a native character to their pictures only when
+they make the choice of some particularly horrible subject. Yet there
+should come a vigorous art as well as a vigorous literature one day from
+these Balkan States. There the mysticism, the melancholy, the
+transcendentalism of the Slav is mixed with the fatalism of the Turk,
+and the vivacity of the Greek and the Roumanian in the national types.
+Byzantine traditions, Slav traditions, classic Greek traditions, Roman
+traditions mingle to influence this composite character, the two former
+predominating, but the two latter having a very definite power. It
+should be rich soil for talent, even for genius.
+
+Interesting opportunities were given in the Southern Slav Art
+Exhibitions of 1904 and 1906 (the first at Belgrade, the second at
+Sofia) to note the trend of art in the Balkans. At those Exhibitions
+Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, and Slavonian arts were represented. The
+Croatian pictures--I follow a trustworthy guide in stating this--showed
+a high degree of technical skill, not distinguishable from Austrian art
+in character: the Slavonian pictures were also technically good, but of
+a more impressionist character: the Serbian pictures imitated in
+technique the Old Masters, but took their subjects almost exclusively
+from Serbian history: the Bulgarian pictures had no national
+characteristic in style, but usually sought to be transcriptions of some
+form of Bulgarian life of the day.
+
+Summing up the art position in the Balkans, it can be fairly said that
+before the outbreak of the last great war very good progress had been
+made for the few years since the Liberation from the Turks. A wise
+policy for the future would be to encourage as much as possible the
+peasant arts and crafts which are distinctive, and not to seek to
+impose too much of modern art education, which may stifle national
+influences and inflict a sterile sameness.
+
+Balkan industry varies greatly with the height of the country, as well
+as with the racial type. The mountaineers are usually lacking in steady
+industry: the peoples of the plain are usually exceptionally hard
+workers. Very many emigrants from the Balkans go to the United States to
+work there in the mines, and on works of railway construction, for a
+term of years. The Bulgarian will come back from the United States with
+�300 saved up, and settle down in his native village as farmer or
+trader. The Serbian will come back with �200 saved up, but with a wider
+knowledge of United States life, and he will settle down as pastoralist
+or farmer, but not as trader. The Albanian or Montenegrin will come back
+with little or no money, but with a wonderful armoury of silver-adorned
+weapons and much other personal decoration. So graced, the mountaineer
+will have no difficulty in marrying the girl of his choice, and she will
+do most of the work that is needed thereafter, whilst he attends to the
+hunting and the fighting. The Greek and the Roumanian go abroad,
+preferably as traders, and afterwards elect to stay abroad, though it
+is to be recorded in proof of modern Greek patriotism that in 1912 there
+was a steady flow of Greeks from all parts of the world coming back to
+their native land to fight in the army.
+
+[Illustration: A BULGARIAN FARM]
+
+Considered industrially the Bulgarian is the best type in the Balkans.
+He is a steady, tireless worker on the soil; takes to factory life
+amiably; and has in a very strongly marked degree "the road-making
+talent."
+
+A very valuable index to national character is provided by a people's
+roads. The most successful Imperial governors, the Romans, were also
+builders of the finest roads the world has known. The British people
+have been good road-builders as well as good Empire-makers; the French
+people, too, and every other people who at any time have done big
+enduring work in the government of the world. If a nation is not a good
+road-building nation it will not go far: and the converse is probably
+true. On this road-building test the Bulgarians have a prosperous future
+indicated, for they are very pertinacious and skilful road-builders.
+During the 1912 war I noticed that despite all other pre-occupations
+they were pushing roads forward at every possible opportunity. The
+Turks going back to Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse found a great number of
+roads built or building--the first serious efforts in that direction
+since the downfall of the Roman Empire.
+
+The Bulgarian's chief occupation is agriculture. The system of land
+tenures is that of peasant ownership. There are no large estates and
+very few non-occupying landlords. The chief crops are wheat, barley,
+maize, rice (around Philippopolis), tobacco, and roses. The tobacco is
+of as good quality, almost, as that of Turkey. The Bulgarian Government
+encourages the culture of tobacco by distributing seed, free of cost,
+among the planters, by setting a bounty on the export tariff, and by
+authorising the Bulgarian National Bank to consent to loans on the
+surety of certificates granted to the planters until they are able to
+dispose of their crops advantageously.
+
+Tobacco culture is carried on chiefly in the south and in the provinces
+of Silistria and Kustendil. The area of the plantations is estimated at
+3000 hectares. The province of Haskovo has the greatest yield; then
+follows Philippopolis, with 300,000 kilograms; Kustendil and Silistria,
+210,000 kilograms. According to approximate calculations based on
+various statistics, three-fourths of the tobacco crop of Bulgaria is
+consumed by the inhabitants and only a quarter is exported.
+
+The rose crop is next in importance after tobacco. The roses are used
+exclusively for the distilling of attar of roses. The rose gardens are
+limited to 148 parishes of the provinces of Philippopolis and Stara
+Zagora, and occupy a total area of 5094 hectares. The quantity and
+quality of the attar depend very much on the weather at the time of
+bloom and gathering. The roses most cultivated in Bulgaria are the red
+rose (_Rosa damascena_) and the white rose (_Rosa alba_). The best
+gardens are at Kazanlik, Karlovo, Klissoura, and Stara Zagora. The
+distilling of the attar is now a Government monopoly. The cultivation of
+beetroot has been introduced recently and is confined to the province of
+Sofia. The sugar refinery near Sofia utilises the whole crop for local
+consumption.
+
+It is interesting to note in connection with Balkan agriculture that as
+far back as 1863 the much-abused Turk had actually adopted the very
+modern idea of an agricultural _Credit Foncier_ system in the Balkans!
+In that year Midhat Pasha, Governor of the Danubian Vilayet, prepared a
+scheme for the creation of banks, to assist the rural population. The
+scheme having been approved by the Turkish Government, several of these
+banks were established. The peasants were allowed to repay in kind the
+loans which were advanced to them, the banks themselves selling the
+agricultural products. With the object of increasing the capital of the
+banks, a special tax was introduced obliging the farmers to hand every
+year to these institutions part of their produce in kind.
+
+When it was realised that these banks were of great service to the rural
+population, to which they advanced money at 12 per cent
+interest--instead of 30-100 per cent, as the usurers generally did--the
+Turkish Government extended the reform to the whole Turkish Empire, and
+obliged the peasants to create similar banks in all the district
+centres. According to their statutes one-third of the net profits of
+these banks was destined for works of public utility, such as bridges,
+roads, fountains, schools, etc., while the remaining two-thirds went to
+increase the capital of the banks.
+
+During the Russo-Turkish war several of these banks lost their funds,
+the functionaries of the Turkish Government having carried away all the
+cash, as well as the securities and other property belonging to the
+banks' clients. After the war the debtors refused to pay, and only part
+of the property of the banks was restored, by means of the issue of new
+bonds. For that unfortunate end the war is rather to be blamed than the
+Turk. This _Credit Foncier_ system is pretty clear proof that the
+Turkish power was not always cruel and rapacious, since so sensible a
+reform was set on foot in one of the Christian provinces under the
+Sublime Porte.
+
+Apart from the industries of the soil, Bulgaria has a small mining
+population and an increasing factory population. The Protective tariff
+is used freely to encourage young industries, and there is an effort
+just now to set up cotton-spinning as a national enterprise.
+
+Serbia had a mixed pastoral and agricultural population up to the
+outbreak of the war of 1912, with pig-raising as the greatest of the
+national industries. By the Treaty of Bucharest she has, however,
+acquired much new territory, and is now probably predominantly an
+agricultural country. She has, too, great mineral resources at present,
+but they are little developed, and fine forests which only need an
+improvement of the means of communication to be commercially a big
+asset. The Serbian is not so steadily devoted to his work as the
+Bulgarian: his is the pastoral as opposed to the agricultural character.
+Nevertheless he has a reasonable faculty of industry. As is the case in
+Bulgaria the bulk of the land is held by peasant proprietors. These are
+organised into communes very much on the Russian system. It is an
+interesting fact that though in Serbia there is almost the same degree
+as in Bulgaria of seclusion of the women of the nation, a Serbian woman
+may be the head of the village commune, and, as such, exercise a very
+real authority.
+
+Both in Bulgaria and Serbia the rights of the commune are very jealously
+safeguarded. The central government must take no part in the
+administration of the communes, or maintain any agents of its own to
+interfere with their affairs. The commune forms the basis of the State
+fabric and enjoys a complete autonomy. It is the smallest unit in the
+administrative organisation of the country. Every district is subdivided
+into communes, which are either urban or rural. The commune is a
+corporation. Every subject must belong to a commune and figure in its
+registers, the laws not tolerating the state of vagrancy. The members of
+the Commune Council are elected by universal suffrage, in the same way
+and subject to the same precautions as the members of the National
+Assembly. In passing it may be observed that theoretically the
+governments of the Balkan States are free democracies. Practically they
+are oligarchies tempered by assassination, which is still a favoured
+political weapon.
+
+The Serbian has not much of the commercial faculty: and people of other
+nations manage very many of the businesses in Serbia.
+
+The Montenegrin is willing to be a worker if it does not interfere with
+his manly amusements of warfare. His occupations are pastoral and
+agricultural pursuits and the chase. The Albanian is not content to be a
+worker at all under any conditions. His occupations are dancing and
+swaggering whilst his womenfolk carry on the bulk of the primitive
+pastoral and agricultural work.
+
+It is not possible to hope for much industrial or commercial progress in
+Albania. But in Serbia and Bulgaria there are rich opportunities for
+enterprise and capital provided that an era of peace could be reckoned
+upon. It is the uncertainty on that point that will stand in the way of
+future Balkan development. When after the Treaty of London the Balkan
+League fell to pieces there was incurred, in addition to other
+sacrifices, a serious loss of confidence on the part of European
+capital.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FUTURE OF THE BALKANS
+
+
+We have seen that a blood-mist has hung over the Balkans during all the
+centuries that history knows. Nature set up there lists for the great
+contests of races--on the path from the cold north of Europe to the warm
+south; on the path from Asia to Europe; and each great campaign left
+behind it shreds of devastated peoples. These shreds of peoples dwelling
+in the Balkans to-day have a blood-thirst as an inescapable heritage.
+Turk, Bulgar, Serb, Roumanian, Greek--they may hold the peace for a
+time, and some may try to think that they are friends with others; but
+all have something of hate or fear or contempt for the others, and all
+prepare in peace for the next fight.
+
+The Fates making the Balkan Peninsula the battle-ground of empires and
+races, the field of last stands, the refuge of residual fragments of
+peoples, imposed upon it its bloody tradition. Under other conditions,
+Serb or Bulgar or Greek or Turk or Roumanian left to themselves might
+have made happier history. For all these races can be human, reasonable,
+companionable. I have seen something of all of them in following a
+Balkan campaign as a war correspondent (not following always as the
+sheltered guest of an army, but forcing a solitary path through the
+peasant population), and in watching the wonderful acrobatic lying of a
+Balkan Peace Conference have seen thus the best and the worst of them. I
+have been an unofficial member of a Bulgarian court-martial; the guest
+of a dozen and more Bulgarian and Serbian army outposts, dependent often
+for food and shelter on the kindness of peasant soldiers; for days have
+held at the mercy of Balkan peasants my life and my property; have been
+mistaken for a wandering Turk twice, and have never suffered violence,
+rudeness, or the loss of a pennyworth. For the peasants, the commonfolk
+of all the Balkan peoples, I have come thus to a hearty liking; their
+priests and politicians (with a few exceptions), a different feeling.
+Knowing that the massacre is the national sport in many districts of
+the Balkans; that at the outbreak of the 1912 war the death-rate by
+violence actually decreased in some quarters because the killing was
+systematised a little and put under a sort of regulation; that always
+Turks and Exarchate Christians and Patriarchate Christians are plotting
+against one another new raids and murders, still I maintain that, if
+left to themselves, if freed from the prompting of priests and
+politicians the Balkan peasants of any race are quite decent folk. So I
+wish heartily that there was fair reason to hope for peace and happiness
+for them. Is there fair reason? To that question a study of the races
+and the personalities can give clues for an answer.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+ALBANIAN TRIBESMEN]
+
+The Bulgarian is dour, dull, a little greedy, honest, very industrious.
+He is almost as much a Turk as a Slav. (I was told that during the
+Turkish occupation a Bulgarian mother finding herself with child after
+violence by a Turk brought up the child with her family, whilst a
+Serbian mother under the same circumstances killed the infant at birth.)
+The Bulgarian is very moral, marrying at an early age.
+
+The Bulgarian peasant soldiers were very honest and loyal. At Mustapha
+Pasha one night, being short of food, I tried to get bread at the
+military bakery (all bread and flour having been requisitioned for the
+army). I offered a soldier up to five francs for a loaf without tempting
+him to sell it. Finally I had to get bread as a charity by declaring
+that I was actually in want of it for food. Later, travelling between
+Silivri and Chatalja, I encountered four Bulgarian foot soldiers who had
+become separated from their regiment and were starving. They asked for
+food and I gave them all I could spare, enough for two meals. One of the
+men produced a purse and took out some coppers wishing to pay.
+
+Travelling across Thrace (then in Bulgarian occupation), I often put up
+at some military post, being invited to become a member of the little
+mess--usually an official or two and four or five non-commissioned
+officers. Nearly always I had the same experience, that I was made free
+of the stewed goat and rice, or the dish of eggs and flour, or the bread
+and cheese of the Bulgarians, and when I wished to add from my stores
+chocolate and biscuits and dates, just a scrap or two would be taken. I
+could see the men's eyes hungering for the delicacies, but nothing would
+induce them to take anything material from my stores.
+
+The Bulgarian peasant soldier and officer I found, in short, to be a
+gentleman. Yet nationally Bulgaria is not "a gentleman," and has come to
+its present sorry state, I believe, largely on that account. The old
+Bulgarian aristocracy was exterminated by the Turks. The surviving
+Bulgarian peasantry has not yet been able to produce another
+aristocracy. It is the more cunning rather than the more worthy son of
+the peasant who wins to a sort of an education--often abroad--and
+becomes the lawyer, politician, official. In very many cases he carries
+with him into a higher stratum of society few of his peasant virtues and
+all of his peasant faults. He gets an overweening pride in his own
+acuteness. He becomes arrogant, "too-clever-by-half," and intrigue
+teaches him cruelty. I can contrast vividly two Bulgarian types in a
+noted diplomat, who fancied himself a Bismarck and had about the wits of
+an office boy, and an old peasant captain with whom I travelled from
+Kirk Kilisse to Chorlu. Generalising, the "leading men" in Bulgaria are
+of a poor type (there are exceptions), the leading priests of a still
+poorer type; the people themselves are a sound people, and when the
+ambitious among them contrive to preserve their peasant virtues through
+the ordeal of education they will become a great people.
+
+The Bulgarian did not seem to me naturally cruel. All the time that I
+was with the main army I saw no trace of outrage or cruelty. I did see
+several instances of curt and merciful justice.
+
+I arrived one night at the Tchundra River alone, having gone forward
+from my ox cart because the miserable Macedonian driver and the still
+more miserable Bulgarian servant I had (I suspect he was in training for
+the diplomatic service) could not be induced to do a fair day's march. A
+vedette outpost of five men held the bridge. They took me--as I judged
+from their gestures rather than from their language, of which I
+understood only one word, "Turc"--for a Turk. But they let me stay
+unmolested at their camp fire for an hour until an officer who spoke
+French appeared. I could give several similar instances. Never did I
+feel nervous in the least when making my way alone through the country
+in Bulgarian occupation (most of the time I was alone, for after a while
+I dropped my Macedonian and my Bulgarian servant).
+
+[Illustration: _See page_ 190
+
+GREEK INFANTRY]
+
+The Turk I found disappointing. I had pictured a romantic individual
+with a Circassian harem, a stable of Arab steeds, and a fierce and
+warlike manner. I found the Turk to be rather a shabby individual;
+monogamous usually (but with the free and easy ideas as to his rights
+over Christian women which are almost consequent upon his philosophy of
+life, and cause most of the trouble when the Turk lives by the side of a
+Christian population); much addicted to sweetmeats--his shops were full
+of Scotch lollies and English biscuits. Certainly most of the Turks I
+have encountered were prisoners or dwelling in conquered country. But,
+making all allowance for that, the traditional fiery Turk of martial
+fame no longer exists, I should say, in European Turkey. The Turkish
+prisoners in the hands of the Bulgarians seemed to be glad to have
+arrived at a fate which meant regular food. In old Bulgaria I found
+Turks living quite contentedly under Christian rule, and in many cases
+following menial occupations. The boot-blacks in the streets were Turks,
+the porters were Turks.
+
+I had a Turkish driver for five days once from Kirk Kilisse to Mustapha
+Pasha. The first hour of our acquaintance he won my heart by telling me
+(through an interpreter) that since his horses had been requisitioned by
+the Bulgarians, he had not been able to get proper food for them, and he
+embraced his ponies, which were really in rather good condition. I
+applauded the noble Turk and his love for horses, and bought tobacco for
+him which he welcomed with tears of joy, as he had been without it for
+long. The horses carried the cart a gallant thirty miles that day, and
+we camped at a burned-out village. Mr. Turk set himself to enjoy a smoke
+over the fire. My own supper I prepared, and gave him some to eke out
+his bread and cheese, and then told him to water and feed the horses.
+Because the well was 400 yards away and the tobacco was sweet and the
+fire comforting, the Turk had no wish to do this, but was ready to let
+them go through the night without food or water. I had to threaten to
+flog him (and to start to do it) before he would attend to the horses.
+Yet after that incident I slept in the cart without a thought that the
+Turk would consider himself offended and cut my throat. As a matter of
+fact the touch of the whip did not rankle with him, and at Mustapha
+Pasha when, the journey ended, I gave him a little money for himself,
+Mr. Turk prostrated himself in gratitude.
+
+I believe that the warlike virtues have died out of the Turk in Europe.
+Of other nation-making and nation-maintaining qualities he has none. In
+all Turkey from the borders of Bulgaria to the lines of Chatalja, I
+found no roads, no street lamps, no drainage, no water supply (I was not
+in Adrianople). Except for a few agricultural peasants I found nowhere
+the Turk doing any useful work. In a characteristic Turkish town the
+shops were kept by Greeks, the industries carried on by Greeks,
+Macedonians, and Bulgarians. The Turk was the tax-collector, the
+official, the soldier, and did none of these things well. That acute
+observer of the Turkish character, Mr. L. March Phillips, in his book
+_In the Desert_ upholds that the Turk is impossible as a civilising
+force:
+
+     Or, for a third example, come to the craggy hills of Southern
+     Albania, and mix, if but for half an hour, with the armed
+     shepherds, as wild and intractable as their own crags, or as the
+     gaunt dogs which guard their flocks from the wolves, and whose
+     attentions to strangers you are apt to find such a nuisance. You
+     will understand from the first glance at the men more of the
+     interminable Balkan difficulty than newspapers and books can ever
+     teach you. These are the fellows who swoop down from their peaks on
+     the mixed races of the plains and carry fire and slaughter through
+     village and valley. Their natural aptitude for fighting and
+     foraging, for bearing things with a strong hand, for cowing the
+     weak and feeble, for vindicating the old "might is right" theory,
+     is written all over them. You see it in their gait, glance, walk,
+     and manner, you hear it in every accent of their voice, you feel it
+     in their individuality and presence.
+
+     These are specimens of the Moslem type, the type that stops short
+     at the virile virtues, that makes the best host and worst neighbour
+     in the world, that has many splendid qualities to recommend it, but
+     to which all that makes life profound and inexhaustible is a dead
+     letter. It is the most strongly marked and salient type I have ever
+     met with. There is the Moslem walk, the Moslem scowl, the Moslem
+     courtesy, the Moslem dignity, the Moslem carriage and attitudes and
+     features, the Moslem composure, and the Moslem fury. All these
+     traits and characteristics, inspired by the same temper, expressing
+     the same ideal, conspire to depict a figure so notable that you
+     must be a dull observer indeed if you cannot pick him out from a
+     mixed crowd as you would pick out a Chinaman in the London streets.
+
+     Some people say it is the religion that creates the type. "There,"
+     they say of Mohammedanism, "is a religion that breeds men." It
+     would be truer, I think, to say that Mohammedanism recommends
+     itself to men at a certain stage of their development, and has for
+     that stage a natural affinity. Every race goes through a time when
+     the virile estimate of life and the splendour of self-assertion
+     seem the finest things possible. It is at this time it is open to
+     the attack of El Islam. The Moslem religion answers all its needs
+     at this stage, and lays good hold of it, and having once laid hold
+     of it, it sanctifies the ideas belonging to this stage, and so
+     tends to restrict the race to it. There is no instance on record of
+     a people having embraced Mohammedanism and afterwards achieving a
+     complete, or what gives promise of ever becoming a complete,
+     civilisation.
+
+During my stay in the Balkans I found no certain evidence of Turkish
+cruelty. There was plenty of evidence offered by the Bulgarians, but it
+usually smelt of the lamp of some patriotic journalist of Sofia. Once
+near Mustapha Pasha--when all the war correspondents were cooped up
+under strict censorship, prevented from seeing any of the operations
+around Adrianople--the Bulgarians found it necessary to burn a village
+for strategic reasons. The chance was offered to the Press photographers
+of seeing this, if it were represented in their pictures as the
+atrocious burning of a village by the Turks. I believe that the offer
+was accepted by some. The "atrocities" by Turks, regularly recorded by
+the Bulgarian Press Bureau were, as far as the main theatre of
+operations was concerned, founded on similar evidence. During its first
+phase I believe that the war was very humanely conducted on all sides.
+In Macedonia, of course, there were some deplorable atrocities, but I
+believe the normal massacre conditions there were rather bettered than
+otherwise by the outbreak of war.
+
+To sum up the Turk, I do not think he will survive for long in Europe.
+As a matter of hard fact there really are not many real Turks left in
+Europe.
+
+The Serbian, with his highlander the Montenegrin, is a far more engaging
+personality than the Bulgarian. He lacks the stubborn, dour courage of
+his neighbour, but he has more _�lan_. In military life the Bulgarian
+would supply incomparable infantry, the Serbians be superior in
+artillery and cavalry. In social life the Serbian is convivial and
+hospitable. Whilst the Bulgarian wishes to go to bed early that he may
+get up early and push the road he is making along a little farther, the
+Serbian will keep you at his dinner-table drinking and singing until far
+into the morning. He is not troubling about a road.
+
+When the Serbian army came to help the Bulgarians in the siege of
+Adrianople, the contrast between the two armies and the two camps was
+great. The Serbian men were smarter, better equipped, their quarters
+cleaner, and from their mess tents would come by night the sound of
+revelry. One might imagine Roundheads and Cavaliers camping side by
+side.
+
+The Allies did not fraternise. For that I blamed the Bulgarians. The
+positions in regard to the Serbian aid at Adrianople, as I understood
+it, was this: that originally the Bulgarians engaged to help the
+Serbians in their campaign, but this was found not to be necessary: that
+the Bulgarians, later, asked for aid against Adrianople, and it was
+promptly given without any conditions being imposed, though there then
+already existed in the Serbian mind a desire to modify the territorial
+partition arrangement they had with Bulgaria and this request for aid
+might have been taken as a good opportunity for raising that question. I
+believe those to be the facts, but since in Balkan diplomacy it is
+always a matter of finding out the truth of comparing and weighing and
+deducing from a series of lies, I cannot state them with absolute
+certainty. If they are true, the Serbians behaved like gentlemen in not
+raising against an ally an awkward question at a time when help was
+asked. Quite certainly the Bulgarian authorities behaved like boors to
+their Serbian friends. Things were made as unpleasant as was reasonably
+possible for them in all kinds of niggling ways around Adrianople. The
+Serbians behaved well under great provocation.
+
+During the first sessions of the Balkan Peace Conference I had
+opportunities of observing the same good behaviour on the part of the
+Serbians. Bulgarian diplomacy was, as usual, very exasperating. It was
+not only that Bulgaria was insisting on having the hide, horn, and hoofs
+of Turkey, but also on rubbing salt into her bare carcase. The Turkish
+delegates approached the Serbians--whose territorial demands as far as
+Turkey was concerned were satisfied, but who had a pending controversy
+with the Bulgarians--hoping to get some moral support against Bulgaria
+and being prepared to offer something in return. The Serbian attitude
+was sharply loyal, to stand by Bulgaria absolutely in regard to the
+Turkish frontier. Serbians have not been always popular in Great
+Britain, I know; but I am not alone among those who have come into
+recent contact with Balkan affairs who found them to be the best of the
+Balkan peoples.
+
+[Illustration: _See page_ 194
+
+PODGORICA, UPON THE ALBANIAN FRONTIER]
+
+The Greek is even more engaging and hospitable than the Serbian; but his
+fluent, flexible, subtle nature does not inspire full confidence. At
+the outset of the last Balkan war there was one thing that all were sure
+of: that the Greeks would not fight. All were wrong. The Greeks did
+exceedingly well in the field, even allowing that they sometimes shaped
+their campaign quite as much by considerations of jealousy of their
+allies as of hostility to the common enemy. But it is a fact that the
+Greek has usually more stomach for politics than for fighting, and that
+his subtle nature allows him to live comfortably in a state of
+subjection, which would irk a more robust mind. He is by instinct a
+trader: and a trader is not an uncompromising patriot as a rule.
+
+The Greeks live side by side with the Turks in Turkey with fair comfort.
+At Kirk Kilisse, after the Bulgarian occupation, a deputation came to me
+from the Greeks to assure me that they would much prefer to live under
+the Turk than under the Bulgar: and asking that England should be urged
+to support autonomy for Thrace. Well, the Turks are back at Kirk
+Kilisse, and I suppose my Greek friends are happy. Eloquent, courteous,
+kind folk they were. I stayed in the house of one for some days, and
+will remember always the gracious kindness of the man and his wife. I
+had to leave one morning at four to catch a troop train which would
+carry me a few miles towards the front. The couple were up and had a
+fire and tea ready for me. As I had a fever at the time, and a long
+laborious journey ahead, the whole Greek race seemed good that morning.
+
+Later at Chorlu after I had got permission from the military commandant
+to go forward to Chatalja, and he had helped me to hire a cart and
+horses and to stock up my provisions, the permission was withdrawn
+because Bashi-Bazouks were raiding along the line of communication. I
+might go later, he said, when a body of troops was moving. I objected
+that time was precious; and I had my revolver, and there was the driver.
+
+"Ah," he said sweetly, "he is a Greek. He will run away."
+
+After that manner the Bulgarians always spoke of the Greeks. In this
+case the Bulgarian was possibly right. I finally coaxed permission to go
+forward, on condition that I took a patrol of one Bulgarian soldier, and
+I was allowed to borrow a rifle and some ammunition. We met no
+Bashi-Bazouks: but whilst the Bulgarian palpably was quite content to
+enter into a plan to give the Bashi-Bazouks a chance of showing
+themselves at nightfall, the Greek liked the adventure not at all.
+(Perhaps on the whole he was justified. But I was desperately eager for
+a "story," and with the Turkish regulars running away so consistently,
+to encounter irregulars suggested no real danger.)
+
+On that journey, at a little village which I cannot name between Silivri
+and Chatalja, the population was largely Greek. Some of the Greeks,
+after the Turks had fled before the Bulgarians, had discarded the fez
+and were wearing Bulgarian caps. Others held to the fez, but had marked
+on it with white chalk a cross. I formed the opinion that if by the
+fortune of war the Turks came back, those crosses would be rubbed out.
+The Greek can be very pliant undoubtedly, when he is in contact with a
+dominant people. The other side to his character--that of a hot-headed,
+argumentative, boisterous Donnybrook Fair patriotism--is developed in
+his own country where it is fed with memories of the historic greatness
+of his race.
+
+The Roumanian--the fourth national type in the Balkans to which I shall
+refer--very closely resembles the Greek in most respects. Like the
+Greeks the Roumanians are subtle, flexible, engaging. They are a
+singularly good-looking race, and Roumanian girls are sought after in
+marriage a great deal. A Serbian politician explaining to me what he
+called "a nice national balance," pointed out that the Serbians rather
+despised trade and finance. The Roumanian, therefore, came into Serbia
+to make money as shopkeeper and financier. Then the young Serbian man
+married the rich Roumanian's daughter and thus the Serbian money was
+still kept in the country.
+
+The instinct for trade has a very marked effect on the politics of the
+Balkans. The Serbian has no love for trade: the Montenegrin despises it
+quite. The Greek and the Roumanian are very keen traders with an
+inclination to escape from manual work as soon as they can. The
+Bulgarian is a trader and also fond of productive industry. So "as two
+of a trade never agree," neither Greek nor Roumanian can get on as well
+with the Bulgarian as with the Serbian.
+
+The Roumanian national polity differs greatly from the Greek, though the
+two racial types are very similar. Whilst Greece has a stormy and
+disorderly democracy, Roumania is ruled practically by an oligarchy--an
+oligarchy which during the past twelve months has won to an achievement
+which would have delighted the old Florentine Republic. Without losing a
+soldier, almost without spending a crown, Roumania has won a great tract
+of territory and established herself as the paramount power of the
+Balkans. It was a victory of unscrupulous and patient resoluteness which
+is a classic of its kind, and it was made possible by the oligarchic
+system of Roumania. The Montenegrin does not need to be considered
+separately: he is the "Highlander" of the Serbian and shares Serbian
+language, customs, and character with such modifications as the
+conditions of his mountain life impose. But the Albanian, the largely
+Mohammedan mountain type to which the jealousies of Europe have agreed
+to give a separate nationality and a separate kingdom, calls for some
+attention. The Albanian is the wildest of the Balkan types, and his
+country the most primitive. It has had no period of civilisation, and
+can hardly be said to promise to have. Its existence as a nation in 1914
+was due to the fact that the German Powers wished to have a footing in
+the Balkans for intrigue. "The creation of Albania dealt a death-blow
+to the Balkan League," said a cynical Austrian diplomatist recently. He
+was right: and the creation of Albania undertaken at the instance of
+Austria had no other purpose from the first, though it was disguised
+under the plea of anxiety for the national rights of the Albanians, wild
+catamarans of the hills, odd specimens of whom one may encounter in many
+parts of the Balkans acting as dragomans. The Albanian has many savage
+virtues. He is a picturesque fellow as he swaggers about with a
+silver-decorated armoury stuck in his waist-belt: and he is truly
+faithful to a master. But he has not the barest elements of a national
+organisation; and the Austrian Prince of Albania did not find a single
+house within all his dominion which would satisfy the housing needs of a
+respectable London clerk.
+
+Describing the march across Albania to the Adriatic coast during the
+recent war a Serbian officer wrote:
+
+     It is only by travelling as we did that real facts can be learned.
+     We who had only known the Turks by hearsay had a certain respect
+     for them. At present I feel but contempt and disgust. To think that
+     they should have held these lands for five hundred years, and kept
+     them absolutely wild and uncultivated! Prishtina, Jakovitsa, and
+     Prizrend are in every respect behind Mirigevo [a village some
+     miles outside Belgrade]. There are neither bridges nor roads, nor
+     decent dwellings to be met with in the Sanjak. Of the dirt I cannot
+     trust myself to speak. The "Ujumat" (Prefecture) of Prizrend,
+     residence of the Mutessarif, is in such a filthy condition that I
+     could not sit there for more than five minutes together. All around
+     the sofras (tables) were rags, remnants of food, tufts of dogs'
+     hair, etc., for these ate and slept with their masters....
+
+     The people are humble, cowed, moving out-of-doors rarely, and then
+     huddled together like a herd of cattle.... The peasants run to kiss
+     our hands, and bow down to the ground, but they are too frightened
+     to give a sensible answer to a plain question. They speak Serbian,
+     it is true, and cross themselves as Christians, but otherwise bear
+     little resemblance to our peasant folk. They have lived no better
+     than their masters, for themselves and their pigs share the same
+     apartment! If the pigs were let loose the Turks were sure to kill
+     them, so they were hidden indoors. The first use they made of the
+     liberty we gave them was to hunt the pigs into the open air, and
+     how the poor beasts enjoyed it! One could not help laughing at
+     their antics as they chased each other, while the children ran to
+     keep them from escaping to the woods. But the cows and oxen defy
+     description. They are like our calves, only the shape is queer. I
+     saw no vegetables anywhere. The staple diet is maize. From our
+     frontier to the sea it is the same tale of misery, helplessness,
+     and dirt. In Prizrend, after every rainfall, the people drink muddy
+     water in which none of our soldiers would care to wash. When we
+     boiled it a thick scum came on the top, which we skimmed off! This
+     is the water used by a town of 40,000 citizens; and really one felt
+     that authorities like the Turks should not be allowed to live any
+     longer. Now we feel that it is a disgrace to us to have delayed so
+     long in coming to the deliverance of our brothers in bondage just
+     outside our doors. Better late than never.
+
+     As for the independence of Albania, it would be a comical, if it
+     were not a sinister, idea. Whoever speaks of a national sense in
+     these savage hordes is either untruthful or ignorant. The Serbians
+     of this region make no distinction, as we do, between the Turks and
+     the Mohammedan Albanians. I could not get them to understand that
+     the latter were in reality brethren of the Christian Albanians with
+     whom they live in amity. I pointed out that these Mohammedans could
+     not speak a word of Turkish, but that did not help. The Serbians
+     insist that they are Turks all the same. And for all practical
+     purposes they are right. The Christian Albanians are called by
+     their race brethren "Catholics," and are hated and persecuted by
+     them just as the Serbians are hated and persecuted. The "Catholics"
+     loathe the Mohammedans and deny that they are of the same
+     nationality. But the fact remains that they speak the same
+     language. The Catholics welcomed us with joy, rendered us every
+     possible service, and often refused to accept payment. They are
+     eager to assist in our operations, acted as scouts for us, and
+     brought us precious information. Sometimes they acted on their own
+     initiative, captured, and killed their Mohammedan co-nationalists
+     without first consulting us.... The priests are the most
+     embittered. These jealous "fratres" told us they longed for a
+     Christian Government, and that the project of a united Albania was
+     insensate.... Ismail Kemal's proclamation has irritated the priests
+     about here. They will not for a moment consider a union with the
+     Mohammedan tribes or submission to a Moslem leader like Ismail. On
+     the other hand, if we evacuate this country, a terrible fate awaits
+     the Catholics....
+
+     Here I have made acquaintance with the Montenegrin troops, rather
+     different from ours! They get leave to go home and see after their
+     wives and children whenever they ask it, and lax discipline does
+     not seem to affect their heroism. They fight like lions, but do
+     nothing else except shoot birds and fish in the interval. Every
+     ship that touches here is greeted with a volley, though ammunition
+     is sometimes scarce, but the Montenegrin can better spare bread
+     than shot. He will do nothing but fight, and ships often remain
+     unladen here for days, because there are few Albanians in the place
+     to do the work. My soldiers carry sacks and burdens of all kinds to
+     and from the ships, and the Montenegrins laugh at them and say: "Is
+     that how you fight, Brother Shumadinats?" [Shumadia is a forest in
+     the centre of the Kingdom of Serbia.] They are amused to see our
+     men one day unshaven; they are most particular themselves to shave
+     each day whatever happens. The priests alone wear a beard, for they
+     are not supposed to fight.... The Montenegrin soldiers' wives come
+     once a week to look after their husbands, wash the linen, and help
+     to clean up....
+
+There is, of course, a certain amount of Serb intolerance in that
+letter, but it represents on the whole the truth.
+
+So much for the different nations of the Balkans. The personalities of
+the Peninsula might provide a happy solution for the problems which the
+conflict of these mutually antipathetic racial elements create: for
+there is no fact more clear than that the general interest of the
+countries could best be served by a wise policy of compromise and
+co-operation, bringing its different elements together as the Swiss were
+brought together by a geographical rather than a racial reason. But
+unfortunately there are no personalities alike honest in outlook and
+great in power.
+
+Four able and far-seeing men I have met in the Balkans: M. Nikolitch,
+President of the Serbian Parliament; General Demetrieff, Commander of
+the Third Army (which won the most notable Bulgarian victories), now
+commanding a Russian army; M. Venizuelos, Prime Minister of Greece; M.
+Take Jonescu, of the Roumanian Cabinet. All men of power, none seemingly
+has sufficient strength to impose his will not alone on his own country,
+but on the other Balkan States, and weld them into a Confederation which
+would be held together by a sense of common interests and common
+dangers.
+
+King Ferdinand of Bulgaria has kept for years the centre of the Balkan
+stage to the European onlooker; and is still a great enough figure to
+give pause to those Bulgarian Nationalists who would exact from him
+reprisal for the terrible misfortunes of their country. But he is a man
+of audacity rather than of courage, and his ambition has been always
+more personal than national--to be Czar of the Balkans rather than to be
+the maker of a Balkan nation. Gifted with a great deal of diplomatic
+ability and with a soaring imagination, King Ferdinand has a serious
+obstacle in his personal timidity. To play a gambler's game one must be
+prepared at times to take the great risk. But King Ferdinand has many
+fears. He fears, for instance, infectious diseases morbidly, and the
+thought of a germ in the track could turn him from the highest of
+enterprises. Perhaps it was the fear of disease rather than of wounds
+that kept him so much in the rear of his army during the 1912 campaign
+against Turkey. But whatever the cause, his absence from the front
+showed a serious weakness of character in a man who aspired to carve out
+an empire for himself. The Bulgarian authorities, deceiving the Press
+almost as assiduously for the purpose as for the false representation
+that all the destruction of the Turkish forces was ascribable to the
+Bulgarian arms, gave to Europe inspiriting pictures of His Majesty
+following close on the heels of his soldiers in a military train which
+served him as a palace. The fact was that the ambitious but timid king
+kept very well to the rear, at Stara Zagora first and afterwards at Kirk
+Kilisse, with a great entourage of secret police. And when armistice
+negotiations were in progress he kept separate from his Cabinet as well
+as from his army. Affable in manner, industrious, pertinacious, well
+aware of the advantage of advertisement (my first meeting with His
+Majesty was due to the fact that he mistook my map case for a camera,
+and sent for me to photograph him while he stood on the bridge over the
+Maritza at Mustapha Pasha), of high ability, King Ferdinand did great
+things for his adopted country, but showed a fatal weakness of character
+when he had drunk deep of the wine of success. It is the fashion to
+blame him wholly now for the wild attack on Serbia and Greece. He may
+have been in part the victim of his advisers' folly in that. But without
+much doubt he could have vetoed the fatal move, if he had known his army
+from personal observation, if he had been down to the lines at Chatalja,
+and had looked closely into the besieging forces around Adrianople.
+Common sense would have told him that the attack on his allies was
+hopeless, if strength of character had not told him that it was wicked.
+But he neither knew the facts nor understood the ethics of the position.
+
+General Demetrieff, Commander of the Third Bulgarian Army, the victor of
+Kirk Kilisse and of Lule Burgas, the reluctant attacker at Chatalja,
+impressed me as a man of fine character. For some few days I was a
+member of the officers' mess at Erminekioi, which was the headquarters
+of the Staff before the lines of Chatalja, and had the chance of seeing
+much of the general. He struck one as a frank, courageous man. He
+answered questions truthfully or not at all, and was notably kind to the
+very small group of correspondents who had got through to the front. His
+personal staff worshipped him, and told with pride that most of the
+staff work with him on the battle-field was under fire. When it was
+clear that the attack at Chatalja had failed, General Demetrieff neither
+attempted to tell falsehoods nor shut himself off from visitors. He
+ascribed the cessation of the attack to the outbreak of cholera in the
+Bulgarian lines (and the statement was probably in his mind not only the
+truth but all the truth: in any case one could not expect him to
+disclose the shortage of big gun ammunition): was avowedly disconsolate
+but not in the least discouraged. I cannot imagine General Demetrieff
+having any hand in the making of the second Balkan war against the
+Serbians and Greeks, and think that the Bulgarians had in him a man of
+honesty and courage as well as of great military skill. No other general
+of the Bulgarian Army impressed me in the same way, certainly not
+General Savoff.
+
+Of the Bulgarian politicians, M. Gueshoff, Prime Minister at the
+outbreak of the first war, and M. Daneff, chief Bulgarian delegate at
+the Peace Conference and Prime Minister at the outbreak of the second
+war, had the chief parts in the glories and tragedies of 1912-13. M.
+Gueshoff seemed a well-meaning but weak man. He was fond of insisting
+upon his English education and of advancing that as a proof of his
+complete candour. I imagine that he played no directing part in the
+drama of his country's sudden rise to power and more sudden fall, but
+did just as his king directed, sometimes probably under protest. M.
+Daneff was a more virile man, and his force of character, with little
+guidance from experience, of liberal education, or from wise purpose,
+had much to do with the downfall of Bulgaria. Of the Balkan Peace
+Conference which met first in London in December 1912, M. Daneff
+attempted from the outset to be dictator. He never lost a chance of
+being rude to an opponent or fulsome to a supporter. He diplomatised by
+pronunciamento and made a vigorous use of the minor newspaper Press with
+the idea of overawing the chancelleries of Europe. I am sure that the
+British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had nearly as much amusement
+as chagrin from the incidents of the Conference. Just when the Turkish
+delegates were being gently coaxed up to drink the hemlock, Bulgaria
+would publicly dance a wild triumph of joy, and announce that the very
+last drop had to be absorbed or Bulgaria would not be satisfied. When
+the Turkish delegates were thus startled away and all the pressure of
+European diplomacy was being brought to bear upon the Turkish Government
+to bring them back to the point, Bulgaria threatened publicly to break
+up the Conference and resume the war. Europe was given a short
+time-limit in which to act.
+
+M. Venizuelos, Prime Minister of Greece, has proved in his own country a
+great capacity for good government and wise diplomacy. There was a
+strong movement made at the outset of the Balkan Peace Conference to
+have him appointed head of the Balkan delegation. Success in that would
+have made the chances of peace better; and probably he had an
+expectation of being chosen as being the senior in official rank of all
+those present. But the jealousy and distrust of Greece was great: and M.
+Venizuelos did not prove himself the man of genius who could overcome
+the handicap which his nationality imposed. True, the task was almost
+impossible. But still nearer to the impossible would it be now to unite
+again the warring factions in the Balkans. M. Venizuelos, of the highest
+talent though he be, will not be the maker of a Balkan Confederation.
+
+M. Nikolitch, President of the Serbian Parliament, is an amiable and
+clever man with far more culture than is usual in the Balkans. He has
+translated English classics into the Serbian tongue, and is an
+industrious student of social and political philosophy. But he has
+nothing of the brute force that is needed to control the warring
+passions of the Balkan States. As the Minister of a Balkan Union to a
+great Power he would be admirable, for he has tact and wit, and a
+knowledge of the value of truth. When it was made plain that Austria was
+to have her way and Serbia no territory on the Adriatic, the
+disappointment of Serbia was bitter: and there was some special blame of
+Great Britain that she "had not considered her obvious interests," and
+brought this friendly little state to the sea. M. Nikolitch had the
+diplomat's faculty of taking a defeat smilingly. "The most unhappy thing
+about it," he said to me, "is that now Serbia will not have England on
+her frontier." It was a neat touch to speak of the sea as British
+territory.
+
+There remains to be considered M. Take Jonescu, who is credited with the
+chief share in the unscrupulous diplomacy which has made Roumania for
+the while paramount in the Balkans. It was certainly a masterpiece of
+Machiavellianism, applying the tenets of "The Prince" with cold
+precision, and marks its author as the master mind of the Balkans
+to-day. Give such a man a good soldier people to follow him and an
+honest purpose, and a Balkan Confederation might be achieved, with some
+further blood-letting perhaps. But it is not possible to believe that
+the Roumanians, frivolous, pleasure-loving, untenacious, could impose
+their will for long upon the coarser-fibred but more virile Slavs of the
+Peninsula.
+
+No, there is not a personality in the Balkans to-day at once forceful
+enough, honest enough, and skilful enough to give the Peninsula a union
+which would enable it by means of a bold decision now to ensure internal
+peace and freedom from outside interference. A great man could build up
+a greater Switzerland, perhaps, of the Slavs, the Greeks, and the
+Roumanians in the Balkan Peninsula with Great Britain, Russia, and
+France as joint sponsors for the freedom of the new Federation. But one
+hardly dares to hope for such a happy ending to the long miserable story
+of the Balkans.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Adrian, Emperor, 89
+
+Adrianople, 14, 65, 68
+  description of, 90
+  Turkish occupation of, 26
+
+Adriatic coast, 150
+  Sea, 45
+
+Aegean Islands, 62
+  Sea, 45
+
+Alani, the, 10
+
+Albania, 14, 17, 62
+  condition of, 194
+
+Albanian character, 173, 193
+  massacres, 89
+  mountains, 152
+
+Alexander of Battenberg. _See_ Alexander of Bulgaria
+
+Alexander, King of Bulgaria, 47
+  abdication of, 48
+
+Alexander the Great, 6
+
+American war correspondents, 99
+
+Amurath I., Sultan of Turkey, 27
+
+Amurath II., Sultan of Turkey, 27
+
+Architecture, 158
+
+Arjenli, 131
+
+Armenia, 6
+
+Art, applied, 163, 164
+  modern, 164, 165
+
+Arts and crafts, 162
+
+Asia Minor, invasion of, 17
+
+Asiatic invasions, 11, 12
+
+Assyria, 6
+
+Astrakhan, 9
+
+Austria, 28
+  and Serbia's trade, 125
+
+Austrian ambitions in the Balkans, 45, 46, 49
+  war correspondents, 99, 105
+
+Autonomy of the Christian Provinces, 57
+
+
+Bajayet, Sultan of Turkey, 27
+
+Balkan Alliance, 18, 21, 45, 53, 55, 57, 59, 74, 174, 194
+  possibilities of, 82
+
+Balkan casualties in the war, 87, 88
+  character, 124
+  Committee, the, 91
+  development, 174
+  diplomacy, 56, 57
+  disunion, 75-77, 79
+  mountains, 3, 151
+
+Balkan Peace Conference, 1912, 75, 78, 80, 81, 176, 188
+  second phase, 84, 85
+  spokesman, 83
+
+Balkan peasants, 176
+  peoples as linguists, 148
+  politicians, 176
+  priests, 176
+  statesmen, 78, 92
+  War of 1912, 46, 54, 107
+  War resumed, 84
+  women, 159
+
+Baltic Sea, 4, 6
+
+Banking, 168, 170
+
+Bashi-Bazouks, 26, 39, 43, 190
+
+Basil, the Bulgar-slayer, 14
+
+Beetroot cultivation, 169
+
+Belgrade, 16, 124, 146
+  siege of, 27
+
+Bessarabia, 32
+
+Birrell, Major E. T. F., R.A.M.C., 143
+
+Bishop Babylas of Montenegro, 36
+
+Black Sea, 3, 5, 120
+  littoral, 150
+
+Blood-mist, the, 175
+
+Bosnia, 39, 49
+
+British Army Medical Detachment, 69
+  opinion, 83
+  Red Cross Hospital, 143
+  surgeons, 142
+
+Bucharest, 30, 109
+
+Buda-Pest, 109
+
+Bulgaria, 13, 22, 37
+  an autonomous principality, 44
+  beaten, 88
+  boundaries of (1830), 44
+  foreign influences in, 97
+  government of, 40
+  liberation of, 30
+  under Serbian rule, 17
+  a Turkish province, 22, 25
+  and universal suffrage, 40
+  at war, 127, 128
+
+_Bulgaria of To-day_, extract from, 23
+
+Bulgarian ambitions, 61
+  aristocracy, 179
+  army of 1912, 41
+  atrocities, 43
+  atrocities in Macedonia, 51
+  autonomy, 40
+  blunders, 86, 87
+  censorship. _See_ Censorship
+  character, 177-180
+  church, 26
+  commissariat, 69-73, 128
+  crops, 168
+  diplomacy, 85-87, 188
+  diplomatic intrigues, 49
+  Exarchates, 52
+  finance, 64, 168
+  generals, 59
+  hegemony, 48
+  hospitals, 143
+  industry, 167
+  medical service, 138, 139
+  military tactics, 66-71
+  mobilisation, 59, 63, 134
+  peace negotiations, 79
+  peasants, 141
+  preparedness for war, 55, 127
+  Press Bureau, 185
+  revolt of 1875, 39, 47
+  Secret Service, 60
+  system of land tenures, 168
+  War of Liberation, 42
+  women, 135
+
+Bulgars, 3, 4, 9, 11, 13
+
+Buxton, Mr. Noel, M.P., 158
+
+Byzantine art, 164
+  traditions, 164
+
+
+Caf�s, 160
+
+Carpets, 164
+
+Caucasus, the, 9
+
+Censorship, the, 94, 98, 100, 101, 115, 121
+  humours of the, 100
+  the second, 102
+
+Cettinje, 35
+
+Charles, King of Roumania, 39, 41
+
+Chatalja, 61, 68, 117
+
+Cherson, 5
+
+Chersonesos, 5
+
+Choleraic dysentery, 133, 138
+
+Chorlu, 68
+
+Churches. _See_ Architecture
+
+Congress of Berlin, 44, 45
+
+Constantinople, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 20, 26, 43, 61, 62, 137
+  fall of, 27, 89, 90
+
+Cotton-spinning, 171
+
+_Credit Foncier_ system, 169, 171
+
+Cretan excavations, 4
+
+Crimean War, 32, 38, 107
+
+Crusaders, the, 20
+
+Cyrillic characters, 35
+
+
+Dacians, 6, 7
+
+Daneff, M., 202
+
+Danilo I., King of Montenegro, 33
+
+Danube, 2, 3, 7, 28, 146
+
+Dardanelles, the, 62
+
+Decius the elder, 8
+
+Decius the younger, 8
+
+Demetrieff, General, 67, 136, 198, 201
+
+Disease, ravages of, 140
+
+Dnieper River, 5
+
+Dniester River, 5
+
+Don Cossacks, 15
+
+Don River, 3
+
+Dual Monarchy, problems of, 28
+
+Dulcigno, 46
+
+Durazzo, 14
+
+
+Eastern Church, 16
+
+Eastern Rumelia, 48
+
+Egyptian influences, 4
+
+Embroideries, 164
+
+Emigration, 166
+
+English war correspondents, 99
+
+Enos, 88
+
+Ermenikioi, 136, 138, 201
+
+Eski Sagrah, 96, 97
+
+Eski Zagora, 20
+
+European capital, 174
+  diplomacy, 39, 40
+  diplomacy and Roumania, 85
+  finance, 64
+  policy, 50, 55
+  policy in 1912-13, 45
+  Powers, interest of, 96
+  Powers, intervention of, 58
+
+Euxine, 6
+
+Exarchate Christians, 177
+
+
+Ferdinand, Czar of Bulgaria, 47, 49, 50, 108, 152, 154
+  his character, 198-201
+
+Ferdinand of Coburg. _See_ Ferdinand of Bulgaria
+
+Filimer, King of the Goths, 9
+
+Finno-ugric tribe, 3
+
+Forty Holy Martyrs of Bulgaria, 14
+
+Fratricidal war, 87
+
+Frederick Barbarossa, 16
+
+French war correspondents, 99
+
+
+Gallipoli, Peninsula of, 75
+
+Geographical position, 1
+
+Gepidae, 11
+
+German Powers, 193
+
+German war correspondents, 99
+
+Getae. _See_ Dacians
+
+Goths, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 20
+  invasions of, 75
+
+Greco-Bulgarian disunion, 79
+  _entente_, 76
+
+Greco-Turkish wars, 107
+
+Greece, 37
+
+Greek atrocities in Macedonia, 51
+  character, 188-191
+  church, 22
+  civilisation, 4
+  coast, 150
+  diplomacy, 93
+  Empire, 2, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 20
+  Empire, fall of, 21
+  governors in Roumania, 31
+  official report, 76
+  Patriarchates, 52
+  patriotism, 167
+  Prime Minister. _See_ Venizuelos
+  traditions, 164
+  war of independence, 82
+
+Greeks, 3
+
+Grey, Sir Edward, 85, 203
+
+Grivica Redoubt, 41
+
+Gueshoff, M., 202
+
+Guttones. _See_ Goths
+
+
+Haskovo, province of, 168
+
+Health resorts, 153
+
+Herodotus, 5
+
+Herzegovina, 39, 49
+
+History, Early, 3, 4
+
+Hodgkin, Mr. T., 5
+
+Hospital services, 141, 142
+
+Hungarians, 11, 13, 28
+
+Huns, 4, 7, 11, 13
+  invasions of, 9, 75
+  origin of, 9, 10
+
+
+"International Socialist," 132
+
+Ionian letter-forms, 5
+
+Istros, 5
+
+Italian Peninsula, 1
+  war correspondents, 99
+
+Ivan the Black, of Montenegro, 35
+
+Ivankeui, battle of, 67
+
+
+Janina, 75
+
+Japanese censorship, 98
+
+Jirecek, 2
+
+John As�n, Czar of Bulgaria, 14
+
+John Hunyad, 27
+
+John Paleologos, Emperor of Greece, 21
+
+Jonescu, M. Take, 198, 205
+
+Jostoff, Colonel, 138
+
+Journalism, 108-110
+
+
+"Kara George." _See_ Petrovic
+
+Kirk Kilisse, 42, 65, 139
+
+Korea, 58
+
+Kossova, 21
+  battle of, 27, 33
+
+Kustendil, 168
+
+Kustendjix, 5
+
+
+Lazar, King of Serbia, 27
+
+Levant, the, 4, 5
+
+Liberation, progress since the, 165
+
+Lithuania, 5
+
+Lombards, 8, 11
+
+London Morning Post, 54, 100
+
+"Lord Salisbury's principle," 93
+
+Lule Burgas, 68
+  battle of, 72
+
+
+Macedonia, 44, 74
+  atrocities in, 51, 52, 53
+  Empire of, 6
+  massacres in, 51, 89
+
+Marcianople. _See_ Schumla
+
+Mariano Bolizza, 36
+
+Maritza River, 90
+
+Marmora, Sea of, 62, 120, 150
+
+"Mass at St. Sofia," 146
+
+Massacre, the national sport, 177
+
+Medicinal springs, 153
+
+Mediterranean littoral, 2
+  Sea, 4
+
+Michael, Czar of Bulgaria, 15
+
+Michael the Brave, of Roumania, 30
+
+Midhat Pasha, 169, 170
+
+Midia, 88
+
+Military attach�s, 105, 107
+
+Milosh Obrenovic of Serbia, 38
+
+Mineral resources in Serbia, 172
+
+Minoan civilisation, 2
+
+Moesia, 3
+
+Mohammedanism, 24
+
+Moldavia, 13, 29, 38
+
+Montenegrin character, 173, 193
+  printing press, 35, 36
+  resistance of Turks, 34, 35
+  war with Austria, 35
+  war with Turkey, 35
+
+Montenegro, 17, 28, 32, 33, 37, 46
+
+Montenegro, government of, 33
+
+_Morning Post_, the. _See_ London
+
+Mount Athos, monastery of, 16
+
+Music, national, 163
+
+
+Napoleon, 17, 34
+
+Napoleonic strategy, 113
+  wars, 32
+
+Near East, the, 107
+
+Near Eastern character, 78
+
+Neytchef, Dr., 131
+
+Nicolaieff, General, 42
+
+Niemen River, 5
+
+Nikolitch, M., 198, 204
+
+Nish, 43, 125, 126
+
+Nordic tribes, 4
+
+Norman knights, 13
+
+Normans, 4
+
+Northern invasions, 13
+  peoples, 2
+
+North Sea, 4
+
+Nova Sagora, 135
+
+Novi-Bazar, 46
+
+
+Odessa, 5
+
+Odessos, 5
+
+Olbia, 5
+
+Old Serbia, 74
+
+Oriental Express, 156
+
+Ostrogoths, 7
+
+Ottoman. _See_ Turks
+
+Ox wagons, 130, 131
+
+
+Patriarchate Christians, 177
+
+Peace Conference. _See under_ Balkan
+
+Peace of Bucharest, 88
+
+Peace of London, 85, 88
+
+Persians, 11
+
+Peter the Great of Russia, 34
+
+Petrovic, George, 29, 37
+
+Philip of Macedon, 6
+
+Philippopolis, 8, 44
+  capture of, 20
+
+Phillip, Roman Emperor, 8
+
+Pig-raising, 171
+
+Pirot, 43
+
+Plevna, 41, 46
+
+Pomaks, 22
+
+Prehistoric state, 2
+
+Press influence, 83, 84
+
+Protective tariff, 171
+
+_Punch_ cartoon, 54
+
+
+Religious proselytising, 30
+
+Rhodopes, the, 151, 152, 158
+
+Roads, 167
+
+Roman Church, 16
+  civilisation, 8
+  Empire, 1, 2, 89, 168
+
+Roman Empire, decline of, 7
+  fall of, 8
+  traditions, 164
+
+Romans, 4, 7
+
+Rose cultivation, 169
+
+Roumania, 7, 13, 22, 29, 37
+  Greek governors in, 31
+  an independent principality, 32
+  King of, 48, 49
+  liberation of, 30, 31
+  Russian garrison in, 32
+  subjugation of, 2
+  a Turkish province, 29
+
+Roumanian character, 191, 192
+  diplomacy, 92
+  independence, 38
+  war correspondents, 105
+  women, 160
+
+Roumanians, 3
+
+Runes, 5
+
+Russian ambitions in the Balkans, 44, 45, 49
+  garrison in Roumania, 32
+  hospital at Kirk Kilisse, 143
+  intrigue in Bulgaria, 48
+  liberators of Bulgaria, 25
+  Power, 31
+  war correspondents, 99
+
+Russo-Japanese War, effect of, 50
+
+Russo-Roumanian alliance, 31
+
+Russo-Turkish War of 1828, 32
+  of 1877, 41, 43, 170
+
+
+Salonica, 46, 62, 76, 79
+
+Sanitary arrangements, absence of, 140, 141, 142
+
+Saracens, 4, 12, 20
+
+Savoff, General, 117, 202
+
+Schumla, 8
+
+Scutari, 74, 75
+
+Scythia, 5, 8, 9
+
+Seaside resorts, 150, 151
+
+Sebastopol, 5
+
+Seleniki, 129
+
+Semitic invasions, 4
+
+Serbia, 15, 17, 26, 37
+  as a European Power, 16
+  local government in, 172
+  Turkish garrisons withdrawn, 38
+  a Turkish province, 27
+
+Serbian character, 186-188
+  contest for liberty, 38
+  diplomacy, 93
+  emigration to Austria, 28
+  Empire, 33
+  Empire, fall of, 27
+  forests, 172
+  Highlanders, 33
+  increase of territory, 46
+  liberation, 37
+  mineral resources, 172
+  mountains, 151
+  trade, Austria and, 125
+  women, 172
+
+Serbians, 3, 4, 9
+
+Serbo-Hungarian Alliance, 27
+
+Servians. _See_ Serbians
+
+Shipka Pass, 42, 129
+
+Silistria, 168
+
+Simeon of Bulgaria, 163
+
+Slav traditions, 164
+
+Slavs, 3, 4
+
+Slivnitza, battle of, 48
+
+Sofia, 61, 145
+  the Military College, 42
+
+Southern Slav Art Exhibition, 165
+
+Stambouloff, 48
+  assassination of, 49
+
+Stara Zagora, 42
+
+Stephen Dushan, King of Serbia, 16, 17, 26, 162
+
+Stephen the Great, of Moldavia, 30
+
+Sweden, 6, 9
+
+Switzerland, 58
+
+
+Tapestries, 164
+
+Tartars, 4, 11, 13
+
+Tchobanoff, Lieutenant-Colonel, 131
+
+Tchorlu, 42
+
+Tchundra River, 90
+
+Teutonic knights, 13
+
+Theodore Komnenus, Czar of Greece, 14
+
+Thessaly, 2
+
+Thrace, 2, 8, 44, 51
+  an autonomous, 80
+
+Thracian campaign, 54
+  plain, 154
+
+Thraco-Dacians, 3
+
+Thraco-Illyrians, 3
+
+Thraco-Macedonians, 3
+
+Tirnova, 44
+  Church of the Forty Martyrs, 14
+
+Tobacco cultivation, 168
+
+Tourist possibilities, 151, 152
+
+Trade, Early, 5
+
+Trajan, 7
+
+Transylvania, 30
+
+Travel facilities, 155-158
+  risks, 161
+
+Treaty of Adrianople (1830), 44
+
+Treaty of Berlin, 38, 45, 46
+
+Treaty of Bucharest (1913), 17, 171
+
+Treaty of London, 174
+
+Treaty of Paris (1856), 32, 38, 39
+
+Treaty of San Stefano, 43, 44, 46, 47, 50
+
+Trenches, 145
+
+Triple Alliance, the, 50
+
+Turco-Russian wars, 107
+
+Turkey-in-Europe, 61
+
+Turkish Army, 106
+  atrocities, 19, 26, 29, 31, 52
+  character, 181-186
+  corruption, 61
+  cruelty, 185
+  delegates at the Conference, 188
+  domination in Bulgaria, 23, 24, 25
+  entrenchments, 137
+  invasion, first, 15
+  occupation, 17, 20, 158
+  offer of reform, 56
+  Power in Europe, decline of, 45
+  prisoners, 136
+  procrastination at the Peace Conference, 81, 84
+  rally, 88
+  rule in Bulgaria, end of, 26
+  rule in Serbia, 28
+  spy incident, 133
+  tyranny, 24
+  villages, 138
+
+Turks, 3, 4, 13
+  before Vienna, 21
+
+Turnu-Severin, 7
+
+Tyras, 5
+
+
+Unity of Balkans. _See_ Balkan Alliance
+
+
+Valerius, Emperor, 89
+
+Vandals, 7
+
+Varna, 5
+
+Venetians, 16
+
+Venice 34
+
+Venizuelos, M., 83, 198, 203, 204
+
+Vienna, 109
+  siege of, 21
+
+Villages, the, 154
+
+Visigoths, 7
+
+Vistula River, 5
+
+Vlad the Impaler, of Wallachia, 30
+
+Volga River, 3
+
+Volgars. _See_ Bulgars
+
+Vranga, 43
+
+
+Wallachia, 13, 29
+
+Wallachians. _See_ Roumanians
+
+War correspondent, the, 98, 99, 102, 103, 107, 126, 185
+  advice to, 110
+  new school, 107, 108, 113
+  passing of the, 122
+  a personal record, 116
+
+War of Liberation, 85
+
+Winter sports, 152
+
+
+Yamboli, 42, 65, 69
+
+Yanina, battle of, 67
+
+
+Zablack, 35
+
+
+THE END
+
+_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW SERIES OF COLOUR BOOKS
+
+EACH CONTAINING 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+
+_Large Square Demy 8vo._ Price =7/6= net each. _Bound in Cloth._
+
+(_By Post_, 8/-)
+
+
+BULGARIA. By Frank Fox.
+
+This book will give to the reader an adequate idea of a wild and
+little-known corner of Europe, but to those who look upon Bulgaria as a
+place of endless massacres and savage inhospitality the book will bring
+many surprises. The Bulgarian artist shows us a land in which
+civilisation is evident and art not unknown. The Australian author (who
+was with the Bulgarian Army as correspondent for the London _Morning
+Post_ during the former Balkan War) writes of a people whom he found
+usually courteous, gentle, and worthy. His personal experiences of the
+Bulgarian peasantry are vividly interesting, and hardly less interesting
+is the brief sketch of the early history of Bulgaria, the country where
+the Roman Empire met its doom.
+
+
+ITALY. By Frank Fox.
+
+Messrs. A. & C. Black have published many books on the various cities of
+Italy with colour illustrations. But before this they have not offered
+to the public a handy volume giving a general idea of the country which
+was the cradle of Christian civilisation. Whether to tourists who
+contemplate a visit to Italy or to those who cannot hope for that
+pleasure, _Italy_ will be welcome. The author has left to the vivid
+pictures the main task of describing Italian scenery, and devoted most
+of his text to telling of the spirit of the people and showing how the
+Italy of to-day is linked up with the Italy of the Roman Republic and
+the Italy of the Renaissance.
+
+
+SWITZERLAND. By Frank Fox.
+
+This volume will give to the reader a good knowledge not only of the
+scenery of Europe's playground but of the Swiss people and their life. A
+little nation which has supplied Europe at various times with bands of
+both heroes and waiters, which is celebrated alike for generous
+hospitality to refugees and the most strictly commercial hospitality to
+tourists, has a paradoxical aspect whatever way it is regarded. The
+author seeks to describe rather than to explain the Swiss, but gives a
+closely compressed record of their early history as some key to the
+curiously contradictory elements of their national character.
+
+
+ENGLAND. By Frank Fox.
+
+The task of describing England was for good reason given to a visitor to
+the Mother Country. It will be found that Mr. Frank Fox has done his
+work well. A stranger to England will have his attention drawn to the
+features of her life which are most characteristic: residents in England
+will find interest in studying an impression of their country from a
+sympathetic Australian observer. Within a very small compass there is a
+bright living picture of England, her history, her institutions, her
+people, her green country-side, her historic monuments.
+
+
+FRANCE. By Gordon Home.
+
+Mr. Gordon Home's chapters cover many aspects of French life, and give
+the reader a comprehensive vision of the land from Boulogne to Mentone
+and Bayonne. Political life, home life in town and country, the duel,
+marriage arrangements, the navy, architecture, the doctor, the priest,
+the _midinette_, the constitution, the great rivers, the
+watering-places, hunting, vine-growing, and school life are a few of the
+many topics that come in orderly sequence in the book. After reading the
+volume and studying the pictures, even those who know France well will
+probably understand some aspects of it more clearly, and those who have
+yet to cross the English Channel will go there understanding much that
+might otherwise puzzle them.
+
+
+AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. By G. E. Mitton.
+
+It was through Austria-Hungary that the great crisis in Europe arose.
+Yet how few people know anything about the country, although both in the
+matter of national history and scenery Austria-Hungary is well worth
+considering. Its story of romance, its scenery is not behind any in
+Europe, though, except for the Tyrol and the Dolomites, it is far from
+well known. In the reconstruction of political frontiers which will
+necessarily follow the War, the races of the Dual Monarchy will have to
+be taken into account, and it is essential to know something of them if
+we would be abreast of the times.
+
+
+Published by A. & C. BLACK, Ltd., 4, 5, & 6 Soho Square, London, W.
+
+
+
+
+OTHER BOOKS ON
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+
+CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+Painted by WARWICK GOBLE
+
+Described by Prof. ALEXANDER VAN MILLINGEN, D.D.
+
+CONTAINING 62 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+
+_Published at_ =20/-= _net, now offered at_ =7/6= _net_ (_by post_, 8/-)
+
+     "Mr. Goble has succeeded in a difficult task. He has 'caught the
+     glory' of the Queen of Cities, and, in the wealth of material for
+     choice, has seized on those features which, though the most skilful
+     pencil can convey them only inadequately, best represent their
+     wonderful variety to those who have never seen them."--_Daily
+     Chronicle._
+
+
+GREECE: MONTENEGRO: TURKEY
+
+In the "Peeps at Many Lands" Series
+
+EACH CONTAINING 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+
+_Large Square Crown 8vo, bound in Cloth._
+
+(_By post_, 1/11)      Price =1/6= net each      (_By post_, 1/11)
+
+     This series of little travel books for young people who are of an
+     age to be interested in the countries of the world and their
+     peoples has steadily grown on account of its wide popularity. Each
+     book is written in a simple and very attractive style, and thus the
+     child gains valuable instruction and a vivid interest in countries,
+     great cities, and peoples through the sheer pleasure of reading and
+     by examining the beautiful illustrations. The youthful reader
+     becomes absorbed in descriptions of how children work and play, and
+     in the way of living, in the various countries of the world.
+
+     The volumes are handsomely bound and splendidly illustrated in
+     colour.
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF THE ALLIED NATIONS
+
+A SERIES OF ESSAYS BY
+
+PAUL STUDER, M.A., Professor of the Romance Languages in the University
+of Oxford.
+
+ALEXIS ALADIN, Ex-member of the Russian Duma.
+
+PAUL HAMELIUS, D. �s L., Professor of English Literature in the
+University of Li�ge.
+
+J. H. LONGFORD, B.A., Professor of Japanese in the University of London.
+
+R. W. SETON-WATSON, D. Litt., New College, Oxford; Author of _The
+Southern Slav Question_, etc.
+
+SIDNEY LOW, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford, Lecturer on Imperial and
+Colonial History, King's College, London University; Author of _The
+Governance of England_, _A Vision of India_, etc.
+
+Edited, with an Introduction and Appendix, by SIDNEY LOW
+
+_Crown 8vo._      Price =2/6= net      _Cloth._
+
+(_By post_, 2/10)
+
+     "No student, or even casual lover of books, and certainly no
+     patriot, should hesitate to read this remarkable little
+     volume."--_Daily Express._
+
+     "A valuable supplement to the books relating to the negotiations
+     preceding the war and to the campaign itself."--_Aberdeen Journal._
+
+
+Published by A. & C. BLACK, Ltd., 4, 5, & 6 Soho Square, London, W.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+Both "Serbia" and "Servia", "country-side" and "countryside" are found
+in this text.
+
+At p. 54, the phrase "I was through the war" may be an error for "I went
+through the war", but has been left unchanged.
+
+There is only one typo: "howevre" (on p. 21) has been changed to
+"however".
+
+Four words in the index have a different spelling from that used in the
+text. Kossovo, Nova Zagora, Chorlu and Zablak are indexed as "Kossova",
+"Nova Sagora", "Tchorlu" and "Zablack" respectively. These spellings
+have been left unchanged.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Balkan Peninsula, by Frank Fox
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALKAN PENINSULA ***
+
+***** This file should be named 39688-8.txt or 39688-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Balkan Peninsula, by Frank Fox.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Balkan Peninsula, by Frank Fox
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The Balkan Peninsula
+
+Author: Frank Fox
+
+Release Date: May 13, 2012 [EBook #39688]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALKAN PENINSULA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Margo Romberg and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;">
+<img src="images/title.png" width="372" height="550" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<h1>THE BALKAN PENINSULA</h1>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p class="center"><b>AGENTS</b></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">America</span>       <span class="smcap">The Macmillan Company
+                64 &amp; 66 Fifth Avenue, New York</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Australasia</span>   <span class="smcap">The Oxford University Press
+                205 Flinders Lane, Melbourne</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Canada</span>        <span class="smcap">The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd.
+                St. Martin's House, 70 Bond Street, Toronto</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">India</span>         <span class="smcap">Macmillan &amp; Company, Ltd.
+                Macmillan Building, Bombay
+                309 Bow Bazaar Street, Calcutta</span>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii"></a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 243px;">
+<img src="images/img_004.jpg" width="243" height="500" alt="A Balkan peasant" />
+<span class="caption">A BALKAN PEASANT</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<h2>THE BALKAN PENINSULA</h2>
+
+<p class="center">BY</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">FRANK FOX</p>
+
+<p class="centerb3">AUTHOR OF<br />
+
+"AUSTRALIA," "BULGARIA," "SWITZERLAND," ETC.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 78px;">
+<img src="images/img_005a.png" width="78" height="89" alt="badge" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="centerb3">PUBLISHED BY A. &amp; C. BLACK, LTD.<br />
+4, 5, &amp; 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.<br /><br />
+
+1915</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">This</span> book was written in the spring of 1914, just
+before Germany plunged the world into the
+horrors of a war which she had long prepared,
+taking as a pretext a Balkan incident&mdash;the
+political murder of an Austrian prince by an
+Austrian subject of Serb nationality. Germany
+having prepared for war was anxious for an
+occasion which would range Austria by her side.
+If Germany had gone to war at the time of the
+Agadir incident, she knew that Italy would
+desert the Triple Alliance, and she feared for
+Austria's loyalty. A war pretext which made
+Austria's desertion impossible was just the thing
+for her plans.</p>
+
+<p>It would be impossible to reshape this book
+so as to bring within its range the Great War,
+begun in the Balkans, and in all human probability<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span>
+to be decided finally by battles in the
+Balkans. I let it go out to the public as impressions
+of the Balkans dated from the end of
+1913. It may have some value to the student
+of contemporary Balkan events.</p>
+
+<p>My impressions of the Balkan Peninsula were
+chiefly gathered during the period 1912-13 of
+the war of the Balkan allies against Turkey,
+and of the subsequent war among themselves.
+I was war correspondent for the London <i>Morning
+Post</i> during the war against Turkey and penetrated
+through the Balkan Peninsula down to
+the Sea of Marmora and the lines of Chatalja.
+In war-time peoples show their best or their
+worst. As they appeared during a struggle in
+which, at first, the highest feelings of patriotism
+were evoked, and afterwards the lowest feelings
+of greed and cruelty, the Balkan peoples left
+me with a steady affection for the peasants and
+the common folk generally; a dislike and contempt,
+which made few exceptions, for the
+politicians and priests who governed their
+destinies. Perhaps when they settle down to
+a more peaceful existence&mdash;if ever they do&mdash;the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span>
+inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula will
+come to average more their qualities, the common
+people becoming less simple-minded, obedient,
+chaste, kind: their leaders learning wisdom
+rather than cunning, and getting some sense
+of the value of truth and also some sense of
+ruth to keep them from setting their countrymen
+at one another's throats. But at the
+present time the picture which I have to put
+before the reader, with its almost unbelievable
+contradictions of courage and gentleness on the
+one side and cowardly cruelty on the other, is
+a true one.</p>
+
+<p>The true Balkan States are Bulgaria, Serbia,
+Montenegro, and Albania. Roumania is proud
+to consider herself a Western State rather than
+a semi-Eastern Balkan State, though both her
+position and her diplomacy link her closely with
+Balkan developments. Turkey, of course, cannot
+be considered in any sense as a Balkan State
+though she still holds the foot of the Balkan
+Peninsula. Greece has prouder aspirations than
+to be considered one of the struggling nationalities
+of the Balkans and dreams of a revival of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span>
+the Hellenic Empire. But in considering the
+Balkan Peninsula it is not possible to exclude
+altogether the Turk, the Greek, the Roumanian.
+My aim will be to give a snapshot picture of the
+Balkan Peninsula, looking at it as a geographical
+entity for historical reference, and to devote more
+especial attention to the true Balkan States.</p>
+
+<p class="p2tb">
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">FRANK FOX.</span>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="table of contents">
+<tr><td class="tdr">CHAP.<br /></td><td></td><td>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">I. &nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Vexed Balkans</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">II. &nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Turk in the Balkans</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">III. &nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Fall of the Turkish Power</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_37">37</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">IV. &nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Wars of 1912-13</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">53</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">V. &nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Chapter in Balkan Diplomacy</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VI. &nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Troubles of a War Correspondent in the Balkans</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_94">94</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VII. &nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Jottings from my Balkan Travel Book</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_124">124</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VIII. &nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Picturesque Balkans</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">149</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">IX. &nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Balkan Peoples in Art and Industry</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_162">162</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">X. &nbsp;</td><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Future of the Balkans</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_175">175</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr"></td><td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Index</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_207">207</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="r20" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="list of illustrations">
+<tr><td></td><td class="tdr">FACING PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">A Balkan Peasant</td><td class="tdr"><i><a href="#Page_ii">Frontispiece</a></i> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Trajan's Column in Rome</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_7">7</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">The Walls of Constantinople from the Seven Towers</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#language">10</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Sancta Sophia, Constantinople</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_21">21</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">King Peter of Serbia &nbsp;</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Monarchy">28</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">King Nicolas of Montenegro</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33">33</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Montenegrin Troops: Weekly Drill and Inspection of Weapons</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#soldiers">35</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">The King of Roumania</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">The Shipka Pass</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#fields">42</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">King Ferdinand of Bulgaria</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Salonica">46</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">King Ferdinand's Bodyguard</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#save_him">48</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Bulgarian Infantry</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53">53</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Bulgarian Troops leaving Sofia</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#designed">60</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">General Demetrieff, the Conqueror at Lule Burgas</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_69">69</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Adrianople: A General View</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#interests">76</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Roumanian Soldiers in Bucharest</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85">85</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Adrianople: View looking across the Great Bridge</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#value">88</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">General View of Stara Zagora, Bulgaria</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#diplomats">92</a> &nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Sofia: Commercial Road from Commercial Square</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_101">101</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Bucharest: The Roumanian House of Representatives</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Matrem">108</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">General Savoff</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_117">117</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Bulgarian Infantry</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_124a">124</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Ox Transport in the Balkans</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_133">133</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">A Balkan Peasant Woman</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_136">136</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">A Bagpiper</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#causes">140</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Some Serbian Peasants</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_149">149</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">General View of Sofia</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#dear">156</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Bucharest</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_161">161</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">A Bulgarian Farm</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_166">166</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Albanian Tribesmen</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#answer">176</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Greek Infantry</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_181">181</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl">Podgorica, upon the Albanian Frontier</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#peoples">188</a> &nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="center2"><i>Sketch Map on page <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>.</i></p>
+<hr class="r65" />
+<p class="p4b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/img_014.jpg" width="500" height="584" alt="sketch map of the Balkan peninsula" />
+<span class="caption">SKETCH MAP OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>THE BALKAN PENINSULA</h2>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h4>THE VEXED BALKANS</h4>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Fates were unkind to the Balkan Peninsula.
+Because of its position, it was forced to stand in
+the path of the greatest racial movements of the
+world, and was thus the scene of savage racial
+struggles, and the depositary of residual shreds
+of nations surviving from great defeats or Pyrrhic
+victories and cherishing irreconcilable mutual
+hatreds. As if that were not enough of ill fortune
+imposed by geographical position, the great Roman
+Empire elected to come from its seat in the
+Italian Peninsula to die in the Balkan Peninsula,
+a long drawn-out death of many agonies, of many
+bloody disasters and desperate retrievals. For
+all the centuries of which history knows a blood-mist
+has hung over the Balkans; and for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+centuries before the dawn of written history one
+may surmise that there was the same constant
+struggle of warring races.</p>
+
+<p>It seems fairly certain that when the Northern
+peoples moved down from their gloomy forests
+towards the Mediterranean littoral to mingle
+their blood with the early peoples of the Minoan
+civilisation and to found the Grecian and the
+Roman nations, the chief stream of these fierce
+hordes moved down by the valley of the Danube
+and debouched on the Balkan Peninsula. Doubtless
+they fought many a savage battle with the
+aborigines in Thessaly and Thrace. Of these
+battles we have no records, and no absolute
+certainty, indeed, that the Mediterranean shore
+was colonised by a race from the North, though
+all the facts that we are learning now from the
+researches of modern archaeologists point to that
+conclusion. But whatever the prehistoric state
+of the Balkan Peninsula, the first sure records
+from written history show it as a vexed area
+peopled by widely different and mutually
+warring races, and subject always to waves of
+war and invasion from the outside. The Slav
+historian Jire&#269;ek concludes that the Balkan
+Peninsula was inhabited at the earliest times<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+known to history by many different tribes
+belonging to distinct races&mdash;the Thraco-Illyrians,
+the Thraco-Macedonians, and the Thraco-Dacians.
+At the beginning of the third century, the Slavs
+made their first appearance and, crossing the
+Danube, came to settle in the great plains between
+the river and the Balkan Mountains. Later, they
+proceeded southwards and formed colonies among
+the Thraco-Illyrians, the Roumanians, and the
+Greeks. This Slav emigration went on for several
+centuries. In the seventh century of the Christian
+era a Finno-ugric tribe reached the banks of the
+Danube. This tribe came from the Volga, and,
+crossing Russia, proceeded towards ancient Moesia,
+where it took possession of the north-east territory
+of the Balkans between the Danube and the
+Black Sea. These were the Bulgars or Volgars,
+near cousins to the Turks who were to come
+later. The Bulgars assumed the language of
+the Slavs, and some of their customs. The
+Serbs or Serbians, coming from the Don River
+district had been near neighbours of the Volgars
+or Bulgars (in the Slav languages "B" and "V"
+have a way of interchanging), and were without
+much doubt closely allied to them in race originally.
+Later, they diverged, tending more to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+Slav type, whilst the Bulgars approached nearer
+to the Turk type.</p>
+
+<p>There may be traced, then, in the racial history
+of the Balkans these race types: a Mediterranean
+people inhabiting the sea-coast and possessing a
+fairly high civilisation, the records of which are
+being explored now in the Cretan excavations;
+an aboriginal people occupying the hinterland
+of the coast, not so highly cultivated as the
+coast dwellers (who had probably been civilised
+by Egyptian influences) but racially akin to them;
+a Northern people coming from the shores of
+the Baltic and the North Sea before the period of
+written history and combining ultimately with the
+people of the coast to found the Grecian civilisation,
+leaving in the hinterland, as they passed
+towards the sea, detachments which formed other
+mixed tribes, partly aboriginal, partly Nordic;
+various invading peoples of Semitic type from
+the Levant; the Romans, the Goths and the
+Huns, the Slavs and the Tartars, the Bulgars and
+the Serbs, the Normans, Saracens, and Turks.
+Because the Balkan Peninsula was on the natural
+path to a warm-water port from the north to the
+south of Europe; because it was on the track
+of invasion and counter-invasion between Asia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+and Europe, all this mixture of races was forced
+upon it, and as a consequence of the mixture a
+constant clash of warfare. There was, too, a
+current of more peaceful communication for
+purposes of trade between the Levant and the
+Black Sea on the one side and the peoples of the
+Baltic Sea on the other side, which flowed in part
+along the Balkan Peninsula.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>Italy and her Invaders</i> Mr. T. Hodgkin
+suggests:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>During the interval from 540 to 480 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> there was a
+brisk commercial intercourse between the flourishing
+Greek colonies on the Black Sea, Odessos, Istros, Tyras,
+Olbia and Chersonesos&mdash;places now approximately
+represented by Varna, Kustendjix, Odessa, Cherson,
+and Sebastopol&mdash;between these cities and the tribes to
+the northward (inhabiting the country which has been
+since known as Lithuania), all of whom at the time of
+Herodotus passed under the vague generic name of
+Scythians. By this intercourse which would naturally
+pass up the valleys of the great rivers, especially the
+Dniester and the Dnieper, and would probably again
+descend by the Vistula and the Niemen, the settlements
+of the Goths were reached, and by its means the Ionian
+letter-forms were communicated to the Goths, to
+become in due time the magical and mysterious Runes.</p>
+
+<p>One fact which lends great probability to this theory
+is that undoubtedly, from very early times, the amber
+deposits of the Baltic, to which allusion has already
+been made, were known to the civilised world; and thus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+the presence of the trader from the South among the
+settlements of the Guttones or Goths is naturally
+accounted for. Probably also there was for centuries
+before the Christian Era a trade in sables, ermines, and
+other furs, which were a necessity in the wintry North
+and a luxury of kings and nobles in the wealthier South.
+In exchange for amber and fur, the traders brought
+probably not only golden staters and silver drachmas,
+but also bronze from Armenia with pearls, spices, rich
+mantles suited to the barbaric taste of the Gothic
+chieftains. As has been said, this commerce was most
+likely carried on for many centuries. Sabres of Assyrian
+type have been found in Sweden, and we may hence
+infer that there was a commercial intercourse between
+the Euxine and the Baltic, perhaps 1300 years before
+Christ.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>A few leading facts with dates should give a
+fairly clear impression of the story of the Balkan
+Peninsula. About 400 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> the Macedonian
+Empire was being founded. It represented the
+uprise of a hinterland Greek people over the
+decayed greatness of the coast-dwelling Greeks.
+At that time the northern part of the Balkan
+Peninsula was occupied by the Getae or Dacians.
+Phillip of Macedon made an alliance with the
+Getae. Alexander the Great of Macedonia
+thrashed them to subjection and carried a great
+wave of invasion into Asia from the Balkan
+Peninsula.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 347px;">
+<img src="images/img_022.jpg" width="347" height="500" alt="Trajan's column in Rome" />
+<span class="caption">TRAJAN&#39;S COLUMN IN ROME<br />
+Commemorates the victories which brought all the Balkan Peninsula under
+the Roman sway</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">About the year 110 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> the Romans first came
+to the Balkan Peninsula, finding it inhabited as
+regards the south by the Greek peoples, as
+regards the north by the Getae or Dacians. The
+southern people were quickly subdued: the
+northern people were never really subdued by
+the Romans until the time of Trajan (the first
+century of the Christian era). He bridged the
+Danube with a great military bridge at the spot
+now known as Turnu-Severin, and Trajan's
+Column in Rome commemorated the victories
+which brought all the Balkan Peninsula under the
+Roman sway. Trajan found that the manners
+and customs of the Dacians were similar to those
+of the Germans. These sturdy Dacians were
+conquered but not exterminated by the Romans.
+Dacia across the Danube was made into a Roman
+colony, and the present kingdom of Roumania
+is supposed to represent the survival of that
+colony, which was a mixture of Roman and
+Dacian blood.</p>
+
+<p>In the third century of the Christian era the
+Goths made their first appearance in the Balkan
+Peninsula. The Roman Empire had then entered
+into its period of decline. The invasions of the
+Visigoths, the Huns, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+and the Lombards were to come in turn to overwhelm
+the Roman civilisation. The Gothic invasion
+of the Balkan Peninsula was begun in
+the reign of the Roman Emperor Phillip. Crossing
+the Danube, the Goths ravaged Thrace and laid
+siege to Marcianople (now Schumla) without
+success. In a later invasion the Goths attacked
+Philippopolis and captured it after a great defeat
+of the Roman general, Decius the younger. Then
+the Roman Emperor (Decius the elder) himself
+took the field and was defeated and killed in
+a great battle near the mouth of the Danube
+(<span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 251). That may be called the decisive
+date in the history of the fall of the Roman
+Empire. It was destined to retrieve that defeat,
+and to shine with momentary glory again for
+brief intervals, but the destruction of the Emperor
+and his army by the Goths in 251 was the
+sure presage of the doom of the Roman Power.</p>
+
+<p>One direct result of the battle in which Decius
+was slain was to bring the headquarters of the
+Roman Empire to the Balkan Peninsula. It
+was found that a better stand could be made
+against the tide of Gothic invasion from a new
+capital closer to the Scythian frontier. Constantinople
+was planned and built, and became<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+the capital of the Roman Empire (<span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 330), and
+thus brought to the Balkan stage the death throes
+of the mightiest world-power that history has
+known. From that date it is wise for the sake
+of clearness to speak of the Roman Empire as
+the Greek Empire, though it was some time after
+its settlement in Constantinople before it became
+rather Greek than Roman in character.</p>
+
+<p>With the issue between the Goths and the
+Greek Empire, in which peaceful agreements often
+interrupted for a while fierce campaigns, I cannot
+deal here at any length. It soaked the Balkan
+Peninsula deep in blood. But it was only the
+first of the horrors that were to mark the death
+of the Empire. Late in the fourth century of
+the Christian Era there burst into the Balkans
+from the steppes of Astrakhan and the Caucasus&mdash;from
+very much the same district that was afterwards
+to supply the Bulgars and the Serbs&mdash;the
+Tartar hordes of the Huns. Of these Huns there
+is a vivid contemporary Gothic account.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="p2b">We have ascertained that the nation of the Huns,
+who surpassed all others in atrocity, came thus into
+being. When Filimer, fifth king of the Goths after
+their departure from Sweden, was entering Scythia,
+with his people, as we have before described, he found<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+among them certain sorcerer-women, whom they called
+in their native tongue Haliorunnas (or Al-runas), whom
+he suspected and drove forth from the midst of his
+army into the wilderness. The unclean spirits that
+wander up and down in desert places, seeing these
+women, made concubines of them; and from this union
+sprang that most fierce people [of the Huns], who were
+at first little, foul, emaciated creatures, dwelling among
+the swamps, and possessing only the shadow of human
+speech by way of <a id="language"></a>language.</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/img_027.jpg" width="550" height="399" alt="the walls of Constantinople from the seven towers" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption">
+<i>S�bah &amp; Joaillier</i></span><br />
+</p>
+<p class="center"><b>THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE FROM THE SEVEN TOWERS</b></p>
+</div>
+<p class="p2">With the Alani especially, who were as good warriors
+as themselves, but somewhat less brutal in appearance
+and manner of life, they had many a struggle, but at
+length they wearied out and subdued them. For, in
+truth, they derived an unfair advantage from the intense
+hideousness of their countenances. Nations whom
+they would never have vanquished in fair fight fled
+horrified from those frightful&mdash;faces I can hardly call
+them, but rather&mdash;shapeless black collops of flesh, with
+little points instead of eyes. No hair on their cheeks
+or chins gives grace to adolescence or dignity to age, but
+deep furrowed scars instead, down the sides of their
+faces, show the impress of the iron which with characteristic
+ferocity they apply to every male child that
+is born among them, drawing blood from its cheeks
+before it is allowed its first taste of milk. They are
+little in stature, but lithe and active in their motions,
+and especially skilful in riding, broad-shouldered, good
+at the use of the bow and arrows, with sinewy necks,
+and always holding their heads high in their pride. To
+sum up, these beings under the form of man hide the
+fierce nature of the beast!</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Not a lovable people the Huns clearly:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+and the modern peoples who have some slight
+ancestral kinship with them hate to be reminded
+of the fact. I remember the fierce indignation
+which a French war correspondent aroused in
+Bulgarian breasts by his description&mdash;which had
+eluded the censor&mdash;of the passage of a great
+Bulgarian train of ox wagons because he compared
+it to the passage of the Huns.</p>
+
+<p>The Huns were, with the exception of the
+Persians who had vainly attacked the Greek
+States at an earlier period, the first successful
+Asiatic invaders of Europe. For a full century
+they ravaged the Empire, and the Balkan
+Peninsula felt the chief force of their barbarian
+rage. By the fifth century the waves of the Hun
+invasions had died away, leaving distinct traces of
+the Hunnish race in the Balkans. The Gepidae,
+the Lombards, and later the Hungarians and the
+Tartars then took up the task of ravaging the
+unhappy land which as the chief seat of power of
+the Greek Empire found itself the first objective
+of every invader because of that dignity and yet
+but poorly protected by that power. Constantinople
+was never taken by these barbarians, but
+at some periods little else than its walls stood
+secure against their ravages.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the first Saracens had appeared
+in the Peninsula, curiously enough not as invaders
+nor as enemies, but as mercenary soldiers in the
+army of the Greek Empire fighting against the
+Goths. To a Gothic chronicler we are again
+indebted for a vivid picture of these Saracens,
+"riding almost naked into battle, their long
+black hair streaming in the wind, wont to spring
+with a melancholy howl upon their chosen victim
+in battle and to suck his life-blood, biting at his
+throat." Perhaps the Gothic war correspondent
+of the day studied picturesqueness more than
+accuracy, like some of his modern successors.
+But, without a doubt, the first contact with
+Asiatics, whether Huns or Saracens, gave to the
+European peoples a horror and a terror which
+had never been inspired by their battles among
+themselves&mdash;battles by no means bloodless or
+merciful. As the Asiatic waves of invasion later
+developed in strength the unhappy Balkan
+Peninsula was doomed to feel their full force as
+they poured across the Bosphorus from Asia
+Minor, and across the Danube from the north-eastern
+Asiatic steppes.</p>
+
+<p>It would be vain to attempt to chronicle even
+in the barest outline all the horrors inflicted upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+the Balkans from the date of the first invasion
+of the Huns in the fourth century to the first
+invasion of the Turks in the fourteenth century.
+To say that those ten centuries were filled with
+bloodshed suffices. But they also saw the
+development of the Balkan nationalities of to-day,
+and cannot therefore be passed over without
+some attention. Let us then glance at each
+Balkan nation during that period.</p>
+
+<p><i>Roumania</i>, inhabited by the people of the old
+Roman-Dacian colony, stood full in the way of
+the Northern invasions of Goths, of Huns, of
+Hungarians, of Tartars. It was almost submerged.
+But in the thirteenth century the
+country benefited by the coming of Teutonic
+and Norman knights. The two kingdoms or
+principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (which,
+combined, make up modern Roumania) were
+founded in this century.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bulgaria.</i>&mdash;In the seventh century Slavs had
+begun to settle in Bulgaria. The Bulgars or
+Volgars followed. They were akin to the Tartars
+and the Turks. Together Slavs and Bulgars
+formed the Bulgarian national type and founded
+a very robust nation which was almost constantly
+at war with the Greek Empire (with its capital<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+at Constantinople). At times Bulgaria seriously
+threatened Constantinople and the Greek
+Empire. A boastful inscription in the Church
+of the Forty Martyrs at Tirnovo, the ancient
+capital of Bulgaria, records:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>In the year 1230, I, John As&#xEA;n, Czar and Autocrat
+of the Bulgarians, obedient to God in Christ, son of the
+old As&#xEA;n, have built this most worthy church from its
+foundations, and completely decked it with paintings
+in honour of the Forty holy Martyrs, by whose help,
+in the 12th year of my reign, when the Church had just
+been painted, I set out to Roumania to the war and
+smote the Greek army and took captive the Czar Theodore
+Komnenus with all his nobles. And all lands have
+I conquered from Adrianople to Durazzo, the Greek, the
+Albanian, and the Serbian land. Only the towns round
+Constantinople and that city itself did the Franks hold;
+but these too bowed themselves beneath the hand of
+my sovereignty, for they had no other Czar but me, and
+prolonged their days according to my will, as God had
+so ordained. For without him no word or work is
+accomplished. To him be honour for ever. Amen.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The wars were carried on under conditions
+of mutual ferocity which still rule in Bulgarian-Grecian
+conflicts. An incident of one campaign
+was that the Greek Emperor, Basil, the Bulgar-slayer,
+having captured a Bulgarian army, had
+the eyes torn out of all the men and sent them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+home blinded, leaving, however, one eye to every
+centurion, so that the poor mutilated wretches
+might have guides. In the early part of the
+fourteenth century a Bulgarian Czar, Michael,
+almost captured Constantinople. He formed a
+league with the Roumanians and the Greeks
+against the Serbs, who were at the time promising
+to become the paramount power of the peninsula.
+But Czar Michael was defeated by the Serbs and
+Bulgaria became dependent upon Serbia, which
+was the position of affairs at the time of the
+first serious Turkish invasion of the Balkan
+Peninsula.</p>
+
+<p><i>Serbia.</i>&mdash;Invading tribes of Don Cossacks began
+to come in great numbers to the Balkan Peninsula
+in the sixth century. In the seventh century
+they were encouraged by the Greek Empire to
+settle in Serbia, on condition of paying tribute
+to Constantinople. They set up a kind of aristocratic
+republic of a Slav type. In the ninth
+century they began to fight with the neighbouring
+and kindred Bulgarians. Early in the tenth
+century (<span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 917) the Bulgarians almost effaced
+Serbia from the map; but the Serbs recovered after
+half a century, only to come shortly afterwards
+under the sway of the Greeks. In the eleventh<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+century the Serbians held a very strong position
+and were able to harass the Greek Empire at
+Constantinople. They entered into friendly
+relations with the Pope of Rome, and for some
+time contemplated following the Roman rather
+than the Eastern Church. In the twelfth century
+King Stephen of Serbia was a valued ally of
+the Greek Empire against the Venetians. He
+established Serbia as a European "Power," and
+the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa visited his
+court at Belgrade. This king was the first of
+a succession of able and brave monarchs, and
+Serbia enjoyed a period of stable prosperity and
+power unusually lengthy for the Balkans. Except
+for the strife between the Eastern and Roman
+Catholic Churches for supremacy in Serbia, the
+nation was at peace within her own borders, and
+enjoyed not only a military but an economic
+predominance in the Balkans. Mining and handicrafts
+were developed, education encouraged,
+and the national organisation reached fully to
+the average standard of European civilisation
+at the time. By 1275 the Serbs were the chief
+power in the Balkans. They defeated the Greeks,
+marched right down to the Aegean and reached
+the famous monastery of Mount Athos, to which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+the first King Stephen (Nemanya) had retired
+in 1195 when he abdicated.</p>
+
+<p class="p4b">In 1303 the Serbians forgot their quarrel with
+the Greeks and helped them against the Turks,
+undertaking an invasion of Asia Minor. In 1315
+they again saved the Greek Empire from the
+Turks. When in 1336 Stephen Dushan, the
+greatest of Serbian kings, who has been compared
+to Napoleon because of his military genius and
+capacity for statesmanship, came to the throne,
+Bulgaria was under the suzerainty of Serbia, and
+the Serb monarch ruled over all that area comprised
+within the boundaries of Bulgaria, Serbia,
+Albania, Montenegro, and Greece by the recent
+treaty of Bucharest (1913). King Stephen
+Dushan was not only a great military leader, he
+was also a law-maker and a patron of learning.
+His death on December 13, 1356, at the Gates of
+Constantinople&mdash;he is said to have been poisoned&mdash;opened
+the way for the Turkish occupation
+of the Balkan Peninsula. That occupation was
+made possible in the first instance by the mutual
+jealousies of the Christian peoples of the Balkans.
+It was kept in existence for centuries by the same
+weaknesses arising from jealousy. In 1912 it
+was swept away in a month because in a spasm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+of common sense the Balkan Christian peoples
+had united. In 1913 it was in part restored
+because internecine strife had broken out again
+among the Balkan natives recently allied. It
+will probably continue until the lesson of unity
+is learned again.</p>
+
+<hr class="r33" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="high">CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h4>THE TURK IN THE BALKANS</h4>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">It</span> seems to be difficult to speak without violent
+prejudice on the subject of the Turk in the
+Balkans. One school of prejudice insists that
+the Turk is the finest gentleman in the world,
+who has been always the victim and not the
+oppressor of the Christian peoples by whose side
+he lives, and whose territories he invaded with
+the best of motives and with the minimum of
+slaughter. The other school of prejudice credits
+the Turk with the most abominable cruelty,
+treachery, and lust, and will hear no good of
+him. In England the issue is largely a political
+one. A great Liberal campaign was once founded
+on a Turkish massacre of Bulgarians in the
+Balkans. That made it a party duty for Liberals
+to be pro-Bulgarian and anti-Turk, and almost
+a party duty for Conservatives to find all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+Christian and a few ex-Christian virtues in the
+Turk. Before attempting to judge the Turk of
+to-day, let us see how he stands in the light of
+history. It was in the fourth century that the
+first Saracens came to the Balkan Peninsula as
+allies of the Greek Empire against the Goths.
+They were thus called in by a Christian Power
+in the first instance. It was not until the
+fourteenth century that the Turks made a serious
+attempt to occupy the Balkan Peninsula. They
+were helped in their campaign considerably by
+the Christian Crusaders, who, incidentally to
+their warfare against the Infidel who held the
+Holy Sepulchre, had made war on the Greek
+Empire, capturing Constantinople, and thus weakening
+the power of Christian Europe at its
+threshold. Bulgaria, too, refused help to the
+Greeks when the Turkish invasion had to be
+beaten off. The Turks' coming to the Balkans
+was thus largely due to Christian divisions.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/img_040.jpg" width="550" height="400" alt="Sancta Sophia, Constantinople" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption"><i>S�bah &amp; Joaillier</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="centerb">SANCTA SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">Built by Justinian I, consecrated 538, converted into a Mohammedan
+mosque 1453. It is now thought that the design of its famous architect,
+Anthemius of Tralles, was never completed. The minarets and most of the
+erections in the foreground are Turkish</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Without being able at the time to capture
+Constantinople, the invading Turks occupied
+soon a large tract of the Balkan Peninsula. By
+1362 they had captured Philippopolis and Eski
+Zagora, two important centres of Bulgaria. It
+was not a violence to their conscience for some
+of the Bulgarian men after this to join the Turkish
+army as mercenaries. When the sorely-beset
+Greeks sent the Emperor John Paleologos to
+appeal for help to the Bulgarians, he was seized
+by them and kept as a prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>A united Balkan Peninsula would have kept
+off the Turks, no doubt. But a set of small
+nations without any faculty of permanent cohesion,
+and hating and distrusting one another
+more thoroughly than they did the Turk, could
+do nothing. The Balkan nations of the time,
+though united they would have been really
+powerful, allowed themselves to be taken in
+detail and crushed under the heels of an invader
+who was alien in blood and in religion. In 1366
+the Bulgarians became the vassals of the Turks,
+and the Serbians were defeated at Kossovo. The
+fall of the Greek Empire and the subjugation of
+Roumania followed in due course, and by the
+seventeenth century the Turks had penetrated
+to the very walls of Vienna. At one time it
+seemed as if all Europe would fall under the
+sway of Islam, for, as elsewhere than in the
+Balkans, there were Christian States which were
+treacherous to their faith. But that happily was
+averted. For the Balkan Peninsula, however,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+there were now to be centuries of oppression
+and religious persecution. It will be convenient
+once again to set forth under three national
+headings the chief facts regarding the Turkish
+conquest of the Balkans.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bulgaria.</i>&mdash;By 1366 weakness in the field and
+civil dissensions had brought Bulgaria to the
+humiliation of becoming the vassal of the Turk.
+In 1393 the Turks, not content with mere suzerainty,
+occupied Bulgaria and converted it into
+a Turkish province. In 1398 the Hungarians
+and the Wallachians (Roumanians) made a gallant
+attempt to free Bulgaria from the Turkish yoke,
+but failed. Some of the Bulgarians joined in
+with their Turkish conquerors, abandoned the
+Christian religion for that of Islam, and were the
+ancestors of what are known to-day as the
+Pomaks. The rest of the people gave a reluctant
+obedience to the Turkish conqueror, preserving
+their Christian faith, their Slav tongue, and their
+sense of separate nationality. The Greeks, who
+had come to some kind of terms with the Turkish
+invaders, assisted to bring the Bulgarian people
+under subjection. The Greek church and the
+Greek tongue rather than the Turkish were
+sought to be imposed upon the Bulgarians. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+subject people accepted the situation with occasional
+revolts, but more tamely than some other
+Balkan nations. It was not a general meek
+acquiescence, though it was&mdash;possibly by chance,
+possibly because of the fact that a racial relationship
+existed between conqueror and conquered&mdash;not
+so fierce in protest as that of the Serbians.
+In writing that, I do not follow exactly the Bulgarian
+modern view, which represents as much
+more vivid the sufferings and the protests of the
+Bulgarian people, and ignores altogether the
+racial relationship which existed between Bulgarian
+and Turk, and enabled a section of the
+Bulgarian nation to fall into line with the conqueror
+and embrace his religion and his habits
+of life, a relationship which to this day shows
+its traces in the Bulgarian national life. But in
+Balkan history as written locally, there is usually
+a certain amount of political deflection from
+the facts. A modern Balkan historian, giving
+what may be called the official national account
+of the times of the Turkish domination, says
+(<i>Bulgaria of To-day</i>):</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Had the rulers been of the same race and religion as
+the vanquished, the subjection might have been more
+tolerable. Ottoman domination was not, however, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+simple political domination. Ottoman tyranny was
+social as well as political. It was keenly and painfully
+felt in private as well as in public life; in social liberty,
+manners and morals; in the free development of national
+feeling; in short, in the whole scope of human life.
+According to our present notions, political domination
+does not infringe upon personal liberty, which is sacred
+for the conqueror. This is not the case with Turkish
+rule. The Bulgarians, like the other Christians of the
+Balkan Peninsula, were, both collectively and individually,
+slaves. The life, possessions, and honour of
+private individuals were in constant peril. The bulk
+of the people, after several generations, calmed down
+to passivity and inertia. From time to time the more
+vigorous element, the strongest individualities, protested.
+Some Bulgarian whose sister had been carried
+off to the harem of some pasha would take to the
+mountains and make war on the oppressors. The
+haidukes and voivodes, celebrated in the national songs,
+kept up in mountain fastnesses that spirit of liberty
+which later was to serve as a cement to unite the new
+Bulgarian nation.</p>
+
+<p>But it is a noteworthy fact that the Osmanlis, being
+themselves but little civilised, did not attempt to assimilate
+the Bulgarians in the sense in which civilised
+nations try to effect the intellectual and ethnic assimilation
+of a subject race. Except in isolated cases, where
+Bulgarian girls or young men were carried off and forced
+to adopt Mohammedanism, the government never took
+any general measures to impose Mohammedanism or
+assimilate the Bulgarians to the Moslems. The Turks
+prided themselves on keeping apart from the Bulgarians,
+and this was fortunate for our nationality. Contented
+with their political supremacy and pleased to feel themselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+masters, the Turks did not trouble about the
+spiritual life of the <i>rayas</i>, except to try to trample out
+all desires for independence. All these circumstances
+contributed to allow the Bulgarian people, crushed and
+ground down by the Turkish yoke, to concentrate and
+preserve its own inner spiritual life. They formed religious
+communities attached to the churches. These
+had a certain amount of autonomy, and, beside seeing
+after the churches, could keep schools. The national
+literature, full of the most poetic melancholy, handed
+down from generation to generation and developed by
+tradition, still tells us of the life of the Bulgarians under
+the Ottoman yoke. In these popular songs, the memory
+of the ancient Bulgarian kingdom is mingled with
+the sufferings of the present hour. The songs of this
+period are remarkable for the oriental character of
+their times, and this is almost the sole trace of Moslem
+influence.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the vigilance of the Turks, the religious
+associations served as centres to keep alive the national
+feeling.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>A conquered people which was allowed to
+keep up its religious institutions (with "a certain
+amount of autonomy"), and later to found
+national schools ("to keep alive the national
+feeling"), was not exactly ground to the dust.
+And truth compels the admission that Bulgaria
+under Turkish rule enjoyed a certain amount
+of material prosperity. When the Russian
+liberators of the nineteenth century came to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+Bulgaria they found the peasants far more
+comfortable than were the Russian peasants of
+the day. The atrocities in Bulgaria which
+shocked Europe in 1875 were not the continuance
+of a settled policy of cruelty and rapine. They
+were the ferocious reprisals chiefly of Turkish
+Bashi-Bazouks (irregulars) following upon a Bulgarian
+rising. The Turks felt that they had been
+making an honest effort to promote the interests
+of the Bulgarian province. They had just satisfied
+a Bulgarian aspiration by allowing of the
+formation of an independent Bulgarian church,
+though this meant giving grave offence to the
+Greeks. Probably they felt that they had a real
+grievance against the Bulgars. After the Bulgarian
+atrocities of 1875 there ended the Turkish
+domination of the country.</p>
+
+<p><i>Serbia.</i>&mdash;In December 1356 the great Serbian
+king, Stephen Dushan, soldier, administrator, and
+economist, died before the walls of Constantinople,
+and the one hope of the Balkan Peninsula making
+a stand against the Turks was ended. Shortly
+after, the Turks had occupied Adrianople, their
+first capital in Europe, defeating heavily a
+combined Serbian and Greek army. Later the
+Serbian forces were again defeated by the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+Turkish sultan Amurath I., and the Serbian king
+was killed on the battle-field. King Lazar, who
+succeeded to the Serbian throne, made some
+headway against the invaders, but in 1389, at
+the Battle of Kossovo, the Serbian Empire came
+tumbling to ruins. The Turkish leader, Amurath,
+was killed in the fight, but his son Bajayet
+proved another Amurath and pressed home the
+victory. Serbia became a vassal state of Turkey.</p>
+
+<p>But there was to be still a period of fierce
+resistance to the Turk. In 1413 the Turks,
+dissatisfied with the attitude of the Serbs, entered
+upon a new invasion of the territory of
+Serbia. In 1440 Sultan Amurath II. again overran
+the country and conquered it definitely,
+imposing not merely vassalage but armed occupation
+on its people. John Hunyad, "the White
+Knight of Wallachia," came to the rescue of the
+Serbs, and Amurath II. was driven back. An
+alliance between Serbs and Hungarians kept the
+Turk at bay for a time, and in 1444 Serbia could
+claim to be free once again. But the respite was
+a brief one. In 1453 Constantinople fell to the
+Turks, and the full tide of their strengthened
+and now undivided power was turned upon
+Serbia. A siege of Belgrade in 1457 was repulsed,
+but in 1459 Serbia was conquered and annexed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+to European Turkey. Lack of unity among the
+Serbs themselves had contributed greatly to the
+national doom, but on the whole the Serbs had
+put up a gallant fight against the Turks. And
+even now a section of them, the Montenegrins,
+in their mountain fastnesses kept their liberty,
+and through all the centuries that were to follow
+never yielded to the Crescent.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">The condition of the Serbs in the fifteenth and
+sixteenth centuries was very unhappy. They
+could come to no manner of contentment with
+Turkish rule, and sporadic revolts were frequent.
+At times the Hungarians from the other side of
+the Danube came to the aid of the revolters, but
+never in such strength as to shake seriously the
+Turkish power. Very many of the Serbs left
+their country in despair and sought refuge under
+the Austrian flag. To-day a big Serb element,
+under the flag of Austro-Hungaria, is one of the
+racial difficulties of the Dual <a id="Monarchy"></a>Monarchy.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img_049.jpg" width="400" height="500" alt="King Peter of Serbia" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption"><i>Underwood &amp; Underwood</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="centerb">KING PETER OF SERBIA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The Serb exiles carried to their new homes
+their old sympathies, and largely because of
+their efforts Austria in 1788 went to the rescue
+of Serbia, and for a brief while the land again
+was free. But the Turkish power returned and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+Serbia stumbled blindly, painfully through years
+of reprisals, which culminated in the great
+massacre of Serbs by Turks in 1804, which, like
+the Turkish massacre of Bulgarians in 1875,
+really declared the doom of the Turkish power
+in the country. Following this massacre George
+Petrovic, "Black George," or "<i>Kara</i> George,"
+as the Serbians knew him, raised the standard
+of revolt among his countrymen. He was a fierce
+blood-stained man, this first liberator of the Serbs,
+a man on whose head was the blood of his father
+and his brother. His grim character was fitted
+for his grim task. The story of that task will
+come better within the scope of a following
+chapter, which will tell of the liberation of the
+Balkans from the Turks.</p>
+
+<p><i>Roumania.</i>&mdash;It was not until 1391 that the
+Turks crossed the Danube and attacked the
+kingdoms of Wallachia and Moldavia, and reduced
+Wallachia to the position of a tributary
+state. King Mirtsched made a gallant fight
+against the invaders, but the Turks proved too
+strong. That was the beginning of a Turkish
+dominance of Roumania, which was never so
+complete as that exercised over Bulgaria and
+Serbia, but left the two Roumanian kingdoms<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+of Wallachia and Moldavia as vassal states.
+Mutual jealousy between them prevented effective
+operations against the Turk, and helped to make
+their vassalage possible. In the fifteenth century
+both kingdoms had great rulers. Wallachia was
+ruled by Vlad the Impaler, an able but cruel man,
+who seems to have earned the infamy of inventing
+a form of torture still practised in the Balkans
+as a matter of religious proselytising, that of
+sitting the victim on a sharp stake, and leaving
+him to die slowly as the stake penetrated his
+body. Moldavia had as king Stephen the
+Great, who has no such ghastly reputation of
+cruelty. But able princes could effect little with
+communities weakened by the luxury of the
+nobles and the helpless poverty of the serfs.
+Still, the Roumanians had intervals of victory.
+In the sixteenth century Michael the Brave
+(whose memory is commemorated by a statue in
+Bucharest) drove the Turks back as far as
+Adrianople, liberating Roumania and Bulgaria.
+He annexed Moldavia and Transylvania to Wallachia,
+and was in a sense the founder of modern
+Roumania. But the union thus effected was
+not enduring and the Turkish ascendancy grew
+stronger. The Turkish suzerain forced upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+Roumanian peoples governors of the Greek race,
+who carried on the work of oppression and
+spoliation with an industrious effectiveness quite
+beyond the capacity of the Turk, who at his worst
+is a fitful and indolent tyrant.</p>
+
+<p>In the last quarter of the seventeenth century
+the Russian Power began to take a close interest
+in Roumania. In 1711 there was a definite
+Russian-Roumanian alliance. By this time the
+Roumanians were resolutely hostile to the Turkish
+domination. True, they had been spared most
+of the cruelties which were in Servia a customary
+and in Bulgaria an occasional concomitant of
+Turkish rule. But they were deeply injured by
+the corrupt, the luxurious, the exacting administration
+of the Greek rulers forced upon them by
+the Turkish government. Though they suffered
+little from massacre they suffered much from
+"squeeze." There was not only the greed of
+the Turk but the greed of the intermediate Greek
+to be satisfied. From 1711 until the final
+liberation of Roumania, Roumanian sympathies
+were generally with the Russians in the frequent
+wars waged by them against Turkey. In 1770
+the Russians occupied Roumania and freed it
+for a time from the Turk, but in 1774 the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+Roumanians went back to the Turkish suzerainty.
+During the Napoleonic wars Russia gave Roumania
+some reason to doubt the disinterestedness
+of her friendship by annexing the rich province
+of Bessarabia, a part of the natural territory of
+the Roumanian people. The year 1821 saw the
+outbreak of the Greek war of independence, in
+which Roumania took no part, having as little
+love for the Greek as for the Turk. She won one
+advantage for herself from the war, the right to
+have her native rulers under Turkish suzerainty.
+In 1828, as a result of a Russo-Turkish war,
+Roumania won almost complete freedom, conditional
+only on tribute being continued to be
+paid to the Sultan. She found a new master,
+however, in Russia, and was forced to keep up a
+Russian garrison within her borders, nominally
+as a protection against Turkey, really as a safeguard
+against the growth in her own people of
+a spirit of national independence. The Crimean
+War (1853) freed Roumania from this Russian
+garrison, and in 1856 the Treaty of Paris declared
+Roumania to be an independent principality
+under Turkish suzerainty.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 378px;">
+<img src="images/img_056.jpg" width="378" height="500" alt="King Nicolas of Montenegro" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption"><i>Underwood &amp; Underwood</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="centerb">KING NICOLAS OF MONTENEGRO</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2"><i>Montenegro.</i>&mdash;The existence of Montenegro
+as a separate Balkan state dates back to the
+Battle of Kossovo. The Montenegrin is a Serbian
+Highlander, and whilst the Serbian Empire
+flourished, claimed for himself no separate national
+entity. When, however, the rest of Serbia was
+subjugated by the Turks, "the Black Mountain"
+held out, and there gathered within its little area
+of rocky hill fastnesses the free remnants of the
+Serbian race. The story of that little nation is
+quite the most wonderful in all the world. It
+transcends Sparta, and makes the fighting record
+of the Swiss seem tame. At the height of its
+power Montenegro had a population of perhaps
+8000 males, and little source of riches from mines,
+from trade, or even from fertile agricultural
+land. Yet Montenegro kept the Turks from her
+own territory, and was able at times to give
+valuable help to the rest of Europe in withstanding
+the invasion of Islam.</p>
+
+<p>The system of government instituted was
+that of a theocratic despotism: the head of the
+nation was its chief bishop, and he had the right
+to nominate a nephew (not a son&mdash;as a bishop of
+the Greek Communion he would be celibate)
+to succeed him. The Montenegrin dynasty was
+founded in 1696 by King Danilo I., and has
+endured to this day, though recently the functions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+of the chief priest and king have been separated,
+and the present monarch is purely a civil ruler.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">It is not possible here to give even the barest
+mention of the leading facts in the proud history
+of little Montenegro. In the seventeenth century
+she was the valued friend of Venice against the
+Turks; in the eighteenth century she was aided
+by Peter the Great of Russia; later she met without
+being subdued the warlike power of Napoleon.
+All the time, during every century, every year
+almost, there was constant warfare with the Turks.
+One campaign lasted without interruption from
+1424 to 1436, and was marked by over sixty
+battles. The little population of the patch of
+rocks in the mountains was worn down by this
+incessant fighting, but was recruited by a steady
+flow of exiles from other parts of the Balkan
+Peninsula, anxious for freedom and for revenge
+on the Turk. Sometimes the tide of battle went
+sorely against the mountaineers, and almost all
+their country was put under the heel of the
+Moslem. But always one eyrie was kept for the
+free eagles, and from it they swooped down with
+renewed strength to send the invader once again
+across their borders. Repeatedly the Turk levied
+great armies for the conquest of Montenegro<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+(once the Turkish force reached to the number
+of 80,000). Repeatedly great European Powers
+which had proffered help or had been begged for
+help failed little Montenegro at a crisis. But never
+were the stout hearts of the Black Mountain
+quelled. In 1484, when Zablak had to be
+evacuated and the whole nation was confined to
+the little mountain fortress of Cettinje, Ivan the
+Black offered to his people the choice of ending
+the war and making peace with the Turks. They
+rejected the idea, and swore to stand by the
+freedom of Montenegro until the last. The oath
+was never broken. Right down to 1832 a free
+Montenegro faced Turkey. In that year the
+Turks, despairing of an occupation of the country,
+suggested that Montenegro should agree at least
+to pay tribute. That offer was rejected and yet
+another war entered upon. A war against Austria
+followed, in which the desperate Montenegrins
+used the type of their printing presses to make
+bullets for the <a id="soldiers"></a>soldiers.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 398px;">
+<img src="images/img_060.jpg" width="398" height="500" alt="Montenegrin troops" />
+<p class="center"><span class="caption">MONTENEGRIN TROOPS</span></p>
+
+<p class="centerb">Weekly Drill and Inspection of Weapons</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">That there was lead type to be so used
+shows that the Montenegrins had not altogether
+neglected the arts of peace. In 1493 a printing
+press had been set up in Cettinje and the first
+Montenegrin book printed in the Cyrillic character.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+During the next century this printing
+press was kept busy with the issue of the Gospels
+and psalters under the rule of the brave Bishop
+Babylas. The state of Montenegro at this time
+aroused the admiration of the Venetians, and
+there is extant a book in praise of Montenegro
+written in 1614 by a Venetian noble, Mariano
+Bolizza.</p>
+
+<p>When the time came for the other Balkan
+States to throw off the Turkish yoke Montenegro
+was not reluctant to join in the movement for
+liberation, and she was later first in the field
+in the campaign of 1912.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">This very brief record of the leading facts of
+Balkan history has now brought each of the
+peoples up to the stage at which the final and
+successful effort was made with the help of
+Russia to drive the Turks out of Balkan territory.
+The story of that effort will be told in the succeeding
+chapter.</p>
+
+<hr class="r33" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h4>THE FALL OF THE TURKISH POWER</h4>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">In</span> the nineteenth century the Turkish dominion
+was pushed back in all directions from the
+Balkan Peninsula. At the dawn of that century
+Montenegro was the only Balkan state entirely
+free from occupation, vassalage, or the duty of
+tribute to the Sublime Porte. At the close of
+that century Montenegro, Serbia, Roumania,
+Greece, and Bulgaria were all practically free
+and self-governing.</p>
+
+<p>In 1804, as has been recorded, Kara George
+in Serbia raised the standard of revolt against
+Turkey. In 1806 the Serbs defeated the Turks
+in a pitched battle, and for a moment Serbia was
+free. But in 1812 when the Turkish power
+resolved upon a great invasion of Serbia, the heart
+of Kara George failed him and he left his country
+to its fate, taking refuge in Austria. Thus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+deserted by their leader, the Serbs did not abandon
+the struggle altogether. Milosh Obrenovic stepped
+to the front as the national champion, and though
+he could make no stand against the Turkish
+troops in the open field he kept up an active
+revolt from a base in the mountains. The
+contest for national liberty went on with varying
+fortune. Troubles at this time were thickening
+around Turkey, and whenever she was engaged
+in war with Russia the oppressed nationalities
+within her borders took the opportunity to strike
+a blow for liberty. By 1839&mdash;it is not possible
+to make a record of all the dynastic changes
+and revolutions which filled the years 1812-1839&mdash;Serbia
+was practically free, with the payment
+of an annual tribute to Turkey as her only bond.
+During the Crimean War she kept her neutrality
+as between Russia and Turkey. The Treaty of
+Paris (1856) confirmed her territorial independence,
+subject to the payment of a tribute to
+Turkey. In 1867 the Turkish garrisons were
+withdrawn from Serbia; but the tribute was
+still left in existence until the date of the Treaty
+of Berlin.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 353px;">
+<img src="images/img_066.jpg" width="353" height="500" alt="The King of Roumania" />
+
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption"><i>Exclusive News Agency</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="centerb">THE KING OF ROUMANIA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Roumania in 1828 (then Wallachia and
+Moldavia) had won her territorial independence
+of Turkey subject only to payment of a tribute.
+The Treaty of Paris (1856) left her under a
+nominal suzerainty to Turkey. In 1859 the
+two kingdoms united to form Roumania, and in
+1866 the late King Charles, as the result of
+a revolution, was elected prince of the united
+kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Bulgaria had remained a fairly contented
+Turkish province until the rising of 1875, and its
+cruel suppression by the Bashi-Bazouks. As a
+direct consequence of that massacre European
+diplomacy turned its serious attention to the
+Balkan Peninsula, and at a Conference demands
+were made upon Turkey for a comprehensive
+reform applying to Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia,
+Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. The proposed
+reform was particularly drastic as applied
+to Bulgaria, which was still in effect Turkish
+territory, whilst all the other districts had
+achieved a practical freedom. It was proposed
+to create two Bulgarian provinces divided into
+Sandjaks and Kazas as administrative units,
+these to be subdivided into districts. Christian
+and Mohammedans were to be settled homogeneously
+in these districts. Each district was
+to have at its head a mayor and a district council,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+elected by universal suffrage, and was to enjoy
+entire autonomy in local affairs. Several districts
+would form a Sandjak with a prefect (<i>mutessarif</i>)
+at its head who was to be Christian or Mohammedan,
+according to the majority of the population
+of the Sandjak. He would be proposed by
+the Governor-General, and nominated by the
+Porte for four years. Finally, every two Sandjaks
+were to be administered by a Christian Governor-General
+nominated by the Porte for five years,
+with consent of the Powers. He would govern
+the province with the help of a provincial assembly,
+composed of representatives chosen by the district
+councils for a term of four years. This assembly
+would nominate an administrative council. The
+provincial assembly would be summoned every
+year to decide the budget and the redivision of
+taxes. The armed force was to be concentrated
+in the towns and there would be local militia
+besides. The language of the predominant
+nationality was to be employed, as well as
+Turkish. Finally, a Commission of International
+Control was to supervise the execution of these
+reforms.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">The Sublime Porte was still haggling about
+these reforms when Russia lost patience and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+declared war upon Turkey on April 12, 1877.
+Moving through the friendly territory of
+Roumania, Russia attacked the Turkish forces
+in Bulgarian territory. In that war the Russians
+found that the Turks were a gallant foe, and
+the issue seemed to hang in the balance until
+Roumania and Bulgaria went actively to the
+help of the Russian forces. The Roumanian
+aid was exceedingly valuable. Prince Charles
+crossed the Danube at the head of 28,000 foot
+soldiers and 4000 cavalry. He was appointed
+Commander-in-Chief of the forces against Plevna,
+and his soldiers were chiefly responsible for the
+taking of the Grivica Redoubt which turned the
+tide of victory against the Turks. The Bulgarians
+did but little during the campaign: it was not
+possible that they should do much seeing that
+they could only put irregulars in the field. Nevertheless
+some high personal reputations for courage
+were made. During my stay with the Bulgarian
+army in 1912 I noted that there were of the
+military officers three classes, the men who had
+graduated in foreign military colleges&mdash;usually
+Petrograd,&mdash;very smart, very insistent on
+their military dignity, speaking usually three or
+four languages; officers who had been educated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+at the Military College, Sofia; and the older
+Bulgarian type, dating sometimes from before
+the War of Liberation. Of these last the outstanding
+figure was General Nicolaieff, who as captain
+of a Bulgarian company rushed a Turkish battery
+beneath Shipka after the Russians had been held
+up so long that they were in despair. A fine
+stalwart figure General Nicolaieff showed when
+I met him at Yamboli, a hospital base town of
+which he was military commandant. Another
+soldier of the War of Liberation, a captain in rank,
+I travelled with for a day once between Kirk
+Kilisse and Chorlu. We chummed up and shared
+a meal of meat balls cooked with onions, rough
+country wine (these from his stores), and dates
+and biscuits (from my stores). He spoke neither
+English nor French, but a Bulgarian doctor
+who spoke French acted as interpreter, and the
+old officer, who after long entreaty at last had
+got leave to go down to the front in spite of his
+age, yarned about the hardships and tragedies of
+the fighting around Stara Zagora and the Shipka
+Pass. Some of the Bulgarians, he said, took
+the field with no other arms than staves and
+knives, and got their first rifles from the dead of
+the battle-<a id="fields"></a>fields.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 405px;">
+<img src="images/img_071.jpg" width="405" height="500" alt="The Shipka Pass" />
+<span class="caption">THE SHIPKA PASS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+Serbia took a hand in this campaign, too,
+though she hesitated for some time, going to the
+aid of Russia through fear of Austria. Beginning
+late, at a time when the mountains were covered
+in the winter snows, the Serbians suffered severely
+from the weather, but won notable victories
+at Pirot, at Nish, and at Vranga. The Turks
+were in full retreat on Constantinople when the
+armistice and Treaty of San Stefano put an end
+to the war.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to be one of the standing rules of
+Balkan wars and Balkan peace treaties that
+those who do the work shall not reap the reward,
+and that a policy of standing by and waiting is
+the wisest and most profitable. In this Russo-Turkish
+war the Roumanians had done invaluable
+work for the Russian cause. In return the
+Treaty of San Stefano robbed them shamefully.
+The Bulgarians had done little, except to stain
+the arms of the allies with a series of massacres
+of the Turks in reprisal for the previous atrocities
+inflicted upon them by the Bashi-Bazouks. The
+Bulgarians were awarded a tremendous prize
+of territory. If the grant had been confirmed
+it would have made Bulgaria the paramount
+power of the Balkan Peninsula. By the Treaty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+of San Stefano, Bulgaria was made an autonomous
+principality subject to Turkey, with a Christian
+government and national militia. The Prince
+of Bulgaria was to be freely chosen by the people
+and accepted by the Sublime Porte, with the
+consent of the Powers. As regards internal
+government, it was agreed that an assembly of
+notables, presided over by an Imperial Commissioner
+and attended by a Turkish Commissioner,
+should meet at Philippopolis or Tirnova
+before the election of the Prince to draw up a
+constitutional statute similar to those of the
+other Danubian principalities after the Treaty
+of Adrianople in 1830. The boundaries of
+Bulgaria were to include all that is now Bulgaria,
+and the greater part of Thrace and Macedonia.</p>
+
+<p>The European Congress of Berlin which revised
+the Treaty of San Stefano recognised that the
+motive of Russia was to create in Bulgaria a
+vast but weak state, which would obediently
+serve her interests and in time fall into her hands:
+and that the injury proposed to be done to
+Roumania was inspired by a desire to limit the
+progress of a courageous but an unfortunately
+independent-minded friend. The Congress was
+suspicious of the Bulgarian arrangement, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+clipped off much of the territory assigned to the
+new principality. The injury done to Roumania
+was allowed to stand. Then, as in 1912-1913,
+when Balkan boundaries were again under the
+discussion of an inter-European Conference, the
+vital interests of the great Powers surrounding
+the Balkan Peninsula were to keep its peoples
+divided and weak. Both Russia and Austria
+had more or less defined territorial ambitions in
+the Balkans: and it suited neither Power to see
+any one Balkan state rise to such a standard
+of greatness as would enable it to take the lead in
+a Balkan Union. Especially was it not the wish
+of Austria that any Balkan state should grow
+to be so strong as to kill definitely the hope she
+cherished of extending down the Adriatic and
+towards the Aegean.</p>
+
+<p>By the Treaty of Berlin, which followed the
+Congress of Berlin, the greater part of the Balkan
+Peninsula was freed altogether from Turkish
+rule. Roumania and Serbia were relieved from
+all suggestion of tribute or vassalage. Bulgaria
+was left subject to a tribute (which was very
+quickly afterwards repudiated). Where the
+Turkish power was left in existence in European
+Turkey it was a threatened existence, for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+newly freed Christian peoples began at once to
+conspire to help to freedom their nationals left
+still under Turkish rule. The war of 1912 began
+to be prepared in 1878.</p>
+
+<p>There was, however, a period of comparative
+peace. Roumania, though discontented, decided
+to bide her time. Her prince was crowned king
+with a crown made from the metal of Turkish
+cannon taken at Plevna. That was the only hint
+that she gave of keeping in mind the greatness of
+her services which had been so poorly rewarded.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">Montenegro, whilst deprived of the great and
+the well-deserved expansion which the Treaty of
+San Stefano offered, had some benefit from the
+Treaty of Berlin. The area of the kingdom was
+doubled and it won access to the Adriatic. A
+little later the harbour of Dulcigno was ceded to
+Montenegro by Turkey under pressure from the
+Powers, and she was left with only one notable
+grievance, that of being shut off from Serbia by
+the Sanjak of Novi-Bazar, which Austria secured
+for Turkey, apparently with the idea of one day
+seizing it on her way down to <a id="Salonica"></a>Salonica.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 349px;">
+<img src="images/img_077.jpg" width="349" height="500" alt="King Ferdinand of Bulgaria" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption"><i>Chusseau Flaviens</i></span></p>
+<p class="centerb">KING FERDINAND OF BULGARIA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Serbia increased her territory by one-fourth
+under the Treaty of Berlin, but was not allowed
+to extend towards the Adriatic, and, nurturing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+as she did a dream of reviving the old Serbian
+Empire, was but poorly satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>Bulgaria, if it had not been for the promises
+of the Treaty of San Stefano, might have been
+fairly content with the provisions of the Treaty
+of Berlin. She had been the first nation in the
+Balkans to yield to the Turks. She had allowed
+her sons to act as mercenary soldiers to aid the
+Turks against other Christians: and during the
+period of oppression she had suffered less than
+any from the rigours of the invader, had protested
+less than any by force of arms. Yet now she
+was given freedom as a gift won largely by the
+sacrifices of others. But, though having the
+most reason to be content, Bulgaria was the
+least contented of all the Balkan States. The
+restless ambition of the people guiding her
+destinies was manifested in an internal revolution
+which displaced the first prince (Alexander of
+Battenberg) and put on the throne the present
+king (Ferdinand of Coburg). Bulgaria, too,
+repudiated the friendly tutelage which Russia
+wished to exercise over her destinies.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">The territorial settlement made by the Berlin
+Treaty was first broken by Bulgaria. That
+treaty had cut the ethnological Bulgaria into two,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+leaving the southern half as a separate province
+under the name of Eastern Rumelia. In 1885
+Eastern Rumelia was annexed to Bulgaria with
+the glad consent of its inhabitants, but in spite
+of the wishes of Russia. Serbia saw in this the
+threat of a Bulgarian hegemony in the Balkans,
+and demanded some territorial compensation for
+herself. This was refused. War followed. The
+Bulgarians were victorious at the Battle of
+Slivnitza, an achievement which was in great
+measure due to the organising ability of Prince
+Alexander. The victory secured Rumelia for
+Bulgaria. But no sense of gratitude to Prince
+Alexander survived, and the Russian intrigue
+which secured his abdication and flight was
+undoubtedly aided by a large section of the
+Bulgarian people. Stambouloff, a peasant leader
+of the Bulgarians and its greatest personality
+since the War of Liberation, was faithful to
+Alexander, but was not able to <a id="save_him"></a>save him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_081.jpg" width="600" height="403" alt="King Ferdinand's Bodyguard" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption">
+<i>Underwood &amp; Underwood</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">KING FERDINAND&#39;S BODYGUARD</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The Bulgarian throne after Alexander's abdication
+was offered to the King of Roumania. The
+acceptance of the offer would possibly have led
+to a real Balkan Federation. The united power
+of Roumania and Bulgaria, exercised wisely,
+could have gently pressed the other Balkan
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+peoples into a union. That, however, would
+have suited the aims neither of Russia nor of
+Austria, the two Empires which guided the
+destinies of the Balkans, chiefly in the light of
+their own selfish ends. The Roumanian king
+refused the throne of Bulgaria, and in 1887
+Prince Ferdinand of Coburg became Prince of
+the State. It was not long before he fell out
+with Stambouloff, the able but personally unamenable
+patriot who chiefly had made modern
+Bulgaria. In the conflict between the two Prince
+Ferdinand proved the stronger. Stambouloff
+was dismissed from office, and in 1895 was assassinated
+in the streets of Sofia. No attempt was
+made to punish his murderers.</p>
+
+<p>In 1908 Bulgaria shook off the last shred of
+dependence to Turkey. The bold action was the
+crown of a clever diplomatic intrigue by Prince
+Ferdinand. Since the murder of Stambouloff
+the Prince had been sedulously cultivating in
+public the friendship of Russia: but that had
+not prevented him carrying to a great pitch of
+mutual confidence a secret understanding with
+Austria. The Austrian Empire was anxious to
+annex formally the districts of Bosnia and
+Herzegovina, of which it had long been in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+occupation. Objection to this would surely have
+come from Russia; but Russia was impotent for
+the time being after the disastrous war with
+Japan. Just as surely it would come from Serbia
+which would see thus definitely pass over to the
+one Power, which she had reason to fear, a section
+of Slav-inhabited country clearly connected to
+the Serbs by racial ties. Serbia, it might be
+expected, would have the support of France and
+England as well as Russia. For Bulgaria the
+offer to neutralise Serbia made to Austria all the
+difference between an action which was a little
+risky and an action which had no risk at all.
+Bulgaria supported Austria in the annexation,
+and, as was to have been expected, Serbia found
+protest impossible, since Russia, France, and
+England swallowed the affront to treaty obligations
+to which they were parties. It was
+Bulgaria's reward to have the support of the
+Triple Alliance in throwing off all fealty and
+tribute to the Sublime Porte. Prince Ferdinand
+became the Czar Ferdinand of Bulgaria.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was that the end of Bulgarian ambition.
+The "big" Bulgaria of the San Stefano treaty
+floated before the eyes of her rulers constantly,
+and she began to prepare for a war against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+Turkey, of which the prize should be Thrace and
+Macedonia. An obstacle in Macedonia was not
+only that the Turks were in occupation, but
+that the Greeks considered themselves entitled
+to the reversion of the estate. Rivalry between
+the three nations was responsible for the
+Macedonian horrors, which went on from year to
+year, and made one district of the Balkans a
+veritable hell on earth. These horrors have been
+set at the door of the "Unspeakable Turk."
+The Turk has quite enough to answer for in the
+many hideous crimes which he has undoubtedly
+committed. It is not quite just to hold him
+wholly responsible for the terrible state of
+Macedonia during the last few years. Greek
+and Bulgarian were alike interested in making
+it appear to the world that Turkish rule in
+Macedonia was impossible. To effect this they
+insisted that rapine and massacre should become
+normal. If the Turk did not wish for massacres
+he was stirred up to massacres. Christian pastors
+were not prevented by their Christian faith from
+murders of their own people, if it could be certain
+that the Turks would have the discredit of them.
+Side by side with the atrocities which were committed
+by Turks against Christians and Christians<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+against Turks, the two sets of warring Christians,
+the Bulgarian Exarchates and the Greek Patriarchates,
+attacked one another with a fiendish relentlessness,
+which equalled the most able efforts of the
+Turks in the way of rape, murder, and robbery.</p>
+
+<p>In excuse for part of this, <i>i.e.</i> that part which
+stirred up the Turks to atrocities even when they
+wished to be peaceful, there could be pleaded the
+good object of striving for the end of all Turkish
+rule in Christian districts of the Balkans. The
+excuse will serve this far: that without a doubt
+a Christian community cannot be governed justly
+by the Turk, and the very strongest of steps are
+warranted to put an end to Turkish domination
+of a district largely inhabited by Christians.
+But no consideration, even that of exterminating
+Turkish rule, could justify all the Christian
+atrocities perpetrated in Macedonia: and there
+is certainly no shadow of an excuse for the
+atrocities with which Bulgarian sought to score
+against Greek and Greek against Bulgarian. The
+era of those atrocities has not yet closed. The
+Turk has been driven from Macedonia, but
+Greek and Bulgarian continue their feud. For
+the time the Greek is in the ascendant, whilst
+the Bulgarian broods over a revenge.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_088.jpg" width="600" height="378" alt="Bulgarian Infantry" />
+<span class="caption">BULGARIAN INFANTRY</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="r33" />
+
+<h2 class="high"><a id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h4>THE WARS OF 1912-13</h4>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">By</span> 1912, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro
+had contrived, in spite of any past quarrels, in
+spite of the mutual jealousies even then being
+displayed in the recurring Macedonian massacres,
+of Christians by Christians as well as by Turks,
+to arrive at a sufficient degree of unity to allow
+them to make war jointly on Turkey. Bulgaria
+and Serbia concluded an offensive and defensive
+alliance, arranging for all contingencies and
+providing for the division of the spoils which it
+was hoped to win from the Turks. Between
+Bulgaria and Greece there was no such definite
+alliance, but a military convention only. The
+division of the spoil after the war was left to
+future determination, both Greek and Bulgarian
+probably having it clearly in his head that
+he would have all his own way after the war or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+fight the issue out subsequently. A later Punch
+cartoon put this peculiarity of a Balkan alliance
+with pretty satire. Greece and Serbia were
+discussing what they should do with the spoils
+they were then winning from Bulgaria. "Of
+course we shall fight for them. Are we not
+allies?" said one of the partners.</p>
+
+<p>I was through the war of 1912 as war correspondent
+for the London <i>Morning Post</i>, and
+followed the fortunes of the main Bulgarian
+army in the Thracian campaign. In this book
+I do not intend to attempt a history of the war
+but will give some impressions of it which, whilst
+not neglecting any of the chief facts in any
+part of the theatre of operations, will naturally be
+mainly based on observations with the Bulgarians.</p>
+
+<p>First, with regard to the political side of the
+war, one could not but be struck by the exceedingly
+careful preparation that the Bulgarians had made
+for the struggle. It was no unexpected or sudden
+war. They had known for some time that war
+was inevitable, having made up their minds for
+a considerable time that the wrongs of their
+fellow-nationals in Macedonia and Thrace would
+have to be righted by force of arms. Attempts
+on the part of the Powers to enforce reforms<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+in the Christian Provinces of Turkey had, in the
+opinion of the Bulgars, been absolute failures,
+and they had done their best to make them
+failures, wishing for a destroyed Turkey not a
+reformed Turkey. In their opinion there was
+nothing to hope for except armed intervention
+on their part against Turkey. And, believing
+that, they had made most careful preparation
+extending over several years for the struggle.
+That preparation was in every sense admirable.
+For instance, it had extended, so far as I could
+gather, from informants in Bulgaria, to this
+degree: that they formed military camps in
+winter for the training of their troops. Thus
+they did not train solely in the most favourable
+time of the year for man&#339;uvres, but in the
+unfavourable weather too, in case that time
+should prove the best for their war. The excellence
+of their artillery arm, and the proof
+of the scientific training of their officers, prove
+to what extent their training beforehand had
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>When war became inevitable, the Balkan
+League having been formed, and the time being
+ripe for the war, Bulgaria in particular, and the
+Balkan States in general, were quite determined<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+that war should be. The Turks at this time
+were inclined to make reforms and concessions;
+they had an inclination to ease the pressure on
+their Christian subjects in the Christian provinces.
+Perhaps knowing&mdash;perhaps not knowing&mdash;that
+they were unready for war themselves, but
+feeling that the Balkan States were preparing
+for war, the Turks were undoubtedly willing to
+make great concessions. But whatever concessions
+the Turks might have offered, war would
+still have taken place. I do not think one need
+offer any harsh criticism about the Balkan nations
+for coming to that decision. If you have made
+your preparation for war&mdash;perhaps a very expensive
+preparation, perhaps a preparation which
+has involved very great commitments apart from
+expense&mdash;it is not reasonable to suppose that at
+the last moment you will consent to desist from
+making that war. The line which you may have
+been prepared to take before you made your
+preparations you may not be prepared to take
+after the preparations have been made. And,
+as the Turks found out afterwards, the terms
+which were offered to them before the outbreak
+of the war were not the same terms as would
+be listened to after that event.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+To a pro-Turk it all will seem a little
+unscrupulous. But it is after the true fashion
+of diplomacy or warlike enterprise. The simple
+position was that Turkey was obviously a decadent
+Power; that her territories were envied and that
+if there had not been a real grievance (there was
+a real grievance) one would have been manufactured
+to justify a war of spoliation. It not
+being necessary to manufacture a grievance, the
+existing one was carefully nursed and stimulated:
+and when the ripe time came for war the unreal
+pretext that war was the alternative to reform
+and could be avoided by reform was put forward.
+No reform would have stopped the war just as
+no "reform" would stop, say, San Marino
+attacking the British Empire if she wanted something
+which the British Empire has got and felt
+that she could get it by an attack.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think that the Balkan League would
+have withdrawn from the war supposing the
+Turks before the outbreak of the war had offered
+autonomy of the Christian provinces. I was
+informed in very high quarters, and I believe
+profoundly, that if the Turks had offered so much
+at that time the war would still have taken
+place.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+There is another interesting lesson to be
+gleaned from the political side of this war.
+At the outset, the Powers, when endeavouring
+to prevent hostilities, made an announcement
+that, whatever the result of the war, no territorial
+benefit would be allowed to any of the
+participants; that is to say, the Balkan States
+were informed, on the authority of all Europe,
+that if they did go to war, and if they won
+victories they would be allowed no fruits from
+those victories. The Balkan States recognised,
+as I think all sensible people must recognise,
+that a victorious army makes its own laws.
+They treated this <i>caveat</i> which was issued by
+the Powers of Europe as a matter to be politely
+set aside; and ignored it.</p>
+
+<p>Political experience seems to show that if a
+nation, under any circumstances, wishes its
+international rights to be respected, it must be
+ready to fight for them. There is proof from
+contemporary history in the respective fates of
+Switzerland and Korea. Both nations once stood
+in very much the same position internationally;
+that their independence was, in a sense, guaranteed.
+Korea's independence was guaranteed by both
+the United States and Great Britain. But the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+independence of Korea has now vanished. Korea
+could not fight for herself, and nobody was going
+to fight for a nation which could not fight for
+herself. The independence of Switzerland is
+maintained because Switzerland would be a very
+thorny problem for any Power in search of territory
+to tackle. In case of an attack on Switzerland,
+that country would be able to help herself and
+her friends.</p>
+
+<p>On the opposite side of the argument, we see
+the Balkan League entering upon a desperate
+war, warned that they would be allowed no
+territorial advantage from that war, but engaging
+upon it because they recognised that a victorious
+army makes its own laws.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">It was of wonderful value to the Bulgarian
+generals entering upon this war that the whole
+Bulgarian nation was filled with the martial
+spirit&mdash;was, in a sense, wrapped up in the colours.
+Every male Bulgarian citizen was trained to
+the use of arms. Every Bulgarian citizen of
+fighting age was engaged either at the front or
+on the lines of communication. Before the war,
+every Bulgarian man, being a soldier, was under
+a soldier's honour; and the preliminaries of the
+war, the preparations for mobilisation in particular,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+were carried out with a degree of secrecy that,
+I think, astonished every Court and every
+Military Department in Europe. The secret
+was so well kept that one of the diplomatists
+in Roumania left for a holiday three days before
+the declaration of war, feeling certain that there
+was to be no war. Bulgaria is not governed
+altogether autocratically, but is a very free
+democracy in some respects. It has a newspaper
+Press that, on ordinary matters, for delightful
+irresponsibility, might be matched in London.
+Yet not a single whisper of what the nation was
+designing and planning leaked abroad. Because
+the whole nation was a soldier, and the whole
+nation was under a soldier's honour, secrecy
+could be kept. No one abroad knew anything,
+either from the babbling of "Pro-Turks," or
+from the newspapers, that a great campaign
+was being <a id="designed"></a>designed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_097.jpg" width="600" height="427" alt="Bulgarian troops leaving Sofia" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption">
+<i>Topical Press</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="centerb">BULGARIAN TROOPS LEAVING SOFIA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The Secret Service of Bulgaria before the war
+evidently had been excellent. They seemed to
+know all that was necessary to know about the
+country in which they were going to fight. This
+very complete knowledge of theirs was in part
+responsible for the arrangements which were made
+between the Balkan Allies for carrying on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+war. The Bulgarian people had made up their
+minds to do the lion's share of the work, and to
+have the lion's share of the spoils. They knew
+quite definitely the state of corruption to which
+the Turkish nation had come. When I reached
+Sofia, the Bulgarians told me they were going
+to be in Constantinople three weeks after the
+declaration of war. That was the view that
+they took of the possibilities of the campaign.
+And they kept their programme as far as Chatalja
+fairly closely.</p>
+
+<p>The view of the Bulgarians as to the ultimate
+result of the war, and what they had designed
+should be the division of spoil after the war,
+I gathered from various classes in Bulgaria,
+speaking not only with politicians but with
+bankers, trading people, and others. They concluded
+that the Turk was going to be driven out
+of Europe, at any rate, as far as Constantinople.
+They considered that Constantinople was too
+great a prize for the Bulgarian nation, or for the
+Balkan States, and that Constantinople would
+be left as an international city, to be governed
+by a commission of the Great Powers. Bulgaria
+was, then, to have practically all Turkey-in-Europe&mdash;the
+province of Thrace, and a large<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+part of Macedonia as far as the city of Salonica.
+Constantinople was to be left, with a small
+territory, as an international city, and the
+Bulgarian boundary was to stretch as far as
+Salonica. Salonica, they admitted, was desired
+very much by the Bulgarians, and also very
+much by the Greeks; and the Bulgarian idea
+in regard to Salonica before the war was that it
+would be best to make it a free Balkan city,
+governed by all the Balkan States in common,
+and a free port for all the Balkan States. Then
+the frontier of Greece was to extend very much
+to the north, and Greece was to be allowed all
+the Aegean Islands. The Serbian frontier was
+to extend to the eastward and the southward,
+and what is now the autonomous province of
+Albania (the creation of which has been insisted
+on by the Powers) was to be divided between
+Montenegro and Servia.</p>
+
+<p>That division would have left the Bulgarians
+with the greatest spoil of the war. They would
+have had entry on to the Sea of Marmora; they
+would have controlled, perhaps, one side of
+the Dardanelles (but I believe they thought
+that the Dardanelles might also be left to a
+commission of the Powers). It needed great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+confidence and exact knowledge as to the state
+of the Turkish Army to allow plans of that sort
+to have been not only formed, but to be generally
+talked about.</p>
+
+<p>It must be tragical now for a patriotic Bulgarian
+to compare these high anticipations with the
+actual results of the war, and to reflect that at
+one time he had three-fourths of his hopes secure
+and then sacrificed all by straining after the
+remainder.</p>
+
+<p>The Bulgarian mobilisation&mdash;effected after
+lengthy preparation with perfect success and
+complete secrecy&mdash;was a triumph of military
+achievement. It emphasises a point often urged,
+that when a whole nation is wrapt up in the
+colours, when every citizen is a soldier and taught
+the code of patriotic honour of the soldier&mdash;then
+at a time of crisis, spies, grumblers, critics are
+impossible. Bulgaria, as I have said, is very
+democratic. Unlike Roumania, where a landed
+aristocracy survived Turkish rule, the whole
+nation is of peasants or the sons and grandsons
+of peasants. The nobles, the wealthy, the intellectuals
+were exterminated by the Turk. Yet
+the strategy of the war suffered nothing from
+the democracy of the people. They acted with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+a unity, a secrecy, and a loyalty to the flag that
+no despotism could rival.</p>
+
+<p>The mobilisation was effected on very slender
+resources. Official statistics&mdash;perhaps for a
+reason&mdash;are silent regarding the growth of railway
+material since 1909. But in that year there
+were only 155 locomotives in the country. As
+soon as war was anticipated these provident
+and determined people set to amassing railway
+material, and one railway official, without giving
+exact figures, talked of locomotives being added
+by "fifties" at a time. I doubt that. But
+perhaps there were between 200 and 225 locomotives
+in Bulgaria in October 1912, though one
+military attach� gave me the figure at 193. It
+was a slender stock, in any case, on which to
+move 350,000 men and to keep them in supplies.
+But the people contributed all their horses,
+mules, and oxen to the war fund. Soldiers
+were willing and able to walk great distances,
+and within a few days all the armies were over
+the frontier.</p>
+
+<p>The Bulgarians, by the way, began the war
+with a <i>moratorium</i>. (The week of the declaration
+of hostilities, meeting some personages notable
+in European finance, they ridiculed for this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+reason the idea of the war being anything but
+a dismal failure from the point of view of the
+Balkan States.) It was necessary to win in a
+hurry if they were to win at all. They could
+take the field only because of the magnificent
+spirit of their population. They could not keep
+the field indefinitely under any circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>The main line of communication was through
+Yamboli, and here the chief force was massed
+whilst exploratory work was carried on towards
+Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse. I believe that
+originally the capture of Adrianople was the
+first grand object of the campaign, and that a
+modification was made later either for political
+or military reasons, or for a mixture of both.
+Up to the point at which Adrianople was invested
+from the north, Kirk Kilisse captured, and the
+cavalry sent raiding south-west to attack the
+Turk's lines of communication and to feel for
+his field army, an excellent plan of campaign
+was followed. If the main Bulgarian army had
+then swung over from Kirk Kilisse and had
+made a resolute&mdash;and, under the circumstances,
+almost certainly victorious&mdash;effort to rush
+Adrianople the natural course, from a military
+point of view, would have been followed. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+one risk involved was that the Turkish field army
+would come up from the south and force a battle
+under the walls of Adrianople, aided by a sortie
+from the garrison. But the experience of Kirk
+Kilisse and the following battles argued against
+this. There would have been, one may judge,
+ample time allowed to subdue Adrianople with
+an army flushed by its success at Kirk Kilisse,
+operating against a garrison thoroughly despondent
+at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>Kirk Kilisse, it must be noted in passing,
+was a vastly overrated fortress. The Turks,
+I believe, valued it highly. The Bulgarians
+triumphantly quoted a German opinion that it
+could withstand a German army for three months.
+As a matter of fact, whilst it was a valuable
+base for an enterprising field army, surrounded
+as it was by natural features of great strength,
+it was not a real fortress at all. Still, the moral
+effect of its capture was great, and on the flood
+of that success the Bulgarian army could have
+entered Adrianople if it had been willing to make
+the necessary great sacrifice of infantry.</p>
+
+<p>A second sound&mdash;and more enterprising, and
+therefore probably better course&mdash;was that which
+I thought at the time was being followed, to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+pursue the Turks fleeing from Kirk Kilisse, to
+search out their field army, give it a thrashing,
+and then swing back to subdue Adrianople. But
+neither of these courses was followed. Kirk
+Kilisse was not followed up vigorously in the
+first instance. After its capture the Bulgarian
+army rested three days. During that time the
+fleeing Turks had won back some of their courage,
+had come back in their tracks, recovered many
+of the guns they had abandoned, and the battles
+of Ivankeui and Yanina&mdash;battles in which the
+Bulgarian losses were very heavy&mdash;were necessary
+to do over again work which had been already
+once accomplished. This criticism must be read
+in the light of the fact that I am totally ignorant
+of the transport position in the Bulgarian Third
+Army at the time. General Demetrieff had made
+a wonderful dash over the wild country between
+Yamboli and Kirk Kilisse, carrying an army
+over a track which took a military attach� six
+days to traverse on horseback, and a hospital
+train seven days to traverse by ox wagon. He
+might at the time have been seriously short
+of ammunition, though Kirk Kilisse renewed
+his food and forage supplies.</p>
+
+<p>After three days the Bulgarians moved on.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+Ivankeui and Yanina were won, and the pursuit
+continued until Lule Burgas, where the Turkish
+army in the field was decisively defeated and
+driven with great slaughter towards Chorlu,
+where its second stand was expected. That
+expectation was not realised. The flight continued
+to Chatalja. This was the turning-point
+of the campaign. Up to now the Bulgarian
+success had been complete. If now Adrianople
+had been made the main objective, with a small
+"holding" force left at Chorlu, the entry into
+Constantinople would possibly have been realised.
+But the decision was made to "mask" Adrianople
+and to push on with all available force towards
+Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>In considering this decision it is easy to be
+misled by giving Adrianople merely the value of
+a fortress in the rear, holding a garrison capable
+of some offensive, necessitating the detachment
+of a large holding force. But that was not the
+position. Actually Adrianople straddled the only
+practical line of communication for effective
+operations against the enemy's capital. The
+railway from Bulgaria to Constantinople passed
+through Adrianople. Excepting that line of
+railway, there was no other railroad, and there
+was no other carriage road, one might say, for
+the Turk did not build roads. Once across the
+Turkish frontier there were tracks, not roads.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 336px;">
+<img src="images/img_108.jpg" width="336" height="500" alt="General Demetrieff" />
+<span class="caption">GENERAL DEMETRIEFF, THE CONQUEROR AT LULE BURGAS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+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&mdash;as I guess it was&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+Greek official account set forth the following
+accusations:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>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&mdash;and
+these were the less frequent&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">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
+<i>entente</i>, safeguarding their political <a id="interests"></a>interests.</p></blockquote>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_117.jpg" width="600" height="410" alt="Adrianople: a general view" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption"><i>Exclusive News Agency</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">ADRIANOPLE</p>
+<p class="centerb">A general view, showing the Mosque of Sultan Selim on the left and the
+Old Mosque on the right</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2tb"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<hr class="r33" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h4>A CHAPTER IN BALKAN DIPLOMACY</h4>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Watching</span> 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&mdash;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 na�ve,
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>In the East and the Near East, the man who
+wants to buy a horse goes to the market-place<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+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&mdash;the East and the Near East is not very
+thrifty with time&mdash;a satisfactory bargain is struck.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+influenced by this sort of fulmination in the
+more irresponsible Press.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 378px;">
+<img src="images/img_128.jpg" width="378" height="500" alt="Roumanian soldiers in Bucharest" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption">
+<i>Underwood &amp; Underwood</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="centerb">ROUMANIAN SOLDIERS IN BUCHAREST</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+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&mdash;to attack such a combination was
+absurd&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Of the dark incidents of that fratricidal war
+no history will ever tell the truth. No war
+correspondents nor military <i>attach�s</i> 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,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+though it lasted only a few days, it is said that
+this number was exceeded.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">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 <a id="value"></a>value.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_133.jpg" width="600" height="437" alt="Adrianople: View looking across the Great Bridge" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption">
+<i>Exclusive News Agency</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">ADRIANOPLE</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">View looking across the Great Bridge</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+it by assault. Finally it was re-captured by a
+mere cavalry patrol of the Turks.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Mustapha
+Pasha on the Maritza was an exception,
+looking dirty and unattractive from any point
+of view&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>I regret the wild Balkan diplomacy which
+doomed that Adrianople should go back to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a London
+organisation which exists to befriend the Balkan
+States&mdash;urged:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>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....</p>
+
+<p>It is clearly our duty to call attention to the governing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+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....</p>
+
+<p>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.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="p2b">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 <a id="diplomats"></a>diplomats.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_139.jpg" width="600" height="400" alt="General view of Stara Zagora, Bulgaria" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption">
+<i>Exclusive News Agency</i></span>
+</p>
+<p class="centerb">GENERAL VIEW OF STARA ZAGORA, BULGARIA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2tb">
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+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 <i>r�clame</i>.
+In Conference he was not aggressive, but moderate,
+and, in my experience, more truthful than other
+Balkan types.</p>
+
+<hr class="r33" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h4>THE TROUBLES OF A WAR CORRESPONDENT IN THE BALKANS</h4>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Being</span> 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:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+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 <i>has</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile one may learn a little of the country and
+its people&mdash;this country which has been riven by many
+wars. The map&mdash;with its names in several languages&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Afterwards, when by dint of hard begging,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+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&mdash;where the Second Army had
+failed at its task and was set to work on a dull
+siege, and was consequently very bad-tempered&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;who were
+working jointly&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+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 <i>Morning
+Post</i> had been seriously (and, it would seem,
+deliberately) mutilated <i>after</i> they had passed the
+censor. They were of some importance as sent&mdash;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.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_150.jpg" width="600" height="397" alt="Sofia" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption">
+<i>Exclusive News Agency</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">SOFIA</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">Commercial Road from Commercial Square</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+the early days of Mustapha Pasha. Later, when
+most of the men had gone away, conditions
+improved.</p>
+
+<p>The "second censorship"&mdash;the most disingenuous
+and condemnable part of the Bulgarian
+system&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+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.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+greatness to give moral courage, may not complain
+too harshly when the circumstances of this
+new-come nation are considered.</p>
+
+<p>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 attach�s
+were in exactly the same position.</p>
+
+<p>There were the Austrian attach� and the
+Roumanian attach�, and their duty was to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+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 attach� to see anything
+of what went on. The attach�s 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 attach�s
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+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 attach� 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
+attach�s or war correspondents to see anything
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">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 <a id="Matrem"></a>Matrem."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_159.jpg" width="600" height="437" alt="Bucharest: The Roumanian House of Representatives" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption">
+<i>Exclusive News Agency</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">BUCHAREST</p>
+<p class="centerb">The Roumanian House of Representatives</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">It was a beautiful story, and why should any
+one let loose a brutal bulldog of a fact and point<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+out that King Ferdinand during the campaign
+lived in temporary palaces at Stara Zagora and
+Kirk Kilisse, and when he travelled on a visit
+to some point near the front it was usually by
+motor-car?</p>
+
+<p>In a paper of another nationality there was
+a vivid story of the battle of Chatalja. This
+story started the battle 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-Pest, 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.</p>
+
+<p>In yet another paper there was a vivid picture&mdash;scenery,
+date, Greenwich time, and all to give
+an air of artistic verisimilitude&mdash;of the signing
+of the Peace armistice. The armistice had not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>2. Return then to a base outside the country.
+It must have good telegraph communication with
+your newspaper. For the rest you may decide<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+its locality by the quality of the wine, or the
+beer, or the cooking.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>terrain</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>5. A little sprinkling of personal experience
+is wise: for example, a bivouac on the battle-field,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+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
+<i>behind</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the correspondents&mdash;one in particular&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+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&mdash;in halting French on
+both sides&mdash;and would explain the campaign as
+it was being carried on. One eloquent gesture
+he habitually had&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" I asked the censor vexedly
+about one message he had stopped. "It is
+true."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is the trouble," he said,&mdash;the
+nearest approach to a joke I ever got out of a
+Bulgarian, for they are a sober, God-fearing, and
+humour-fearing race.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of the Bulgarian censorship in regard
+to the privileges and duties of the war correspondent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+was further illustrated to me on another
+occasion when a harmless map of a past phase
+of the campaign was stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what am I to send?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"There are the bulletins," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you are a war correspondent. You
+can add to them in your own language."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The Mustapha Pasha censorship would not
+allow ox wagons, reservists, or Serbians 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+(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.)</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Here is 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+the great body of war correspondents and soon
+recognised that there was no hope of useful
+work there. The attacking army was at a stand-still,
+and a long, wearisome siege&mdash;its operations
+strictly guarded from inspection&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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 battle-fields),
+liable to ravage by roving bands.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 334px;">
+<img src="images/img_170.jpg" width="334" height="500" alt="General Savoff" />
+<span class="caption">GENERAL SAVOFF</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">That night I gave the Macedonian driver
+some jam and some meat to eke out his bread
+and cheese.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+train was available part of the way if I were
+content to drop interpreter, horse, and baggage,
+and travel with a soldier's load.</p>
+
+<p>That decision was easy enough at the moment&mdash;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&mdash;and by train I got to Chorlu.
+There a friendly artillery officer helped me to get
+a cart (springless) and two fast horses. He insisted
+also on giving me a patrol, a single Bulgarian
+soldier, with 200 rounds of ammunition, as
+Bashi-Bazouks were ranging the country.</p>
+
+<p>It was an unnecessary precaution, though the
+presence of the soldier was comforting as we
+entered Silviri 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
+Silviri 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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. The Commander, an artillery
+officer, welcomed me to a little mess which the
+Bulgarian officers and non-commissioned officers
+(six in all) had set up in a clean room of a village
+house. We had dinner, "Turkish fashion,"
+squatting round a dish of stewed goat and rice,
+and then smoked excellent cigarettes through the
+evening hours as we looked out on the Chatalja
+lines.</p>
+
+<p>Arjenli is perched on a high hill, to the west
+of Ermenikioi. It gave a view of all the Chatalja
+position&mdash;the range of hills stretching from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>Now there had been "good copy" in the
+journey. At Arjenli I happened to be the witness
+of a vivid dramatic scene (more stirring than
+any battle incident). It was a splendid incident,
+showing the high courage and <i>moral</i> of these
+peasant soldiers at an anxious time. To have
+witnessed it, participated in it, was personal
+reward sufficient for a week of toil and anxiety.
+To my paper, too, the reader might say, it was of
+some value, if properly told and given to the
+London reader the next morning, the day before
+the battle of Chatalja.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+Yes. But it was the next afternoon before I
+could get to a telegraph office within the Bulgarian
+lines. Then the censor said any long message
+was hopeless. I was allowed to send a bare
+100 words. They reached London eight days
+later, a week after the battle had been fought,
+when London was interested no longer in anything
+but the armistice negotiations. The reason
+was that the single telegraph line was monopolised
+for military business. My account of the
+battle of Chatalja reached London a full fortnight
+after the event, though I had the advantage
+of the highest influence to expedite the
+message.</p>
+
+<p>Thus from a daily-newspaper point of view
+all the expense, toil, danger were wasted.</p>
+
+<p>Summing up, an accurate and prompt Press
+service as war correspondent with the Bulgarian
+army was impossible, because&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. The Bulgarian authorities were keen that
+correspondents should see nothing.</p>
+
+<p>2. A rigid first censorship checked a full
+record of what little was seen.</p>
+
+<p>3. The first censorship being passed, despatches
+often had still to pass a second censorship at
+Staff headquarters, a third censorship at Sofia.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+4. Despatches passing through Roumania
+underwent another censorship there, and yet
+another in Austria, possibly yet others in other
+European countries.</p>
+
+<p>5. In addition to these censorship delays the
+Bulgarian authorities made newspaper messages
+yield precedence to military messages, and at
+the front this meant that Press messages were
+sent on by mail (ox transport most of the
+way) to the Staff headquarters or the capital.</p>
+
+<p>6. In the meanwhile the imaginative accounts
+written nearer Fleet Street had been published,
+and the accurate news was "dead" from a point
+of public interest.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">Most of these conditions will rule over all
+future wars. Therefore I conclude that the day
+of the war correspondent&mdash;in the sense of a
+truthful observer of a campaign&mdash;has gone, and
+he died with the Balkan War. He can only
+survive if newspapers are willing to incur the
+very great expense of sending out war correspondents
+not for the news, day by day, but for
+what observation and criticism they could supply
+after the campaign was over. To a daily newspaper
+such matter is almost valueless, especially
+as during the progress of the campaign the correspondents<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+of the "new" school would be at work
+with their many inventions, raising the hair of
+the public and the circulation of their journals
+with bright feats of imagination.</p>
+
+<hr class="r33" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h4>JOTTINGS FROM MY BALKAN TRAVEL BOOK</h4>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">These</span> observations I will quote from my diary
+during 1912 in illustration of phases of Balkan
+character, dating them at the time and place
+that they were made.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Belgrade</span>, <i>October 21</i>.&mdash;The declaration of
+war has not set the Serbians singing in the streets.
+In the chief caf� there is displayed a great war
+map. Young soldiers not yet sent to the front
+lounge about in all the caf�s and are lionised
+by the older men. They are the only signs of
+war.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124a" id="Page_124a"></a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_179.jpg" width="600" height="430" alt="Bulgarian Infantry" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption">
+<i>Underwood &amp; Underwood</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">BULGARIAN INFANTRY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The patriotic Serbian illustrates his case
+against the Turk by taking you for a ramble
+around his capital. The old Turkish quarters
+of the town are made up of narrow unpaved
+muddy lanes lined with low hovels. The modern
+Serbian town has handsome buildings markedly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+Russian in architecture, electric trams, and wood-blocked
+pavements. Near the railway station
+one side of a street is as the Turks left it and
+shows a row of hovels: the other side is occupied
+by a great school. The shops, because it is war-time
+and business is largely suspended, are
+mostly closed. But a few remain open with
+reduced staffs. The goods displayed are as a
+rule woefully expensive when they are not of
+local origin. Landlocked Serbia, surrounded by
+commercially hostile countries, finds imports expensive.
+British goods are very much favoured,
+but are hard to obtain.</p>
+
+<p>The Serbians speak bitterly of the efforts of
+Austria "to strangle them commercially."
+"Whenever they wish to put diplomatic pressure
+upon us," said one Serbian to me, "they discover
+that swine fever has broken out in our country
+and stop our exports of pigs and bacon&mdash;our
+chief lines of export. What can we do? Once,
+in retaliation, we found that we suspected a
+consignment of Austrian linen goods of carrying
+swine fever and stopped it on the frontier. It
+almost caused war."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nish</span> (Serbia), <i>October 22</i>.&mdash;A military train
+carrying some members of the army and Staff<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+has brought also a band of war correspondents
+this far. We were a merry but rather a hungry
+lot. The train has been sixteen hours on the
+journey, and as we started at 6 a.m. most of us
+did not bring any stores of food except such as
+were packed away and inaccessible in the big
+baggage. The wayside refreshment rooms are
+swept clean of all food. Finally we manage to
+obtain some bread, and five hungry correspondents
+in one carriage eat at it without enthusiasm,
+whilst in a corner sits a Serbian officer having
+a good meal of sausage and onions and bread.
+We make remarks, a little envious, a little jocose,
+in English, on his selfishness. "He is a greedy
+pig, anyhow," said one, putting the final cap
+on our grumbles. The Serbian officer had not
+betrayed by a smile or a frown that he understood
+but now in good English he remarked: "Perhaps
+you gentlemen will be so kind as to share this
+with me." We all laughed and he laughed then:
+and we took a little of the sausage, and liked
+that Serbian rather well: and no reference was
+made to what had gone before. At nightfall
+we stop at Nish and all my Press comrades leave
+the train to go on in the rear of the Serbian
+army. I push on to Sofia. Clearly these Balkan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+peoples are not quite so savage as I had thought
+once.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sofia</span>, <i>October 24</i>.&mdash;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 has gone to fight who could fight. But
+further, every family has 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&mdash;they were far too
+clever for that,&mdash;but a law 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.</p>
+
+<p>The whole machinery for that had been provided
+beforehand. But so great was the voluntary
+patriotism of the people that this machinery
+practically has not had to be used in any compulsory
+form. Goods were brought in voluntarily,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+wagons, cart-horses and oxen, and all the surplus
+flour and wheat, and&mdash;I have the official figures
+from the Bulgarian Treasurer&mdash;those goods which
+were obtained in this way totalled in value some
+six million pounds. That represented the surplus
+goods, beyond those necessary for consumption
+by the Bulgarian people, at the outset of the war.
+The numbers of the Bulgarian people represent
+half the population of London. The peasant
+population is very 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. I am told that the gold
+supply in the Bulgarian Treasury at the declaration
+of war was only three million pounds. So
+that there was an army of 350,000 men put into
+the field, and only three million pounds as the
+gold supply.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Kirk Kilisse</span>, <i>November 7</i>.&mdash;The extraordinary
+simplicity of the commissariat has helped the
+Bulgarian generals a great deal. The men have
+had bread and cheese, sometimes even bread
+alone; and that was accounted a satisfactory
+ration. When meat and other things could be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+obtained, they were obtained; but there were
+long periods when the Bulgarian soldier had
+nothing but bread and water. The water, unfortunately,
+he took wherever he could get it,
+by the side of the route at any stream he could
+find. There was no attempt to ensure a pure
+water supply for the army. I do not think that,
+without that simplicity of commissariat, it would
+have been possible for the Bulgarian forces to
+have got as far as they did. There was an entire
+absence of tinned foods. As I travelled in the
+trail of the Bulgarian army, I found it impossible
+to imagine that an army had passed that way,
+because there was none of the litter which is
+usually left by an army. It was not that they
+cleared away their rubbish with them; it simply
+did not exist. Their bread and cheese seems to
+be a good fighting diet.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Seleniki</span>, <i>November 13</i>.&mdash;The transport was,
+naturally, the great problem which faced the
+generals. I have seen here (Seleniki, which is
+the point at which the rail-head is), within 30
+miles of Constantinople as the crow flies, ox
+wagons which have come from the Shipka Pass
+in the north of Bulgaria. I asked one driver
+how long it had been on the road; he told me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+three weeks. He was carrying food down to the
+front. The way the ox wagons were used for
+transport was a marvel of organisation. A
+transport officer at Mustapha Pasha, with whom
+I became very friendly, was lyrical in his praise
+of the ox wagon. It was, he said, the only thing
+that stuck to him during the war. The railway
+got choked, and even the horse failed, but the
+ox never failed. There were thousands of ox
+wagons crawling across the country. They do
+not walk, they crawl, like an insect, with an
+irresistible crawl. It reminds you of those armies
+of soldier ants which move across Africa, eating
+everything which they come across, and stopping
+at nothing. I had an ox wagon coming from
+Mustapha Pasha to Kirk Kilisse, and we went over
+the hills and down through the valleys, and stopped
+for nothing&mdash;we never had to unload once. And
+one could sleep in those ox wagons. There is
+no jolting and pulling at the traces, such as
+you get with a harnessed horse. The ox wagon
+moved slowly; but it always moved. If the
+ox transport had not been as perfectly organised,
+and if the oxen had not been as patiently enduring
+as they proved to be, the Bulgarian army
+must have perished by starvation. And yet, at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>But after Lule Burgas, the ox transport has
+had to do the impossible. It is impossible for it
+to maintain the food and the ammunition supply
+of the army at the front, which I suppose must
+number 250,000 to 300,000 men. That army
+has 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Arjenli</span> (Turkey), <i>November 15, 1912</i>.&mdash;It
+is Friday, and we expect to-morrow the Battle
+of Chatalja. In the little Turkish village of
+Arjenli, situated on a high hill a little to the
+rear of the Bulgarian lines, is the ammunition
+park of the artillery, guarded by a small body
+of troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Tchobanoff.
+Coming towards the front from Chorlu, the fall
+of night and the weariness of my horses have
+compelled me to halt at Arjenli, and this officer
+and Dr. Neytchef give me a warm welcome to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+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
+has poured out its manhood for the war, from
+farm, field, factory, shop, bank, university, and
+consulting-room.</p>
+
+<p>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. But there was in the nation one good
+Socialist who knew that war was an evil thing,
+and that it was better to sit down meekly under
+tyranny than to take up arms.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 376px;">
+<img src="images/img_190.jpg" width="376" height="500" alt="ox transport in the balkans" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption">
+<i>Underwood &amp; Underwood</i></span>
+</p>
+<p class="centerb">OX TRANSPORT IN THE BALKANS</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">I followed in the track of the victorious Third
+Army as it came down through the border
+mountains on to Kirk Kilisse, then to Lule Burgas,
+then past Chorlu to the Chatalja lines. At
+Arjenli I had overtaken them in time to see the
+final battle, and now sat looking out on the entrenched
+armies, talking over the position with
+a serene and cheerful artillery officer. The past
+week had been one of hardship and horrors.
+From Chorlu the road was lined with the bodies
+of the Turkish dead, still awaiting burial. Entering
+the Bulgarian lines on their right flank that
+morning, I had tried in vain to succour a soldier
+dying of the choleraic dysentery which had begun
+its ravages. But here in the middle of the battle
+line the atmosphere of noble confidence is inspiriting.
+The horrors of war vanish; only its
+glory shows. The men around me feel that they
+are engaged in a just war. They know that
+everything that man can do has been done.
+Proudly, cheerfully, they await the issue.</p>
+
+<p>During the evening, a Turk suspected of being
+a spy is brought in for trial. He had attempted
+to rush past one of the sentries guarding the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+ammunition wagons. He is given a patient
+hearing, is able to establish his innocence, and
+is allowed to go. There is no feeling of panic
+or injustice among these Bulgarians. I see the
+trial and its end (having been asked to act as
+friend of the accused).</p>
+
+<p>It is to-day forty days since the mobilisation.
+At the call this trained nation was in arms in a
+day. The citizen soldiers hurried to the depots
+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 depot 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 depot 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.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At Stara Zagora, early in November, 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Later, 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."</p>
+
+<p>At Nova Zagora, travelling by a troop train
+carrying reserves to the front, I crossed a train
+bringing wounded from the battle-fields. 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.
+There was no daunting these trained patriots.</p>
+
+<p>These and a score of other pictures pass through
+my mind and explain Kirk Kilisse and Lule
+Burgas, and give confidence for the battle to
+come. Here was a people ranged for battle with
+the steady nerves and the stolid courage that
+come from tilling the soil, with the skill and the
+discipline that come from adequate training,
+with the fervent faith of a great patriotism. I
+have talked with Turkish prisoners and found
+infantrymen who had been sent to the front after
+two days' training, gunners who had been drafted
+into a battery after ten days' drill. Such soldiers
+can only march to defeat.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 352px;">
+<img src="images/img_195.jpg" width="352" height="500" alt="a Balkan peasant woman" />
+<span class="caption">A BALKAN PEASANT WOMAN</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Ermenikioi</span> (Headquarters of the Third
+Bulgarian Army), <i>November 17 (Sunday)</i>.&mdash;The
+Battle of Chatalja has been opened. To-day,
+General Demetrieff rode out with his Staff to the
+battle-field whilst the bells of a Christian church
+in this little village rang. The day was spent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+in artillery reconnaissance, the Bulgarian guns
+searching the Turkish entrenchments to discover
+their real strength. Only once during the day
+was the infantry employed; and then it was
+rather to take the place of artillery than to complete
+work begun by artillery. It seems to me
+that the Bulgarian forces have not enough big
+gun ammunition at the front. They are ten days
+from their base, and shells must come up by ox
+wagon the greater part of the way.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ermenikioi</span>, <i>November 18</i>.&mdash;This was a wild
+day on the Chatalja hills. Driving rain and mist
+swept over from the Black Sea, and at times
+obscured all the valley across which the battle
+raged. With but slight support from the artillery,
+the Bulgarian infantry was sent again and again
+up to the Turkish entrenchments. Once a fort
+was taken but had to be abandoned again. The
+result of the day's fighting is indecisive. The
+Bulgarian forces have driven in the Turkish right
+flank a little, but have effected nothing against
+the central positions which bar the road to
+Constantinople. It is clear that the artillery
+is not well enough supplied with ammunition.
+There is a sprinkle of shells when there should be
+a flood. Gallant as is the infantry, it cannot win<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+much ground faced by conditions such as the Light
+Brigade met at Balaclava.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ermenikioi</span>, <i>November 19</i>.&mdash;Operations have
+been suspended. Yesterday's cold and bitter
+weather has fanned to an epidemic the choleraic
+dysentery which had been creeping through the
+trenches. The casualties in the fighting had been
+heavy. "But for every wounded man who
+comes to the hospitals," Colonel Jostoff, the
+Chief of the Staff, tells me, "there are ten who
+say 'I am ill.'" The Bulgarians recognise
+bitterly that in their otherwise fine organisation
+there has been one flaw, the medical service.
+Among this nation of peasant proprietors&mdash;sturdy,
+abstemious, moral, living in the main on whole-meal
+bread and water&mdash;illness was so rare that
+the medical service was but little regarded. Up
+to Chatalja confidence in the rude health of the
+peasants was justified. They passed through
+cold, hunger, fatigue, and kept healthy. But
+ignorant of sanitary discipline, camped among
+the filthy Turkish villages, the choleraic dysentery
+passed from the Turkish trenches to theirs. There
+are 30,000 cases of illness, and the healthy for
+the first time feel fear as they see the torments
+of the sick. The Bulgarians recognise that there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+must be a pause in the fighting whilst the hospital
+and sanitary service is reorganised.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Kirk Kilisse</span>, <i>December 1</i>.&mdash;It seems certain
+now that peace must be declared, and that the
+dream of driving the Turk right out of Europe
+must be abandoned. These peasant peoples of
+the Balkans have done wonderful things, but
+they have stumbled on one point&mdash;the want of
+knowledge of sanitary science. I have seen only
+one attempt at a clean camp since I have been in
+the field, and that was a Serbian camp, north
+of Adrianople.</p>
+
+<p>With the Bulgarian army there was not, at
+any stage of the campaign up to the Battle of
+Chatalja&mdash;that is, until after the outbreak of
+cholera&mdash;any precaution, to my knowledge, taken
+to secure a clean water supply, or clean camping-grounds,
+or to take the most elementary precautions
+against the outbreak of disease in the
+army. The medical service was almost as bad.
+I have seen much of the hospital work at Kirk
+Kilisse after the armistice; and it has been
+deplorable to see the fine fellows whose lives were
+sacrificed, or whose limbs were sacrificed, through
+neglect of medical knowledge. I am sure the
+Bulgarians would have saved many hundreds of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+lives if there had been anything like a proper
+medical service at the front.</p>
+
+<p>At Chatalja the chief reason given for the
+stoppage of operations was the ravages of disease
+in the Bulgarian lines. The illness was of a
+choleraic type; it had, as usual, a profound
+moral as well as physical effect. The courage
+of the men broke down before this visitation.
+The victims howled with pain and terror, though
+the same men would withstand serious wounds
+without a complaint or a wincing.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">The Turks are blamed for the outbreak in the
+Bulgarian lines. It is more than probable that
+their villages, inexpressibly filthy; the prisoners
+taken from their ranks; the infection of the soil
+abandoned by them, were contributing <a id="causes"></a>causes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 343px;">
+<img src="images/img_201.jpg" width="343" height="500" alt="a bagpiper" />
+<span class="caption">A BAGPIPER</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">But it must be stated frankly that the almost
+complete absence of any sanitary discipline or
+precaution in the Bulgarian lines at this place
+earned for them all the diseases that afflict mankind.
+So far as I can ascertain after careful
+investigation, there were no sanitary police; no
+attempts to secure and safeguard a pure water
+supply; no latrine regulations. I have seen the
+Bulgarian soldiers drinking from streams running
+through battle-fields, though a few feet away were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+swollen carcases. I have seen no attempt in
+the field at a proper latrine service. Some
+hundreds of thousands of peasant soldiers,
+accustomed to the simplest life on their own
+farms, were collected together and left practically
+without sanitary discipline. The details can be
+filled in without my setting them forth in print.
+There is one fact, however, to be recorded of
+a pleasant character. In all investigations of
+the hospital services I never found a case of any
+malady arising from vice. There was also a
+complete absence of drunkenness. This might
+be ascribed to the want of means to obtain
+alcohol. But in Turkey there was an abundance
+of wines and spirits, and some beer in the
+captured villages and towns; it led, however,
+to no orgies.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, the Bulgarian peasant is wonderfully
+healthy. His food is rough whole-meal
+bread and cheese; his occasional luxuries, a
+dish of the sour milk which is so well known in
+London, a little alcohol on Sunday, some sweet
+stuff, and, rarely, grilled meat or meat soup with
+vegetables. It is possible to judge that his
+alimentary tract differs widely from that of the
+Western European. I should say he was almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+immune from enteric, unless attacked by a very
+virulent infection. He can live on bread and
+water alone without serious inconvenience for
+lengthy periods. His blood is very pure, and
+ordinarily heals in a way that astonished the
+British surgeons.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, was the best of material from an
+army medical point of view. Given the roughest
+food, the simplest sanitary precautions, and
+ordinarily good field dressing, and the army
+would have marched without disease and the
+wounded would have dropped out of the firing
+line for a few days only. But there were no
+sanitary precautions; hence disease. The hospital
+service as regards the first aid in the
+field was pitiably deficient; hence serious and
+unnecessary losses of wounded. Without seeking
+to pile up a record of horrors, I cite a few individual
+instances to illustrate bad methods. At the
+front, punctured bayonet wounds were closely
+bandaged&mdash;in some cases stitched up&mdash;without
+provision for irrigation, without even proper
+cleansing. This led to gangrene and often caused
+the sacrifice of a life or of a limb (which, to these
+peasants, was almost as great a loss as that of
+life: their feeling against amputations was very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+strong, and if they understood that amputation
+was intended, they sometimes begged to be
+"killed instead"). Bullet wounds also were
+often plugged up on the field. When proper
+treatment was at last available, it was sometimes
+too late to avoid death or amputation. No
+treatment at all on the field would have been
+preferable to this well-intentioned but shocking
+ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>Of the purely Bulgarian hospitals those at
+Kirk Kilisse are very deficient: at Philippopolis,
+however, there were excellent Bulgarian hospitals,
+and also at Sofia. The Russian hospital at Kirk
+Kilisse is very good. The British Red Cross
+Hospital, under Major E. T. F. Birrell, of the
+R.A.M.C., is excellently organised, has the fullest
+possible equipment, and tries to specialise in
+serious cases. It is subjected locally (as is the
+Russian hospital) to the criticism that by insisting
+on perfection of system it unduly restricts its
+salvage work: that, in short, it could deal with
+far more patients if it consented to more "rough-and-ready"
+methods. I record this criticism,
+and acknowledge that it is based on facts. Yet
+it may be urged on the other side that it was
+ultimately far more useful to have a model<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+hospital to show how things should be done than
+to sacrifice that valuable lesson for the sake of
+striving to cope in rough-and-ready fashion with
+the flood of wounded. This hospital gives interesting
+proof that Great Britain is an Empire, not
+an island nation. I first encountered three of
+its doctors in a caf�. One was from the Mother
+Country, one from the West Indies, one an
+Australian friend, who set at once to talking of
+gum trees and of Melbourne University. Then
+a non-commissioned officer attached to the
+hospital&mdash;most of its Staff are army men&mdash;is a
+Canadian, who had had war experience in South
+Africa. His comments on the Bulgarian wounded
+are full of sympathy. "These chaps," he said,
+"take their gruel better even than the Tommies.
+The Tommy takes his all right, but he 'grouses'
+about it. These chaps never grumble. One of
+them had to have a very painful dressing. He
+winced a little. A comrade at once laughed
+at him. 'Ah,' he said, 'you learn new kinds of
+dancing here.'" Nurses endorse this evidence
+about the Bulgarian soldiers' patience, though
+one stated that she found the officers sometimes
+to be rather neurasthenic.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, the Bulgarian army is not strong<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+on science. In spade work it was not good. I
+saw no perfect trenches&mdash;never a drained trench.
+Undrained trenches caused some increase of
+mortality and of sickness. It is uncomfortable
+to stay for days, or even hours, in a trench which
+the rain has partly filled with water. In no case
+that I saw were there trenches with overhead
+protection against howitzer fire. Except at the
+Chatalja lines and around Adrianople the trenches
+were, of course, intended to be of a very temporary
+use, and would naturally not be elaborate. Gun-pits
+and emplacements were usually fairly good.
+It was the custom to dig a pit, or to put up a little
+sod wall for the gun-limber (most of the artillery
+work was from concealed and prepared positions).
+At Chatalja the trenches were masked with the
+stalks of the Turkish tobacco plants&mdash;about the
+only instance I saw of masking. It was rare to
+see a trench zigzagged as a precaution against
+enfilading fire. The Turkish trenches I saw were
+hopelessly bad.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sofia</span>, <i>December 6, 1912</i>.&mdash;Sofia, in spite of
+the great victories which have been won, is
+neither joyous nor contented. The failure of
+the siege of Adrianople seems to rest heavy upon
+the people: and there are gloomy stories of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+extent of the losses of the nation's manhood.
+So far no lists of killed and wounded have been
+published. "The Mass at St. Sofia," which was
+the battle-cry of the first days of the war, is clearly
+not a possibility now. Some mystery attaches
+to the movements of the king. It is said that
+he had made a vow that he would not return
+to Sofia until a victorious peace was signed. The
+embittered relations with the Greeks, the signs
+of disagreement with the Serbians, suggest gloomy
+possibilities of future troubles.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Belgrade</span>, <i>December 8, 1912</i>.&mdash;With the exception
+of the army before Adrianople, the Serbians
+have finished their share of the war with Turkey.
+Belgrade is satisfied, but not over-elated.
+Across the Danube, a broad gloomy waste of
+dun waters under the winter mists, a division
+of the Austrian army is mobilised. There is a
+fear, almost an expectation, that Austria will
+make war. But there seems neither panic nor
+war-fever in the city.</p>
+
+<p>Business is creeping back to the normal state.
+At the Ministry for War there are to be seen
+pathetic scenes as parents and other relatives
+seek tidings of the soldiers. An old father, himself
+a captain of reserves, hears that his only son, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+lieutenant, has been killed, and bursts into tears
+and tells to all around his sorrow. But generally
+tragic news is received stoically. Amid the congratulations
+on the results of the Allies' efforts
+there is an under-current of resolution to make a
+better bargain with Bulgaria than the <i>ante bellum</i>
+partition treaty proposed. Reports of envious and
+rude treatment of the Serbian army before Adrianople
+are current in the street: and there is some
+talk of recalling the men. This is the irresponsible
+talk of men in the street only: the authorities
+are very correct in their attitude towards "our
+friend and ally," and express themselves as confident
+that Bulgaria of her own volition will suggest
+better terms for her partner in the war.</p>
+
+<p>A Serbian politician, who patiently endures
+my bad French or makes a brave effort to talk
+in English, a tongue which he is learning to speak
+and can read quite well, politely excuses the
+English for being such bad linguists. "For you
+English who have all the poetry, all the romance,
+all the science, all the philosophy a man may
+want in your own language, it is not necessary to
+learn any other. For us in the Balkans, we must
+learn other languages or remain ignorant of much
+that goes on in the world."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+In truth the Balkan peoples are astonishing
+linguists. It is not at all a rare thing to find
+that a man can speak Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek,
+Turkish, and French. Often he adds either English
+or German to this list. Bulgarian and Serbian,
+of course, are but differing dialects of Russian&mdash;a
+Russian can make himself understood in both
+tongues though he knows only Russian. But
+the grammar of one differs from that of the
+other, and many of the words are different. The
+Balkan people who know Turkish know it usually
+in its colloquial and spoken form and not the
+literary language, which is very difficult to understand
+thoroughly because it is really a blending
+of three languages.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_212.jpg" width="600" height="425" alt="some Serbian peasants" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption">
+<i>Underwood &amp; Underwood</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="centerb">SOME SERBIAN PEASANTS</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="r33" />
+
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h4>THE PICTURESQUE BALKANS</h4>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">It</span> is difficult to dissociate the Balkans with
+bloodshed and disorder. Insensibly the mind
+is tempted at every turn to direct attention to
+the last battle or the future campaign which
+can be seen threatening. But if the storm-racked
+peninsula could be granted a term of
+peaceful development, there is no doubt at all
+but that it would be much favoured by voyagers
+seeking picturesque beauty and wishing to go
+over the fields which have been the scenes of
+some of the greatest events in history. Mountain
+resorts to rival those of Switzerland, spas to match
+those of Germany and Austria, autumn and
+winter seaside beaches of great beauty and fine
+sunny climate&mdash;all these exist in the Balkan
+Peninsula, and need only to be known, and to be
+known as peaceful, to attract tourists.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+The Adriatic coast has charms of rugged
+coast-lines and bright waters; the Black Sea
+littoral, though flat and sandy, has a warm sunny
+summer or autumn climate; the Aegean is a sea
+of brilliant purples and rosy mists, in which air,
+rock, and water mingle to greet the eye with a
+great opal jewel. A November sunset on the
+Sea of Marmora gave to my eyes such a feast of
+suffused colour as I had not seen since I left the
+shores of the southern Pacific. The rocky hills
+had the rich red of the Jersey cliffs, but the sea
+and sky were incomparably warmer and deeper
+in tone. Across the sea the shores of distant
+Asia shone dimly through two veils of mist, one
+of the tenderest rose, the other of the palest gold.
+The greater part of the Greek coast has the same
+deliciousness of colour in autumn and in summer.</p>
+
+<p>A few travellers bolder than the ordinary
+search out nowadays the shores of the Adriatic,
+the beautiful coast of Greece, and even the margin
+of the Sea of Marmora in quest of beauty and
+relief from the tedium of civilisation. But they
+must face poor means of communication (though
+to Constantinople and to Trieste there is an
+excellent train service) and scanty accommodation
+of any kind&mdash;almost none of good quality.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+Within a very few years, if the Balkans could
+settle down to peace and the legalised plunder
+of foreign visitors&mdash;a pursuit which is as profitable
+as brigandage and far more comfortable,&mdash;the
+seaside resorts that would spring up within
+Balkan territories would of themselves provide
+a handsome revenue. The shores of the Aegean
+and of the Sea of Marmora in particular would
+attract tourists wearied of the air of hackneyed
+sameness which comes after a while to pervade
+seaside haunts in Italy and France.</p>
+
+<p>From another attraction the Balkan States
+could hope for a great tourist traffic. I have
+caught but fleeting glimpses of the Balkan range
+and of the Rhodopes and the Serbian mountains,
+but have seen enough to know that they offer
+boundless delights to the climber, to the seeker
+after winter sports, and to the lover of the
+picturesque; and the Swiss Alps in these days are
+overcrowded, and the Tyrolean mountains and
+the Carpathians begin to receive a big overflow
+of people who have a taste for heights that are
+not covered with hotels and funicular railways.
+But the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula
+offer prospects, I believe, of greater beauty,
+certainly of greater wildness, than any other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+ranges of Europe. Of the Rhodope mountains,
+in particular, one gets the most alluring accounts
+from the rare travellers who have explored them.
+Seen by the passing voyager as they stand guard
+with their farthest spurs over Philippopolis, they
+suggest that no account of their charm could be
+too glowing. I have promised myself one autumn
+or summer a month in this range, exploring its
+flower-filled valleys and its wild cliffs, shining
+through an air which seems now of rose and now
+of violet.</p>
+
+<p>For winter sports the Serbian, Montenegrin,
+and Albanian mountains, as well as the chief
+Balkan range, promise well. I believe that it
+was part of the plan of Bulgarian reorganisation
+after the war, which King Ferdinand had in his
+mind, to set up great winter hotels in the mountains
+of his kingdom. The other Balkan States could
+with advantage give hospitality to similar plans.
+Provided that security is assured&mdash;and the Balkan
+peasant is in my experience the gentlest-mannered
+kind who ever cut throats in a wholesale way
+at the call of a mischief-maker&mdash;visitors to the
+mountains of the Balkan Peninsula would find
+the wildness, the uncouthness of the surrounding
+national life, very attractive. The picturesque<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+national costumes, the national music, wild and
+uncanny, the strange national dances, all add to
+the fascination of the savage scenery. In an
+age when a fog of dreary sameness comes over all
+the civilised world, the Balkans have a great
+asset in their primitivism. Theirs is not a wholly
+European civilisation; indeed, except in the
+capital cities, it is not chiefly a European civilisation.
+Everywhere there is a touch of the mystery,
+the fatalism, the desert-bred wildness of the
+Asiatic steppes. For centuries the hand of the
+Turk has been heavy on the land, and a strong
+stream of his blood courses still through the veins
+of most of the Balkan peoples. It is not the
+East this Balkan Peninsula, but it is not the
+West, nor will be for some generations.</p>
+
+<p>There is yet another possible means of attracting
+great streams of visitors to the Balkan regions.
+Throughout the mountains there are numberless
+medicinal springs. In Serbia and Bulgaria the
+water of two springs is being exploited for table
+use, and in Bulgaria the warm medicinal springs
+are being developed for bathing resorts. At
+Sofia there are now in course of erection great
+public baths which will be equal to any in Europe
+when they are completed. In the mountains<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+above Sofia warm springs are being utilised, and
+quite a large spa village has grown up. King
+Ferdinand, who has a fine commercial instinct
+whatever the failures of his war diplomacy, has
+done good service to his kingdom by developing
+its baths and springs.</p>
+
+<p>The plain country of the Balkan Peninsula
+is but little attractive. Under the Turkish rule
+nearly all plantations of trees were destroyed,
+and a general air of desolation was maintained.
+Since the Turk left, cultivation and development
+have been on strictly utilitarian lines, and there
+has been little chance for gardens or woods. The
+eye of the voyager misses them, and misses also
+the sight of castles, churches, or great buildings.
+The dreariness of the plain is unrelieved by
+forests. The rivers flow sullenly along without a
+bordering of trees. The Thracian plain&mdash;the
+greater part of which has now gone back to
+Turkey and thus lost hope of a redemption of its
+really fertile soil&mdash;is in particular desolate and
+forbidding. But even there, and more frequently
+in the plain country of Bulgaria and Serbia, there
+is now and again a charming village in some
+dell with adornment of trees and gardens. The
+average village, however, is a collection of hovels,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+their roofs lying so close to the ground that they
+seem to be rather burrows than huts, their aspect
+suggesting that they are hiding themselves and
+their inhabitants from the eye of a possible
+ravager.</p>
+
+<p>Desolate as this plain country is, it has its
+attractions at dawn and sunset in the clear colourfull
+air of the Balkan Peninsula; and where the
+hill slopes, denuded of their forests, have been
+covered over by a dense oak scrub the autumn
+aspect of the plain at sunset is incomparably
+lovely. The scrub, when the first of the autumn
+frosts come, blazes out in such scarlet and gold
+as cannot be imagined in the moist and soft
+climate of England. With the setting of the sun
+and the coming of the violet night the earth's
+carpet seems to be here smouldering, there burning,
+a sea of lambent fire so bright that you look to
+see its burgeoning reflected in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>I should advise the tourist wishing to see the
+Balkan Peninsula at its best to choose the fall
+of the year for a visit. In the summer there is
+great heat and dust and plague of flies. In the
+winter travel is impossible with any comfort
+except along the railway lines, and the whole
+Peninsula is frost-bound. The spring is a beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+season at its later end, but not at the time of the
+thaw.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">As to the route for a voyage there are several
+alternatives. One may take the Oriental Express
+through to Constantinople and work a way up the
+Balkan Peninsula from there: or take train to
+Trieste and approach the Balkans by the Adriatic
+side: or, taking the Oriental Express, leave it at
+Bucharest and journey from there to Sofia: or,
+taking the Oriental Express, leave it at Belgrade,
+making that the starting-point for a riding trip.
+Certainly to enjoy the country one must leave
+the railways and journey on horseback or by
+cart over the wilder tracks. An interpreter who
+speaks English can be engaged in any one of the
+capitals. The hire of horses, oxen, and carts is
+very cheap, if you are properly advised by your
+interpreter and pay the local rates only. Forage,
+too, is cheap: and so is "the food of the country,"
+i.e. bread, cheese, bacon, and goat and sheep
+flesh. Most civilised luxuries of food can be
+obtained in the capitals and bigger towns, but
+they are <a id="dear"></a>dear.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/img_221.jpg" width="550" height="299" alt="Sofia: general view" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption"><i>Exclusive News Agency</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">SOFIA</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">General view, looking towards the Djumala Pass (45 miles away). Taken
+from the front of Parliament House, showing monument of Alexander II,
+known in Bulgaria as the &quot;Tsar Liberator&quot;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Let me suggest a few typical Balkan tours.</p>
+
+<p>Take train to Belgrade: then go by Danube
+steamer to Widdin. From Widdin to Sofia go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+by rail, and then back to Belgrade on horseback,
+sending on heavy luggage by rail, but making at
+Nish on the way a depot of provisions and linen.</p>
+
+<p>Take train to Bucharest. Go from there
+to Stara Zagora on horseback, crossing the
+Roumanian frontier at Roustchouk, going over
+the trail of the Russian Army of Liberation and
+seeing the Balkan mountain passes.</p>
+
+<p>Take train to Sofia, and from there to Yamboli.
+At Yamboli go on horseback (in the track of the
+Bulgarian Third Army of 1912) to Kirk Kilisse,
+Lule Burgas, Chorlu, Silivri (on the Sea of
+Marmora), and Constantinople. A somewhat wild
+trip this would be, but quite practicable. The
+most comfortable way to travel would be to
+take ox wagons for the luggage and the camping
+outfit. That would restrict the day's march to
+twenty miles. The horses&mdash;(diverging to look
+at scenery and battle-fields)&mdash;would do about
+thirty miles a day.</p>
+
+<p>Take train to Constantinople, and from there
+boat to Salonica. Go on horseback from Salonica
+to Belgrade. This would show the most disturbed
+part of the Balkan Peninsula and some of its
+wildest scenery.</p>
+
+<p>Take train to Philippopolis, and from there go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+on horseback and with ox wagons for a tour of
+the Rhodope mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it is possible to take much tamer
+tours of the Balkans. Practically all the big towns
+are connected with the European railway systems.
+But you would see, thus, towns and not the
+country. The Balkan towns are to my eye very
+dreary. There are practically no fine old buildings,
+for in the Turkish occupation the greater
+number of these were destroyed. The modern
+buildings have rarely any character. The
+churches, usually of the Slav school of architecture,
+alone relieve the monotony of economical imitations
+of French and British buildings. In
+Belgrade, it is true, there has been an effort to
+carry the Slav note farther, and some of the
+commercial and public buildings show a Moscow
+influence.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Noel Buxton, M.P., that most enthusiastic
+admirer of the Bulgarians, can carry his enthusiasm
+so far as to admire Sofia. He wrote recently
+(<i>With the Bulgarian Staff</i>):</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Few sights can be more inspiring to the lover of
+liberty and national progress than a view of Sofia from
+the hill where the great seminary of the national church
+overlooks the plain. There at your feet is spread out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+the unpretentious seat of a government which stands
+for the advance of European order in lands long blighted
+with barbarism. Here resides, and is centred, the virile
+force of a people which has advanced the bounds of
+liberty. From here, symbolised by the rivers and roads
+running down on each side, has extended, and will
+further extend, the power of modern education, of
+unhampered ideas, of science, and of humanity. From
+this magnificent view-point Sofia stretches along the
+low hill with the dark background of the Balkan beyond.
+Against that background now stands out the new
+embodiment of Bulgarian and Slavonic energy, genius,
+and freedom of mind, the great cathedral, with its vast
+golden domes brilliantly standing out from the shade
+behind them. In no other capital is a great church
+shown to such effect, viewed from one range of hills
+against the mountainous slopes of another. It is a
+building which, with its marvellous mural paintings,
+would in any capital form an object of world interest,
+but which, in the capital of a tiny peasant State,
+supremely embodies that breadth of mind which</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left:6em">... rejects the lore</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left:4em">Of nicely calculated less or more.</span>
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>But I think that that is a too kindly view.
+What makes the Balkan capitals additionally
+dreary is that there is no "society" in the
+European sense. The Turkish idea of keeping
+the womenfolk in the harem survives to the
+extent that woman is not supposed to frequent
+places of entertainment, to receive or to pay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+visits. In Bulgaria the women are secluded
+with an almost Turkish strictness: in Serbia,
+not quite so strictly, but still strictly.</p>
+
+<p>Bucharest is quite another story; but Bucharest
+would rather resent being called a Balkan city.
+There is no seclusion of the very charming
+Roumanian women, and the atmosphere of the
+city is a little more than gay. Plant a section
+of Paris, a section including Montmartre, into
+the middle of an enlargement of the old quarter of
+Belgrade, and that is Bucharest. It is the one
+Balkan city which has a luxurious and to an
+extent polished aristocracy.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the smaller towns are slightly more interesting&mdash;Philippopolis,
+for instance, in a position of great natural
+beauty&mdash;but the average Balkan town must be set down as squalid.
+Its centres of social interest are the caf�s, where men who have the
+leisure assemble to drink coffee made in the Turkish fashion, tea made
+in the Russian fashion, and occasionally <i>vodka</i>, which is the usual
+alcoholic stimulant. Tobacco is smoked mostly in the form of cigarettes.
+Excellent (and cheap) cigarettes are supplied by the government <i>R�gies</i>
+in Serbia and Bulgaria.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/img_228.jpg" width="550" height="398" alt="Bucharest" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption"><i>Exclusive News Agency</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="centerb">BUCHAREST</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The wise tourist will keep clear of the Balkan
+towns apart from the actual capitals, and will
+carry his food and lodging with him. Under
+these circumstances a good standard of ease
+can be maintained if a train of ox wagons
+sufficient to the size of the party is enlisted.
+Ladies can travel with fair comfort in an ox
+wagon. As regards the danger of Balkan travel,
+in my experience&mdash;and that was during war-time&mdash;there
+is none. Serbian peasant, Bulgarian
+peasant, Greek peasant, Turkish peasant, alike
+are amiable and obliging fellows, if they do not
+feel in duty bound to cut your throat on some
+theological or political point. Being strangers,
+tourists would have no theology and no politics.
+So much for the inhabitants. The officials,
+provided passports are clear and the precaution
+is taken of getting letters at the capital from the
+authorities of the country you are travelling
+through, will be helpful. The one district that
+might be a little dangerous is that corner of
+Macedonia where Greek and Bulgar are always
+playing against one another the old game of
+massacre.</p>
+
+<hr class="r33" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h4>THE BALKAN PEOPLES IN ART AND INDUSTRY</h4>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">The</span> five centuries of Turkish domination, during
+which all the arts and most of the crafts were
+neglected in the Balkan Peninsula, killed nearly
+completely the ancient civilisations of the Greeks,
+the Serbs, and the Bulgars. But a few traces of
+the old culture survive to this day as mournful
+and tattered relics of the greatness of those
+departed Empires. The old Bulgarian Empire,
+combining a Slav with a Turconian element;
+the old Serbian Empire, almost purely Slav but
+influenced a little by Italian and Grecian influence,
+evolved in the days of its greatness the beginnings
+of a national literature and national architecture.
+In Serbia particularly was there a strong
+and promising growth of humane culture, and the
+greatest of the Serbian rulers, Stephen Dushan
+(14th century), whose death before the walls of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+Constantinople at the beginning of the Turkish
+invasions gave up the Balkan Peninsula to the
+Crescent, left as one monument to his name a
+well-reasoned code of laws. He was throughout
+his reign a sincere friend of learning. In Bulgaria
+during the 10th century, under the Czar Simeon,
+there was a brief efflorescence of learning.
+Montenegro, which alone of the Balkan States
+kept its head unbowed before the Turk, was a
+busy centre of literary effort in the 16th century.
+Under the stress of constant war, however, the
+arts of peace died down almost completely in the
+Balkans until the Liberation of the peoples in
+the 19th century. During the interval, however,
+the peasants in their homes kept up some little
+knowledge of the traditions of their forefathers'
+greatness. Legends were passed down from father
+to son in chants set to a rough music. In these
+chants, too, were recorded the deeds of heroism
+which marked the ever-recurring revolts against
+the Turk.</p>
+
+<p>What survives to-day from this period of
+oppression is a very characteristic national music,
+melancholy usually, as might be expected, but of
+arresting sweetness; and an art of peasant-applied
+decoration, which recalls the earlier and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+more primitive forms of Byzantine Art. Balkan
+tapestries, Balkan carpets, Balkan embroideries,
+woven or stitched by the peasant women, have
+a note of barbaric boldness in design and colour
+which distinguishes them at once from the
+peasant work of other countries.</p>
+
+<p>This applied art in decoration is wisely
+fostered by the various governments, and there is
+liberal encouragement also given to modern art.
+Especially is this the case in Bulgaria. The
+impression I have got from seeing picture collections
+in the Balkans is that the local artists have
+learned foreign methods without adding any
+national bent of their own, and contrive to give
+a native character to their pictures only when
+they make the choice of some particularly horrible
+subject. Yet there should come a vigorous art
+as well as a vigorous literature one day from
+these Balkan States. There the mysticism, the
+melancholy, the transcendentalism of the Slav
+is mixed with the fatalism of the Turk, and the
+vivacity of the Greek and the Roumanian in the
+national types. Byzantine traditions, Slav traditions,
+classic Greek traditions, Roman traditions
+mingle to influence this composite character,
+the two former predominating, but the two latter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+having a very definite power. It should be rich
+soil for talent, even for genius.</p>
+
+<p>Interesting opportunities were given in the
+Southern Slav Art Exhibitions of 1904 and 1906
+(the first at Belgrade, the second at Sofia) to note
+the trend of art in the Balkans. At those
+Exhibitions Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, and
+Slavonian arts were represented. The Croatian
+pictures&mdash;I follow a trustworthy guide in stating
+this&mdash;showed a high degree of technical skill, not
+distinguishable from Austrian art in character:
+the Slavonian pictures were also technically
+good, but of a more impressionist character:
+the Serbian pictures imitated in technique the
+Old Masters, but took their subjects almost
+exclusively from Serbian history: the Bulgarian
+pictures had no national characteristic in style,
+but usually sought to be transcriptions of some
+form of Bulgarian life of the day.</p>
+
+<p>Summing up the art position in the Balkans,
+it can be fairly said that before the outbreak of
+the last great war very good progress had been
+made for the few years since the Liberation from
+the Turks. A wise policy for the future would be
+to encourage as much as possible the peasant arts
+and crafts which are distinctive, and not to seek
+to impose too much of modern art education,
+which may stifle national influences and inflict a
+sterile sameness.</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 402px;">
+<img src="images/img_235.jpg" width="402" height="500" alt="a Bulgarian farm" />
+<span class="caption">A BULGARIAN FARM</span>
+</div>
+<p class="p2">Balkan industry varies greatly with the height
+of the country, as well as with the racial type.
+The mountaineers are usually lacking in steady
+industry: the peoples of the plain are usually exceptionally
+hard workers. Very many emigrants
+from the Balkans go to the United States to work
+there in the mines, and on works of railway construction,
+for a term of years. The Bulgarian will
+come back from the United States with �300 saved
+up, and settle down in his native village as farmer
+or trader. The Serbian will come back with �200
+saved up, but with a wider knowledge of United
+States life, and he will settle down as pastoralist or
+farmer, but not as trader. The Albanian or Montenegrin
+will come back with little or no money,
+but with a wonderful armoury of silver-adorned
+weapons and much other personal decoration.
+So graced, the mountaineer will have no difficulty
+in marrying the girl of his choice, and she will
+do most of the work that is needed thereafter,
+whilst he attends to the hunting and the fighting.
+The Greek and the Roumanian go abroad,
+preferably as traders, and afterwards elect to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+stay abroad, though it is to be recorded in proof
+of modern Greek patriotism that in 1912 there
+was a steady flow of Greeks from all parts of
+the world coming back to their native land to
+fight in the army.</p>
+
+<p>Considered industrially the Bulgarian is the
+best type in the Balkans. He is a steady, tireless
+worker on the soil; takes to factory life amiably;
+and has in a very strongly marked degree "the
+road-making talent."</p>
+
+<p>A very valuable index to national character is
+provided by a people's roads. The most successful
+Imperial governors, the Romans, were also
+builders of the finest roads the world has known.
+The British people have been good road-builders
+as well as good Empire-makers; the French
+people, too, and every other people who at any
+time have done big enduring work in the government
+of the world. If a nation is not a good
+road-building nation it will not go far: and the
+converse is probably true. On this road-building
+test the Bulgarians have a prosperous future
+indicated, for they are very pertinacious and
+skilful road-builders. During the 1912 war I
+noticed that despite all other pre-occupations they
+were pushing roads forward at every possible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+opportunity. The Turks going back to Adrianople
+and Kirk Kilisse found a great number of roads
+built or building&mdash;the first serious efforts in that
+direction since the downfall of the Roman
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The Bulgarian's chief occupation is agriculture.
+The system of land tenures is that of peasant
+ownership. There are no large estates and
+very few non-occupying landlords. The chief
+crops are wheat, barley, maize, rice (around
+Philippopolis), tobacco, and roses. The tobacco
+is of as good quality, almost, as that of Turkey.
+The Bulgarian Government encourages the culture
+of tobacco by distributing seed, free of cost,
+among the planters, by setting a bounty on the
+export tariff, and by authorising the Bulgarian
+National Bank to consent to loans on the surety
+of certificates granted to the planters until they
+are able to dispose of their crops advantageously.</p>
+
+<p>Tobacco culture is carried on chiefly in the
+south and in the provinces of Silistria and
+Kustendil. The area of the plantations is
+estimated at 3000 hectares. The province of
+Haskovo has the greatest yield; then follows
+Philippopolis, with 300,000 kilograms; Kustendil
+and Silistria, 210,000 kilograms. According to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+approximate calculations based on various
+statistics, three-fourths of the tobacco crop of
+Bulgaria is consumed by the inhabitants and
+only a quarter is exported.</p>
+
+<p>The rose crop is next in importance after
+tobacco. The roses are used exclusively for the
+distilling of attar of roses. The rose gardens
+are limited to 148 parishes of the provinces of
+Philippopolis and Stara Zagora, and occupy a
+total area of 5094 hectares. The quantity and
+quality of the attar depend very much on the
+weather at the time of bloom and gathering.
+The roses most cultivated in Bulgaria are the red
+rose (<i>Rosa damascena</i>) and the white rose (<i>Rosa
+alba</i>). The best gardens are at Kazanlik, Karlovo,
+Klissoura, and Stara Zagora. The distilling of
+the attar is now a Government monopoly. The
+cultivation of beetroot has been introduced
+recently and is confined to the province of Sofia.
+The sugar refinery near Sofia utilises the whole
+crop for local consumption.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to note in connection with
+Balkan agriculture that as far back as 1863 the
+much-abused Turk had actually adopted the
+very modern idea of an agricultural <i>Credit Foncier</i>
+system in the Balkans! In that year Midhat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+Pasha, Governor of the Danubian Vilayet, prepared
+a scheme for the creation of banks, to
+assist the rural population. The scheme having
+been approved by the Turkish Government,
+several of these banks were established. The
+peasants were allowed to repay in kind the
+loans which were advanced to them, the banks
+themselves selling the agricultural products.
+With the object of increasing the capital of the
+banks, a special tax was introduced obliging the
+farmers to hand every year to these institutions
+part of their produce in kind.</p>
+
+<p>When it was realised that these banks were
+of great service to the rural population, to which
+they advanced money at 12 per cent interest&mdash;instead
+of 30-100 per cent, as the usurers generally
+did&mdash;the Turkish Government extended the
+reform to the whole Turkish Empire, and obliged
+the peasants to create similar banks in all the
+district centres. According to their statutes
+one-third of the net profits of these banks was
+destined for works of public utility, such as
+bridges, roads, fountains, schools, etc., while
+the remaining two-thirds went to increase the
+capital of the banks.</p>
+
+<p>During the Russo-Turkish war several of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+these banks lost their funds, the functionaries
+of the Turkish Government having carried away
+all the cash, as well as the securities and other
+property belonging to the banks' clients. After
+the war the debtors refused to pay, and only part
+of the property of the banks was restored, by
+means of the issue of new bonds. For that
+unfortunate end the war is rather to be blamed
+than the Turk. This <i>Credit Foncier</i> system is
+pretty clear proof that the Turkish power was
+not always cruel and rapacious, since so sensible
+a reform was set on foot in one of the Christian
+provinces under the Sublime Porte.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the industries of the soil, Bulgaria
+has a small mining population and an increasing
+factory population. The Protective tariff is used
+freely to encourage young industries, and there
+is an effort just now to set up cotton-spinning
+as a national enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>Serbia had a mixed pastoral and agricultural
+population up to the outbreak of the war of
+1912, with pig-raising as the greatest of the
+national industries. By the Treaty of Bucharest
+she has, however, acquired much new territory,
+and is now probably predominantly an agricultural
+country. She has, too, great mineral<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+resources at present, but they are little developed,
+and fine forests which only need an improvement
+of the means of communication to be commercially
+a big asset. The Serbian is not so steadily
+devoted to his work as the Bulgarian: his is
+the pastoral as opposed to the agricultural
+character. Nevertheless he has a reasonable
+faculty of industry. As is the case in Bulgaria
+the bulk of the land is held by peasant proprietors.
+These are organised into communes very much
+on the Russian system. It is an interesting
+fact that though in Serbia there is almost the
+same degree as in Bulgaria of seclusion of the
+women of the nation, a Serbian woman may be
+the head of the village commune, and, as such,
+exercise a very real authority.</p>
+
+<p>Both in Bulgaria and Serbia the rights of the
+commune are very jealously safeguarded. The
+central government must take no part in the
+administration of the communes, or maintain
+any agents of its own to interfere with their
+affairs. The commune forms the basis of the
+State fabric and enjoys a complete autonomy.
+It is the smallest unit in the administrative
+organisation of the country. Every district is
+subdivided into communes, which are either<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+urban or rural. The commune is a corporation.
+Every subject must belong to a commune and
+figure in its registers, the laws not tolerating the
+state of vagrancy. The members of the Commune
+Council are elected by universal suffrage,
+in the same way and subject to the same precautions
+as the members of the National Assembly.
+In passing it may be observed that theoretically
+the governments of the Balkan States are free
+democracies. Practically they are oligarchies
+tempered by assassination, which is still a
+favoured political weapon.</p>
+
+<p>The Serbian has not much of the commercial
+faculty: and people of other nations manage
+very many of the businesses in Serbia.</p>
+
+<p>The Montenegrin is willing to be a worker
+if it does not interfere with his manly amusements
+of warfare. His occupations are pastoral
+and agricultural pursuits and the chase. The
+Albanian is not content to be a worker at all under
+any conditions. His occupations are dancing and
+swaggering whilst his womenfolk carry on the
+bulk of the primitive pastoral and agricultural
+work.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">It is not possible to hope for much industrial
+or commercial progress in Albania. But in Serbia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+and Bulgaria there are rich opportunities for
+enterprise and capital provided that an era of
+peace could be reckoned upon. It is the uncertainty
+on that point that will stand in the
+way of future Balkan development. When after
+the Treaty of London the Balkan League fell to
+pieces there was incurred, in addition to other
+sacrifices, a serious loss of confidence on the part
+of European capital.</p>
+
+<hr class="r33" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h4>THE FUTURE OF THE BALKANS</h4>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">We</span> have seen that a blood-mist has hung over
+the Balkans during all the centuries that history
+knows. Nature set up there lists for the great
+contests of races&mdash;on the path from the cold north
+of Europe to the warm south; on the path from
+Asia to Europe; and each great campaign left
+behind it shreds of devastated peoples. These
+shreds of peoples dwelling in the Balkans to-day
+have a blood-thirst as an inescapable heritage.
+Turk, Bulgar, Serb, Roumanian, Greek&mdash;they
+may hold the peace for a time, and some may
+try to think that they are friends with others;
+but all have something of hate or fear or contempt
+for the others, and all prepare in peace
+for the next fight.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">The Fates making the Balkan Peninsula the
+battle-ground of empires and races, the field of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+last stands, the refuge of residual fragments of
+peoples, imposed upon it its bloody tradition.
+Under other conditions, Serb or Bulgar or Greek
+or Turk or Roumanian left to themselves might
+have made happier history. For all these races
+can be human, reasonable, companionable. I
+have seen something of all of them in following
+a Balkan campaign as a war correspondent (not
+following always as the sheltered guest of an
+army, but forcing a solitary path through the
+peasant population), and in watching the wonderful
+acrobatic lying of a Balkan Peace Conference
+have seen thus the best and the worst of them.
+I have been an unofficial member of a Bulgarian
+court-martial; the guest of a dozen and more
+Bulgarian and Serbian army outposts, dependent
+often for food and shelter on the kindness of
+peasant soldiers; for days have held at the mercy
+of Balkan peasants my life and my property;
+have been mistaken for a wandering Turk twice,
+and have never suffered violence, rudeness, or
+the loss of a pennyworth. For the peasants,
+the commonfolk of all the Balkan peoples, I
+have come thus to a hearty liking; their priests
+and politicians (with a few exceptions), a different
+feeling. Knowing that the massacre is the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+national sport in many districts of the Balkans;
+that at the outbreak of the 1912 war the death-rate
+by violence actually decreased in some
+quarters because the killing was systematised a
+little and put under a sort of regulation; that
+always Turks and Exarchate Christians and
+Patriarchate Christians are plotting against one
+another new raids and murders, still I maintain
+that, if left to themselves, if freed from the
+prompting of priests and politicians the Balkan
+peasants of any race are quite decent folk.
+So I wish heartily that there was fair reason to
+hope for peace and happiness for them. Is there
+fair reason? To that question a study of the races
+and the personalities can give clues for an <a id="answer"></a>answer.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_247.jpg" width="600" height="427" alt="Albanian tribesmen" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption"><i>Underwood &amp; Underwood</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">ALBANIAN TRIBESMEN</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The Bulgarian is dour, dull, a little greedy,
+honest, very industrious. He is almost as much
+a Turk as a Slav. (I was told that during the
+Turkish occupation a Bulgarian mother finding
+herself with child after violence by a Turk
+brought up the child with her family, whilst a
+Serbian mother under the same circumstances
+killed the infant at birth.) The Bulgarian is
+very moral, marrying at an early age.</p>
+
+<p>The Bulgarian peasant soldiers were very
+honest and loyal. At Mustapha Pasha one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+night, being short of food, I tried to get bread
+at the military bakery (all bread and flour having
+been requisitioned for the army). I offered a
+soldier up to five francs for a loaf without tempting
+him to sell it. Finally I had to get bread as a
+charity by declaring that I was actually in want
+of it for food. Later, travelling between Silivri
+and Chatalja, I encountered four Bulgarian foot
+soldiers who had become separated from their
+regiment and were starving. They asked for
+food and I gave them all I could spare, enough
+for two meals. One of the men produced a
+purse and took out some coppers wishing to pay.</p>
+
+<p>Travelling across Thrace (then in Bulgarian
+occupation), I often put up at some military
+post, being invited to become a member of the
+little mess&mdash;usually an official or two and four
+or five non-commissioned officers. Nearly always
+I had the same experience, that I was made free
+of the stewed goat and rice, or the dish of eggs
+and flour, or the bread and cheese of the Bulgarians,
+and when I wished to add from my stores chocolate
+and biscuits and dates, just a scrap or two would
+be taken. I could see the men's eyes hungering
+for the delicacies, but nothing would induce them
+to take anything material from my stores.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Bulgarian peasant soldier and officer I
+found, in short, to be a gentleman. Yet nationally
+Bulgaria is not "a gentleman," and has come
+to its present sorry state, I believe, largely on
+that account. The old Bulgarian aristocracy
+was exterminated by the Turks. The surviving
+Bulgarian peasantry has not yet been able to
+produce another aristocracy. It is the more
+cunning rather than the more worthy son of the
+peasant who wins to a sort of an education&mdash;often
+abroad&mdash;and becomes the lawyer, politician,
+official. In very many cases he carries with him
+into a higher stratum of society few of his peasant
+virtues and all of his peasant faults. He gets
+an overweening pride in his own acuteness. He
+becomes arrogant, "too-clever-by-half," and
+intrigue teaches him cruelty. I can contrast
+vividly two Bulgarian types in a noted diplomat,
+who fancied himself a Bismarck and had about
+the wits of an office boy, and an old peasant
+captain with whom I travelled from Kirk Kilisse
+to Chorlu. Generalising, the "leading men" in
+Bulgaria are of a poor type (there are exceptions),
+the leading priests of a still poorer type;
+the people themselves are a sound people, and
+when the ambitious among them contrive to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+preserve their peasant virtues through the
+ordeal of education they will become a great
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The Bulgarian did not seem to me naturally
+cruel. All the time that I was with the main
+army I saw no trace of outrage or cruelty. I
+did see several instances of curt and merciful
+justice.</p>
+
+<p>I arrived one night at the Tchundra River
+alone, having gone forward from my ox cart because
+the miserable Macedonian driver and the still
+more miserable Bulgarian servant I had (I suspect
+he was in training for the diplomatic service)
+could not be induced to do a fair day's march.
+A vedette outpost of five men held the bridge.
+They took me&mdash;as I judged from their gestures
+rather than from their language, of which I
+understood only one word, "Turc"&mdash;for a Turk.
+But they let me stay unmolested at their camp
+fire for an hour until an officer who spoke French
+appeared. I could give several similar instances.
+Never did I feel nervous in the least when making
+my way alone through the country in Bulgarian
+occupation (most of the time I was alone, for
+after a while I dropped my Macedonian and my
+Bulgarian servant).</p>
+<p class="p2b"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_254.jpg" width="600" height="471" alt="Greek infantry" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption"><a href="#Page_190"><i>See page</i> 190</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="centerb">GREEK INFANTRY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">
+The Turk I found disappointing. I had
+pictured a romantic individual with a Circassian
+harem, a stable of Arab steeds, and a fierce and
+warlike manner. I found the Turk to be rather
+a shabby individual; monogamous usually (but
+with the free and easy ideas as to his rights over
+Christian women which are almost consequent
+upon his philosophy of life, and cause most of
+the trouble when the Turk lives by the side of a
+Christian population); much addicted to sweetmeats&mdash;his
+shops were full of Scotch lollies and
+English biscuits. Certainly most of the Turks
+I have encountered were prisoners or dwelling
+in conquered country. But, making all allowance
+for that, the traditional fiery Turk of martial
+fame no longer exists, I should say, in European
+Turkey. The Turkish prisoners in the hands of
+the Bulgarians seemed to be glad to have arrived
+at a fate which meant regular food. In old
+Bulgaria I found Turks living quite contentedly
+under Christian rule, and in many cases following
+menial occupations. The boot-blacks
+in the streets were Turks, the porters were
+Turks.</p>
+
+<p>I had a Turkish driver for five days once from
+Kirk Kilisse to Mustapha Pasha. The first hour<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+of our acquaintance he won my heart by telling
+me (through an interpreter) that since his horses
+had been requisitioned by the Bulgarians, he had
+not been able to get proper food for them, and
+he embraced his ponies, which were really in
+rather good condition. I applauded the noble
+Turk and his love for horses, and bought tobacco
+for him which he welcomed with tears of joy,
+as he had been without it for long. The horses
+carried the cart a gallant thirty miles that day,
+and we camped at a burned-out village. Mr.
+Turk set himself to enjoy a smoke over the fire.
+My own supper I prepared, and gave him some
+to eke out his bread and cheese, and then told
+him to water and feed the horses. Because the
+well was 400 yards away and the tobacco was
+sweet and the fire comforting, the Turk had
+no wish to do this, but was ready to let them
+go through the night without food or water. I
+had to threaten to flog him (and to start to do
+it) before he would attend to the horses. Yet
+after that incident I slept in the cart without
+a thought that the Turk would consider himself
+offended and cut my throat. As a matter of
+fact the touch of the whip did not rankle with
+him, and at Mustapha Pasha when, the journey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+ended, I gave him a little money for himself, Mr.
+Turk prostrated himself in gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that the warlike virtues have died
+out of the Turk in Europe. Of other nation-making
+and nation-maintaining qualities he has
+none. In all Turkey from the borders of Bulgaria
+to the lines of Chatalja, I found no roads, no street
+lamps, no drainage, no water supply (I was not
+in Adrianople). Except for a few agricultural
+peasants I found nowhere the Turk doing any
+useful work. In a characteristic Turkish town
+the shops were kept by Greeks, the industries
+carried on by Greeks, Macedonians, and Bulgarians.
+The Turk was the tax-collector, the official, the
+soldier, and did none of these things well.
+That acute observer of the Turkish character,
+Mr. L. March Phillips, in his book <i>In the Desert</i>
+upholds that the Turk is impossible as a civilising
+force:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Or, for a third example, come to the craggy hills of
+Southern Albania, and mix, if but for half an hour, with
+the armed shepherds, as wild and intractable as their
+own crags, or as the gaunt dogs which guard their flocks
+from the wolves, and whose attentions to strangers you
+are apt to find such a nuisance. You will understand
+from the first glance at the men more of the interminable
+Balkan difficulty than newspapers and books can ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+teach you. These are the fellows who swoop down
+from their peaks on the mixed races of the plains and
+carry fire and slaughter through village and valley.
+Their natural aptitude for fighting and foraging, for
+bearing things with a strong hand, for cowing the weak
+and feeble, for vindicating the old "might is right"
+theory, is written all over them. You see it in their
+gait, glance, walk, and manner, you hear it in every
+accent of their voice, you feel it in their individuality
+and presence.</p>
+
+<p>These are specimens of the Moslem type, the type
+that stops short at the virile virtues, that makes the best
+host and worst neighbour in the world, that has many
+splendid qualities to recommend it, but to which all
+that makes life profound and inexhaustible is a dead
+letter. It is the most strongly marked and salient type
+I have ever met with. There is the Moslem walk, the
+Moslem scowl, the Moslem courtesy, the Moslem dignity,
+the Moslem carriage and attitudes and features, the
+Moslem composure, and the Moslem fury. All these
+traits and characteristics, inspired by the same temper,
+expressing the same ideal, conspire to depict a figure
+so notable that you must be a dull observer indeed if
+you cannot pick him out from a mixed crowd as you
+would pick out a Chinaman in the London streets.</p>
+
+<p>Some people say it is the religion that creates the
+type. "There," they say of Mohammedanism, "is a
+religion that breeds men." It would be truer, I think,
+to say that Mohammedanism recommends itself to men
+at a certain stage of their development, and has for that
+stage a natural affinity. Every race goes through a
+time when the virile estimate of life and the splendour
+of self-assertion seem the finest things possible. It is
+at this time it is open to the attack of El Islam. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+Moslem religion answers all its needs at this stage, and
+lays good hold of it, and having once laid hold of it, it
+sanctifies the ideas belonging to this stage, and so tends
+to restrict the race to it. There is no instance on record
+of a people having embraced Mohammedanism and
+afterwards achieving a complete, or what gives promise
+of ever becoming a complete, civilisation.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>During my stay in the Balkans I found no
+certain evidence of Turkish cruelty. There was
+plenty of evidence offered by the Bulgarians,
+but it usually smelt of the lamp of some patriotic
+journalist of Sofia. Once near Mustapha Pasha&mdash;when
+all the war correspondents were cooped up
+under strict censorship, prevented from seeing
+any of the operations around Adrianople&mdash;the
+Bulgarians found it necessary to burn a village
+for strategic reasons. The chance was offered
+to the Press photographers of seeing this, if it
+were represented in their pictures as the atrocious
+burning of a village by the Turks. I believe
+that the offer was accepted by some. The
+"atrocities" by Turks, regularly recorded by
+the Bulgarian Press Bureau were, as far as the
+main theatre of operations was concerned, founded
+on similar evidence. During its first phase I
+believe that the war was very humanely conducted
+on all sides. In Macedonia, of course, there were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+some deplorable atrocities, but I believe the
+normal massacre conditions there were rather
+bettered than otherwise by the outbreak of war.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up the Turk, I do not think he will
+survive for long in Europe. As a matter of
+hard fact there really are not many real Turks
+left in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The Serbian, with his highlander the
+Montenegrin, is a far more engaging personality
+than the Bulgarian. He lacks the stubborn,
+dour courage of his neighbour, but he has more
+<i>�lan</i>. In military life the Bulgarian would
+supply incomparable infantry, the Serbians be
+superior in artillery and cavalry. In social life
+the Serbian is convivial and hospitable. Whilst
+the Bulgarian wishes to go to bed early that he
+may get up early and push the road he is making
+along a little farther, the Serbian will keep you
+at his dinner-table drinking and singing until
+far into the morning. He is not troubling about
+a road.</p>
+
+<p>When the Serbian army came to help the
+Bulgarians in the siege of Adrianople, the contrast
+between the two armies and the two camps was
+great. The Serbian men were smarter, better
+equipped, their quarters cleaner, and from their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+mess tents would come by night the sound of
+revelry. One might imagine Roundheads and
+Cavaliers camping side by side.</p>
+
+<p>The Allies did not fraternise. For that I
+blamed the Bulgarians. The positions in regard
+to the Serbian aid at Adrianople, as I understood
+it, was this: that originally the Bulgarians
+engaged to help the Serbians in their campaign,
+but this was found not to be necessary: that the
+Bulgarians, later, asked for aid against Adrianople,
+and it was promptly given without any conditions
+being imposed, though there then already existed
+in the Serbian mind a desire to modify the
+territorial partition arrangement they had with
+Bulgaria and this request for aid might have been
+taken as a good opportunity for raising that
+question. I believe those to be the facts, but
+since in Balkan diplomacy it is always a matter
+of finding out the truth of comparing and weighing
+and deducing from a series of lies, I cannot state
+them with absolute certainty. If they are true,
+the Serbians behaved like gentlemen in not
+raising against an ally an awkward question at
+a time when help was asked. Quite certainly
+the Bulgarian authorities behaved like boors
+to their Serbian friends. Things were made as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+unpleasant as was reasonably possible for them
+in all kinds of niggling ways around Adrianople.
+The Serbians behaved well under great provocation.</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">During the first sessions of the Balkan Peace
+Conference I had opportunities of observing the
+same good behaviour on the part of the Serbians.
+Bulgarian diplomacy was, as usual, very exasperating.
+It was not only that Bulgaria was
+insisting on having the hide, horn, and hoofs of
+Turkey, but also on rubbing salt into her bare
+carcase. The Turkish delegates approached the
+Serbians&mdash;whose territorial demands as far as
+Turkey was concerned were satisfied, but who
+had a pending controversy with the Bulgarians&mdash;hoping
+to get some moral support against Bulgaria
+and being prepared to offer something in return.
+The Serbian attitude was sharply loyal, to stand
+by Bulgaria absolutely in regard to the Turkish
+frontier. Serbians have not been always popular
+in Great Britain, I know; but I am not alone
+among those who have come into recent contact
+with Balkan affairs who found them to be the
+best of the Balkan <a id="peoples"></a>peoples.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/img_263.jpg" width="600" height="471" alt="Podgorica, upon the Albanian frontier" />
+<p class="ralign"><span class="caption"><i>See page</i><a href="#Page_194"> 194</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="centerb">PODGORICA, UPON THE ALBANIAN FRONTIER</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">The Greek is even more engaging and hospitable
+than the Serbian; but his fluent, flexible,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+subtle nature does not inspire full confidence.
+At the outset of the last Balkan war there was one
+thing that all were sure of: that the Greeks would
+not fight. All were wrong. The Greeks did
+exceedingly well in the field, even allowing that
+they sometimes shaped their campaign quite
+as much by considerations of jealousy of their
+allies as of hostility to the common enemy. But
+it is a fact that the Greek has usually more stomach
+for politics than for fighting, and that his subtle
+nature allows him to live comfortably in a state
+of subjection, which would irk a more robust
+mind. He is by instinct a trader: and a trader
+is not an uncompromising patriot as a rule.</p>
+
+<p>The Greeks live side by side with the Turks
+in Turkey with fair comfort. At Kirk Kilisse,
+after the Bulgarian occupation, a deputation
+came to me from the Greeks to assure me that
+they would much prefer to live under the Turk
+than under the Bulgar: and asking that England
+should be urged to support autonomy for Thrace.
+Well, the Turks are back at Kirk Kilisse, and I
+suppose my Greek friends are happy. Eloquent,
+courteous, kind folk they were. I stayed in the
+house of one for some days, and will remember
+always the gracious kindness of the man and his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+wife. I had to leave one morning at four to catch
+a troop train which would carry me a few miles
+towards the front. The couple were up and had
+a fire and tea ready for me. As I had a fever at
+the time, and a long laborious journey ahead, the
+whole Greek race seemed good that morning.</p>
+
+<p>Later at Chorlu after I had got permission
+from the military commandant to go forward to
+Chatalja, and he had helped me to hire a cart
+and horses and to stock up my provisions, the
+permission was withdrawn because Bashi-Bazouks
+were raiding along the line of communication.
+I might go later, he said, when a body of troops
+was moving. I objected that time was precious;
+and I had my revolver, and there was the driver.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," he said sweetly, "he is a Greek. He
+will run away."</p>
+
+<p>After that manner the Bulgarians always
+spoke of the Greeks. In this case the Bulgarian
+was possibly right. I finally coaxed permission
+to go forward, on condition that I took a patrol
+of one Bulgarian soldier, and I was allowed to
+borrow a rifle and some ammunition. We met
+no Bashi-Bazouks: but whilst the Bulgarian
+palpably was quite content to enter into a plan
+to give the Bashi-Bazouks a chance of showing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+themselves at nightfall, the Greek liked the
+adventure not at all. (Perhaps on the whole
+he was justified. But I was desperately eager
+for a "story," and with the Turkish regulars
+running away so consistently, to encounter
+irregulars suggested no real danger.)</p>
+
+<p>On that journey, at a little village which I
+cannot name between Silivri and Chatalja, the
+population was largely Greek. Some of the
+Greeks, after the Turks had fled before the
+Bulgarians, had discarded the fez and were
+wearing Bulgarian caps. Others held to the
+fez, but had marked on it with white chalk a
+cross. I formed the opinion that if by the
+fortune of war the Turks came back, those crosses
+would be rubbed out. The Greek can be very
+pliant undoubtedly, when he is in contact
+with a dominant people. The other side to
+his character&mdash;that of a hot-headed, argumentative,
+boisterous Donnybrook Fair patriotism&mdash;is
+developed in his own country where it is fed
+with memories of the historic greatness of his
+race.</p>
+
+<p>The Roumanian&mdash;the fourth national type
+in the Balkans to which I shall refer&mdash;very
+closely resembles the Greek in most respects.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+Like the Greeks the Roumanians are subtle,
+flexible, engaging. They are a singularly good-looking
+race, and Roumanian girls are sought
+after in marriage a great deal. A Serbian politician
+explaining to me what he called "a nice national
+balance," pointed out that the Serbians rather
+despised trade and finance. The Roumanian,
+therefore, came into Serbia to make money as
+shopkeeper and financier. Then the young
+Serbian man married the rich Roumanian's
+daughter and thus the Serbian money was still
+kept in the country.</p>
+
+<p>The instinct for trade has a very marked
+effect on the politics of the Balkans. The Serbian
+has no love for trade: the Montenegrin despises
+it quite. The Greek and the Roumanian are
+very keen traders with an inclination to escape
+from manual work as soon as they can. The
+Bulgarian is a trader and also fond of productive
+industry. So "as two of a trade never agree,"
+neither Greek nor Roumanian can get on as well
+with the Bulgarian as with the Serbian.</p>
+
+<p>The Roumanian national polity differs greatly
+from the Greek, though the two racial types are
+very similar. Whilst Greece has a stormy and
+disorderly democracy, Roumania is ruled practically<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+by an oligarchy&mdash;an oligarchy which during
+the past twelve months has won to an achievement
+which would have delighted the old
+Florentine Republic. Without losing a soldier,
+almost without spending a crown, Roumania has
+won a great tract of territory and established
+herself as the paramount power of the Balkans.
+It was a victory of unscrupulous and patient
+resoluteness which is a classic of its kind, and it
+was made possible by the oligarchic system of
+Roumania. The Montenegrin does not need to
+be considered separately: he is the "Highlander"
+of the Serbian and shares Serbian language,
+customs, and character with such modifications
+as the conditions of his mountain life impose.
+But the Albanian, the largely Mohammedan
+mountain type to which the jealousies of Europe
+have agreed to give a separate nationality and
+a separate kingdom, calls for some attention.
+The Albanian is the wildest of the Balkan types,
+and his country the most primitive. It has had
+no period of civilisation, and can hardly be said
+to promise to have. Its existence as a nation in
+1914 was due to the fact that the German Powers
+wished to have a footing in the Balkans for
+intrigue. "The creation of Albania dealt a death-blow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+to the Balkan League," said a cynical
+Austrian diplomatist recently. He was right: and
+the creation of Albania undertaken at the instance
+of Austria had no other purpose from the first,
+though it was disguised under the plea of anxiety
+for the national rights of the Albanians, wild
+catamarans of the hills, odd specimens of whom
+one may encounter in many parts of the Balkans
+acting as dragomans. The Albanian has many
+savage virtues. He is a picturesque fellow as he
+swaggers about with a silver-decorated armoury
+stuck in his waist-belt: and he is truly faithful
+to a master. But he has not the barest elements
+of a national organisation; and the Austrian
+Prince of Albania did not find a single house
+within all his dominion which would satisfy the
+housing needs of a respectable London clerk.</p>
+
+<p>Describing the march across Albania to the
+Adriatic coast during the recent war a Serbian
+officer wrote:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>It is only by travelling as we did that real facts can
+be learned. We who had only known the Turks by
+hearsay had a certain respect for them. At present
+I feel but contempt and disgust. To think that they
+should have held these lands for five hundred years,
+and kept them absolutely wild and uncultivated!
+Prishtina, Jakovitsa, and Prizrend are in every respect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+behind Mirigevo [a village some miles outside Belgrade].
+There are neither bridges nor roads, nor decent dwellings
+to be met with in the Sanjak. Of the dirt I cannot
+trust myself to speak. The "Ujumat" (Prefecture)
+of Prizrend, residence of the Mutessarif, is in such a
+filthy condition that I could not sit there for more than
+five minutes together. All around the sofras (tables)
+were rags, remnants of food, tufts of dogs' hair, etc., for
+these ate and slept with their masters....</p>
+
+<p>The people are humble, cowed, moving out-of-doors
+rarely, and then huddled together like a herd of cattle....
+The peasants run to kiss our hands, and bow down
+to the ground, but they are too frightened to give a
+sensible answer to a plain question. They speak
+Serbian, it is true, and cross themselves as Christians,
+but otherwise bear little resemblance to our peasant
+folk. They have lived no better than their masters,
+for themselves and their pigs share the same apartment!
+If the pigs were let loose the Turks were sure to kill
+them, so they were hidden indoors. The first use they
+made of the liberty we gave them was to hunt the pigs
+into the open air, and how the poor beasts enjoyed it!
+One could not help laughing at their antics as they
+chased each other, while the children ran to keep them
+from escaping to the woods. But the cows and oxen
+defy description. They are like our calves, only the
+shape is queer. I saw no vegetables anywhere. The
+staple diet is maize. From our frontier to the sea it is the
+same tale of misery, helplessness, and dirt. In Prizrend,
+after every rainfall, the people drink muddy water in
+which none of our soldiers would care to wash. When
+we boiled it a thick scum came on the top, which we
+skimmed off! This is the water used by a town of 40,000
+citizens; and really one felt that authorities like the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+Turks should not be allowed to live any longer. Now
+we feel that it is a disgrace to us to have delayed so long
+in coming to the deliverance of our brothers in bondage
+just outside our doors. Better late than never.</p>
+
+<p>As for the independence of Albania, it would be a
+comical, if it were not a sinister, idea. Whoever speaks
+of a national sense in these savage hordes is either untruthful
+or ignorant. The Serbians of this region make
+no distinction, as we do, between the Turks and the
+Mohammedan Albanians. I could not get them to
+understand that the latter were in reality brethren of the
+Christian Albanians with whom they live in amity. I
+pointed out that these Mohammedans could not speak
+a word of Turkish, but that did not help. The Serbians
+insist that they are Turks all the same. And for
+all practical purposes they are right. The Christian
+Albanians are called by their race brethren "Catholics,"
+and are hated and persecuted by them just as the Serbians
+are hated and persecuted. The "Catholics" loathe
+the Mohammedans and deny that they are of the same
+nationality. But the fact remains that they speak the
+same language. The Catholics welcomed us with joy,
+rendered us every possible service, and often refused to
+accept payment. They are eager to assist in our operations,
+acted as scouts for us, and brought us precious
+information. Sometimes they acted on their own
+initiative, captured, and killed their Mohammedan
+co-nationalists without first consulting us.... The
+priests are the most embittered. These jealous "fratres"
+told us they longed for a Christian Government, and
+that the project of a united Albania was insensate....
+Ismail Kemal's proclamation has irritated the priests
+about here. They will not for a moment consider a
+union with the Mohammedan tribes or submission to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+a Moslem leader like Ismail. On the other hand, if
+we evacuate this country, a terrible fate awaits the
+Catholics....</p>
+
+<p>Here I have made acquaintance with the Montenegrin
+troops, rather different from ours! They get leave to
+go home and see after their wives and children whenever
+they ask it, and lax discipline does not seem to affect
+their heroism. They fight like lions, but do nothing
+else except shoot birds and fish in the interval. Every
+ship that touches here is greeted with a volley, though
+ammunition is sometimes scarce, but the Montenegrin
+can better spare bread than shot. He will do nothing
+but fight, and ships often remain unladen here for days,
+because there are few Albanians in the place to do the
+work. My soldiers carry sacks and burdens of all kinds
+to and from the ships, and the Montenegrins laugh at
+them and say: "Is that how you fight, Brother Shumadinats?"
+[Shumadia is a forest in the centre of the
+Kingdom of Serbia.] They are amused to see our men
+one day unshaven; they are most particular themselves
+to shave each day whatever happens. The priests alone
+wear a beard, for they are not supposed to fight....
+The Montenegrin soldiers' wives come once a week to
+look after their husbands, wash the linen, and help to
+clean up....</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>There is, of course, a certain amount of Serb
+intolerance in that letter, but it represents on the
+whole the truth.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the different nations of the
+Balkans. The personalities of the Peninsula
+might provide a happy solution for the problems<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+which the conflict of these mutually antipathetic
+racial elements create: for there is no fact more
+clear than that the general interest of the countries
+could best be served by a wise policy of compromise
+and co-operation, bringing its different elements
+together as the Swiss were brought together by
+a geographical rather than a racial reason. But
+unfortunately there are no personalities alike
+honest in outlook and great in power.</p>
+
+<p>Four able and far-seeing men I have met in the
+Balkans: M. Nikolitch, President of the Serbian
+Parliament; General Demetrieff, Commander of
+the Third Army (which won the most notable
+Bulgarian victories), now commanding a Russian
+army; M. Venizuelos, Prime Minister of Greece;
+M. Take Jonescu, of the Roumanian Cabinet.
+All men of power, none seemingly has sufficient
+strength to impose his will not alone on his
+own country, but on the other Balkan States,
+and weld them into a Confederation which would
+be held together by a sense of common interests
+and common dangers.</p>
+
+<p>King Ferdinand of Bulgaria has kept for years
+the centre of the Balkan stage to the European
+onlooker; and is still a great enough figure to
+give pause to those Bulgarian Nationalists who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+would exact from him reprisal for the terrible
+misfortunes of their country. But he is a man
+of audacity rather than of courage, and his
+ambition has been always more personal than
+national&mdash;to be Czar of the Balkans rather than
+to be the maker of a Balkan nation. Gifted with
+a great deal of diplomatic ability and with a
+soaring imagination, King Ferdinand has a
+serious obstacle in his personal timidity. To
+play a gambler's game one must be prepared
+at times to take the great risk. But King
+Ferdinand has many fears. He fears, for instance,
+infectious diseases morbidly, and the thought of a
+germ in the track could turn him from the highest
+of enterprises. Perhaps it was the fear of disease
+rather than of wounds that kept him so much in
+the rear of his army during the 1912 campaign
+against Turkey. But whatever the cause, his
+absence from the front showed a serious weakness
+of character in a man who aspired to carve out
+an empire for himself. The Bulgarian authorities,
+deceiving the Press almost as assiduously
+for the purpose as for the false representation
+that all the destruction of the Turkish forces
+was ascribable to the Bulgarian arms, gave to
+Europe inspiriting pictures of His Majesty following<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+close on the heels of his soldiers in a military
+train which served him as a palace. The fact
+was that the ambitious but timid king kept very
+well to the rear, at Stara Zagora first and afterwards
+at Kirk Kilisse, with a great entourage of
+secret police. And when armistice negotiations
+were in progress he kept separate from his
+Cabinet as well as from his army. Affable in
+manner, industrious, pertinacious, well aware of
+the advantage of advertisement (my first meeting
+with His Majesty was due to the fact that he
+mistook my map case for a camera, and sent
+for me to photograph him while he stood on the
+bridge over the Maritza at Mustapha Pasha),
+of high ability, King Ferdinand did great things
+for his adopted country, but showed a fatal
+weakness of character when he had drunk deep
+of the wine of success. It is the fashion to blame
+him wholly now for the wild attack on Serbia
+and Greece. He may have been in part the
+victim of his advisers' folly in that. But without
+much doubt he could have vetoed the fatal
+move, if he had known his army from personal
+observation, if he had been down to the lines at
+Chatalja, and had looked closely into the besieging
+forces around Adrianople. Common sense would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+have told him that the attack on his allies was
+hopeless, if strength of character had not told
+him that it was wicked. But he neither knew the
+facts nor understood the ethics of the position.</p>
+
+<p>General Demetrieff, Commander of the Third
+Bulgarian Army, the victor of Kirk Kilisse and
+of Lule Burgas, the reluctant attacker at Chatalja,
+impressed me as a man of fine character. For
+some few days I was a member of the officers'
+mess at Erminekioi, which was the headquarters
+of the Staff before the lines of Chatalja, and had
+the chance of seeing much of the general. He
+struck one as a frank, courageous man. He
+answered questions truthfully or not at all, and
+was notably kind to the very small group of
+correspondents who had got through to the
+front. His personal staff worshipped him, and
+told with pride that most of the staff work with
+him on the battle-field was under fire. When
+it was clear that the attack at Chatalja had
+failed, General Demetrieff neither attempted to
+tell falsehoods nor shut himself off from visitors.
+He ascribed the cessation of the attack to the
+outbreak of cholera in the Bulgarian lines (and
+the statement was probably in his mind not only
+the truth but all the truth: in any case one could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+not expect him to disclose the shortage of big
+gun ammunition): was avowedly disconsolate
+but not in the least discouraged. I cannot imagine
+General Demetrieff having any hand in the making
+of the second Balkan war against the Serbians
+and Greeks, and think that the Bulgarians had
+in him a man of honesty and courage as well
+as of great military skill. No other general of
+the Bulgarian Army impressed me in the same
+way, certainly not General Savoff.</p>
+
+<p>Of the Bulgarian politicians, M. Gueshoff,
+Prime Minister at the outbreak of the first war,
+and M. Daneff, chief Bulgarian delegate at the
+Peace Conference and Prime Minister at the
+outbreak of the second war, had the chief parts
+in the glories and tragedies of 1912-13. M.
+Gueshoff seemed a well-meaning but weak man.
+He was fond of insisting upon his English education
+and of advancing that as a proof of his
+complete candour. I imagine that he played
+no directing part in the drama of his country's
+sudden rise to power and more sudden fall, but
+did just as his king directed, sometimes probably
+under protest. M. Daneff was a more virile man,
+and his force of character, with little guidance
+from experience, of liberal education, or from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+wise purpose, had much to do with the downfall
+of Bulgaria. Of the Balkan Peace Conference
+which met first in London in December 1912,
+M. Daneff attempted from the outset to be
+dictator. He never lost a chance of being rude
+to an opponent or fulsome to a supporter. He
+diplomatised by pronunciamento and made a
+vigorous use of the minor newspaper Press with
+the idea of overawing the chancelleries of Europe.
+I am sure that the British Foreign Secretary,
+Sir Edward Grey, had nearly as much amusement
+as chagrin from the incidents of the Conference.
+Just when the Turkish delegates were
+being gently coaxed up to drink the hemlock,
+Bulgaria would publicly dance a wild triumph
+of joy, and announce that the very last drop
+had to be absorbed or Bulgaria would not be
+satisfied. When the Turkish delegates were thus
+startled away and all the pressure of European
+diplomacy was being brought to bear upon the
+Turkish Government to bring them back to the
+point, Bulgaria threatened publicly to break
+up the Conference and resume the war. Europe
+was given a short time-limit in which to act.</p>
+
+<p>M. Venizuelos, Prime Minister of Greece,
+has proved in his own country a great capacity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+for good government and wise diplomacy. There
+was a strong movement made at the outset of the
+Balkan Peace Conference to have him appointed
+head of the Balkan delegation. Success in that
+would have made the chances of peace better;
+and probably he had an expectation of being
+chosen as being the senior in official rank of all
+those present. But the jealousy and distrust
+of Greece was great: and M. Venizuelos did not
+prove himself the man of genius who could overcome
+the handicap which his nationality imposed.
+True, the task was almost impossible. But still
+nearer to the impossible would it be now to
+unite again the warring factions in the Balkans.
+M. Venizuelos, of the highest talent though he
+be, will not be the maker of a Balkan Confederation.</p>
+
+<p>M. Nikolitch, President of the Serbian Parliament,
+is an amiable and clever man with far
+more culture than is usual in the Balkans. He
+has translated English classics into the Serbian
+tongue, and is an industrious student of social
+and political philosophy. But he has nothing
+of the brute force that is needed to control the
+warring passions of the Balkan States. As the
+Minister of a Balkan Union to a great Power he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+would be admirable, for he has tact and wit,
+and a knowledge of the value of truth. When
+it was made plain that Austria was to have her
+way and Serbia no territory on the Adriatic,
+the disappointment of Serbia was bitter: and
+there was some special blame of Great Britain
+that she "had not considered her obvious
+interests," and brought this friendly little state
+to the sea. M. Nikolitch had the diplomat's
+faculty of taking a defeat smilingly. "The most
+unhappy thing about it," he said to me, "is that
+now Serbia will not have England on her frontier."
+It was a neat touch to speak of the sea as British
+territory.</p>
+
+<p>There remains to be considered M. Take
+Jonescu, who is credited with the chief share
+in the unscrupulous diplomacy which has made
+Roumania for the while paramount in the Balkans.
+It was certainly a masterpiece of Machiavellianism,
+applying the tenets of "The Prince" with
+cold precision, and marks its author as the master
+mind of the Balkans to-day. Give such a man
+a good soldier people to follow him and an honest
+purpose, and a Balkan Confederation might be
+achieved, with some further blood-letting perhaps.
+But it is not possible to believe that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+Roumanians, frivolous, pleasure-loving, untenacious,
+could impose their will for long upon
+the coarser-fibred but more virile Slavs of the
+Peninsula.</p>
+
+<p>No, there is not a personality in the Balkans
+to-day at once forceful enough, honest enough,
+and skilful enough to give the Peninsula a union
+which would enable it by means of a bold decision
+now to ensure internal peace and freedom from
+outside interference. A great man could build
+up a greater Switzerland, perhaps, of the Slavs,
+the Greeks, and the Roumanians in the Balkan
+Peninsula with Great Britain, Russia, and France
+as joint sponsors for the freedom of the new
+Federation. But one hardly dares to hope for
+such a happy ending to the long miserable story
+of the Balkans.</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Adrian, Emperor, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Adrianople, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>
+  <ul class="isub1">
+  <li class="isub1">description of, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Turkish occupation of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Adriatic coast, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">Sea, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Aegean Islands, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">Sea, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Alani, the, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Albania, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">condition of, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Albanian character, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">massacres, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">mountains, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Alexander of Battenberg. <i>See</i> <a href="#Alexander_King_of_Bulgaria">Alexander of Bulgaria</a></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Alexander_King_of_Bulgaria"></a>Alexander, King of Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">abdication of, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Alexander the Great, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+<li class="indx">American war correspondents, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Amurath I., Sultan of Turkey, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Amurath II., Sultan of Turkey, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Architecture"></a>Architecture, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Arjenli, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Armenia, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Art, applied, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">modern, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Arts and crafts, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Asia Minor, invasion of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Asiatic invasions, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Assyria, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Astrakhan, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Austria, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">and Serbia's trade, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Austrian ambitions in the Balkans, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">war correspondents, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Autonomy of the Christian Provinces, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Bajayet, Sultan of Turkey, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Balkan_Alliance"></a>Balkan Alliance, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">possibilities of, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Balkan casualties in the war, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">character, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Committee, the, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">development, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">diplomacy, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">disunion, <a href="#Page_75">75-77</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">mountains, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Balkan_Peace_Conference"></a>Balkan Peace Conference, 1912, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">second phase, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">spokesman, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Balkan peasants, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">peoples as linguists, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">politicians, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">priests, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">statesmen, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">War of 1912, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">War resumed, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">women, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Baltic Sea, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Banking, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Bashi-Bazouks, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Basil, the Bulgar-slayer, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Beetroot cultivation, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Belgrade, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">siege of, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Bessarabia, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Birrell, Major E. T. F., R.A.M.C., <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Bishop Babylas of Montenegro, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Black Sea, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">littoral, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Blood-mist, the, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Bosnia, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li class="indx">British Army Medical Detachment, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">opinion, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Red Cross Hospital, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">surgeons, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Bucharest, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Buda-Pest, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">an autonomous principality, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">beaten, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">boundaries of (1830), <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">foreign influences in, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">government of, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">liberation of, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">under Serbian rule, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">a Turkish province, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">and universal suffrage, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">at war, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx"><i>Bulgaria of To-day</i>, extract from, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Bulgarian ambitions, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">aristocracy, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">army of 1912, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">atrocities, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">atrocities in Macedonia, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">autonomy, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">blunders, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">censorship. <i>See</i> <a href="#Censorship">Censorship</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">character, <a href="#Page_177">177-180</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">church, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">commissariat, <a href="#Page_69">69-73</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">crops, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">diplomacy, <a href="#Page_85">85-87</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">diplomatic intrigues, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Exarchates, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">finance, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">generals, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">hegemony, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">hospitals, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">industry, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">medical service, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">military tactics, <a href="#Page_66">66-71</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">mobilisation, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">peace negotiations, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">peasants, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">preparedness for war, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Press Bureau, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">revolt of 1875, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Secret Service, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">system of land tenures, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">War of Liberation, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">women, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Bulgars"></a>Bulgars, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Buxton, Mr. Noel, M.P., <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Byzantine art, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">traditions, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Caf�s, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Carpets, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Caucasus, the, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Censorship"></a>Censorship, the, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">humours of the, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">the second, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Cettinje, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Charles, King of Roumania, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Chatalja, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Cherson, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Chersonesos, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Choleraic dysentery, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Chorlu, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Churches. <i>See</i> <a href="#Architecture">Architecture</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Congress of Berlin, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Constantinople, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">fall of, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Cotton-spinning, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+<li class="indx"><i>Credit Foncier</i> system, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Cretan excavations, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Crimean War, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Crusaders, the, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Cyrillic characters, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx"><a id="Dacians"></a>Dacians, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Daneff, M., <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Danilo I., King of Montenegro, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Danube, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Dardanelles, the, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Decius the elder, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Decius the younger, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Demetrieff, General, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Disease, ravages of, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Dnieper River, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Dniester River, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Don Cossacks, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Don River, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Dual Monarchy, problems of, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Dulcigno, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Durazzo, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Eastern Church, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Eastern Rumelia, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Egyptian influences, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Embroideries, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Emigration, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li class="indx">English war correspondents, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Enos, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Ermenikioi, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Eski Sagrah, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Eski Zagora, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+<li class="indx">European capital, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">diplomacy, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">diplomacy and Roumania, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">finance, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">policy, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">policy in 1912-13, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Powers, interest of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Powers, intervention of, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Euxine, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Exarchate Christians, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx"><a id="Ferdinand_Czar_of_Bulgaria"></a>Ferdinand, Czar of Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">his character, <a href="#Page_198">198-201</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Ferdinand of Coburg. <i>See</i> <a href="#Ferdinand_Czar_of_Bulgaria">Ferdinand of Bulgaria</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Filimer, King of the Goths, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Finno-ugric tribe, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Forty Holy Martyrs of Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Fratricidal war, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Frederick Barbarossa, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+<li class="indx">French war correspondents, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Gallipoli, Peninsula of, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Geographical position, <a href="#Page_1">1</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Gepidae, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+<li class="indx">German Powers, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+<li class="indx">German war correspondents, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Getae. <i>See</i> <a href="#Dacians">Dacians</a></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Goths"></a>Goths, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">invasions of, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Greco-Bulgarian disunion, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1"><i>entente</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Greco-Turkish wars, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Greece, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Greek atrocities in Macedonia, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">character, <a href="#Page_188">188-191</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">church, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">civilisation, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">coast, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">diplomacy, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Empire, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Empire, fall of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">governors in Roumania, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">official report, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Patriarchates, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">patriotism, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Prime Minister. <i>See</i> <a href="#Venizuelos">Venizuelos</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">traditions, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">war of independence, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Greeks, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Grey, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Grivica Redoubt, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Gueshoff, M., <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Guttones. <i>See</i> <a href="#Goths">Goths</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Haskovo, province of, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Health resorts, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Herodotus, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Herzegovina, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li class="indx">History, Early, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Hodgkin, Mr. T., <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Hospital services, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Hungarians, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Huns, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">invasions of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">origin of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">"International Socialist," <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Ionian letter-forms, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Istros, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Italian Peninsula, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">war correspondents, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Ivan the Black, of Montenegro, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Ivankeui, battle of, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Janina, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Japanese censorship, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Jire&#269;ek, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li class="indx">John As&#xEA;n, Czar of Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+<li class="indx">John Hunyad, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="indx">John Paleologos, Emperor of Greece, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Jonescu, M. Take, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Jostoff, Colonel, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Journalism, <a href="#Page_108">108-110</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">"Kara George." <i>See</i> <a href="#Petrovic">Petrovic</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Kirk Kilisse, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Korea, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Kossova, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">battle of, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Kustendil, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Kustendjix, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Lazar, King of Serbia, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Levant, the, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Liberation, progress since the, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Lithuania, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Lombards, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="London"></a>London Morning Post, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+<li class="indx">"Lord Salisbury's principle," <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Lule Burgas, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">battle of, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Macedonia, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">atrocities in, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Empire of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">massacres in, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Marcianople. <i>See</i> <a href="#Schumla">Schumla</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Mariano Bolizza, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Maritza River, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Marmora, Sea of, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+<li class="indx">"Mass at St. Sofia," <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Massacre, the national sport, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Medicinal springs, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Mediterranean littoral, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">Sea, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Michael, Czar of Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Michael the Brave, of Roumania, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Midhat Pasha, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Midia, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Military attach&#xE9;s, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Milosh Obrenovic of Serbia, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Mineral resources in Serbia, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Minoan civilisation, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Moesia, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Mohammedanism, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Moldavia, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Montenegrin character, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">printing press, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">resistance of Turks, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">war with Austria, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">war with Turkey, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Montenegro, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">government of, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx"><i>Morning Post</i>, the. <i>See</i> <a href="#London">London</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Mount Athos, monastery of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Music, national, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Napoleon, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Napoleonic strategy, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">wars, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Near East, the, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Near Eastern character, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Neytchef, Dr., <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Nicolaieff, General, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Niemen River, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Nikolitch, M., <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Nish, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Nordic tribes, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Norman knights, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Normans, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Northern invasions, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">peoples, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">North Sea, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Nova Sagora, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Novi-Bazar, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Odessa, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Odessos, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Olbia, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Old Serbia, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Oriental Express, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Ostrogoths, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Ottoman. <i>See</i> <a href="#Turks">Turks</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Ox wagons, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Patriarchate Christians, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Peace Conference. <i>See under</i> <a href="#Balkan_Peace_Conference">Balkan</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Peace of Bucharest, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Peace of London, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Persians, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Peter the Great of Russia, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Petrovic"></a>Petrovic, George, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Philip of Macedon, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Philippopolis, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">capture of, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Phillip, Roman Emperor, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Pig-raising, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Pirot, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Plevna, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Pomaks, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Prehistoric state, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Press influence, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Protective tariff, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+<li class="indx"><i>Punch</i> cartoon, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Religious proselytising, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Rhodopes, the, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Roads, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Roman Church, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">civilisation, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Empire, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Roman Empire, decline of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">fall of, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">traditions, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Romans, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Rose cultivation, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Roumania, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">Greek governors in, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">an independent principality, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">King of, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">liberation of, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Russian garrison in, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">subjugation of, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">a Turkish province, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Roumanian character, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">diplomacy, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">independence, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">war correspondents, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">women, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Roumanians"></a>Roumanians, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Runes, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Russian ambitions in the Balkans, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">garrison in Roumania, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">hospital at Kirk Kilisse, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">intrigue in Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">liberators of Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Power, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">war correspondents, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Russo-Japanese War, effect of, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Russo-Roumanian alliance, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Russo-Turkish War of 1828, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">of 1877, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Salonica, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Sanitary arrangements, absence of, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Saracens, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Savoff, General, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Schumla"></a>Schumla, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Scutari, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Scythia, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Seaside resorts, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Sebastopol, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Seleniki, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Semitic invasions, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Serbia, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">as a European Power, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">local government in, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Turkish garrisons withdrawn, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">a Turkish province, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Serbian character, <a href="#Page_186">186-188</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">contest for liberty, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">diplomacy, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">emigration to Austria, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Empire, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Empire, fall of, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">forests, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Highlanders, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">increase of territory, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">liberation, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">mineral resources, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">mountains, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">trade, Austria and, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">women, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Serbians"></a>Serbians, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Serbo-Hungarian Alliance, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Servians. <i>See</i> <a href="#Serbians">Serbians</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Shipka Pass, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Silistria, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Simeon of Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Slav traditions, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Slavs, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Slivnitza, battle of, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Sofia, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">the Military College, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Southern Slav Art Exhibition, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Stambouloff, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">assassination of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Stara Zagora, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Stephen Dushan, King of Serbia, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Stephen the Great, of Moldavia, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Sweden, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Switzerland, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Tapestries, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Tartars, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Tchobanoff, Lieutenant-Colonel, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Tchorlu, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Tchundra River, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Teutonic knights, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Theodore Komnenus, Czar of Greece, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Thessaly, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Thrace, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">an autonomous, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Thracian campaign, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">plain, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Thraco-Dacians, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Thraco-Illyrians, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Thraco-Macedonians, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Tirnova, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">Church of the Forty Martyrs, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Tobacco cultivation, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Tourist possibilities, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Trade, Early, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Trajan, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Transylvania, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Travel facilities, <a href="#Page_155">155-158</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">risks, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Treaty of Adrianople (1830), <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Treaty of Berlin, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Treaty of Bucharest (1913), <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Treaty of London, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Treaty of Paris (1856), <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Treaty of San Stefano, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Trenches, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Triple Alliance, the, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Turco-Russian wars, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Turkey-in-Europe, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Turkish Army, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">atrocities, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">character, <a href="#Page_181">181-186</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">corruption, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">cruelty, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">delegates at the Conference, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">domination in Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">entrenchments, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">invasion, first, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">occupation, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">offer of reform, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">Power in Europe, decline of, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">prisoners, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">procrastination at the Peace Conference, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">rally, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">rule in Bulgaria, end of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">rule in Serbia, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">spy incident, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">tyranny, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">villages, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Turks"></a>Turks, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">before Vienna, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Turnu-Severin, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Tyras, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Unity of Balkans. <i>See</i> <a href="#Balkan_Alliance">Balkan Alliance</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Valerius, Emperor, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Vandals, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Varna, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Venetians, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Venice <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+<li class="indx"><a id="Venizuelos"></a>Venizuelos, M., <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Vienna, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">siege of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">Villages, the, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Visigoths, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Vistula River, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Vlad the Impaler, of Wallachia, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Volga River, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Volgars. <i>See</i> <a href="#Bulgars">Bulgars</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Vranga, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Wallachia, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Wallachians. <i>See</i> <a href="#Roumanians">Roumanians</a></li>
+<li class="indx">War correspondent, the, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>
+  <ul class="index">
+  <li class="isub1">advice to, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">new school, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">passing of the, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+  <li class="isub1">a personal record, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+  </ul></li>
+<li class="indx">War of Liberation, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Winter sports, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Yamboli, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+<li class="indx">Yanina, battle of, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="indx">Zablack, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+
+<h5><i>Printed by</i> <span class="smcap">R. &amp; R. Clark, Limited</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</h5>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1a" id="Page_1a">[1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>A NEW SERIES OF COLOUR BOOKS</h2>
+
+<h4>EACH CONTAINING 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Large Square Demy 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <span class="smcap">Price <b>7/6</b> net each.</span> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<i>Bound in Cloth.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>By Post</i>, 8/-)</p>
+
+<h3 class="high">BULGARIA. By Frank Fox.</h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p>This book will give to the reader an adequate idea of a wild and little-known corner of Europe, but
+to those who look upon Bulgaria as a place of endless massacres and savage inhospitality the book will
+bring many surprises. The Bulgarian artist shows us a land in which civilisation is evident and art not
+unknown. The Australian author (who was with the Bulgarian Army as correspondent for the London
+<i>Morning Post</i> during the former Balkan War) writes of a people whom he found usually courteous, gentle,
+and worthy. His personal experiences of the Bulgarian peasantry are vividly interesting, and hardly
+less interesting is the brief sketch of the early history of Bulgaria, the country where the Roman
+Empire met its doom.</p></blockquote>
+
+<h3 class="high">ITALY. By Frank Fox.</h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p>Messrs. A. &amp; C. Black have published many books on the various cities of Italy with colour
+illustrations. But before this they have not offered to the public a handy volume giving a general
+idea of the country which was the cradle of Christian civilisation. Whether to tourists who contemplate
+a visit to Italy or to those who cannot hope for that pleasure, <i>Italy</i> will be welcome. The
+author has left to the vivid pictures the main task of describing Italian scenery, and devoted most of
+his text to telling of the spirit of the people and showing how the Italy of to-day is linked up with the
+Italy of the Roman Republic and the Italy of the Renaissance.</p></blockquote>
+
+<h3 class="high">SWITZERLAND. By Frank Fox.</h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p>This volume will give to the reader a good knowledge not only of the scenery of Europe's playground
+but of the Swiss people and their life. A little nation which has supplied Europe at various times with
+bands of both heroes and waiters, which is celebrated alike for generous hospitality to refugees and
+the most strictly commercial hospitality to tourists, has a paradoxical aspect whatever way it is regarded.
+The author seeks to describe rather than to explain the Swiss, but gives a closely compressed record of
+their early history as some key to the curiously contradictory elements of their national character.</p></blockquote>
+
+<h3 class="high">ENGLAND. By Frank Fox.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>The task of describing England was for good reason given to a visitor to the Mother Country. It
+will be found that Mr. Frank Fox has done his work well. A stranger to England will have his
+attention drawn to the features of her life which are most characteristic: residents in England will
+find interest in studying an impression of their country from a sympathetic Australian observer.
+Within a very small compass there is a bright living picture of England, her history, her institutions,
+her people, her green country-side, her historic monuments.</p></blockquote>
+
+<h3 class="high">FRANCE. By Gordon Home.</h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p>Mr. Gordon Home's chapters cover many aspects of French life, and give the reader a comprehensive
+vision of the land from Boulogne to Mentone and Bayonne. Political life, home life in town and country,
+the duel, marriage arrangements, the navy, architecture, the doctor, the priest, the <i>midinette</i>, the
+constitution, the great rivers, the watering-places, hunting, vine-growing, and school life are a few of
+the many topics that come in orderly sequence in the book. After reading the volume and studying
+the pictures, even those who know France well will probably understand some aspects of it more
+clearly, and those who have yet to cross the English Channel will go there understanding much that
+might otherwise puzzle them.</p></blockquote>
+
+<h3 class="high">AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. By G. E. Mitton.</h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p>It was through Austria-Hungary that the great crisis in Europe arose. Yet how few people know
+anything about the country, although both in the matter of national history and scenery Austria-Hungary
+is well worth considering. Its story of romance, its scenery is not behind any in Europe,
+though, except for the Tyrol and the Dolomites, it is far from well known. In the reconstruction of
+political frontiers which will necessarily follow the War, the races of the Dual Monarchy will have to
+be taken into account, and it is essential to know something of them if we would be abreast of the times.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Published by A. &amp; C. BLACK, Ltd., 4, 5, &amp; 6 Soho Square, London, W.</span></p>
+<hr class="r65" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2a" id="Page_2a">[2]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>OTHER BOOKS ON</h2>
+
+<h2>THE BALKAN PENINSULA</h2>
+
+<h3 class="high">CONSTANTINOPLE</h3>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Painted by WARWICK GOBLE</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Described by Prof. ALEXANDER VAN MILLINGEN, D.D.</span></p>
+<p class="center">CONTAINING 62 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Published at</i> <b>20/-</b> <i>net, now offered at</i> <b>7/6</b> <i>net</i> (<i>by post</i>, 8/-)</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Mr. Goble has succeeded in a difficult task. He has 'caught the glory' of the Queen of Cities,
+and, in the wealth of material for choice, has seized on those features which, though the most skilful
+pencil can convey them only inadequately, best represent their wonderful variety to those who have
+never seen them."&mdash;<i>Daily Chronicle.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3 class="high">GREECE: MONTENEGRO: TURKEY</h3>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">In the "Peeps at Many Lands" Series</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">EACH CONTAINING 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Large Square Crown 8vo, bound in Cloth.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>By post</i>, 1/11) &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+<span class="smcap">Price</span> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<b>1/6</b> <span class="smcap">net each</span> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; (<i>By post</i>, 1/11)<br />
+</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>This series of little travel books for young people who are of an age to be interested
+in the countries of the world and their peoples has steadily grown on account of its wide
+popularity. Each book is written in a simple and very attractive style, and thus the child
+gains valuable instruction and a vivid interest in countries, great cities, and peoples through
+the sheer pleasure of reading and by examining the beautiful illustrations. The youthful
+reader becomes absorbed in descriptions of how children work and play, and in the way
+of living, in the various countries of the world.</p>
+
+<p class="center">The volumes are handsomely bound and splendidly illustrated in colour.</p></blockquote>
+
+<h3 class="high">THE SPIRIT OF THE ALLIED NATIONS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">A SERIES OF ESSAYS BY</p>
+
+<p>PAUL STUDER, M.A., Professor of the Romance Languages in the University of Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>ALEXIS ALADIN, Ex-member of the Russian Duma.</p>
+
+<p>PAUL HAMELIUS, D. �s L., Professor of English Literature in the University of Li�ge.</p>
+
+<p>J. H. LONGFORD, B.A., Professor of Japanese in the University of London.</p>
+
+<p>R. W. SETON-WATSON, D. Litt., New College, Oxford; Author of <i>The Southern
+Slav Question</i>, etc.</p>
+
+<p>SIDNEY LOW, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford, Lecturer on Imperial and Colonial
+History, King's College, London University; Author of <i>The Governance of England</i>,
+<i>A Vision of India</i>, etc.</p>
+
+<p class="px"><span class="smcap">Edited, with an Introduction and Appendix, by SIDNEY LOW</span></p>
+
+<p class="pxc"><i>Crown 8vo.</i> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+<span class="smcap">Price</span> <b>2/6</b> <span class="smcap">net</span> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <i>Cloth.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>By post</i>, 2/10)</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"No student, or even casual lover of books, and certainly no patriot, should hesitate to read this
+remarkable little volume."&mdash;<i>Daily Express.</i></p>
+
+<p>"A valuable supplement to the books relating to the negotiations preceding the war and to the
+campaign itself."&mdash;<i>Aberdeen Journal.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="pxc"><span class="smcap">Published by A. &amp; C. BLACK, Ltd.</span>, 4, 5, &amp; 6 <span class="smcap">Soho Square</span>, <span class="smcap">London</span>, W.</p>
+
+<hr class="r65" />
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<h2>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES</h2>
+
+<p>Both "Serbia" and "Servia", "country-side" and "countryside" are found
+in this text.</p>
+
+<p>At p. 54, the phrase "I was through the war" may be an error for "I went
+through the war", but has been left unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>There is only one typo: "howevre" (on p. 21) has been changed to
+"however".</p>
+
+<p class="p2b">Four words in the index have a different spelling from that used in the
+text. Kossovo, Nova Zagora, Chorlu and Zablak are indexed as "Kossova",
+"Nova Sagora", "Tchorlu" and "Zablack" respectively. These spellings
+have been left unchanged.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Balkan Peninsula, by Frank Fox
+
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Balkan Peninsula, by Frank Fox
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The Balkan Peninsula
+
+Author: Frank Fox
+
+Release Date: May 13, 2012 [EBook #39688]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALKAN PENINSULA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Margo Romberg and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+
+
+
+AGENTS
+
+AMERICA       THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+                64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+AUSTRALASIA   THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
+                205 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE
+
+CANADA        THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
+                ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE, 70 BOND STREET, TORONTO
+
+INDIA         MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
+                MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
+                309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A BALKAN PEASANT]
+
+
+
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+BY
+
+FRANK FOX
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"AUSTRALIA," "BULGARIA," "SWITZERLAND," ETC.
+
+PUBLISHED BY A. & C. BLACK, LTD.
+4, 5, & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.
+
+1915
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book was written in the spring of 1914, just before Germany plunged
+the world into the horrors of a war which she had long prepared, taking
+as a pretext a Balkan incident--the political murder of an Austrian
+prince by an Austrian subject of Serb nationality. Germany having
+prepared for war was anxious for an occasion which would range Austria
+by her side. If Germany had gone to war at the time of the Agadir
+incident, she knew that Italy would desert the Triple Alliance, and she
+feared for Austria's loyalty. A war pretext which made Austria's
+desertion impossible was just the thing for her plans.
+
+It would be impossible to reshape this book so as to bring within its
+range the Great War, begun in the Balkans, and in all human probability
+to be decided finally by battles in the Balkans. I let it go out to the
+public as impressions of the Balkans dated from the end of 1913. It may
+have some value to the student of contemporary Balkan events.
+
+My impressions of the Balkan Peninsula were chiefly gathered during the
+period 1912-13 of the war of the Balkan allies against Turkey, and of
+the subsequent war among themselves. I was war correspondent for the
+London _Morning Post_ during the war against Turkey and penetrated
+through the Balkan Peninsula down to the Sea of Marmora and the lines of
+Chatalja. In war-time peoples show their best or their worst. As they
+appeared during a struggle in which, at first, the highest feelings of
+patriotism were evoked, and afterwards the lowest feelings of greed and
+cruelty, the Balkan peoples left me with a steady affection for the
+peasants and the common folk generally; a dislike and contempt, which
+made few exceptions, for the politicians and priests who governed their
+destinies. Perhaps when they settle down to a more peaceful
+existence--if ever they do--the inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula
+will come to average more their qualities, the common people becoming
+less simple-minded, obedient, chaste, kind: their leaders learning
+wisdom rather than cunning, and getting some sense of the value of truth
+and also some sense of ruth to keep them from setting their countrymen
+at one another's throats. But at the present time the picture which I
+have to put before the reader, with its almost unbelievable
+contradictions of courage and gentleness on the one side and cowardly
+cruelty on the other, is a true one.
+
+The true Balkan States are Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania.
+Roumania is proud to consider herself a Western State rather than a
+semi-Eastern Balkan State, though both her position and her diplomacy
+link her closely with Balkan developments. Turkey, of course, cannot be
+considered in any sense as a Balkan State though she still holds the
+foot of the Balkan Peninsula. Greece has prouder aspirations than to be
+considered one of the struggling nationalities of the Balkans and dreams
+of a revival of the Hellenic Empire. But in considering the Balkan
+Peninsula it is not possible to exclude altogether the Turk, the Greek,
+the Roumanian. My aim will be to give a snapshot picture of the Balkan
+Peninsula, looking at it as a geographical entity for historical
+reference, and to devote more especial attention to the true Balkan
+States.
+
+          FRANK FOX.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.                                                 PAGE
+
+   I. The Vexed Balkans                                 1
+
+  II. The Turk in the Balkans                          19
+
+ III. The Fall of the Turkish Power                    37
+
+  IV. The Wars of 1912-13                              53
+
+   V. A Chapter in Balkan Diplomacy                    78
+
+  VI. The Troubles of a War Correspondent in
+      the Balkans                                      94
+
+ VII. Jottings from my Balkan Travel Book             124
+
+VIII. The Picturesque Balkans                         149
+
+  IX. The Balkan Peoples in Art and Industry          162
+
+   X. The Future of the Balkans                       175
+
+   Index                                              207
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                FACING PAGE
+
+A Balkan Peasant                             _Frontispiece_
+
+Trajan's Column in Rome                                 7
+
+The Walls of Constantinople from the Seven Towers      10
+
+Sancta Sophia, Constantinople                          21
+
+King Peter of Serbia                                   28
+
+King Nicolas of Montenegro                             33
+
+Montenegrin Troops: Weekly Drill and Inspection of
+Weapons                                                35
+
+The King of Roumania                                   39
+
+The Shipka Pass                                        42
+
+King Ferdinand of Bulgaria                             46
+
+King Ferdinand's Bodyguard                             48
+
+Bulgarian Infantry                                     53
+
+Bulgarian Troops leaving Sofia                         60
+
+General Demetrieff, the Conqueror at Lule Burgas       69
+
+Adrianople: A General View                             76
+
+Roumanian Soldiers in Bucharest                        85
+
+Adrianople: View looking across the Great Bridge       88
+
+General View of Stara Zagora, Bulgaria                 92
+
+Sofia: Commercial Road from Commercial Square         101
+
+Bucharest: The Roumanian House of Representatives     108
+
+General Savoff                                        117
+
+Bulgarian Infantry                                    124
+
+Ox Transport in the Balkans                           133
+
+A Balkan Peasant Woman                                136
+
+A Bagpiper                                            140
+
+Some Serbian Peasants                                 149
+
+General View of Sofia                                 156
+
+Bucharest                                             161
+
+A Bulgarian Farm                                      166
+
+Albanian Tribesmen                                    176
+
+Greek Infantry                                        181
+
+Podgorica, upon the Albanian Frontier                 188
+
+_Sketch Map on page xii._
+
+[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA]
+
+
+
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE VEXED BALKANS
+
+
+The Fates were unkind to the Balkan Peninsula. Because of its position,
+it was forced to stand in the path of the greatest racial movements of
+the world, and was thus the scene of savage racial struggles, and the
+depositary of residual shreds of nations surviving from great defeats or
+Pyrrhic victories and cherishing irreconcilable mutual hatreds. As if
+that were not enough of ill fortune imposed by geographical position,
+the great Roman Empire elected to come from its seat in the Italian
+Peninsula to die in the Balkan Peninsula, a long drawn-out death of many
+agonies, of many bloody disasters and desperate retrievals. For all the
+centuries of which history knows a blood-mist has hung over the Balkans;
+and for the centuries before the dawn of written history one may
+surmise that there was the same constant struggle of warring races.
+
+It seems fairly certain that when the Northern peoples moved down from
+their gloomy forests towards the Mediterranean littoral to mingle their
+blood with the early peoples of the Minoan civilisation and to found the
+Grecian and the Roman nations, the chief stream of these fierce hordes
+moved down by the valley of the Danube and debouched on the Balkan
+Peninsula. Doubtless they fought many a savage battle with the
+aborigines in Thessaly and Thrace. Of these battles we have no records,
+and no absolute certainty, indeed, that the Mediterranean shore was
+colonised by a race from the North, though all the facts that we are
+learning now from the researches of modern archaeologists point to that
+conclusion. But whatever the prehistoric state of the Balkan Peninsula,
+the first sure records from written history show it as a vexed area
+peopled by widely different and mutually warring races, and subject
+always to waves of war and invasion from the outside. The Slav historian
+Jirecek concludes that the Balkan Peninsula was inhabited at the
+earliest times known to history by many different tribes belonging to
+distinct races--the Thraco-Illyrians, the Thraco-Macedonians, and the
+Thraco-Dacians. At the beginning of the third century, the Slavs made
+their first appearance and, crossing the Danube, came to settle in the
+great plains between the river and the Balkan Mountains. Later, they
+proceeded southwards and formed colonies among the Thraco-Illyrians, the
+Roumanians, and the Greeks. This Slav emigration went on for several
+centuries. In the seventh century of the Christian era a Finno-ugric
+tribe reached the banks of the Danube. This tribe came from the Volga,
+and, crossing Russia, proceeded towards ancient Moesia, where it took
+possession of the north-east territory of the Balkans between the Danube
+and the Black Sea. These were the Bulgars or Volgars, near cousins to
+the Turks who were to come later. The Bulgars assumed the language of
+the Slavs, and some of their customs. The Serbs or Serbians, coming from
+the Don River district had been near neighbours of the Volgars or
+Bulgars (in the Slav languages "B" and "V" have a way of interchanging),
+and were without much doubt closely allied to them in race originally.
+Later, they diverged, tending more to the Slav type, whilst the Bulgars
+approached nearer to the Turk type.
+
+There may be traced, then, in the racial history of the Balkans these
+race types: a Mediterranean people inhabiting the sea-coast and
+possessing a fairly high civilisation, the records of which are being
+explored now in the Cretan excavations; an aboriginal people occupying
+the hinterland of the coast, not so highly cultivated as the coast
+dwellers (who had probably been civilised by Egyptian influences) but
+racially akin to them; a Northern people coming from the shores of the
+Baltic and the North Sea before the period of written history and
+combining ultimately with the people of the coast to found the Grecian
+civilisation, leaving in the hinterland, as they passed towards the sea,
+detachments which formed other mixed tribes, partly aboriginal, partly
+Nordic; various invading peoples of Semitic type from the Levant; the
+Romans, the Goths and the Huns, the Slavs and the Tartars, the Bulgars
+and the Serbs, the Normans, Saracens, and Turks. Because the Balkan
+Peninsula was on the natural path to a warm-water port from the north to
+the south of Europe; because it was on the track of invasion and
+counter-invasion between Asia and Europe, all this mixture of races was
+forced upon it, and as a consequence of the mixture a constant clash of
+warfare. There was, too, a current of more peaceful communication for
+purposes of trade between the Levant and the Black Sea on the one side
+and the peoples of the Baltic Sea on the other side, which flowed in
+part along the Balkan Peninsula.
+
+In _Italy and her Invaders_ Mr. T. Hodgkin suggests:
+
+     During the interval from 540 to 480 B.C. there was a brisk
+     commercial intercourse between the flourishing Greek colonies on
+     the Black Sea, Odessos, Istros, Tyras, Olbia and
+     Chersonesos--places now approximately represented by Varna,
+     Kustendjix, Odessa, Cherson, and Sebastopol--between these cities
+     and the tribes to the northward (inhabiting the country which has
+     been since known as Lithuania), all of whom at the time of
+     Herodotus passed under the vague generic name of Scythians. By this
+     intercourse which would naturally pass up the valleys of the great
+     rivers, especially the Dniester and the Dnieper, and would probably
+     again descend by the Vistula and the Niemen, the settlements of the
+     Goths were reached, and by its means the Ionian letter-forms were
+     communicated to the Goths, to become in due time the magical and
+     mysterious Runes.
+
+     One fact which lends great probability to this theory is that
+     undoubtedly, from very early times, the amber deposits of the
+     Baltic, to which allusion has already been made, were known to the
+     civilised world; and thus the presence of the trader from the
+     South among the settlements of the Guttones or Goths is naturally
+     accounted for. Probably also there was for centuries before the
+     Christian Era a trade in sables, ermines, and other furs, which
+     were a necessity in the wintry North and a luxury of kings and
+     nobles in the wealthier South. In exchange for amber and fur, the
+     traders brought probably not only golden staters and silver
+     drachmas, but also bronze from Armenia with pearls, spices, rich
+     mantles suited to the barbaric taste of the Gothic chieftains. As
+     has been said, this commerce was most likely carried on for many
+     centuries. Sabres of Assyrian type have been found in Sweden, and
+     we may hence infer that there was a commercial intercourse between
+     the Euxine and the Baltic, perhaps 1300 years before Christ.
+
+A few leading facts with dates should give a fairly clear impression of
+the story of the Balkan Peninsula. About 400 B.C. the Macedonian Empire
+was being founded. It represented the uprise of a hinterland Greek
+people over the decayed greatness of the coast-dwelling Greeks. At that
+time the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula was occupied by the Getae
+or Dacians. Phillip of Macedon made an alliance with the Getae.
+Alexander the Great of Macedonia thrashed them to subjection and carried
+a great wave of invasion into Asia from the Balkan Peninsula.
+
+[Illustration: TRAJAN'S COLUMN IN ROME
+
+Commemorates the victories which brought all the Balkan Peninsula under
+the Roman sway]
+
+About the year 110 B.C. the Romans first came to the Balkan Peninsula,
+finding it inhabited as regards the south by the Greek peoples, as
+regards the north by the Getae or Dacians. The southern people were
+quickly subdued: the northern people were never really subdued by the
+Romans until the time of Trajan (the first century of the Christian
+era). He bridged the Danube with a great military bridge at the spot now
+known as Turnu-Severin, and Trajan's Column in Rome commemorated the
+victories which brought all the Balkan Peninsula under the Roman sway.
+Trajan found that the manners and customs of the Dacians were similar to
+those of the Germans. These sturdy Dacians were conquered but not
+exterminated by the Romans. Dacia across the Danube was made into a
+Roman colony, and the present kingdom of Roumania is supposed to
+represent the survival of that colony, which was a mixture of Roman and
+Dacian blood.
+
+In the third century of the Christian era the Goths made their first
+appearance in the Balkan Peninsula. The Roman Empire had then entered
+into its period of decline. The invasions of the Visigoths, the Huns,
+the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, and the Lombards were to come in turn to
+overwhelm the Roman civilisation. The Gothic invasion of the Balkan
+Peninsula was begun in the reign of the Roman Emperor Phillip. Crossing
+the Danube, the Goths ravaged Thrace and laid siege to Marcianople (now
+Schumla) without success. In a later invasion the Goths attacked
+Philippopolis and captured it after a great defeat of the Roman general,
+Decius the younger. Then the Roman Emperor (Decius the elder) himself
+took the field and was defeated and killed in a great battle near the
+mouth of the Danube (A.D. 251). That may be called the decisive date in
+the history of the fall of the Roman Empire. It was destined to retrieve
+that defeat, and to shine with momentary glory again for brief
+intervals, but the destruction of the Emperor and his army by the Goths
+in 251 was the sure presage of the doom of the Roman Power.
+
+One direct result of the battle in which Decius was slain was to bring
+the headquarters of the Roman Empire to the Balkan Peninsula. It was
+found that a better stand could be made against the tide of Gothic
+invasion from a new capital closer to the Scythian frontier.
+Constantinople was planned and built, and became the capital of the
+Roman Empire (A.D. 330), and thus brought to the Balkan stage the death
+throes of the mightiest world-power that history has known. From that
+date it is wise for the sake of clearness to speak of the Roman Empire
+as the Greek Empire, though it was some time after its settlement in
+Constantinople before it became rather Greek than Roman in character.
+
+With the issue between the Goths and the Greek Empire, in which peaceful
+agreements often interrupted for a while fierce campaigns, I cannot deal
+here at any length. It soaked the Balkan Peninsula deep in blood. But it
+was only the first of the horrors that were to mark the death of the
+Empire. Late in the fourth century of the Christian Era there burst into
+the Balkans from the steppes of Astrakhan and the Caucasus--from very
+much the same district that was afterwards to supply the Bulgars and the
+Serbs--the Tartar hordes of the Huns. Of these Huns there is a vivid
+contemporary Gothic account.
+
+     We have ascertained that the nation of the Huns, who surpassed all
+     others in atrocity, came thus into being. When Filimer, fifth king
+     of the Goths after their departure from Sweden, was entering
+     Scythia, with his people, as we have before described, he found
+     among them certain sorcerer-women, whom they called in their native
+     tongue Haliorunnas (or Al-runas), whom he suspected and drove forth
+     from the midst of his army into the wilderness. The unclean spirits
+     that wander up and down in desert places, seeing these women, made
+     concubines of them; and from this union sprang that most fierce
+     people [of the Huns], who were at first little, foul, emaciated
+     creatures, dwelling among the swamps, and possessing only the
+     shadow of human speech by way of language.
+
+     With the Alani especially, who were as good warriors as themselves,
+     but somewhat less brutal in appearance and manner of life, they had
+     many a struggle, but at length they wearied out and subdued them.
+     For, in truth, they derived an unfair advantage from the intense
+     hideousness of their countenances. Nations whom they would never
+     have vanquished in fair fight fled horrified from those
+     frightful--faces I can hardly call them, but rather--shapeless
+     black collops of flesh, with little points instead of eyes. No hair
+     on their cheeks or chins gives grace to adolescence or dignity to
+     age, but deep furrowed scars instead, down the sides of their
+     faces, show the impress of the iron which with characteristic
+     ferocity they apply to every male child that is born among them,
+     drawing blood from its cheeks before it is allowed its first taste
+     of milk. They are little in stature, but lithe and active in their
+     motions, and especially skilful in riding, broad-shouldered, good
+     at the use of the bow and arrows, with sinewy necks, and always
+     holding their heads high in their pride. To sum up, these beings
+     under the form of man hide the fierce nature of the beast!
+
+[Illustration: _Sebah & Joaillier_
+
+THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE FROM THE SEVEN TOWERS]
+
+Not a lovable people the Huns clearly: and the modern peoples who have
+some slight ancestral kinship with them hate to be reminded of the fact.
+I remember the fierce indignation which a French war correspondent
+aroused in Bulgarian breasts by his description--which had eluded the
+censor--of the passage of a great Bulgarian train of ox wagons because
+he compared it to the passage of the Huns.
+
+The Huns were, with the exception of the Persians who had vainly
+attacked the Greek States at an earlier period, the first successful
+Asiatic invaders of Europe. For a full century they ravaged the Empire,
+and the Balkan Peninsula felt the chief force of their barbarian rage.
+By the fifth century the waves of the Hun invasions had died away,
+leaving distinct traces of the Hunnish race in the Balkans. The Gepidae,
+the Lombards, and later the Hungarians and the Tartars then took up the
+task of ravaging the unhappy land which as the chief seat of power of
+the Greek Empire found itself the first objective of every invader
+because of that dignity and yet but poorly protected by that power.
+Constantinople was never taken by these barbarians, but at some periods
+little else than its walls stood secure against their ravages.
+
+Meanwhile the first Saracens had appeared in the Peninsula, curiously
+enough not as invaders nor as enemies, but as mercenary soldiers in the
+army of the Greek Empire fighting against the Goths. To a Gothic
+chronicler we are again indebted for a vivid picture of these Saracens,
+"riding almost naked into battle, their long black hair streaming in the
+wind, wont to spring with a melancholy howl upon their chosen victim in
+battle and to suck his life-blood, biting at his throat." Perhaps the
+Gothic war correspondent of the day studied picturesqueness more than
+accuracy, like some of his modern successors. But, without a doubt, the
+first contact with Asiatics, whether Huns or Saracens, gave to the
+European peoples a horror and a terror which had never been inspired by
+their battles among themselves--battles by no means bloodless or
+merciful. As the Asiatic waves of invasion later developed in strength
+the unhappy Balkan Peninsula was doomed to feel their full force as they
+poured across the Bosphorus from Asia Minor, and across the Danube from
+the north-eastern Asiatic steppes.
+
+It would be vain to attempt to chronicle even in the barest outline all
+the horrors inflicted upon the Balkans from the date of the first
+invasion of the Huns in the fourth century to the first invasion of the
+Turks in the fourteenth century. To say that those ten centuries were
+filled with bloodshed suffices. But they also saw the development of the
+Balkan nationalities of to-day, and cannot therefore be passed over
+without some attention. Let us then glance at each Balkan nation during
+that period.
+
+_Roumania_, inhabited by the people of the old Roman-Dacian colony,
+stood full in the way of the Northern invasions of Goths, of Huns, of
+Hungarians, of Tartars. It was almost submerged. But in the thirteenth
+century the country benefited by the coming of Teutonic and Norman
+knights. The two kingdoms or principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia
+(which, combined, make up modern Roumania) were founded in this century.
+
+_Bulgaria._--In the seventh century Slavs had begun to settle in
+Bulgaria. The Bulgars or Volgars followed. They were akin to the Tartars
+and the Turks. Together Slavs and Bulgars formed the Bulgarian national
+type and founded a very robust nation which was almost constantly at war
+with the Greek Empire (with its capital at Constantinople). At times
+Bulgaria seriously threatened Constantinople and the Greek Empire. A
+boastful inscription in the Church of the Forty Martyrs at Tirnovo, the
+ancient capital of Bulgaria, records:
+
+     In the year 1230, I, John Asen, Czar and Autocrat of the
+     Bulgarians, obedient to God in Christ, son of the old Asen, have
+     built this most worthy church from its foundations, and completely
+     decked it with paintings in honour of the Forty holy Martyrs, by
+     whose help, in the 12th year of my reign, when the Church had just
+     been painted, I set out to Roumania to the war and smote the Greek
+     army and took captive the Czar Theodore Komnenus with all his
+     nobles. And all lands have I conquered from Adrianople to Durazzo,
+     the Greek, the Albanian, and the Serbian land. Only the towns round
+     Constantinople and that city itself did the Franks hold; but these
+     too bowed themselves beneath the hand of my sovereignty, for they
+     had no other Czar but me, and prolonged their days according to my
+     will, as God had so ordained. For without him no word or work is
+     accomplished. To him be honour for ever. Amen.
+
+The wars were carried on under conditions of mutual ferocity which still
+rule in Bulgarian-Grecian conflicts. An incident of one campaign was
+that the Greek Emperor, Basil, the Bulgar-slayer, having captured a
+Bulgarian army, had the eyes torn out of all the men and sent them home
+blinded, leaving, however, one eye to every centurion, so that the poor
+mutilated wretches might have guides. In the early part of the
+fourteenth century a Bulgarian Czar, Michael, almost captured
+Constantinople. He formed a league with the Roumanians and the Greeks
+against the Serbs, who were at the time promising to become the
+paramount power of the peninsula. But Czar Michael was defeated by the
+Serbs and Bulgaria became dependent upon Serbia, which was the position
+of affairs at the time of the first serious Turkish invasion of the
+Balkan Peninsula.
+
+_Serbia._--Invading tribes of Don Cossacks began to come in great
+numbers to the Balkan Peninsula in the sixth century. In the seventh
+century they were encouraged by the Greek Empire to settle in Serbia, on
+condition of paying tribute to Constantinople. They set up a kind of
+aristocratic republic of a Slav type. In the ninth century they began to
+fight with the neighbouring and kindred Bulgarians. Early in the tenth
+century (A.D. 917) the Bulgarians almost effaced Serbia from the map;
+but the Serbs recovered after half a century, only to come shortly
+afterwards under the sway of the Greeks. In the eleventh century the
+Serbians held a very strong position and were able to harass the Greek
+Empire at Constantinople. They entered into friendly relations with the
+Pope of Rome, and for some time contemplated following the Roman rather
+than the Eastern Church. In the twelfth century King Stephen of Serbia
+was a valued ally of the Greek Empire against the Venetians. He
+established Serbia as a European "Power," and the Emperor Frederick
+Barbarossa visited his court at Belgrade. This king was the first of a
+succession of able and brave monarchs, and Serbia enjoyed a period of
+stable prosperity and power unusually lengthy for the Balkans. Except
+for the strife between the Eastern and Roman Catholic Churches for
+supremacy in Serbia, the nation was at peace within her own borders, and
+enjoyed not only a military but an economic predominance in the Balkans.
+Mining and handicrafts were developed, education encouraged, and the
+national organisation reached fully to the average standard of European
+civilisation at the time. By 1275 the Serbs were the chief power in the
+Balkans. They defeated the Greeks, marched right down to the Aegean and
+reached the famous monastery of Mount Athos, to which the first King
+Stephen (Nemanya) had retired in 1195 when he abdicated.
+
+In 1303 the Serbians forgot their quarrel with the Greeks and helped
+them against the Turks, undertaking an invasion of Asia Minor. In 1315
+they again saved the Greek Empire from the Turks. When in 1336 Stephen
+Dushan, the greatest of Serbian kings, who has been compared to Napoleon
+because of his military genius and capacity for statesmanship, came to
+the throne, Bulgaria was under the suzerainty of Serbia, and the Serb
+monarch ruled over all that area comprised within the boundaries of
+Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, and Greece by the recent treaty
+of Bucharest (1913). King Stephen Dushan was not only a great military
+leader, he was also a law-maker and a patron of learning. His death on
+December 13, 1356, at the Gates of Constantinople--he is said to have
+been poisoned--opened the way for the Turkish occupation of the Balkan
+Peninsula. That occupation was made possible in the first instance by
+the mutual jealousies of the Christian peoples of the Balkans. It was
+kept in existence for centuries by the same weaknesses arising from
+jealousy. In 1912 it was swept away in a month because in a spasm of
+common sense the Balkan Christian peoples had united. In 1913 it was in
+part restored because internecine strife had broken out again among the
+Balkan natives recently allied. It will probably continue until the
+lesson of unity is learned again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TURK IN THE BALKANS
+
+
+It seems to be difficult to speak without violent prejudice on the
+subject of the Turk in the Balkans. One school of prejudice insists that
+the Turk is the finest gentleman in the world, who has been always the
+victim and not the oppressor of the Christian peoples by whose side he
+lives, and whose territories he invaded with the best of motives and
+with the minimum of slaughter. The other school of prejudice credits the
+Turk with the most abominable cruelty, treachery, and lust, and will
+hear no good of him. In England the issue is largely a political one. A
+great Liberal campaign was once founded on a Turkish massacre of
+Bulgarians in the Balkans. That made it a party duty for Liberals to be
+pro-Bulgarian and anti-Turk, and almost a party duty for Conservatives
+to find all the Christian and a few ex-Christian virtues in the Turk.
+Before attempting to judge the Turk of to-day, let us see how he stands
+in the light of history. It was in the fourth century that the first
+Saracens came to the Balkan Peninsula as allies of the Greek Empire
+against the Goths. They were thus called in by a Christian Power in the
+first instance. It was not until the fourteenth century that the Turks
+made a serious attempt to occupy the Balkan Peninsula. They were helped
+in their campaign considerably by the Christian Crusaders, who,
+incidentally to their warfare against the Infidel who held the Holy
+Sepulchre, had made war on the Greek Empire, capturing Constantinople,
+and thus weakening the power of Christian Europe at its threshold.
+Bulgaria, too, refused help to the Greeks when the Turkish invasion had
+to be beaten off. The Turks' coming to the Balkans was thus largely due
+to Christian divisions.
+
+[Illustration: _Sebah & Joaillier_
+
+SANCTA SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+Built by Justinian I, consecrated 538, converted into a Mohammedan
+mosque 1453. It is now thought that the design of its famous architect,
+Anthemius of Tralles, was never completed. The minarets and most of the
+erections in the foreground are Turkish]
+
+Without being able at the time to capture Constantinople, the invading
+Turks occupied soon a large tract of the Balkan Peninsula. By 1362 they
+had captured Philippopolis and Eski Zagora, two important centres of
+Bulgaria. It was not a violence to their conscience for some of the
+Bulgarian men after this to join the Turkish army as mercenaries. When
+the sorely-beset Greeks sent the Emperor John Paleologos to appeal for
+help to the Bulgarians, he was seized by them and kept as a prisoner.
+
+A united Balkan Peninsula would have kept off the Turks, no doubt. But a
+set of small nations without any faculty of permanent cohesion, and
+hating and distrusting one another more thoroughly than they did the
+Turk, could do nothing. The Balkan nations of the time, though united
+they would have been really powerful, allowed themselves to be taken in
+detail and crushed under the heels of an invader who was alien in blood
+and in religion. In 1366 the Bulgarians became the vassals of the Turks,
+and the Serbians were defeated at Kossovo. The fall of the Greek Empire
+and the subjugation of Roumania followed in due course, and by the
+seventeenth century the Turks had penetrated to the very walls of
+Vienna. At one time it seemed as if all Europe would fall under the sway
+of Islam, for, as elsewhere than in the Balkans, there were Christian
+States which were treacherous to their faith. But that happily was
+averted. For the Balkan Peninsula, however, there were now to be
+centuries of oppression and religious persecution. It will be convenient
+once again to set forth under three national headings the chief facts
+regarding the Turkish conquest of the Balkans.
+
+_Bulgaria._--By 1366 weakness in the field and civil dissensions had
+brought Bulgaria to the humiliation of becoming the vassal of the Turk.
+In 1393 the Turks, not content with mere suzerainty, occupied Bulgaria
+and converted it into a Turkish province. In 1398 the Hungarians and the
+Wallachians (Roumanians) made a gallant attempt to free Bulgaria from
+the Turkish yoke, but failed. Some of the Bulgarians joined in with
+their Turkish conquerors, abandoned the Christian religion for that of
+Islam, and were the ancestors of what are known to-day as the Pomaks.
+The rest of the people gave a reluctant obedience to the Turkish
+conqueror, preserving their Christian faith, their Slav tongue, and
+their sense of separate nationality. The Greeks, who had come to some
+kind of terms with the Turkish invaders, assisted to bring the Bulgarian
+people under subjection. The Greek church and the Greek tongue rather
+than the Turkish were sought to be imposed upon the Bulgarians. The
+subject people accepted the situation with occasional revolts, but more
+tamely than some other Balkan nations. It was not a general meek
+acquiescence, though it was--possibly by chance, possibly because of the
+fact that a racial relationship existed between conqueror and
+conquered--not so fierce in protest as that of the Serbians. In writing
+that, I do not follow exactly the Bulgarian modern view, which
+represents as much more vivid the sufferings and the protests of the
+Bulgarian people, and ignores altogether the racial relationship which
+existed between Bulgarian and Turk, and enabled a section of the
+Bulgarian nation to fall into line with the conqueror and embrace his
+religion and his habits of life, a relationship which to this day shows
+its traces in the Bulgarian national life. But in Balkan history as
+written locally, there is usually a certain amount of political
+deflection from the facts. A modern Balkan historian, giving what may be
+called the official national account of the times of the Turkish
+domination, says (_Bulgaria of To-day_):
+
+     Had the rulers been of the same race and religion as the
+     vanquished, the subjection might have been more tolerable. Ottoman
+     domination was not, however, a simple political domination.
+     Ottoman tyranny was social as well as political. It was keenly and
+     painfully felt in private as well as in public life; in social
+     liberty, manners and morals; in the free development of national
+     feeling; in short, in the whole scope of human life. According to
+     our present notions, political domination does not infringe upon
+     personal liberty, which is sacred for the conqueror. This is not
+     the case with Turkish rule. The Bulgarians, like the other
+     Christians of the Balkan Peninsula, were, both collectively and
+     individually, slaves. The life, possessions, and honour of private
+     individuals were in constant peril. The bulk of the people, after
+     several generations, calmed down to passivity and inertia. From
+     time to time the more vigorous element, the strongest
+     individualities, protested. Some Bulgarian whose sister had been
+     carried off to the harem of some pasha would take to the mountains
+     and make war on the oppressors. The haidukes and voivodes,
+     celebrated in the national songs, kept up in mountain fastnesses
+     that spirit of liberty which later was to serve as a cement to
+     unite the new Bulgarian nation.
+
+     But it is a noteworthy fact that the Osmanlis, being themselves but
+     little civilised, did not attempt to assimilate the Bulgarians in
+     the sense in which civilised nations try to effect the intellectual
+     and ethnic assimilation of a subject race. Except in isolated
+     cases, where Bulgarian girls or young men were carried off and
+     forced to adopt Mohammedanism, the government never took any
+     general measures to impose Mohammedanism or assimilate the
+     Bulgarians to the Moslems. The Turks prided themselves on keeping
+     apart from the Bulgarians, and this was fortunate for our
+     nationality. Contented with their political supremacy and pleased
+     to feel themselves masters, the Turks did not trouble about the
+     spiritual life of the _rayas_, except to try to trample out all
+     desires for independence. All these circumstances contributed to
+     allow the Bulgarian people, crushed and ground down by the Turkish
+     yoke, to concentrate and preserve its own inner spiritual life.
+     They formed religious communities attached to the churches. These
+     had a certain amount of autonomy, and, beside seeing after the
+     churches, could keep schools. The national literature, full of the
+     most poetic melancholy, handed down from generation to generation
+     and developed by tradition, still tells us of the life of the
+     Bulgarians under the Ottoman yoke. In these popular songs, the
+     memory of the ancient Bulgarian kingdom is mingled with the
+     sufferings of the present hour. The songs of this period are
+     remarkable for the oriental character of their times, and this is
+     almost the sole trace of Moslem influence.
+
+     In spite of the vigilance of the Turks, the religious associations
+     served as centres to keep alive the national feeling.
+
+A conquered people which was allowed to keep up its religious
+institutions (with "a certain amount of autonomy"), and later to found
+national schools ("to keep alive the national feeling"), was not exactly
+ground to the dust. And truth compels the admission that Bulgaria under
+Turkish rule enjoyed a certain amount of material prosperity. When the
+Russian liberators of the nineteenth century came to Bulgaria they
+found the peasants far more comfortable than were the Russian peasants
+of the day. The atrocities in Bulgaria which shocked Europe in 1875 were
+not the continuance of a settled policy of cruelty and rapine. They were
+the ferocious reprisals chiefly of Turkish Bashi-Bazouks (irregulars)
+following upon a Bulgarian rising. The Turks felt that they had been
+making an honest effort to promote the interests of the Bulgarian
+province. They had just satisfied a Bulgarian aspiration by allowing of
+the formation of an independent Bulgarian church, though this meant
+giving grave offence to the Greeks. Probably they felt that they had a
+real grievance against the Bulgars. After the Bulgarian atrocities of
+1875 there ended the Turkish domination of the country.
+
+_Serbia._--In December 1356 the great Serbian king, Stephen Dushan,
+soldier, administrator, and economist, died before the walls of
+Constantinople, and the one hope of the Balkan Peninsula making a stand
+against the Turks was ended. Shortly after, the Turks had occupied
+Adrianople, their first capital in Europe, defeating heavily a combined
+Serbian and Greek army. Later the Serbian forces were again defeated by
+the great Turkish sultan Amurath I., and the Serbian king was killed on
+the battle-field. King Lazar, who succeeded to the Serbian throne, made
+some headway against the invaders, but in 1389, at the Battle of
+Kossovo, the Serbian Empire came tumbling to ruins. The Turkish leader,
+Amurath, was killed in the fight, but his son Bajayet proved another
+Amurath and pressed home the victory. Serbia became a vassal state of
+Turkey.
+
+But there was to be still a period of fierce resistance to the Turk. In
+1413 the Turks, dissatisfied with the attitude of the Serbs, entered
+upon a new invasion of the territory of Serbia. In 1440 Sultan Amurath
+II. again overran the country and conquered it definitely, imposing not
+merely vassalage but armed occupation on its people. John Hunyad, "the
+White Knight of Wallachia," came to the rescue of the Serbs, and Amurath
+II. was driven back. An alliance between Serbs and Hungarians kept the
+Turk at bay for a time, and in 1444 Serbia could claim to be free once
+again. But the respite was a brief one. In 1453 Constantinople fell to
+the Turks, and the full tide of their strengthened and now undivided
+power was turned upon Serbia. A siege of Belgrade in 1457 was repulsed,
+but in 1459 Serbia was conquered and annexed to European Turkey. Lack of
+unity among the Serbs themselves had contributed greatly to the national
+doom, but on the whole the Serbs had put up a gallant fight against the
+Turks. And even now a section of them, the Montenegrins, in their
+mountain fastnesses kept their liberty, and through all the centuries
+that were to follow never yielded to the Crescent.
+
+The condition of the Serbs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was
+very unhappy. They could come to no manner of contentment with Turkish
+rule, and sporadic revolts were frequent. At times the Hungarians from
+the other side of the Danube came to the aid of the revolters, but never
+in such strength as to shake seriously the Turkish power. Very many of
+the Serbs left their country in despair and sought refuge under the
+Austrian flag. To-day a big Serb element, under the flag of
+Austro-Hungaria, is one of the racial difficulties of the Dual
+Monarchy.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+KING PETER OF SERBIA]
+
+The Serb exiles carried to their new homes their old sympathies, and
+largely because of their efforts Austria in 1788 went to the rescue of
+Serbia, and for a brief while the land again was free. But the Turkish
+power returned and Serbia stumbled blindly, painfully through years of
+reprisals, which culminated in the great massacre of Serbs by Turks in
+1804, which, like the Turkish massacre of Bulgarians in 1875, really
+declared the doom of the Turkish power in the country. Following this
+massacre George Petrovic, "Black George," or "_Kara_ George," as the
+Serbians knew him, raised the standard of revolt among his countrymen.
+He was a fierce blood-stained man, this first liberator of the Serbs, a
+man on whose head was the blood of his father and his brother. His grim
+character was fitted for his grim task. The story of that task will come
+better within the scope of a following chapter, which will tell of the
+liberation of the Balkans from the Turks.
+
+_Roumania._--It was not until 1391 that the Turks crossed the Danube and
+attacked the kingdoms of Wallachia and Moldavia, and reduced Wallachia
+to the position of a tributary state. King Mirtsched made a gallant
+fight against the invaders, but the Turks proved too strong. That was
+the beginning of a Turkish dominance of Roumania, which was never so
+complete as that exercised over Bulgaria and Serbia, but left the two
+Roumanian kingdoms of Wallachia and Moldavia as vassal states. Mutual
+jealousy between them prevented effective operations against the Turk,
+and helped to make their vassalage possible. In the fifteenth century
+both kingdoms had great rulers. Wallachia was ruled by Vlad the Impaler,
+an able but cruel man, who seems to have earned the infamy of inventing
+a form of torture still practised in the Balkans as a matter of
+religious proselytising, that of sitting the victim on a sharp stake,
+and leaving him to die slowly as the stake penetrated his body. Moldavia
+had as king Stephen the Great, who has no such ghastly reputation of
+cruelty. But able princes could effect little with communities weakened
+by the luxury of the nobles and the helpless poverty of the serfs.
+Still, the Roumanians had intervals of victory. In the sixteenth century
+Michael the Brave (whose memory is commemorated by a statue in
+Bucharest) drove the Turks back as far as Adrianople, liberating
+Roumania and Bulgaria. He annexed Moldavia and Transylvania to
+Wallachia, and was in a sense the founder of modern Roumania. But the
+union thus effected was not enduring and the Turkish ascendancy grew
+stronger. The Turkish suzerain forced upon the Roumanian peoples
+governors of the Greek race, who carried on the work of oppression and
+spoliation with an industrious effectiveness quite beyond the capacity
+of the Turk, who at his worst is a fitful and indolent tyrant.
+
+In the last quarter of the seventeenth century the Russian Power began
+to take a close interest in Roumania. In 1711 there was a definite
+Russian-Roumanian alliance. By this time the Roumanians were resolutely
+hostile to the Turkish domination. True, they had been spared most of
+the cruelties which were in Servia a customary and in Bulgaria an
+occasional concomitant of Turkish rule. But they were deeply injured by
+the corrupt, the luxurious, the exacting administration of the Greek
+rulers forced upon them by the Turkish government. Though they suffered
+little from massacre they suffered much from "squeeze." There was not
+only the greed of the Turk but the greed of the intermediate Greek to be
+satisfied. From 1711 until the final liberation of Roumania, Roumanian
+sympathies were generally with the Russians in the frequent wars waged
+by them against Turkey. In 1770 the Russians occupied Roumania and freed
+it for a time from the Turk, but in 1774 the Roumanians went back to
+the Turkish suzerainty. During the Napoleonic wars Russia gave Roumania
+some reason to doubt the disinterestedness of her friendship by annexing
+the rich province of Bessarabia, a part of the natural territory of the
+Roumanian people. The year 1821 saw the outbreak of the Greek war of
+independence, in which Roumania took no part, having as little love for
+the Greek as for the Turk. She won one advantage for herself from the
+war, the right to have her native rulers under Turkish suzerainty. In
+1828, as a result of a Russo-Turkish war, Roumania won almost complete
+freedom, conditional only on tribute being continued to be paid to the
+Sultan. She found a new master, however, in Russia, and was forced to
+keep up a Russian garrison within her borders, nominally as a protection
+against Turkey, really as a safeguard against the growth in her own
+people of a spirit of national independence. The Crimean War (1853)
+freed Roumania from this Russian garrison, and in 1856 the Treaty of
+Paris declared Roumania to be an independent principality under Turkish
+suzerainty.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+KING NICOLAS OF MONTENEGRO]
+
+_Montenegro._--The existence of Montenegro as a separate Balkan state
+dates back to the Battle of Kossovo. The Montenegrin is a Serbian
+Highlander, and whilst the Serbian Empire flourished, claimed for
+himself no separate national entity. When, however, the rest of Serbia
+was subjugated by the Turks, "the Black Mountain" held out, and there
+gathered within its little area of rocky hill fastnesses the free
+remnants of the Serbian race. The story of that little nation is quite
+the most wonderful in all the world. It transcends Sparta, and makes the
+fighting record of the Swiss seem tame. At the height of its power
+Montenegro had a population of perhaps 8000 males, and little source of
+riches from mines, from trade, or even from fertile agricultural land.
+Yet Montenegro kept the Turks from her own territory, and was able at
+times to give valuable help to the rest of Europe in withstanding the
+invasion of Islam.
+
+The system of government instituted was that of a theocratic despotism:
+the head of the nation was its chief bishop, and he had the right to
+nominate a nephew (not a son--as a bishop of the Greek Communion he
+would be celibate) to succeed him. The Montenegrin dynasty was founded
+in 1696 by King Danilo I., and has endured to this day, though recently
+the functions of the chief priest and king have been separated, and the
+present monarch is purely a civil ruler.
+
+It is not possible here to give even the barest mention of the leading
+facts in the proud history of little Montenegro. In the seventeenth
+century she was the valued friend of Venice against the Turks; in the
+eighteenth century she was aided by Peter the Great of Russia; later she
+met without being subdued the warlike power of Napoleon. All the time,
+during every century, every year almost, there was constant warfare with
+the Turks. One campaign lasted without interruption from 1424 to 1436,
+and was marked by over sixty battles. The little population of the patch
+of rocks in the mountains was worn down by this incessant fighting, but
+was recruited by a steady flow of exiles from other parts of the Balkan
+Peninsula, anxious for freedom and for revenge on the Turk. Sometimes
+the tide of battle went sorely against the mountaineers, and almost all
+their country was put under the heel of the Moslem. But always one eyrie
+was kept for the free eagles, and from it they swooped down with renewed
+strength to send the invader once again across their borders. Repeatedly
+the Turk levied great armies for the conquest of Montenegro (once the
+Turkish force reached to the number of 80,000). Repeatedly great
+European Powers which had proffered help or had been begged for help
+failed little Montenegro at a crisis. But never were the stout hearts of
+the Black Mountain quelled. In 1484, when Zablak had to be evacuated and
+the whole nation was confined to the little mountain fortress of
+Cettinje, Ivan the Black offered to his people the choice of ending the
+war and making peace with the Turks. They rejected the idea, and swore
+to stand by the freedom of Montenegro until the last. The oath was never
+broken. Right down to 1832 a free Montenegro faced Turkey. In that year
+the Turks, despairing of an occupation of the country, suggested that
+Montenegro should agree at least to pay tribute. That offer was rejected
+and yet another war entered upon. A war against Austria followed, in
+which the desperate Montenegrins used the type of their printing presses
+to make bullets for the soldiers.
+
+[Illustration: MONTENEGRIN TROOPS
+
+Weekly Drill and Inspection of Weapons]
+
+That there was lead type to be so used shows that the Montenegrins had
+not altogether neglected the arts of peace. In 1493 a printing press had
+been set up in Cettinje and the first Montenegrin book printed in the
+Cyrillic character. During the next century this printing press was
+kept busy with the issue of the Gospels and psalters under the rule of
+the brave Bishop Babylas. The state of Montenegro at this time aroused
+the admiration of the Venetians, and there is extant a book in praise of
+Montenegro written in 1614 by a Venetian noble, Mariano Bolizza.
+
+When the time came for the other Balkan States to throw off the Turkish
+yoke Montenegro was not reluctant to join in the movement for
+liberation, and she was later first in the field in the campaign of
+1912.
+
+This very brief record of the leading facts of Balkan history has now
+brought each of the peoples up to the stage at which the final and
+successful effort was made with the help of Russia to drive the Turks
+out of Balkan territory. The story of that effort will be told in the
+succeeding chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FALL OF THE TURKISH POWER
+
+
+In the nineteenth century the Turkish dominion was pushed back in all
+directions from the Balkan Peninsula. At the dawn of that century
+Montenegro was the only Balkan state entirely free from occupation,
+vassalage, or the duty of tribute to the Sublime Porte. At the close of
+that century Montenegro, Serbia, Roumania, Greece, and Bulgaria were all
+practically free and self-governing.
+
+In 1804, as has been recorded, Kara George in Serbia raised the standard
+of revolt against Turkey. In 1806 the Serbs defeated the Turks in a
+pitched battle, and for a moment Serbia was free. But in 1812 when the
+Turkish power resolved upon a great invasion of Serbia, the heart of
+Kara George failed him and he left his country to its fate, taking
+refuge in Austria. Thus deserted by their leader, the Serbs did not
+abandon the struggle altogether. Milosh Obrenovic stepped to the front
+as the national champion, and though he could make no stand against the
+Turkish troops in the open field he kept up an active revolt from a base
+in the mountains. The contest for national liberty went on with varying
+fortune. Troubles at this time were thickening around Turkey, and
+whenever she was engaged in war with Russia the oppressed nationalities
+within her borders took the opportunity to strike a blow for liberty. By
+1839--it is not possible to make a record of all the dynastic changes
+and revolutions which filled the years 1812-1839--Serbia was practically
+free, with the payment of an annual tribute to Turkey as her only bond.
+During the Crimean War she kept her neutrality as between Russia and
+Turkey. The Treaty of Paris (1856) confirmed her territorial
+independence, subject to the payment of a tribute to Turkey. In 1867 the
+Turkish garrisons were withdrawn from Serbia; but the tribute was still
+left in existence until the date of the Treaty of Berlin.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+THE KING OF ROUMANIA]
+
+Roumania in 1828 (then Wallachia and Moldavia) had won her territorial
+independence of Turkey subject only to payment of a tribute. The Treaty
+of Paris (1856) left her under a nominal suzerainty to Turkey. In 1859
+the two kingdoms united to form Roumania, and in 1866 the late King
+Charles, as the result of a revolution, was elected prince of the united
+kingdom.
+
+Bulgaria had remained a fairly contented Turkish province until the
+rising of 1875, and its cruel suppression by the Bashi-Bazouks. As a
+direct consequence of that massacre European diplomacy turned its
+serious attention to the Balkan Peninsula, and at a Conference demands
+were made upon Turkey for a comprehensive reform applying to Serbia,
+Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. The proposed reform was
+particularly drastic as applied to Bulgaria, which was still in effect
+Turkish territory, whilst all the other districts had achieved a
+practical freedom. It was proposed to create two Bulgarian provinces
+divided into Sandjaks and Kazas as administrative units, these to be
+subdivided into districts. Christian and Mohammedans were to be settled
+homogeneously in these districts. Each district was to have at its head
+a mayor and a district council, elected by universal suffrage, and was
+to enjoy entire autonomy in local affairs. Several districts would form
+a Sandjak with a prefect (_mutessarif_) at its head who was to be
+Christian or Mohammedan, according to the majority of the population of
+the Sandjak. He would be proposed by the Governor-General, and nominated
+by the Porte for four years. Finally, every two Sandjaks were to be
+administered by a Christian Governor-General nominated by the Porte for
+five years, with consent of the Powers. He would govern the province
+with the help of a provincial assembly, composed of representatives
+chosen by the district councils for a term of four years. This assembly
+would nominate an administrative council. The provincial assembly would
+be summoned every year to decide the budget and the redivision of taxes.
+The armed force was to be concentrated in the towns and there would be
+local militia besides. The language of the predominant nationality was
+to be employed, as well as Turkish. Finally, a Commission of
+International Control was to supervise the execution of these reforms.
+
+The Sublime Porte was still haggling about these reforms when Russia
+lost patience and declared war upon Turkey on April 12, 1877. Moving
+through the friendly territory of Roumania, Russia attacked the Turkish
+forces in Bulgarian territory. In that war the Russians found that the
+Turks were a gallant foe, and the issue seemed to hang in the balance
+until Roumania and Bulgaria went actively to the help of the Russian
+forces. The Roumanian aid was exceedingly valuable. Prince Charles
+crossed the Danube at the head of 28,000 foot soldiers and 4000 cavalry.
+He was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the forces against Plevna, and
+his soldiers were chiefly responsible for the taking of the Grivica
+Redoubt which turned the tide of victory against the Turks. The
+Bulgarians did but little during the campaign: it was not possible that
+they should do much seeing that they could only put irregulars in the
+field. Nevertheless some high personal reputations for courage were
+made. During my stay with the Bulgarian army in 1912 I noted that there
+were of the military officers three classes, the men who had graduated
+in foreign military colleges--usually Petrograd,--very smart, very
+insistent on their military dignity, speaking usually three or four
+languages; officers who had been educated at the Military College,
+Sofia; and the older Bulgarian type, dating sometimes from before the
+War of Liberation. Of these last the outstanding figure was General
+Nicolaieff, who as captain of a Bulgarian company rushed a Turkish
+battery beneath Shipka after the Russians had been held up so long that
+they were in despair. A fine stalwart figure General Nicolaieff showed
+when I met him at Yamboli, a hospital base town of which he was military
+commandant. Another soldier of the War of Liberation, a captain in rank,
+I travelled with for a day once between Kirk Kilisse and Chorlu. We
+chummed up and shared a meal of meat balls cooked with onions, rough
+country wine (these from his stores), and dates and biscuits (from my
+stores). He spoke neither English nor French, but a Bulgarian doctor who
+spoke French acted as interpreter, and the old officer, who after long
+entreaty at last had got leave to go down to the front in spite of his
+age, yarned about the hardships and tragedies of the fighting around
+Stara Zagora and the Shipka Pass. Some of the Bulgarians, he said, took
+the field with no other arms than staves and knives, and got their first
+rifles from the dead of the battle-fields.
+
+[Illustration: THE SHIPKA PASS]
+
+Serbia took a hand in this campaign, too, though she hesitated for some
+time, going to the aid of Russia through fear of Austria. Beginning
+late, at a time when the mountains were covered in the winter snows, the
+Serbians suffered severely from the weather, but won notable victories
+at Pirot, at Nish, and at Vranga. The Turks were in full retreat on
+Constantinople when the armistice and Treaty of San Stefano put an end
+to the war.
+
+It seems to be one of the standing rules of Balkan wars and Balkan peace
+treaties that those who do the work shall not reap the reward, and that
+a policy of standing by and waiting is the wisest and most profitable.
+In this Russo-Turkish war the Roumanians had done invaluable work for
+the Russian cause. In return the Treaty of San Stefano robbed them
+shamefully. The Bulgarians had done little, except to stain the arms of
+the allies with a series of massacres of the Turks in reprisal for the
+previous atrocities inflicted upon them by the Bashi-Bazouks. The
+Bulgarians were awarded a tremendous prize of territory. If the grant
+had been confirmed it would have made Bulgaria the paramount power of
+the Balkan Peninsula. By the Treaty of San Stefano, Bulgaria was made
+an autonomous principality subject to Turkey, with a Christian
+government and national militia. The Prince of Bulgaria was to be freely
+chosen by the people and accepted by the Sublime Porte, with the consent
+of the Powers. As regards internal government, it was agreed that an
+assembly of notables, presided over by an Imperial Commissioner and
+attended by a Turkish Commissioner, should meet at Philippopolis or
+Tirnova before the election of the Prince to draw up a constitutional
+statute similar to those of the other Danubian principalities after the
+Treaty of Adrianople in 1830. The boundaries of Bulgaria were to include
+all that is now Bulgaria, and the greater part of Thrace and Macedonia.
+
+The European Congress of Berlin which revised the Treaty of San Stefano
+recognised that the motive of Russia was to create in Bulgaria a vast
+but weak state, which would obediently serve her interests and in time
+fall into her hands: and that the injury proposed to be done to Roumania
+was inspired by a desire to limit the progress of a courageous but an
+unfortunately independent-minded friend. The Congress was suspicious of
+the Bulgarian arrangement, and clipped off much of the territory
+assigned to the new principality. The injury done to Roumania was
+allowed to stand. Then, as in 1912-1913, when Balkan boundaries were
+again under the discussion of an inter-European Conference, the vital
+interests of the great Powers surrounding the Balkan Peninsula were to
+keep its peoples divided and weak. Both Russia and Austria had more or
+less defined territorial ambitions in the Balkans: and it suited neither
+Power to see any one Balkan state rise to such a standard of greatness
+as would enable it to take the lead in a Balkan Union. Especially was it
+not the wish of Austria that any Balkan state should grow to be so
+strong as to kill definitely the hope she cherished of extending down
+the Adriatic and towards the Aegean.
+
+By the Treaty of Berlin, which followed the Congress of Berlin, the
+greater part of the Balkan Peninsula was freed altogether from Turkish
+rule. Roumania and Serbia were relieved from all suggestion of tribute
+or vassalage. Bulgaria was left subject to a tribute (which was very
+quickly afterwards repudiated). Where the Turkish power was left in
+existence in European Turkey it was a threatened existence, for the
+newly freed Christian peoples began at once to conspire to help to
+freedom their nationals left still under Turkish rule. The war of 1912
+began to be prepared in 1878.
+
+There was, however, a period of comparative peace. Roumania, though
+discontented, decided to bide her time. Her prince was crowned king with
+a crown made from the metal of Turkish cannon taken at Plevna. That was
+the only hint that she gave of keeping in mind the greatness of her
+services which had been so poorly rewarded.
+
+Montenegro, whilst deprived of the great and the well-deserved expansion
+which the Treaty of San Stefano offered, had some benefit from the
+Treaty of Berlin. The area of the kingdom was doubled and it won access
+to the Adriatic. A little later the harbour of Dulcigno was ceded to
+Montenegro by Turkey under pressure from the Powers, and she was left
+with only one notable grievance, that of being shut off from Serbia by
+the Sanjak of Novi-Bazar, which Austria secured for Turkey, apparently
+with the idea of one day seizing it on her way down to Salonica.
+
+[Illustration: _Chusseau Flaviens_
+
+KING FERDINAND OF BULGARIA]
+
+Serbia increased her territory by one-fourth under the Treaty of Berlin,
+but was not allowed to extend towards the Adriatic, and, nurturing as
+she did a dream of reviving the old Serbian Empire, was but poorly
+satisfied.
+
+Bulgaria, if it had not been for the promises of the Treaty of San
+Stefano, might have been fairly content with the provisions of the
+Treaty of Berlin. She had been the first nation in the Balkans to yield
+to the Turks. She had allowed her sons to act as mercenary soldiers to
+aid the Turks against other Christians: and during the period of
+oppression she had suffered less than any from the rigours of the
+invader, had protested less than any by force of arms. Yet now she was
+given freedom as a gift won largely by the sacrifices of others. But,
+though having the most reason to be content, Bulgaria was the least
+contented of all the Balkan States. The restless ambition of the people
+guiding her destinies was manifested in an internal revolution which
+displaced the first prince (Alexander of Battenberg) and put on the
+throne the present king (Ferdinand of Coburg). Bulgaria, too, repudiated
+the friendly tutelage which Russia wished to exercise over her
+destinies.
+
+The territorial settlement made by the Berlin Treaty was first broken by
+Bulgaria. That treaty had cut the ethnological Bulgaria into two,
+leaving the southern half as a separate province under the name of
+Eastern Rumelia. In 1885 Eastern Rumelia was annexed to Bulgaria with
+the glad consent of its inhabitants, but in spite of the wishes of
+Russia. Serbia saw in this the threat of a Bulgarian hegemony in the
+Balkans, and demanded some territorial compensation for herself. This
+was refused. War followed. The Bulgarians were victorious at the Battle
+of Slivnitza, an achievement which was in great measure due to the
+organising ability of Prince Alexander. The victory secured Rumelia for
+Bulgaria. But no sense of gratitude to Prince Alexander survived, and
+the Russian intrigue which secured his abdication and flight was
+undoubtedly aided by a large section of the Bulgarian people.
+Stambouloff, a peasant leader of the Bulgarians and its greatest
+personality since the War of Liberation, was faithful to Alexander, but
+was not able to save him.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+KING FERDINAND'S BODYGUARD]
+
+The Bulgarian throne after Alexander's abdication was offered to the
+King of Roumania. The acceptance of the offer would possibly have led to
+a real Balkan Federation. The united power of Roumania and Bulgaria,
+exercised wisely, could have gently pressed the other Balkan peoples
+into a union. That, however, would have suited the aims neither of
+Russia nor of Austria, the two Empires which guided the destinies of the
+Balkans, chiefly in the light of their own selfish ends. The Roumanian
+king refused the throne of Bulgaria, and in 1887 Prince Ferdinand of
+Coburg became Prince of the State. It was not long before he fell out
+with Stambouloff, the able but personally unamenable patriot who chiefly
+had made modern Bulgaria. In the conflict between the two Prince
+Ferdinand proved the stronger. Stambouloff was dismissed from office,
+and in 1895 was assassinated in the streets of Sofia. No attempt was
+made to punish his murderers.
+
+In 1908 Bulgaria shook off the last shred of dependence to Turkey. The
+bold action was the crown of a clever diplomatic intrigue by Prince
+Ferdinand. Since the murder of Stambouloff the Prince had been
+sedulously cultivating in public the friendship of Russia: but that had
+not prevented him carrying to a great pitch of mutual confidence a
+secret understanding with Austria. The Austrian Empire was anxious to
+annex formally the districts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which it had
+long been in occupation. Objection to this would surely have come from
+Russia; but Russia was impotent for the time being after the disastrous
+war with Japan. Just as surely it would come from Serbia which would see
+thus definitely pass over to the one Power, which she had reason to
+fear, a section of Slav-inhabited country clearly connected to the Serbs
+by racial ties. Serbia, it might be expected, would have the support of
+France and England as well as Russia. For Bulgaria the offer to
+neutralise Serbia made to Austria all the difference between an action
+which was a little risky and an action which had no risk at all.
+Bulgaria supported Austria in the annexation, and, as was to have been
+expected, Serbia found protest impossible, since Russia, France, and
+England swallowed the affront to treaty obligations to which they were
+parties. It was Bulgaria's reward to have the support of the Triple
+Alliance in throwing off all fealty and tribute to the Sublime Porte.
+Prince Ferdinand became the Czar Ferdinand of Bulgaria.
+
+Nor was that the end of Bulgarian ambition. The "big" Bulgaria of the
+San Stefano treaty floated before the eyes of her rulers constantly, and
+she began to prepare for a war against Turkey, of which the prize
+should be Thrace and Macedonia. An obstacle in Macedonia was not only
+that the Turks were in occupation, but that the Greeks considered
+themselves entitled to the reversion of the estate. Rivalry between the
+three nations was responsible for the Macedonian horrors, which went on
+from year to year, and made one district of the Balkans a veritable hell
+on earth. These horrors have been set at the door of the "Unspeakable
+Turk." The Turk has quite enough to answer for in the many hideous
+crimes which he has undoubtedly committed. It is not quite just to hold
+him wholly responsible for the terrible state of Macedonia during the
+last few years. Greek and Bulgarian were alike interested in making it
+appear to the world that Turkish rule in Macedonia was impossible. To
+effect this they insisted that rapine and massacre should become normal.
+If the Turk did not wish for massacres he was stirred up to massacres.
+Christian pastors were not prevented by their Christian faith from
+murders of their own people, if it could be certain that the Turks would
+have the discredit of them. Side by side with the atrocities which were
+committed by Turks against Christians and Christians against Turks, the
+two sets of warring Christians, the Bulgarian Exarchates and the Greek
+Patriarchates, attacked one another with a fiendish relentlessness,
+which equalled the most able efforts of the Turks in the way of rape,
+murder, and robbery.
+
+In excuse for part of this, _i.e._ that part which stirred up the Turks
+to atrocities even when they wished to be peaceful, there could be
+pleaded the good object of striving for the end of all Turkish rule in
+Christian districts of the Balkans. The excuse will serve this far: that
+without a doubt a Christian community cannot be governed justly by the
+Turk, and the very strongest of steps are warranted to put an end to
+Turkish domination of a district largely inhabited by Christians. But no
+consideration, even that of exterminating Turkish rule, could justify
+all the Christian atrocities perpetrated in Macedonia: and there is
+certainly no shadow of an excuse for the atrocities with which Bulgarian
+sought to score against Greek and Greek against Bulgarian. The era of
+those atrocities has not yet closed. The Turk has been driven from
+Macedonia, but Greek and Bulgarian continue their feud. For the time the
+Greek is in the ascendant, whilst the Bulgarian broods over a revenge.
+
+[Illustration: BULGARIAN INFANTRY]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE WARS OF 1912-13
+
+
+By 1912, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro had contrived, in
+spite of any past quarrels, in spite of the mutual jealousies even then
+being displayed in the recurring Macedonian massacres, of Christians by
+Christians as well as by Turks, to arrive at a sufficient degree of
+unity to allow them to make war jointly on Turkey. Bulgaria and Serbia
+concluded an offensive and defensive alliance, arranging for all
+contingencies and providing for the division of the spoils which it was
+hoped to win from the Turks. Between Bulgaria and Greece there was no
+such definite alliance, but a military convention only. The division of
+the spoil after the war was left to future determination, both Greek and
+Bulgarian probably having it clearly in his head that he would have all
+his own way after the war or fight the issue out subsequently. A later
+Punch cartoon put this peculiarity of a Balkan alliance with pretty
+satire. Greece and Serbia were discussing what they should do with the
+spoils they were then winning from Bulgaria. "Of course we shall fight
+for them. Are we not allies?" said one of the partners.
+
+I was through the war of 1912 as war correspondent for the London
+_Morning Post_, and followed the fortunes of the main Bulgarian army in
+the Thracian campaign. In this book I do not intend to attempt a history
+of the war but will give some impressions of it which, whilst not
+neglecting any of the chief facts in any part of the theatre of
+operations, will naturally be mainly based on observations with the
+Bulgarians.
+
+First, with regard to the political side of the war, one could not but
+be struck by the exceedingly careful preparation that the Bulgarians had
+made for the struggle. It was no unexpected or sudden war. They had
+known for some time that war was inevitable, having made up their minds
+for a considerable time that the wrongs of their fellow-nationals in
+Macedonia and Thrace would have to be righted by force of arms. Attempts
+on the part of the Powers to enforce reforms in the Christian Provinces
+of Turkey had, in the opinion of the Bulgars, been absolute failures,
+and they had done their best to make them failures, wishing for a
+destroyed Turkey not a reformed Turkey. In their opinion there was
+nothing to hope for except armed intervention on their part against
+Turkey. And, believing that, they had made most careful preparation
+extending over several years for the struggle. That preparation was in
+every sense admirable. For instance, it had extended, so far as I could
+gather, from informants in Bulgaria, to this degree: that they formed
+military camps in winter for the training of their troops. Thus they did
+not train solely in the most favourable time of the year for manoeuvres,
+but in the unfavourable weather too, in case that time should prove the
+best for their war. The excellence of their artillery arm, and the proof
+of the scientific training of their officers, prove to what extent their
+training beforehand had gone.
+
+When war became inevitable, the Balkan League having been formed, and
+the time being ripe for the war, Bulgaria in particular, and the Balkan
+States in general, were quite determined that war should be. The Turks
+at this time were inclined to make reforms and concessions; they had an
+inclination to ease the pressure on their Christian subjects in the
+Christian provinces. Perhaps knowing--perhaps not knowing--that they
+were unready for war themselves, but feeling that the Balkan States were
+preparing for war, the Turks were undoubtedly willing to make great
+concessions. But whatever concessions the Turks might have offered, war
+would still have taken place. I do not think one need offer any harsh
+criticism about the Balkan nations for coming to that decision. If you
+have made your preparation for war--perhaps a very expensive
+preparation, perhaps a preparation which has involved very great
+commitments apart from expense--it is not reasonable to suppose that at
+the last moment you will consent to desist from making that war. The
+line which you may have been prepared to take before you made your
+preparations you may not be prepared to take after the preparations have
+been made. And, as the Turks found out afterwards, the terms which were
+offered to them before the outbreak of the war were not the same terms
+as would be listened to after that event.
+
+To a pro-Turk it all will seem a little unscrupulous. But it is after
+the true fashion of diplomacy or warlike enterprise. The simple position
+was that Turkey was obviously a decadent Power; that her territories
+were envied and that if there had not been a real grievance (there was a
+real grievance) one would have been manufactured to justify a war of
+spoliation. It not being necessary to manufacture a grievance, the
+existing one was carefully nursed and stimulated: and when the ripe time
+came for war the unreal pretext that war was the alternative to reform
+and could be avoided by reform was put forward. No reform would have
+stopped the war just as no "reform" would stop, say, San Marino
+attacking the British Empire if she wanted something which the British
+Empire has got and felt that she could get it by an attack.
+
+I do not think that the Balkan League would have withdrawn from the war
+supposing the Turks before the outbreak of the war had offered autonomy
+of the Christian provinces. I was informed in very high quarters, and I
+believe profoundly, that if the Turks had offered so much at that time
+the war would still have taken place.
+
+There is another interesting lesson to be gleaned from the political
+side of this war. At the outset, the Powers, when endeavouring to
+prevent hostilities, made an announcement that, whatever the result of
+the war, no territorial benefit would be allowed to any of the
+participants; that is to say, the Balkan States were informed, on the
+authority of all Europe, that if they did go to war, and if they won
+victories they would be allowed no fruits from those victories. The
+Balkan States recognised, as I think all sensible people must recognise,
+that a victorious army makes its own laws. They treated this _caveat_
+which was issued by the Powers of Europe as a matter to be politely set
+aside; and ignored it.
+
+Political experience seems to show that if a nation, under any
+circumstances, wishes its international rights to be respected, it must
+be ready to fight for them. There is proof from contemporary history in
+the respective fates of Switzerland and Korea. Both nations once stood
+in very much the same position internationally; that their independence
+was, in a sense, guaranteed. Korea's independence was guaranteed by both
+the United States and Great Britain. But the independence of Korea has
+now vanished. Korea could not fight for herself, and nobody was going to
+fight for a nation which could not fight for herself. The independence
+of Switzerland is maintained because Switzerland would be a very thorny
+problem for any Power in search of territory to tackle. In case of an
+attack on Switzerland, that country would be able to help herself and
+her friends.
+
+On the opposite side of the argument, we see the Balkan League entering
+upon a desperate war, warned that they would be allowed no territorial
+advantage from that war, but engaging upon it because they recognised
+that a victorious army makes its own laws.
+
+It was of wonderful value to the Bulgarian generals entering upon this
+war that the whole Bulgarian nation was filled with the martial
+spirit--was, in a sense, wrapped up in the colours. Every male Bulgarian
+citizen was trained to the use of arms. Every Bulgarian citizen of
+fighting age was engaged either at the front or on the lines of
+communication. Before the war, every Bulgarian man, being a soldier, was
+under a soldier's honour; and the preliminaries of the war, the
+preparations for mobilisation in particular, were carried out with a
+degree of secrecy that, I think, astonished every Court and every
+Military Department in Europe. The secret was so well kept that one of
+the diplomatists in Roumania left for a holiday three days before the
+declaration of war, feeling certain that there was to be no war.
+Bulgaria is not governed altogether autocratically, but is a very free
+democracy in some respects. It has a newspaper Press that, on ordinary
+matters, for delightful irresponsibility, might be matched in London.
+Yet not a single whisper of what the nation was designing and planning
+leaked abroad. Because the whole nation was a soldier, and the whole
+nation was under a soldier's honour, secrecy could be kept. No one
+abroad knew anything, either from the babbling of "Pro-Turks," or from
+the newspapers, that a great campaign was being designed.
+
+[Illustration: _Topical Press_
+
+BULGARIAN TROOPS LEAVING SOFIA]
+
+The Secret Service of Bulgaria before the war evidently had been
+excellent. They seemed to know all that was necessary to know about the
+country in which they were going to fight. This very complete knowledge
+of theirs was in part responsible for the arrangements which were made
+between the Balkan Allies for carrying on the war. The Bulgarian people
+had made up their minds to do the lion's share of the work, and to have
+the lion's share of the spoils. They knew quite definitely the state of
+corruption to which the Turkish nation had come. When I reached Sofia,
+the Bulgarians told me they were going to be in Constantinople three
+weeks after the declaration of war. That was the view that they took of
+the possibilities of the campaign. And they kept their programme as far
+as Chatalja fairly closely.
+
+The view of the Bulgarians as to the ultimate result of the war, and
+what they had designed should be the division of spoil after the war, I
+gathered from various classes in Bulgaria, speaking not only with
+politicians but with bankers, trading people, and others. They concluded
+that the Turk was going to be driven out of Europe, at any rate, as far
+as Constantinople. They considered that Constantinople was too great a
+prize for the Bulgarian nation, or for the Balkan States, and that
+Constantinople would be left as an international city, to be governed by
+a commission of the Great Powers. Bulgaria was, then, to have
+practically all Turkey-in-Europe--the province of Thrace, and a large
+part of Macedonia as far as the city of Salonica. Constantinople was to
+be left, with a small territory, as an international city, and the
+Bulgarian boundary was to stretch as far as Salonica. Salonica, they
+admitted, was desired very much by the Bulgarians, and also very much by
+the Greeks; and the Bulgarian idea in regard to Salonica before the war
+was that it would be best to make it a free Balkan city, governed by all
+the Balkan States in common, and a free port for all the Balkan States.
+Then the frontier of Greece was to extend very much to the north, and
+Greece was to be allowed all the Aegean Islands. The Serbian frontier
+was to extend to the eastward and the southward, and what is now the
+autonomous province of Albania (the creation of which has been insisted
+on by the Powers) was to be divided between Montenegro and Servia.
+
+That division would have left the Bulgarians with the greatest spoil of
+the war. They would have had entry on to the Sea of Marmora; they would
+have controlled, perhaps, one side of the Dardanelles (but I believe
+they thought that the Dardanelles might also be left to a commission of
+the Powers). It needed great confidence and exact knowledge as to the
+state of the Turkish Army to allow plans of that sort to have been not
+only formed, but to be generally talked about.
+
+It must be tragical now for a patriotic Bulgarian to compare these high
+anticipations with the actual results of the war, and to reflect that at
+one time he had three-fourths of his hopes secure and then sacrificed
+all by straining after the remainder.
+
+The Bulgarian mobilisation--effected after lengthy preparation with
+perfect success and complete secrecy--was a triumph of military
+achievement. It emphasises a point often urged, that when a whole nation
+is wrapt up in the colours, when every citizen is a soldier and taught
+the code of patriotic honour of the soldier--then at a time of crisis,
+spies, grumblers, critics are impossible. Bulgaria, as I have said, is
+very democratic. Unlike Roumania, where a landed aristocracy survived
+Turkish rule, the whole nation is of peasants or the sons and grandsons
+of peasants. The nobles, the wealthy, the intellectuals were
+exterminated by the Turk. Yet the strategy of the war suffered nothing
+from the democracy of the people. They acted with a unity, a secrecy,
+and a loyalty to the flag that no despotism could rival.
+
+The mobilisation was effected on very slender resources. Official
+statistics--perhaps for a reason--are silent regarding the growth of
+railway material since 1909. But in that year there were only 155
+locomotives in the country. As soon as war was anticipated these
+provident and determined people set to amassing railway material, and
+one railway official, without giving exact figures, talked of
+locomotives being added by "fifties" at a time. I doubt that. But
+perhaps there were between 200 and 225 locomotives in Bulgaria in
+October 1912, though one military attache gave me the figure at 193. It
+was a slender stock, in any case, on which to move 350,000 men and to
+keep them in supplies. But the people contributed all their horses,
+mules, and oxen to the war fund. Soldiers were willing and able to walk
+great distances, and within a few days all the armies were over the
+frontier.
+
+The Bulgarians, by the way, began the war with a _moratorium_. (The week
+of the declaration of hostilities, meeting some personages notable in
+European finance, they ridiculed for this reason the idea of the war
+being anything but a dismal failure from the point of view of the Balkan
+States.) It was necessary to win in a hurry if they were to win at all.
+They could take the field only because of the magnificent spirit of
+their population. They could not keep the field indefinitely under any
+circumstances.
+
+The main line of communication was through Yamboli, and here the chief
+force was massed whilst exploratory work was carried on towards
+Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse. I believe that originally the capture of
+Adrianople was the first grand object of the campaign, and that a
+modification was made later either for political or military reasons, or
+for a mixture of both. Up to the point at which Adrianople was invested
+from the north, Kirk Kilisse captured, and the cavalry sent raiding
+south-west to attack the Turk's lines of communication and to feel for
+his field army, an excellent plan of campaign was followed. If the main
+Bulgarian army had then swung over from Kirk Kilisse and had made a
+resolute--and, under the circumstances, almost certainly
+victorious--effort to rush Adrianople the natural course, from a
+military point of view, would have been followed. The one risk involved
+was that the Turkish field army would come up from the south and force a
+battle under the walls of Adrianople, aided by a sortie from the
+garrison. But the experience of Kirk Kilisse and the following battles
+argued against this. There would have been, one may judge, ample time
+allowed to subdue Adrianople with an army flushed by its success at Kirk
+Kilisse, operating against a garrison thoroughly despondent at the
+moment.
+
+Kirk Kilisse, it must be noted in passing, was a vastly overrated
+fortress. The Turks, I believe, valued it highly. The Bulgarians
+triumphantly quoted a German opinion that it could withstand a German
+army for three months. As a matter of fact, whilst it was a valuable
+base for an enterprising field army, surrounded as it was by natural
+features of great strength, it was not a real fortress at all. Still,
+the moral effect of its capture was great, and on the flood of that
+success the Bulgarian army could have entered Adrianople if it had been
+willing to make the necessary great sacrifice of infantry.
+
+A second sound--and more enterprising, and therefore probably better
+course--was that which I thought at the time was being followed, to
+pursue the Turks fleeing from Kirk Kilisse, to search out their field
+army, give it a thrashing, and then swing back to subdue Adrianople. But
+neither of these courses was followed. Kirk Kilisse was not followed up
+vigorously in the first instance. After its capture the Bulgarian army
+rested three days. During that time the fleeing Turks had won back some
+of their courage, had come back in their tracks, recovered many of the
+guns they had abandoned, and the battles of Ivankeui and Yanina--battles
+in which the Bulgarian losses were very heavy--were necessary to do over
+again work which had been already once accomplished. This criticism must
+be read in the light of the fact that I am totally ignorant of the
+transport position in the Bulgarian Third Army at the time. General
+Demetrieff had made a wonderful dash over the wild country between
+Yamboli and Kirk Kilisse, carrying an army over a track which took a
+military attache six days to traverse on horseback, and a hospital train
+seven days to traverse by ox wagon. He might at the time have been
+seriously short of ammunition, though Kirk Kilisse renewed his food and
+forage supplies.
+
+After three days the Bulgarians moved on. Ivankeui and Yanina were won,
+and the pursuit continued until Lule Burgas, where the Turkish army in
+the field was decisively defeated and driven with great slaughter
+towards Chorlu, where its second stand was expected. That expectation
+was not realised. The flight continued to Chatalja. This was the
+turning-point of the campaign. Up to now the Bulgarian success had been
+complete. If now Adrianople had been made the main objective, with a
+small "holding" force left at Chorlu, the entry into Constantinople
+would possibly have been realised. But the decision was made to "mask"
+Adrianople and to push on with all available force towards
+Constantinople.
+
+In considering this decision it is easy to be misled by giving
+Adrianople merely the value of a fortress in the rear, holding a
+garrison capable of some offensive, necessitating the detachment of a
+large holding force. But that was not the position. Actually Adrianople
+straddled the only practical line of communication for effective
+operations against the enemy's capital. The railway from Bulgaria to
+Constantinople passed through Adrianople. Excepting that line of
+railway, there was no other railroad, and there was no other carriage
+road, one might say, for the Turk did not build roads. Once across the
+Turkish frontier there were tracks, not roads.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL DEMETRIEFF, THE CONQUEROR AT LULE BURGAS]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+ADRIANOPLE
+
+A general view, showing the Mosque of Sultan Selim on the left and the
+Old Mosque on the right]
+
+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 naive, 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.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+ROUMANIAN SOLDIERS IN BUCHAREST]
+
+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 _attaches_ 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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+ADRIANOPLE
+
+View looking across the Great Bridge]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+GENERAL VIEW OF STARA ZAGORA, BULGARIA]
+
+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 _reclame_. 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.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+SOFIA
+
+Commercial Road from Commercial Square]
+
+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 attaches were in
+exactly the same position.
+
+There were the Austrian attache and the Roumanian attache, 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
+attache to see anything of what went on. The attaches 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
+attaches 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 attache 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 attaches 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."
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+BUCHAREST
+
+The Roumanian House of Representatives]
+
+It was a beautiful story, and why should any one let loose a brutal
+bulldog of a fact and point out that King Ferdinand during the
+campaign lived in temporary palaces at Stara Zagora and Kirk Kilisse,
+and when he travelled on a visit to some point near the front it was
+usually by motor-car?
+
+In a paper of another nationality there was a vivid story of the battle
+of Chatalja. This story started the battle 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-Pest, 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 battle-field, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The Mustapha Pasha censorship would not allow ox wagons, reservists, or
+Serbians 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.
+
+Here is 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 stand-still, 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 battle-fields), liable to
+ravage by roving bands.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL SAVOFF]
+
+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.
+
+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 Chorlu. There a friendly artillery officer helped me to
+get a cart (springless) and two fast horses. He insisted also on giving
+me a patrol, a single Bulgarian soldier, with 200 rounds of ammunition,
+as Bashi-Bazouks were ranging the country.
+
+It was an unnecessary precaution, though the presence of the soldier was
+comforting as we entered Silviri 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
+Silviri 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. The Commander,
+an artillery officer, welcomed me to a little mess which the Bulgarian
+officers and non-commissioned officers (six in all) had set up in a
+clean room of a village house. We had dinner, "Turkish fashion,"
+squatting round a dish of stewed goat and rice, and then smoked
+excellent cigarettes through the evening hours as we looked out on the
+Chatalja lines.
+
+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."
+
+Now there had been "good copy" in the journey. At Arjenli I happened to
+be the witness of a vivid dramatic scene (more stirring than any battle
+incident). It was a splendid incident, showing the high courage and
+_moral_ of these peasant soldiers at an anxious time. To have witnessed
+it, participated in it, was personal reward sufficient for a week of
+toil and anxiety. To my paper, too, the reader might say, it was of some
+value, if properly told and given to the London reader the next morning,
+the day before the battle of Chatalja.
+
+Yes. But it was the next afternoon before I could get to a telegraph
+office within the Bulgarian lines. Then the censor said any long message
+was hopeless. I was allowed to send a bare 100 words. They reached
+London eight days later, a week after the battle had been fought, when
+London was interested no longer in anything but the armistice
+negotiations. The reason was that the single telegraph line was
+monopolised for military business. My account of the battle of Chatalja
+reached London a full fortnight after the event, though I had the
+advantage of the highest influence to expedite the message.
+
+Thus from a daily-newspaper point of view all the expense, toil, danger
+were wasted.
+
+Summing up, an accurate and prompt Press service as war correspondent
+with the Bulgarian army was impossible, because--
+
+1. The Bulgarian authorities were keen that correspondents should see
+nothing.
+
+2. A rigid first censorship checked a full record of what little was
+seen.
+
+3. The first censorship being passed, despatches often had still to pass
+a second censorship at Staff headquarters, a third censorship at Sofia.
+
+4. Despatches passing through Roumania underwent another censorship
+there, and yet another in Austria, possibly yet others in other European
+countries.
+
+5. In addition to these censorship delays the Bulgarian authorities made
+newspaper messages yield precedence to military messages, and at the
+front this meant that Press messages were sent on by mail (ox transport
+most of the way) to the Staff headquarters or the capital.
+
+6. In the meanwhile the imaginative accounts written nearer Fleet Street
+had been published, and the accurate news was "dead" from a point of
+public interest.
+
+Most of these conditions will rule over all future wars. Therefore I
+conclude that the day of the war correspondent--in the sense of a
+truthful observer of a campaign--has gone, and he died with the Balkan
+War. He can only survive if newspapers are willing to incur the very
+great expense of sending out war correspondents not for the news, day by
+day, but for what observation and criticism they could supply after the
+campaign was over. To a daily newspaper such matter is almost valueless,
+especially as during the progress of the campaign the correspondents of
+the "new" school would be at work with their many inventions, raising
+the hair of the public and the circulation of their journals with bright
+feats of imagination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+JOTTINGS FROM MY BALKAN TRAVEL BOOK
+
+
+These observations I will quote from my diary during 1912 in
+illustration of phases of Balkan character, dating them at the time and
+place that they were made.
+
+Belgrade, _October 21_.--The declaration of war has not set the Serbians
+singing in the streets. In the chief cafe there is displayed a great war
+map. Young soldiers not yet sent to the front lounge about in all the
+cafes and are lionised by the older men. They are the only signs of war.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+BULGARIAN INFANTRY]
+
+The patriotic Serbian illustrates his case against the Turk by taking
+you for a ramble around his capital. The old Turkish quarters of the
+town are made up of narrow unpaved muddy lanes lined with low hovels.
+The modern Serbian town has handsome buildings markedly Russian in
+architecture, electric trams, and wood-blocked pavements. Near the
+railway station one side of a street is as the Turks left it and shows a
+row of hovels: the other side is occupied by a great school. The shops,
+because it is war-time and business is largely suspended, are mostly
+closed. But a few remain open with reduced staffs. The goods displayed
+are as a rule woefully expensive when they are not of local origin.
+Landlocked Serbia, surrounded by commercially hostile countries, finds
+imports expensive. British goods are very much favoured, but are hard to
+obtain.
+
+The Serbians speak bitterly of the efforts of Austria "to strangle them
+commercially." "Whenever they wish to put diplomatic pressure upon us,"
+said one Serbian to me, "they discover that swine fever has broken out
+in our country and stop our exports of pigs and bacon--our chief lines
+of export. What can we do? Once, in retaliation, we found that we
+suspected a consignment of Austrian linen goods of carrying swine fever
+and stopped it on the frontier. It almost caused war."
+
+Nish (Serbia), _October 22_.--A military train carrying some members of
+the army and Staff has brought also a band of war correspondents this
+far. We were a merry but rather a hungry lot. The train has been sixteen
+hours on the journey, and as we started at 6 a.m. most of us did not
+bring any stores of food except such as were packed away and
+inaccessible in the big baggage. The wayside refreshment rooms are swept
+clean of all food. Finally we manage to obtain some bread, and five
+hungry correspondents in one carriage eat at it without enthusiasm,
+whilst in a corner sits a Serbian officer having a good meal of sausage
+and onions and bread. We make remarks, a little envious, a little
+jocose, in English, on his selfishness. "He is a greedy pig, anyhow,"
+said one, putting the final cap on our grumbles. The Serbian officer had
+not betrayed by a smile or a frown that he understood but now in good
+English he remarked: "Perhaps you gentlemen will be so kind as to share
+this with me." We all laughed and he laughed then: and we took a little
+of the sausage, and liked that Serbian rather well: and no reference was
+made to what had gone before. At nightfall we stop at Nish and all my
+Press comrades leave the train to go on in the rear of the Serbian army.
+I push on to Sofia. Clearly these Balkan peoples are not quite so
+savage as I had thought once.
+
+Sofia, _October 24_.--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 has gone to fight who could fight.
+But further, every family has 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 a law 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 has not had 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--those goods which were obtained in this way
+totalled in value some six million pounds. That represented the surplus
+goods, beyond those necessary for consumption by the Bulgarian people,
+at the outset of the war. The numbers of the Bulgarian people represent
+half the population of London. The peasant population is very 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. I am told that the gold supply in the
+Bulgarian Treasury at the declaration of war was only three million
+pounds. So that there was an army of 350,000 men put into the field, and
+only three million pounds as the gold supply.
+
+Kirk Kilisse, _November 7_.--The extraordinary simplicity of the
+commissariat has helped the Bulgarian generals a great deal. The men
+have had bread and cheese, sometimes even bread alone; and that was
+accounted a satisfactory ration. When meat and other things could be
+obtained, they were obtained; but there were long periods when the
+Bulgarian soldier had nothing but bread and water. The water,
+unfortunately, he took wherever he could get it, by the side of the
+route at any stream he could find. There was no attempt to ensure a pure
+water supply for the army. I do not think that, without that simplicity
+of commissariat, it would have been possible for the Bulgarian forces to
+have got as far as they did. There was an entire absence of tinned
+foods. As I travelled in the trail of the Bulgarian army, I found it
+impossible to imagine that an army had passed that way, because there
+was none of the litter which is usually left by an army. It was not that
+they cleared away their rubbish with them; it simply did not exist.
+Their bread and cheese seems to be a good fighting diet.
+
+Seleniki, _November 13_.--The transport was, naturally, the great
+problem which faced the generals. I have seen here (Seleniki, which is
+the point at which the rail-head is), within 30 miles of Constantinople
+as the crow flies, ox wagons which have come from the Shipka Pass in the
+north of Bulgaria. I asked one driver how long it had been on the road;
+he told me three weeks. He was carrying food down to the front. The way
+the ox wagons were used for transport was a marvel of organisation. A
+transport officer at Mustapha Pasha, with whom I became very friendly,
+was lyrical in his praise of the ox wagon. It was, he said, the only
+thing that stuck to him during the war. The railway got choked, and even
+the horse failed, but the ox never failed. There were thousands of ox
+wagons crawling across the country. They do not walk, they crawl, like
+an insect, with an irresistible crawl. It reminds you of those armies of
+soldier ants which move across Africa, eating everything which they come
+across, and stopping at nothing. I had an ox wagon coming from Mustapha
+Pasha to Kirk Kilisse, and we went over the hills and down through the
+valleys, and stopped for nothing--we never had to unload once. And one
+could sleep in those ox wagons. There is no jolting and pulling at the
+traces, such as you get with a harnessed horse. The ox wagon moved
+slowly; but it always moved. If the ox transport had not been as
+perfectly organised, and if the oxen had not been as patiently enduring
+as they proved to be, the Bulgarian army must have perished by
+starvation. 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.
+
+But after Lule Burgas, the ox transport has had to do the impossible. It
+is impossible for it to maintain the food and the ammunition supply of
+the army at the front, which I suppose must number 250,000 to 300,000
+men. That army has 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.
+
+Arjenli (Turkey), _November 15, 1912_.--It is Friday, and we expect
+to-morrow the Battle of Chatalja. In the little Turkish village of
+Arjenli, situated on a high hill a little to the rear of the Bulgarian
+lines, is the ammunition park of the artillery, guarded by a small body
+of troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Tchobanoff. Coming towards the front
+from Chorlu, the fall of night and the weariness of my horses have
+compelled me to halt at Arjenli, and this officer and Dr. Neytchef give
+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 has 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. But there was in the nation one good Socialist
+who knew that war was an evil thing, and that it was better to sit
+down meekly under tyranny than to take up arms.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+OX TRANSPORT IN THE BALKANS]
+
+I followed in the track of the victorious Third Army as it came down
+through the border mountains on to Kirk Kilisse, then to Lule Burgas,
+then past Chorlu to the Chatalja lines. At Arjenli I had overtaken them
+in time to see the final battle, and now sat looking out on the
+entrenched armies, talking over the position with a serene and cheerful
+artillery officer. The past week had been one of hardship and horrors.
+From Chorlu the road was lined with the bodies of the Turkish dead,
+still awaiting burial. Entering the Bulgarian lines on their right flank
+that morning, I had tried in vain to succour a soldier dying of the
+choleraic dysentery which had begun its ravages. But here in the middle
+of the battle line the atmosphere of noble confidence is inspiriting.
+The horrors of war vanish; only its glory shows. The men around me feel
+that they are engaged in a just war. They know that everything that man
+can do has been done. Proudly, cheerfully, they await the issue.
+
+During the evening, a Turk suspected of being a spy is brought in for
+trial. He had attempted to rush past one of the sentries guarding the
+ammunition wagons. He is given a patient hearing, is able to establish
+his innocence, and is allowed to go. There is no feeling of panic or
+injustice among these Bulgarians. I see the trial and its end (having
+been asked to act as friend of the accused).
+
+It is to-day forty days since the mobilisation. At the call this trained
+nation was in arms in a day. The citizen soldiers hurried to the depots
+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 depot 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 depot 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, early in November, 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.
+
+Later, 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 battle-fields. 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.
+There was no daunting these trained patriots.
+
+These and a score of other pictures pass through my mind and explain
+Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas, and give confidence for the battle to
+come. Here was a people ranged for battle with the steady nerves and the
+stolid courage that come from tilling the soil, with the skill and the
+discipline that come from adequate training, with the fervent faith of a
+great patriotism. I have talked with Turkish prisoners and found
+infantrymen who had been sent to the front after two days' training,
+gunners who had been drafted into a battery after ten days' drill. Such
+soldiers can only march to defeat.
+
+[Illustration: A BALKAN PEASANT WOMAN]
+
+Ermenikioi (Headquarters of the Third Bulgarian Army), _November 17
+(Sunday)_.--The Battle of Chatalja has been opened. To-day, General
+Demetrieff rode out with his Staff to the battle-field whilst the bells
+of a Christian church in this little village rang. The day was spent
+in artillery reconnaissance, the Bulgarian guns searching the Turkish
+entrenchments to discover their real strength. Only once during the day
+was the infantry employed; and then it was rather to take the place of
+artillery than to complete work begun by artillery. It seems to me that
+the Bulgarian forces have not enough big gun ammunition at the front.
+They are ten days from their base, and shells must come up by ox wagon
+the greater part of the way.
+
+Ermenikioi, _November 18_.--This was a wild day on the Chatalja hills.
+Driving rain and mist swept over from the Black Sea, and at times
+obscured all the valley across which the battle raged. With but slight
+support from the artillery, the Bulgarian infantry was sent again and
+again up to the Turkish entrenchments. Once a fort was taken but had to
+be abandoned again. The result of the day's fighting is indecisive. The
+Bulgarian forces have driven in the Turkish right flank a little, but
+have effected nothing against the central positions which bar the road
+to Constantinople. It is clear that the artillery is not well enough
+supplied with ammunition. There is a sprinkle of shells when there
+should be a flood. Gallant as is the infantry, it cannot win much
+ground faced by conditions such as the Light Brigade met at Balaclava.
+
+Ermenikioi, _November 19_.--Operations have been suspended. Yesterday's
+cold and bitter weather has fanned to an epidemic the choleraic
+dysentery which had been creeping through the trenches. The casualties
+in the fighting had been heavy. "But for every wounded man who comes to
+the hospitals," Colonel Jostoff, the Chief of the Staff, tells me,
+"there are ten who say 'I am ill.'" The Bulgarians recognise bitterly
+that in their otherwise fine organisation there has been one flaw, the
+medical service. Among this nation of peasant proprietors--sturdy,
+abstemious, moral, living in the main on whole-meal bread and
+water--illness was so rare that the medical service was but little
+regarded. Up to Chatalja confidence in the rude health of the peasants
+was justified. They passed through cold, hunger, fatigue, and kept
+healthy. But ignorant of sanitary discipline, camped among the filthy
+Turkish villages, the choleraic dysentery passed from the Turkish
+trenches to theirs. There are 30,000 cases of illness, and the healthy
+for the first time feel fear as they see the torments of the sick. The
+Bulgarians recognise that there must be a pause in the fighting whilst
+the hospital and sanitary service is reorganised.
+
+Kirk Kilisse, _December 1_.--It seems certain now that peace must be
+declared, and that the dream of driving the Turk right out of Europe
+must be abandoned. These peasant peoples of the Balkans have done
+wonderful things, but they have stumbled on one point--the want of
+knowledge of sanitary science. I have seen only one attempt at a clean
+camp since I have been in the field, and that was a Serbian camp, north
+of Adrianople.
+
+With the Bulgarian army there was not, at any stage of the campaign up
+to the Battle of Chatalja--that is, until after the outbreak of
+cholera--any precaution, to my knowledge, taken to secure a clean water
+supply, or clean camping-grounds, or to take the most elementary
+precautions against the outbreak of disease in the army. The medical
+service was almost as bad. I have seen much of the hospital work at Kirk
+Kilisse after the armistice; and it has been deplorable to see the fine
+fellows whose lives were sacrificed, or whose limbs were sacrificed,
+through neglect of medical knowledge. I am sure the Bulgarians would
+have saved many hundreds of lives if there had been anything like a
+proper medical service at the front.
+
+At Chatalja the chief reason given for the stoppage of operations was
+the ravages of disease in the Bulgarian lines. The illness was of a
+choleraic type; it had, as usual, a profound moral as well as physical
+effect. The courage of the men broke down before this visitation. The
+victims howled with pain and terror, though the same men would withstand
+serious wounds without a complaint or a wincing.
+
+The Turks are blamed for the outbreak in the Bulgarian lines. It is more
+than probable that their villages, inexpressibly filthy; the prisoners
+taken from their ranks; the infection of the soil abandoned by them,
+were contributing causes.
+
+[Illustration: A BAGPIPER]
+
+But it must be stated frankly that the almost complete absence of any
+sanitary discipline or precaution in the Bulgarian lines at this place
+earned for them all the diseases that afflict mankind. So far as I can
+ascertain after careful investigation, there were no sanitary police; no
+attempts to secure and safeguard a pure water supply; no latrine
+regulations. I have seen the Bulgarian soldiers drinking from streams
+running through battle-fields, though a few feet away were swollen
+carcases. I have seen no attempt in the field at a proper latrine
+service. Some hundreds of thousands of peasant soldiers, accustomed to
+the simplest life on their own farms, were collected together and left
+practically without sanitary discipline. The details can be filled in
+without my setting them forth in print. There is one fact, however, to
+be recorded of a pleasant character. In all investigations of the
+hospital services I never found a case of any malady arising from vice.
+There was also a complete absence of drunkenness. This might be ascribed
+to the want of means to obtain alcohol. But in Turkey there was an
+abundance of wines and spirits, and some beer in the captured villages
+and towns; it led, however, to no orgies.
+
+Naturally, the Bulgarian peasant is wonderfully healthy. His food is
+rough whole-meal bread and cheese; his occasional luxuries, a dish of
+the sour milk which is so well known in London, a little alcohol on
+Sunday, some sweet stuff, and, rarely, grilled meat or meat soup with
+vegetables. It is possible to judge that his alimentary tract differs
+widely from that of the Western European. I should say he was almost
+immune from enteric, unless attacked by a very virulent infection. He
+can live on bread and water alone without serious inconvenience for
+lengthy periods. His blood is very pure, and ordinarily heals in a way
+that astonished the British surgeons.
+
+Here, then, was the best of material from an army medical point of view.
+Given the roughest food, the simplest sanitary precautions, and
+ordinarily good field dressing, and the army would have marched without
+disease and the wounded would have dropped out of the firing line for a
+few days only. But there were no sanitary precautions; hence disease.
+The hospital service as regards the first aid in the field was pitiably
+deficient; hence serious and unnecessary losses of wounded. Without
+seeking to pile up a record of horrors, I cite a few individual
+instances to illustrate bad methods. At the front, punctured bayonet
+wounds were closely bandaged--in some cases stitched up--without
+provision for irrigation, without even proper cleansing. This led to
+gangrene and often caused the sacrifice of a life or of a limb (which,
+to these peasants, was almost as great a loss as that of life: their
+feeling against amputations was very strong, and if they understood
+that amputation was intended, they sometimes begged to be "killed
+instead"). Bullet wounds also were often plugged up on the field. When
+proper treatment was at last available, it was sometimes too late to
+avoid death or amputation. No treatment at all on the field would have
+been preferable to this well-intentioned but shocking ignorance.
+
+Of the purely Bulgarian hospitals those at Kirk Kilisse are very
+deficient: at Philippopolis, however, there were excellent Bulgarian
+hospitals, and also at Sofia. The Russian hospital at Kirk Kilisse is
+very good. The British Red Cross Hospital, under Major E. T. F. Birrell,
+of the R.A.M.C., is excellently organised, has the fullest possible
+equipment, and tries to specialise in serious cases. It is subjected
+locally (as is the Russian hospital) to the criticism that by insisting
+on perfection of system it unduly restricts its salvage work: that, in
+short, it could deal with far more patients if it consented to more
+"rough-and-ready" methods. I record this criticism, and acknowledge that
+it is based on facts. Yet it may be urged on the other side that it was
+ultimately far more useful to have a model hospital to show how things
+should be done than to sacrifice that valuable lesson for the sake of
+striving to cope in rough-and-ready fashion with the flood of wounded.
+This hospital gives interesting proof that Great Britain is an Empire,
+not an island nation. I first encountered three of its doctors in a
+cafe. One was from the Mother Country, one from the West Indies, one an
+Australian friend, who set at once to talking of gum trees and of
+Melbourne University. Then a non-commissioned officer attached to the
+hospital--most of its Staff are army men--is a Canadian, who had had war
+experience in South Africa. His comments on the Bulgarian wounded are
+full of sympathy. "These chaps," he said, "take their gruel better even
+than the Tommies. The Tommy takes his all right, but he 'grouses' about
+it. These chaps never grumble. One of them had to have a very painful
+dressing. He winced a little. A comrade at once laughed at him. 'Ah,' he
+said, 'you learn new kinds of dancing here.'" Nurses endorse this
+evidence about the Bulgarian soldiers' patience, though one stated that
+she found the officers sometimes to be rather neurasthenic.
+
+On the whole, the Bulgarian army is not strong on science. In spade
+work it was not good. I saw no perfect trenches--never a drained trench.
+Undrained trenches caused some increase of mortality and of sickness. It
+is uncomfortable to stay for days, or even hours, in a trench which the
+rain has partly filled with water. In no case that I saw were there
+trenches with overhead protection against howitzer fire. Except at the
+Chatalja lines and around Adrianople the trenches were, of course,
+intended to be of a very temporary use, and would naturally not be
+elaborate. Gun-pits and emplacements were usually fairly good. It was
+the custom to dig a pit, or to put up a little sod wall for the
+gun-limber (most of the artillery work was from concealed and prepared
+positions). At Chatalja the trenches were masked with the stalks of the
+Turkish tobacco plants--about the only instance I saw of masking. It was
+rare to see a trench zigzagged as a precaution against enfilading fire.
+The Turkish trenches I saw were hopelessly bad.
+
+Sofia, _December 6, 1912_.--Sofia, in spite of the great victories which
+have been won, is neither joyous nor contented. The failure of the siege
+of Adrianople seems to rest heavy upon the people: and there are gloomy
+stories of the extent of the losses of the nation's manhood. So far no
+lists of killed and wounded have been published. "The Mass at St.
+Sofia," which was the battle-cry of the first days of the war, is
+clearly not a possibility now. Some mystery attaches to the movements of
+the king. It is said that he had made a vow that he would not return to
+Sofia until a victorious peace was signed. The embittered relations with
+the Greeks, the signs of disagreement with the Serbians, suggest gloomy
+possibilities of future troubles.
+
+Belgrade, _December 8, 1912_.--With the exception of the army before
+Adrianople, the Serbians have finished their share of the war with
+Turkey. Belgrade is satisfied, but not over-elated. Across the Danube, a
+broad gloomy waste of dun waters under the winter mists, a division of
+the Austrian army is mobilised. There is a fear, almost an expectation,
+that Austria will make war. But there seems neither panic nor war-fever
+in the city.
+
+Business is creeping back to the normal state. At the Ministry for War
+there are to be seen pathetic scenes as parents and other relatives seek
+tidings of the soldiers. An old father, himself a captain of reserves,
+hears that his only son, a lieutenant, has been killed, and bursts into
+tears and tells to all around his sorrow. But generally tragic news is
+received stoically. Amid the congratulations on the results of the
+Allies' efforts there is an under-current of resolution to make a better
+bargain with Bulgaria than the _ante bellum_ partition treaty proposed.
+Reports of envious and rude treatment of the Serbian army before
+Adrianople are current in the street: and there is some talk of
+recalling the men. This is the irresponsible talk of men in the street
+only: the authorities are very correct in their attitude towards "our
+friend and ally," and express themselves as confident that Bulgaria of
+her own volition will suggest better terms for her partner in the war.
+
+A Serbian politician, who patiently endures my bad French or makes a
+brave effort to talk in English, a tongue which he is learning to speak
+and can read quite well, politely excuses the English for being such bad
+linguists. "For you English who have all the poetry, all the romance,
+all the science, all the philosophy a man may want in your own language,
+it is not necessary to learn any other. For us in the Balkans, we must
+learn other languages or remain ignorant of much that goes on in the
+world."
+
+In truth the Balkan peoples are astonishing linguists. It is not at all
+a rare thing to find that a man can speak Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek,
+Turkish, and French. Often he adds either English or German to this
+list. Bulgarian and Serbian, of course, are but differing dialects of
+Russian--a Russian can make himself understood in both tongues though he
+knows only Russian. But the grammar of one differs from that of the
+other, and many of the words are different. The Balkan people who know
+Turkish know it usually in its colloquial and spoken form and not the
+literary language, which is very difficult to understand thoroughly
+because it is really a blending of three languages.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+SOME SERBIAN PEASANTS]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE PICTURESQUE BALKANS
+
+
+It is difficult to dissociate the Balkans with bloodshed and disorder.
+Insensibly the mind is tempted at every turn to direct attention to the
+last battle or the future campaign which can be seen threatening. But if
+the storm-racked peninsula could be granted a term of peaceful
+development, there is no doubt at all but that it would be much favoured
+by voyagers seeking picturesque beauty and wishing to go over the fields
+which have been the scenes of some of the greatest events in history.
+Mountain resorts to rival those of Switzerland, spas to match those of
+Germany and Austria, autumn and winter seaside beaches of great beauty
+and fine sunny climate--all these exist in the Balkan Peninsula, and
+need only to be known, and to be known as peaceful, to attract
+tourists.
+
+The Adriatic coast has charms of rugged coast-lines and bright waters;
+the Black Sea littoral, though flat and sandy, has a warm sunny summer
+or autumn climate; the Aegean is a sea of brilliant purples and rosy
+mists, in which air, rock, and water mingle to greet the eye with a
+great opal jewel. A November sunset on the Sea of Marmora gave to my
+eyes such a feast of suffused colour as I had not seen since I left the
+shores of the southern Pacific. The rocky hills had the rich red of the
+Jersey cliffs, but the sea and sky were incomparably warmer and deeper
+in tone. Across the sea the shores of distant Asia shone dimly through
+two veils of mist, one of the tenderest rose, the other of the palest
+gold. The greater part of the Greek coast has the same deliciousness of
+colour in autumn and in summer.
+
+A few travellers bolder than the ordinary search out nowadays the shores
+of the Adriatic, the beautiful coast of Greece, and even the margin of
+the Sea of Marmora in quest of beauty and relief from the tedium of
+civilisation. But they must face poor means of communication (though to
+Constantinople and to Trieste there is an excellent train service) and
+scanty accommodation of any kind--almost none of good quality. Within a
+very few years, if the Balkans could settle down to peace and the
+legalised plunder of foreign visitors--a pursuit which is as profitable
+as brigandage and far more comfortable,--the seaside resorts that would
+spring up within Balkan territories would of themselves provide a
+handsome revenue. The shores of the Aegean and of the Sea of Marmora in
+particular would attract tourists wearied of the air of hackneyed
+sameness which comes after a while to pervade seaside haunts in Italy
+and France.
+
+From another attraction the Balkan States could hope for a great tourist
+traffic. I have caught but fleeting glimpses of the Balkan range and of
+the Rhodopes and the Serbian mountains, but have seen enough to know
+that they offer boundless delights to the climber, to the seeker after
+winter sports, and to the lover of the picturesque; and the Swiss Alps
+in these days are overcrowded, and the Tyrolean mountains and the
+Carpathians begin to receive a big overflow of people who have a taste
+for heights that are not covered with hotels and funicular railways. But
+the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula offer prospects, I believe, of
+greater beauty, certainly of greater wildness, than any other ranges of
+Europe. Of the Rhodope mountains, in particular, one gets the most
+alluring accounts from the rare travellers who have explored them. Seen
+by the passing voyager as they stand guard with their farthest spurs
+over Philippopolis, they suggest that no account of their charm could be
+too glowing. I have promised myself one autumn or summer a month in this
+range, exploring its flower-filled valleys and its wild cliffs, shining
+through an air which seems now of rose and now of violet.
+
+For winter sports the Serbian, Montenegrin, and Albanian mountains, as
+well as the chief Balkan range, promise well. I believe that it was part
+of the plan of Bulgarian reorganisation after the war, which King
+Ferdinand had in his mind, to set up great winter hotels in the
+mountains of his kingdom. The other Balkan States could with advantage
+give hospitality to similar plans. Provided that security is
+assured--and the Balkan peasant is in my experience the
+gentlest-mannered kind who ever cut throats in a wholesale way at the
+call of a mischief-maker--visitors to the mountains of the Balkan
+Peninsula would find the wildness, the uncouthness of the surrounding
+national life, very attractive. The picturesque national costumes, the
+national music, wild and uncanny, the strange national dances, all add
+to the fascination of the savage scenery. In an age when a fog of dreary
+sameness comes over all the civilised world, the Balkans have a great
+asset in their primitivism. Theirs is not a wholly European
+civilisation; indeed, except in the capital cities, it is not chiefly a
+European civilisation. Everywhere there is a touch of the mystery, the
+fatalism, the desert-bred wildness of the Asiatic steppes. For centuries
+the hand of the Turk has been heavy on the land, and a strong stream of
+his blood courses still through the veins of most of the Balkan peoples.
+It is not the East this Balkan Peninsula, but it is not the West, nor
+will be for some generations.
+
+There is yet another possible means of attracting great streams of
+visitors to the Balkan regions. Throughout the mountains there are
+numberless medicinal springs. In Serbia and Bulgaria the water of two
+springs is being exploited for table use, and in Bulgaria the warm
+medicinal springs are being developed for bathing resorts. At Sofia
+there are now in course of erection great public baths which will be
+equal to any in Europe when they are completed. In the mountains above
+Sofia warm springs are being utilised, and quite a large spa village has
+grown up. King Ferdinand, who has a fine commercial instinct whatever
+the failures of his war diplomacy, has done good service to his kingdom
+by developing its baths and springs.
+
+The plain country of the Balkan Peninsula is but little attractive.
+Under the Turkish rule nearly all plantations of trees were destroyed,
+and a general air of desolation was maintained. Since the Turk left,
+cultivation and development have been on strictly utilitarian lines, and
+there has been little chance for gardens or woods. The eye of the
+voyager misses them, and misses also the sight of castles, churches, or
+great buildings. The dreariness of the plain is unrelieved by forests.
+The rivers flow sullenly along without a bordering of trees. The
+Thracian plain--the greater part of which has now gone back to Turkey
+and thus lost hope of a redemption of its really fertile soil--is in
+particular desolate and forbidding. But even there, and more frequently
+in the plain country of Bulgaria and Serbia, there is now and again a
+charming village in some dell with adornment of trees and gardens. The
+average village, however, is a collection of hovels, their roofs lying
+so close to the ground that they seem to be rather burrows than huts,
+their aspect suggesting that they are hiding themselves and their
+inhabitants from the eye of a possible ravager.
+
+Desolate as this plain country is, it has its attractions at dawn and
+sunset in the clear colourfull air of the Balkan Peninsula; and where
+the hill slopes, denuded of their forests, have been covered over by a
+dense oak scrub the autumn aspect of the plain at sunset is incomparably
+lovely. The scrub, when the first of the autumn frosts come, blazes out
+in such scarlet and gold as cannot be imagined in the moist and soft
+climate of England. With the setting of the sun and the coming of the
+violet night the earth's carpet seems to be here smouldering, there
+burning, a sea of lambent fire so bright that you look to see its
+burgeoning reflected in the sky.
+
+I should advise the tourist wishing to see the Balkan Peninsula at its
+best to choose the fall of the year for a visit. In the summer there is
+great heat and dust and plague of flies. In the winter travel is
+impossible with any comfort except along the railway lines, and the
+whole Peninsula is frost-bound. The spring is a beautiful season at its
+later end, but not at the time of the thaw.
+
+As to the route for a voyage there are several alternatives. One may
+take the Oriental Express through to Constantinople and work a way up
+the Balkan Peninsula from there: or take train to Trieste and approach
+the Balkans by the Adriatic side: or, taking the Oriental Express, leave
+it at Bucharest and journey from there to Sofia: or, taking the Oriental
+Express, leave it at Belgrade, making that the starting-point for a
+riding trip. Certainly to enjoy the country one must leave the railways
+and journey on horseback or by cart over the wilder tracks. An
+interpreter who speaks English can be engaged in any one of the
+capitals. The hire of horses, oxen, and carts is very cheap, if you are
+properly advised by your interpreter and pay the local rates only.
+Forage, too, is cheap: and so is "the food of the country," i.e. bread,
+cheese, bacon, and goat and sheep flesh. Most civilised luxuries of food
+can be obtained in the capitals and bigger towns, but they are dear.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+SOFIA
+
+General view, looking towards the Djumala Pass (45 miles away). Taken
+from the front of Parliament House, showing monument of Alexander II,
+known in Bulgaria as the "Tsar Liberator"]
+
+Let me suggest a few typical Balkan tours.
+
+Take train to Belgrade: then go by Danube steamer to Widdin. From Widdin
+to Sofia go by rail, and then back to Belgrade on horseback, sending
+on heavy luggage by rail, but making at Nish on the way a depot of
+provisions and linen.
+
+Take train to Bucharest. Go from there to Stara Zagora on horseback,
+crossing the Roumanian frontier at Roustchouk, going over the trail of
+the Russian Army of Liberation and seeing the Balkan mountain passes.
+
+Take train to Sofia, and from there to Yamboli. At Yamboli go on
+horseback (in the track of the Bulgarian Third Army of 1912) to Kirk
+Kilisse, Lule Burgas, Chorlu, Silivri (on the Sea of Marmora), and
+Constantinople. A somewhat wild trip this would be, but quite
+practicable. The most comfortable way to travel would be to take ox
+wagons for the luggage and the camping outfit. That would restrict the
+day's march to twenty miles. The horses--(diverging to look at scenery
+and battle-fields)--would do about thirty miles a day.
+
+Take train to Constantinople, and from there boat to Salonica. Go on
+horseback from Salonica to Belgrade. This would show the most disturbed
+part of the Balkan Peninsula and some of its wildest scenery.
+
+Take train to Philippopolis, and from there go on horseback and with ox
+wagons for a tour of the Rhodope mountains.
+
+Of course it is possible to take much tamer tours of the Balkans.
+Practically all the big towns are connected with the European railway
+systems. But you would see, thus, towns and not the country. The Balkan
+towns are to my eye very dreary. There are practically no fine old
+buildings, for in the Turkish occupation the greater number of these
+were destroyed. The modern buildings have rarely any character. The
+churches, usually of the Slav school of architecture, alone relieve the
+monotony of economical imitations of French and British buildings. In
+Belgrade, it is true, there has been an effort to carry the Slav note
+farther, and some of the commercial and public buildings show a Moscow
+influence.
+
+Mr. Noel Buxton, M.P., that most enthusiastic admirer of the Bulgarians,
+can carry his enthusiasm so far as to admire Sofia. He wrote recently
+(_With the Bulgarian Staff_):
+
+     Few sights can be more inspiring to the lover of liberty and
+     national progress than a view of Sofia from the hill where the
+     great seminary of the national church overlooks the plain. There at
+     your feet is spread out the unpretentious seat of a government
+     which stands for the advance of European order in lands long
+     blighted with barbarism. Here resides, and is centred, the virile
+     force of a people which has advanced the bounds of liberty. From
+     here, symbolised by the rivers and roads running down on each side,
+     has extended, and will further extend, the power of modern
+     education, of unhampered ideas, of science, and of humanity. From
+     this magnificent view-point Sofia stretches along the low hill with
+     the dark background of the Balkan beyond. Against that background
+     now stands out the new embodiment of Bulgarian and Slavonic energy,
+     genius, and freedom of mind, the great cathedral, with its vast
+     golden domes brilliantly standing out from the shade behind them.
+     In no other capital is a great church shown to such effect, viewed
+     from one range of hills against the mountainous slopes of another.
+     It is a building which, with its marvellous mural paintings, would
+     in any capital form an object of world interest, but which, in the
+     capital of a tiny peasant State, supremely embodies that breadth of
+     mind which
+
+              ... rejects the lore
+    Of nicely calculated less or more.
+
+But I think that that is a too kindly view. What makes the Balkan
+capitals additionally dreary is that there is no "society" in the
+European sense. The Turkish idea of keeping the womenfolk in the harem
+survives to the extent that woman is not supposed to frequent places of
+entertainment, to receive or to pay visits. In Bulgaria the women are
+secluded with an almost Turkish strictness: in Serbia, not quite so
+strictly, but still strictly.
+
+Bucharest is quite another story; but Bucharest would rather resent
+being called a Balkan city. There is no seclusion of the very charming
+Roumanian women, and the atmosphere of the city is a little more than
+gay. Plant a section of Paris, a section including Montmartre, into the
+middle of an enlargement of the old quarter of Belgrade, and that is
+Bucharest. It is the one Balkan city which has a luxurious and to an
+extent polished aristocracy.
+
+Some of the smaller towns are slightly more interesting--Philippopolis,
+for instance, in a position of great natural beauty--but the average
+Balkan town must be set down as squalid. Its centres of social interest
+are the cafes, where men who have the leisure assemble to drink coffee
+made in the Turkish fashion, tea made in the Russian fashion, and
+occasionally _vodka_, which is the usual alcoholic stimulant. Tobacco is
+smoked mostly in the form of cigarettes. Excellent (and cheap)
+cigarettes are supplied by the government _Regies_ in Serbia and
+Bulgaria.
+
+[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
+
+BUCHAREST]
+
+The wise tourist will keep clear of the Balkan towns apart from the
+actual capitals, and will carry his food and lodging with him. Under
+these circumstances a good standard of ease can be maintained if a train
+of ox wagons sufficient to the size of the party is enlisted. Ladies can
+travel with fair comfort in an ox wagon. As regards the danger of Balkan
+travel, in my experience--and that was during war-time--there is none.
+Serbian peasant, Bulgarian peasant, Greek peasant, Turkish peasant,
+alike are amiable and obliging fellows, if they do not feel in duty
+bound to cut your throat on some theological or political point. Being
+strangers, tourists would have no theology and no politics. So much for
+the inhabitants. The officials, provided passports are clear and the
+precaution is taken of getting letters at the capital from the
+authorities of the country you are travelling through, will be helpful.
+The one district that might be a little dangerous is that corner of
+Macedonia where Greek and Bulgar are always playing against one another
+the old game of massacre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BALKAN PEOPLES IN ART AND INDUSTRY
+
+
+The five centuries of Turkish domination, during which all the arts and
+most of the crafts were neglected in the Balkan Peninsula, killed nearly
+completely the ancient civilisations of the Greeks, the Serbs, and the
+Bulgars. But a few traces of the old culture survive to this day as
+mournful and tattered relics of the greatness of those departed Empires.
+The old Bulgarian Empire, combining a Slav with a Turconian element; the
+old Serbian Empire, almost purely Slav but influenced a little by
+Italian and Grecian influence, evolved in the days of its greatness the
+beginnings of a national literature and national architecture. In Serbia
+particularly was there a strong and promising growth of humane culture,
+and the greatest of the Serbian rulers, Stephen Dushan (14th century),
+whose death before the walls of Constantinople at the beginning of the
+Turkish invasions gave up the Balkan Peninsula to the Crescent, left as
+one monument to his name a well-reasoned code of laws. He was throughout
+his reign a sincere friend of learning. In Bulgaria during the 10th
+century, under the Czar Simeon, there was a brief efflorescence of
+learning. Montenegro, which alone of the Balkan States kept its head
+unbowed before the Turk, was a busy centre of literary effort in the
+16th century. Under the stress of constant war, however, the arts of
+peace died down almost completely in the Balkans until the Liberation of
+the peoples in the 19th century. During the interval, however, the
+peasants in their homes kept up some little knowledge of the traditions
+of their forefathers' greatness. Legends were passed down from father to
+son in chants set to a rough music. In these chants, too, were recorded
+the deeds of heroism which marked the ever-recurring revolts against the
+Turk.
+
+What survives to-day from this period of oppression is a very
+characteristic national music, melancholy usually, as might be expected,
+but of arresting sweetness; and an art of peasant-applied decoration,
+which recalls the earlier and more primitive forms of Byzantine Art.
+Balkan tapestries, Balkan carpets, Balkan embroideries, woven or
+stitched by the peasant women, have a note of barbaric boldness in
+design and colour which distinguishes them at once from the peasant work
+of other countries.
+
+This applied art in decoration is wisely fostered by the various
+governments, and there is liberal encouragement also given to modern
+art. Especially is this the case in Bulgaria. The impression I have got
+from seeing picture collections in the Balkans is that the local artists
+have learned foreign methods without adding any national bent of their
+own, and contrive to give a native character to their pictures only when
+they make the choice of some particularly horrible subject. Yet there
+should come a vigorous art as well as a vigorous literature one day from
+these Balkan States. There the mysticism, the melancholy, the
+transcendentalism of the Slav is mixed with the fatalism of the Turk,
+and the vivacity of the Greek and the Roumanian in the national types.
+Byzantine traditions, Slav traditions, classic Greek traditions, Roman
+traditions mingle to influence this composite character, the two former
+predominating, but the two latter having a very definite power. It
+should be rich soil for talent, even for genius.
+
+Interesting opportunities were given in the Southern Slav Art
+Exhibitions of 1904 and 1906 (the first at Belgrade, the second at
+Sofia) to note the trend of art in the Balkans. At those Exhibitions
+Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, and Slavonian arts were represented. The
+Croatian pictures--I follow a trustworthy guide in stating this--showed
+a high degree of technical skill, not distinguishable from Austrian art
+in character: the Slavonian pictures were also technically good, but of
+a more impressionist character: the Serbian pictures imitated in
+technique the Old Masters, but took their subjects almost exclusively
+from Serbian history: the Bulgarian pictures had no national
+characteristic in style, but usually sought to be transcriptions of some
+form of Bulgarian life of the day.
+
+Summing up the art position in the Balkans, it can be fairly said that
+before the outbreak of the last great war very good progress had been
+made for the few years since the Liberation from the Turks. A wise
+policy for the future would be to encourage as much as possible the
+peasant arts and crafts which are distinctive, and not to seek to
+impose too much of modern art education, which may stifle national
+influences and inflict a sterile sameness.
+
+Balkan industry varies greatly with the height of the country, as well
+as with the racial type. The mountaineers are usually lacking in steady
+industry: the peoples of the plain are usually exceptionally hard
+workers. Very many emigrants from the Balkans go to the United States to
+work there in the mines, and on works of railway construction, for a
+term of years. The Bulgarian will come back from the United States with
+L300 saved up, and settle down in his native village as farmer or
+trader. The Serbian will come back with L200 saved up, but with a wider
+knowledge of United States life, and he will settle down as pastoralist
+or farmer, but not as trader. The Albanian or Montenegrin will come back
+with little or no money, but with a wonderful armoury of silver-adorned
+weapons and much other personal decoration. So graced, the mountaineer
+will have no difficulty in marrying the girl of his choice, and she will
+do most of the work that is needed thereafter, whilst he attends to the
+hunting and the fighting. The Greek and the Roumanian go abroad,
+preferably as traders, and afterwards elect to stay abroad, though it
+is to be recorded in proof of modern Greek patriotism that in 1912 there
+was a steady flow of Greeks from all parts of the world coming back to
+their native land to fight in the army.
+
+[Illustration: A BULGARIAN FARM]
+
+Considered industrially the Bulgarian is the best type in the Balkans.
+He is a steady, tireless worker on the soil; takes to factory life
+amiably; and has in a very strongly marked degree "the road-making
+talent."
+
+A very valuable index to national character is provided by a people's
+roads. The most successful Imperial governors, the Romans, were also
+builders of the finest roads the world has known. The British people
+have been good road-builders as well as good Empire-makers; the French
+people, too, and every other people who at any time have done big
+enduring work in the government of the world. If a nation is not a good
+road-building nation it will not go far: and the converse is probably
+true. On this road-building test the Bulgarians have a prosperous future
+indicated, for they are very pertinacious and skilful road-builders.
+During the 1912 war I noticed that despite all other pre-occupations
+they were pushing roads forward at every possible opportunity. The
+Turks going back to Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse found a great number of
+roads built or building--the first serious efforts in that direction
+since the downfall of the Roman Empire.
+
+The Bulgarian's chief occupation is agriculture. The system of land
+tenures is that of peasant ownership. There are no large estates and
+very few non-occupying landlords. The chief crops are wheat, barley,
+maize, rice (around Philippopolis), tobacco, and roses. The tobacco is
+of as good quality, almost, as that of Turkey. The Bulgarian Government
+encourages the culture of tobacco by distributing seed, free of cost,
+among the planters, by setting a bounty on the export tariff, and by
+authorising the Bulgarian National Bank to consent to loans on the
+surety of certificates granted to the planters until they are able to
+dispose of their crops advantageously.
+
+Tobacco culture is carried on chiefly in the south and in the provinces
+of Silistria and Kustendil. The area of the plantations is estimated at
+3000 hectares. The province of Haskovo has the greatest yield; then
+follows Philippopolis, with 300,000 kilograms; Kustendil and Silistria,
+210,000 kilograms. According to approximate calculations based on
+various statistics, three-fourths of the tobacco crop of Bulgaria is
+consumed by the inhabitants and only a quarter is exported.
+
+The rose crop is next in importance after tobacco. The roses are used
+exclusively for the distilling of attar of roses. The rose gardens are
+limited to 148 parishes of the provinces of Philippopolis and Stara
+Zagora, and occupy a total area of 5094 hectares. The quantity and
+quality of the attar depend very much on the weather at the time of
+bloom and gathering. The roses most cultivated in Bulgaria are the red
+rose (_Rosa damascena_) and the white rose (_Rosa alba_). The best
+gardens are at Kazanlik, Karlovo, Klissoura, and Stara Zagora. The
+distilling of the attar is now a Government monopoly. The cultivation of
+beetroot has been introduced recently and is confined to the province of
+Sofia. The sugar refinery near Sofia utilises the whole crop for local
+consumption.
+
+It is interesting to note in connection with Balkan agriculture that as
+far back as 1863 the much-abused Turk had actually adopted the very
+modern idea of an agricultural _Credit Foncier_ system in the Balkans!
+In that year Midhat Pasha, Governor of the Danubian Vilayet, prepared a
+scheme for the creation of banks, to assist the rural population. The
+scheme having been approved by the Turkish Government, several of these
+banks were established. The peasants were allowed to repay in kind the
+loans which were advanced to them, the banks themselves selling the
+agricultural products. With the object of increasing the capital of the
+banks, a special tax was introduced obliging the farmers to hand every
+year to these institutions part of their produce in kind.
+
+When it was realised that these banks were of great service to the rural
+population, to which they advanced money at 12 per cent
+interest--instead of 30-100 per cent, as the usurers generally did--the
+Turkish Government extended the reform to the whole Turkish Empire, and
+obliged the peasants to create similar banks in all the district
+centres. According to their statutes one-third of the net profits of
+these banks was destined for works of public utility, such as bridges,
+roads, fountains, schools, etc., while the remaining two-thirds went to
+increase the capital of the banks.
+
+During the Russo-Turkish war several of these banks lost their funds,
+the functionaries of the Turkish Government having carried away all the
+cash, as well as the securities and other property belonging to the
+banks' clients. After the war the debtors refused to pay, and only part
+of the property of the banks was restored, by means of the issue of new
+bonds. For that unfortunate end the war is rather to be blamed than the
+Turk. This _Credit Foncier_ system is pretty clear proof that the
+Turkish power was not always cruel and rapacious, since so sensible a
+reform was set on foot in one of the Christian provinces under the
+Sublime Porte.
+
+Apart from the industries of the soil, Bulgaria has a small mining
+population and an increasing factory population. The Protective tariff
+is used freely to encourage young industries, and there is an effort
+just now to set up cotton-spinning as a national enterprise.
+
+Serbia had a mixed pastoral and agricultural population up to the
+outbreak of the war of 1912, with pig-raising as the greatest of the
+national industries. By the Treaty of Bucharest she has, however,
+acquired much new territory, and is now probably predominantly an
+agricultural country. She has, too, great mineral resources at present,
+but they are little developed, and fine forests which only need an
+improvement of the means of communication to be commercially a big
+asset. The Serbian is not so steadily devoted to his work as the
+Bulgarian: his is the pastoral as opposed to the agricultural character.
+Nevertheless he has a reasonable faculty of industry. As is the case in
+Bulgaria the bulk of the land is held by peasant proprietors. These are
+organised into communes very much on the Russian system. It is an
+interesting fact that though in Serbia there is almost the same degree
+as in Bulgaria of seclusion of the women of the nation, a Serbian woman
+may be the head of the village commune, and, as such, exercise a very
+real authority.
+
+Both in Bulgaria and Serbia the rights of the commune are very jealously
+safeguarded. The central government must take no part in the
+administration of the communes, or maintain any agents of its own to
+interfere with their affairs. The commune forms the basis of the State
+fabric and enjoys a complete autonomy. It is the smallest unit in the
+administrative organisation of the country. Every district is subdivided
+into communes, which are either urban or rural. The commune is a
+corporation. Every subject must belong to a commune and figure in its
+registers, the laws not tolerating the state of vagrancy. The members of
+the Commune Council are elected by universal suffrage, in the same way
+and subject to the same precautions as the members of the National
+Assembly. In passing it may be observed that theoretically the
+governments of the Balkan States are free democracies. Practically they
+are oligarchies tempered by assassination, which is still a favoured
+political weapon.
+
+The Serbian has not much of the commercial faculty: and people of other
+nations manage very many of the businesses in Serbia.
+
+The Montenegrin is willing to be a worker if it does not interfere with
+his manly amusements of warfare. His occupations are pastoral and
+agricultural pursuits and the chase. The Albanian is not content to be a
+worker at all under any conditions. His occupations are dancing and
+swaggering whilst his womenfolk carry on the bulk of the primitive
+pastoral and agricultural work.
+
+It is not possible to hope for much industrial or commercial progress in
+Albania. But in Serbia and Bulgaria there are rich opportunities for
+enterprise and capital provided that an era of peace could be reckoned
+upon. It is the uncertainty on that point that will stand in the way of
+future Balkan development. When after the Treaty of London the Balkan
+League fell to pieces there was incurred, in addition to other
+sacrifices, a serious loss of confidence on the part of European
+capital.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FUTURE OF THE BALKANS
+
+
+We have seen that a blood-mist has hung over the Balkans during all the
+centuries that history knows. Nature set up there lists for the great
+contests of races--on the path from the cold north of Europe to the warm
+south; on the path from Asia to Europe; and each great campaign left
+behind it shreds of devastated peoples. These shreds of peoples dwelling
+in the Balkans to-day have a blood-thirst as an inescapable heritage.
+Turk, Bulgar, Serb, Roumanian, Greek--they may hold the peace for a
+time, and some may try to think that they are friends with others; but
+all have something of hate or fear or contempt for the others, and all
+prepare in peace for the next fight.
+
+The Fates making the Balkan Peninsula the battle-ground of empires and
+races, the field of last stands, the refuge of residual fragments of
+peoples, imposed upon it its bloody tradition. Under other conditions,
+Serb or Bulgar or Greek or Turk or Roumanian left to themselves might
+have made happier history. For all these races can be human, reasonable,
+companionable. I have seen something of all of them in following a
+Balkan campaign as a war correspondent (not following always as the
+sheltered guest of an army, but forcing a solitary path through the
+peasant population), and in watching the wonderful acrobatic lying of a
+Balkan Peace Conference have seen thus the best and the worst of them. I
+have been an unofficial member of a Bulgarian court-martial; the guest
+of a dozen and more Bulgarian and Serbian army outposts, dependent often
+for food and shelter on the kindness of peasant soldiers; for days have
+held at the mercy of Balkan peasants my life and my property; have been
+mistaken for a wandering Turk twice, and have never suffered violence,
+rudeness, or the loss of a pennyworth. For the peasants, the commonfolk
+of all the Balkan peoples, I have come thus to a hearty liking; their
+priests and politicians (with a few exceptions), a different feeling.
+Knowing that the massacre is the national sport in many districts of
+the Balkans; that at the outbreak of the 1912 war the death-rate by
+violence actually decreased in some quarters because the killing was
+systematised a little and put under a sort of regulation; that always
+Turks and Exarchate Christians and Patriarchate Christians are plotting
+against one another new raids and murders, still I maintain that, if
+left to themselves, if freed from the prompting of priests and
+politicians the Balkan peasants of any race are quite decent folk. So I
+wish heartily that there was fair reason to hope for peace and happiness
+for them. Is there fair reason? To that question a study of the races
+and the personalities can give clues for an answer.
+
+[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
+
+ALBANIAN TRIBESMEN]
+
+The Bulgarian is dour, dull, a little greedy, honest, very industrious.
+He is almost as much a Turk as a Slav. (I was told that during the
+Turkish occupation a Bulgarian mother finding herself with child after
+violence by a Turk brought up the child with her family, whilst a
+Serbian mother under the same circumstances killed the infant at birth.)
+The Bulgarian is very moral, marrying at an early age.
+
+The Bulgarian peasant soldiers were very honest and loyal. At Mustapha
+Pasha one night, being short of food, I tried to get bread at the
+military bakery (all bread and flour having been requisitioned for the
+army). I offered a soldier up to five francs for a loaf without tempting
+him to sell it. Finally I had to get bread as a charity by declaring
+that I was actually in want of it for food. Later, travelling between
+Silivri and Chatalja, I encountered four Bulgarian foot soldiers who had
+become separated from their regiment and were starving. They asked for
+food and I gave them all I could spare, enough for two meals. One of the
+men produced a purse and took out some coppers wishing to pay.
+
+Travelling across Thrace (then in Bulgarian occupation), I often put up
+at some military post, being invited to become a member of the little
+mess--usually an official or two and four or five non-commissioned
+officers. Nearly always I had the same experience, that I was made free
+of the stewed goat and rice, or the dish of eggs and flour, or the bread
+and cheese of the Bulgarians, and when I wished to add from my stores
+chocolate and biscuits and dates, just a scrap or two would be taken. I
+could see the men's eyes hungering for the delicacies, but nothing would
+induce them to take anything material from my stores.
+
+The Bulgarian peasant soldier and officer I found, in short, to be a
+gentleman. Yet nationally Bulgaria is not "a gentleman," and has come to
+its present sorry state, I believe, largely on that account. The old
+Bulgarian aristocracy was exterminated by the Turks. The surviving
+Bulgarian peasantry has not yet been able to produce another
+aristocracy. It is the more cunning rather than the more worthy son of
+the peasant who wins to a sort of an education--often abroad--and
+becomes the lawyer, politician, official. In very many cases he carries
+with him into a higher stratum of society few of his peasant virtues and
+all of his peasant faults. He gets an overweening pride in his own
+acuteness. He becomes arrogant, "too-clever-by-half," and intrigue
+teaches him cruelty. I can contrast vividly two Bulgarian types in a
+noted diplomat, who fancied himself a Bismarck and had about the wits of
+an office boy, and an old peasant captain with whom I travelled from
+Kirk Kilisse to Chorlu. Generalising, the "leading men" in Bulgaria are
+of a poor type (there are exceptions), the leading priests of a still
+poorer type; the people themselves are a sound people, and when the
+ambitious among them contrive to preserve their peasant virtues through
+the ordeal of education they will become a great people.
+
+The Bulgarian did not seem to me naturally cruel. All the time that I
+was with the main army I saw no trace of outrage or cruelty. I did see
+several instances of curt and merciful justice.
+
+I arrived one night at the Tchundra River alone, having gone forward
+from my ox cart because the miserable Macedonian driver and the still
+more miserable Bulgarian servant I had (I suspect he was in training for
+the diplomatic service) could not be induced to do a fair day's march. A
+vedette outpost of five men held the bridge. They took me--as I judged
+from their gestures rather than from their language, of which I
+understood only one word, "Turc"--for a Turk. But they let me stay
+unmolested at their camp fire for an hour until an officer who spoke
+French appeared. I could give several similar instances. Never did I
+feel nervous in the least when making my way alone through the country
+in Bulgarian occupation (most of the time I was alone, for after a while
+I dropped my Macedonian and my Bulgarian servant).
+
+[Illustration: _See page_ 190
+
+GREEK INFANTRY]
+
+The Turk I found disappointing. I had pictured a romantic individual
+with a Circassian harem, a stable of Arab steeds, and a fierce and
+warlike manner. I found the Turk to be rather a shabby individual;
+monogamous usually (but with the free and easy ideas as to his rights
+over Christian women which are almost consequent upon his philosophy of
+life, and cause most of the trouble when the Turk lives by the side of a
+Christian population); much addicted to sweetmeats--his shops were full
+of Scotch lollies and English biscuits. Certainly most of the Turks I
+have encountered were prisoners or dwelling in conquered country. But,
+making all allowance for that, the traditional fiery Turk of martial
+fame no longer exists, I should say, in European Turkey. The Turkish
+prisoners in the hands of the Bulgarians seemed to be glad to have
+arrived at a fate which meant regular food. In old Bulgaria I found
+Turks living quite contentedly under Christian rule, and in many cases
+following menial occupations. The boot-blacks in the streets were Turks,
+the porters were Turks.
+
+I had a Turkish driver for five days once from Kirk Kilisse to Mustapha
+Pasha. The first hour of our acquaintance he won my heart by telling me
+(through an interpreter) that since his horses had been requisitioned by
+the Bulgarians, he had not been able to get proper food for them, and he
+embraced his ponies, which were really in rather good condition. I
+applauded the noble Turk and his love for horses, and bought tobacco for
+him which he welcomed with tears of joy, as he had been without it for
+long. The horses carried the cart a gallant thirty miles that day, and
+we camped at a burned-out village. Mr. Turk set himself to enjoy a smoke
+over the fire. My own supper I prepared, and gave him some to eke out
+his bread and cheese, and then told him to water and feed the horses.
+Because the well was 400 yards away and the tobacco was sweet and the
+fire comforting, the Turk had no wish to do this, but was ready to let
+them go through the night without food or water. I had to threaten to
+flog him (and to start to do it) before he would attend to the horses.
+Yet after that incident I slept in the cart without a thought that the
+Turk would consider himself offended and cut my throat. As a matter of
+fact the touch of the whip did not rankle with him, and at Mustapha
+Pasha when, the journey ended, I gave him a little money for himself,
+Mr. Turk prostrated himself in gratitude.
+
+I believe that the warlike virtues have died out of the Turk in Europe.
+Of other nation-making and nation-maintaining qualities he has none. In
+all Turkey from the borders of Bulgaria to the lines of Chatalja, I
+found no roads, no street lamps, no drainage, no water supply (I was not
+in Adrianople). Except for a few agricultural peasants I found nowhere
+the Turk doing any useful work. In a characteristic Turkish town the
+shops were kept by Greeks, the industries carried on by Greeks,
+Macedonians, and Bulgarians. The Turk was the tax-collector, the
+official, the soldier, and did none of these things well. That acute
+observer of the Turkish character, Mr. L. March Phillips, in his book
+_In the Desert_ upholds that the Turk is impossible as a civilising
+force:
+
+     Or, for a third example, come to the craggy hills of Southern
+     Albania, and mix, if but for half an hour, with the armed
+     shepherds, as wild and intractable as their own crags, or as the
+     gaunt dogs which guard their flocks from the wolves, and whose
+     attentions to strangers you are apt to find such a nuisance. You
+     will understand from the first glance at the men more of the
+     interminable Balkan difficulty than newspapers and books can ever
+     teach you. These are the fellows who swoop down from their peaks on
+     the mixed races of the plains and carry fire and slaughter through
+     village and valley. Their natural aptitude for fighting and
+     foraging, for bearing things with a strong hand, for cowing the
+     weak and feeble, for vindicating the old "might is right" theory,
+     is written all over them. You see it in their gait, glance, walk,
+     and manner, you hear it in every accent of their voice, you feel it
+     in their individuality and presence.
+
+     These are specimens of the Moslem type, the type that stops short
+     at the virile virtues, that makes the best host and worst neighbour
+     in the world, that has many splendid qualities to recommend it, but
+     to which all that makes life profound and inexhaustible is a dead
+     letter. It is the most strongly marked and salient type I have ever
+     met with. There is the Moslem walk, the Moslem scowl, the Moslem
+     courtesy, the Moslem dignity, the Moslem carriage and attitudes and
+     features, the Moslem composure, and the Moslem fury. All these
+     traits and characteristics, inspired by the same temper, expressing
+     the same ideal, conspire to depict a figure so notable that you
+     must be a dull observer indeed if you cannot pick him out from a
+     mixed crowd as you would pick out a Chinaman in the London streets.
+
+     Some people say it is the religion that creates the type. "There,"
+     they say of Mohammedanism, "is a religion that breeds men." It
+     would be truer, I think, to say that Mohammedanism recommends
+     itself to men at a certain stage of their development, and has for
+     that stage a natural affinity. Every race goes through a time when
+     the virile estimate of life and the splendour of self-assertion
+     seem the finest things possible. It is at this time it is open to
+     the attack of El Islam. The Moslem religion answers all its needs
+     at this stage, and lays good hold of it, and having once laid hold
+     of it, it sanctifies the ideas belonging to this stage, and so
+     tends to restrict the race to it. There is no instance on record of
+     a people having embraced Mohammedanism and afterwards achieving a
+     complete, or what gives promise of ever becoming a complete,
+     civilisation.
+
+During my stay in the Balkans I found no certain evidence of Turkish
+cruelty. There was plenty of evidence offered by the Bulgarians, but it
+usually smelt of the lamp of some patriotic journalist of Sofia. Once
+near Mustapha Pasha--when all the war correspondents were cooped up
+under strict censorship, prevented from seeing any of the operations
+around Adrianople--the Bulgarians found it necessary to burn a village
+for strategic reasons. The chance was offered to the Press photographers
+of seeing this, if it were represented in their pictures as the
+atrocious burning of a village by the Turks. I believe that the offer
+was accepted by some. The "atrocities" by Turks, regularly recorded by
+the Bulgarian Press Bureau were, as far as the main theatre of
+operations was concerned, founded on similar evidence. During its first
+phase I believe that the war was very humanely conducted on all sides.
+In Macedonia, of course, there were some deplorable atrocities, but I
+believe the normal massacre conditions there were rather bettered than
+otherwise by the outbreak of war.
+
+To sum up the Turk, I do not think he will survive for long in Europe.
+As a matter of hard fact there really are not many real Turks left in
+Europe.
+
+The Serbian, with his highlander the Montenegrin, is a far more engaging
+personality than the Bulgarian. He lacks the stubborn, dour courage of
+his neighbour, but he has more _elan_. In military life the Bulgarian
+would supply incomparable infantry, the Serbians be superior in
+artillery and cavalry. In social life the Serbian is convivial and
+hospitable. Whilst the Bulgarian wishes to go to bed early that he may
+get up early and push the road he is making along a little farther, the
+Serbian will keep you at his dinner-table drinking and singing until far
+into the morning. He is not troubling about a road.
+
+When the Serbian army came to help the Bulgarians in the siege of
+Adrianople, the contrast between the two armies and the two camps was
+great. The Serbian men were smarter, better equipped, their quarters
+cleaner, and from their mess tents would come by night the sound of
+revelry. One might imagine Roundheads and Cavaliers camping side by
+side.
+
+The Allies did not fraternise. For that I blamed the Bulgarians. The
+positions in regard to the Serbian aid at Adrianople, as I understood
+it, was this: that originally the Bulgarians engaged to help the
+Serbians in their campaign, but this was found not to be necessary: that
+the Bulgarians, later, asked for aid against Adrianople, and it was
+promptly given without any conditions being imposed, though there then
+already existed in the Serbian mind a desire to modify the territorial
+partition arrangement they had with Bulgaria and this request for aid
+might have been taken as a good opportunity for raising that question. I
+believe those to be the facts, but since in Balkan diplomacy it is
+always a matter of finding out the truth of comparing and weighing and
+deducing from a series of lies, I cannot state them with absolute
+certainty. If they are true, the Serbians behaved like gentlemen in not
+raising against an ally an awkward question at a time when help was
+asked. Quite certainly the Bulgarian authorities behaved like boors to
+their Serbian friends. Things were made as unpleasant as was reasonably
+possible for them in all kinds of niggling ways around Adrianople. The
+Serbians behaved well under great provocation.
+
+During the first sessions of the Balkan Peace Conference I had
+opportunities of observing the same good behaviour on the part of the
+Serbians. Bulgarian diplomacy was, as usual, very exasperating. It was
+not only that Bulgaria was insisting on having the hide, horn, and hoofs
+of Turkey, but also on rubbing salt into her bare carcase. The Turkish
+delegates approached the Serbians--whose territorial demands as far as
+Turkey was concerned were satisfied, but who had a pending controversy
+with the Bulgarians--hoping to get some moral support against Bulgaria
+and being prepared to offer something in return. The Serbian attitude
+was sharply loyal, to stand by Bulgaria absolutely in regard to the
+Turkish frontier. Serbians have not been always popular in Great
+Britain, I know; but I am not alone among those who have come into
+recent contact with Balkan affairs who found them to be the best of the
+Balkan peoples.
+
+[Illustration: _See page_ 194
+
+PODGORICA, UPON THE ALBANIAN FRONTIER]
+
+The Greek is even more engaging and hospitable than the Serbian; but his
+fluent, flexible, subtle nature does not inspire full confidence. At
+the outset of the last Balkan war there was one thing that all were sure
+of: that the Greeks would not fight. All were wrong. The Greeks did
+exceedingly well in the field, even allowing that they sometimes shaped
+their campaign quite as much by considerations of jealousy of their
+allies as of hostility to the common enemy. But it is a fact that the
+Greek has usually more stomach for politics than for fighting, and that
+his subtle nature allows him to live comfortably in a state of
+subjection, which would irk a more robust mind. He is by instinct a
+trader: and a trader is not an uncompromising patriot as a rule.
+
+The Greeks live side by side with the Turks in Turkey with fair comfort.
+At Kirk Kilisse, after the Bulgarian occupation, a deputation came to me
+from the Greeks to assure me that they would much prefer to live under
+the Turk than under the Bulgar: and asking that England should be urged
+to support autonomy for Thrace. Well, the Turks are back at Kirk
+Kilisse, and I suppose my Greek friends are happy. Eloquent, courteous,
+kind folk they were. I stayed in the house of one for some days, and
+will remember always the gracious kindness of the man and his wife. I
+had to leave one morning at four to catch a troop train which would
+carry me a few miles towards the front. The couple were up and had a
+fire and tea ready for me. As I had a fever at the time, and a long
+laborious journey ahead, the whole Greek race seemed good that morning.
+
+Later at Chorlu after I had got permission from the military commandant
+to go forward to Chatalja, and he had helped me to hire a cart and
+horses and to stock up my provisions, the permission was withdrawn
+because Bashi-Bazouks were raiding along the line of communication. I
+might go later, he said, when a body of troops was moving. I objected
+that time was precious; and I had my revolver, and there was the driver.
+
+"Ah," he said sweetly, "he is a Greek. He will run away."
+
+After that manner the Bulgarians always spoke of the Greeks. In this
+case the Bulgarian was possibly right. I finally coaxed permission to go
+forward, on condition that I took a patrol of one Bulgarian soldier, and
+I was allowed to borrow a rifle and some ammunition. We met no
+Bashi-Bazouks: but whilst the Bulgarian palpably was quite content to
+enter into a plan to give the Bashi-Bazouks a chance of showing
+themselves at nightfall, the Greek liked the adventure not at all.
+(Perhaps on the whole he was justified. But I was desperately eager for
+a "story," and with the Turkish regulars running away so consistently,
+to encounter irregulars suggested no real danger.)
+
+On that journey, at a little village which I cannot name between Silivri
+and Chatalja, the population was largely Greek. Some of the Greeks,
+after the Turks had fled before the Bulgarians, had discarded the fez
+and were wearing Bulgarian caps. Others held to the fez, but had marked
+on it with white chalk a cross. I formed the opinion that if by the
+fortune of war the Turks came back, those crosses would be rubbed out.
+The Greek can be very pliant undoubtedly, when he is in contact with a
+dominant people. The other side to his character--that of a hot-headed,
+argumentative, boisterous Donnybrook Fair patriotism--is developed in
+his own country where it is fed with memories of the historic greatness
+of his race.
+
+The Roumanian--the fourth national type in the Balkans to which I shall
+refer--very closely resembles the Greek in most respects. Like the
+Greeks the Roumanians are subtle, flexible, engaging. They are a
+singularly good-looking race, and Roumanian girls are sought after in
+marriage a great deal. A Serbian politician explaining to me what he
+called "a nice national balance," pointed out that the Serbians rather
+despised trade and finance. The Roumanian, therefore, came into Serbia
+to make money as shopkeeper and financier. Then the young Serbian man
+married the rich Roumanian's daughter and thus the Serbian money was
+still kept in the country.
+
+The instinct for trade has a very marked effect on the politics of the
+Balkans. The Serbian has no love for trade: the Montenegrin despises it
+quite. The Greek and the Roumanian are very keen traders with an
+inclination to escape from manual work as soon as they can. The
+Bulgarian is a trader and also fond of productive industry. So "as two
+of a trade never agree," neither Greek nor Roumanian can get on as well
+with the Bulgarian as with the Serbian.
+
+The Roumanian national polity differs greatly from the Greek, though the
+two racial types are very similar. Whilst Greece has a stormy and
+disorderly democracy, Roumania is ruled practically by an oligarchy--an
+oligarchy which during the past twelve months has won to an achievement
+which would have delighted the old Florentine Republic. Without losing a
+soldier, almost without spending a crown, Roumania has won a great tract
+of territory and established herself as the paramount power of the
+Balkans. It was a victory of unscrupulous and patient resoluteness which
+is a classic of its kind, and it was made possible by the oligarchic
+system of Roumania. The Montenegrin does not need to be considered
+separately: he is the "Highlander" of the Serbian and shares Serbian
+language, customs, and character with such modifications as the
+conditions of his mountain life impose. But the Albanian, the largely
+Mohammedan mountain type to which the jealousies of Europe have agreed
+to give a separate nationality and a separate kingdom, calls for some
+attention. The Albanian is the wildest of the Balkan types, and his
+country the most primitive. It has had no period of civilisation, and
+can hardly be said to promise to have. Its existence as a nation in 1914
+was due to the fact that the German Powers wished to have a footing in
+the Balkans for intrigue. "The creation of Albania dealt a death-blow
+to the Balkan League," said a cynical Austrian diplomatist recently. He
+was right: and the creation of Albania undertaken at the instance of
+Austria had no other purpose from the first, though it was disguised
+under the plea of anxiety for the national rights of the Albanians, wild
+catamarans of the hills, odd specimens of whom one may encounter in many
+parts of the Balkans acting as dragomans. The Albanian has many savage
+virtues. He is a picturesque fellow as he swaggers about with a
+silver-decorated armoury stuck in his waist-belt: and he is truly
+faithful to a master. But he has not the barest elements of a national
+organisation; and the Austrian Prince of Albania did not find a single
+house within all his dominion which would satisfy the housing needs of a
+respectable London clerk.
+
+Describing the march across Albania to the Adriatic coast during the
+recent war a Serbian officer wrote:
+
+     It is only by travelling as we did that real facts can be learned.
+     We who had only known the Turks by hearsay had a certain respect
+     for them. At present I feel but contempt and disgust. To think that
+     they should have held these lands for five hundred years, and kept
+     them absolutely wild and uncultivated! Prishtina, Jakovitsa, and
+     Prizrend are in every respect behind Mirigevo [a village some
+     miles outside Belgrade]. There are neither bridges nor roads, nor
+     decent dwellings to be met with in the Sanjak. Of the dirt I cannot
+     trust myself to speak. The "Ujumat" (Prefecture) of Prizrend,
+     residence of the Mutessarif, is in such a filthy condition that I
+     could not sit there for more than five minutes together. All around
+     the sofras (tables) were rags, remnants of food, tufts of dogs'
+     hair, etc., for these ate and slept with their masters....
+
+     The people are humble, cowed, moving out-of-doors rarely, and then
+     huddled together like a herd of cattle.... The peasants run to kiss
+     our hands, and bow down to the ground, but they are too frightened
+     to give a sensible answer to a plain question. They speak Serbian,
+     it is true, and cross themselves as Christians, but otherwise bear
+     little resemblance to our peasant folk. They have lived no better
+     than their masters, for themselves and their pigs share the same
+     apartment! If the pigs were let loose the Turks were sure to kill
+     them, so they were hidden indoors. The first use they made of the
+     liberty we gave them was to hunt the pigs into the open air, and
+     how the poor beasts enjoyed it! One could not help laughing at
+     their antics as they chased each other, while the children ran to
+     keep them from escaping to the woods. But the cows and oxen defy
+     description. They are like our calves, only the shape is queer. I
+     saw no vegetables anywhere. The staple diet is maize. From our
+     frontier to the sea it is the same tale of misery, helplessness,
+     and dirt. In Prizrend, after every rainfall, the people drink muddy
+     water in which none of our soldiers would care to wash. When we
+     boiled it a thick scum came on the top, which we skimmed off! This
+     is the water used by a town of 40,000 citizens; and really one felt
+     that authorities like the Turks should not be allowed to live any
+     longer. Now we feel that it is a disgrace to us to have delayed so
+     long in coming to the deliverance of our brothers in bondage just
+     outside our doors. Better late than never.
+
+     As for the independence of Albania, it would be a comical, if it
+     were not a sinister, idea. Whoever speaks of a national sense in
+     these savage hordes is either untruthful or ignorant. The Serbians
+     of this region make no distinction, as we do, between the Turks and
+     the Mohammedan Albanians. I could not get them to understand that
+     the latter were in reality brethren of the Christian Albanians with
+     whom they live in amity. I pointed out that these Mohammedans could
+     not speak a word of Turkish, but that did not help. The Serbians
+     insist that they are Turks all the same. And for all practical
+     purposes they are right. The Christian Albanians are called by
+     their race brethren "Catholics," and are hated and persecuted by
+     them just as the Serbians are hated and persecuted. The "Catholics"
+     loathe the Mohammedans and deny that they are of the same
+     nationality. But the fact remains that they speak the same
+     language. The Catholics welcomed us with joy, rendered us every
+     possible service, and often refused to accept payment. They are
+     eager to assist in our operations, acted as scouts for us, and
+     brought us precious information. Sometimes they acted on their own
+     initiative, captured, and killed their Mohammedan co-nationalists
+     without first consulting us.... The priests are the most
+     embittered. These jealous "fratres" told us they longed for a
+     Christian Government, and that the project of a united Albania was
+     insensate.... Ismail Kemal's proclamation has irritated the priests
+     about here. They will not for a moment consider a union with the
+     Mohammedan tribes or submission to a Moslem leader like Ismail. On
+     the other hand, if we evacuate this country, a terrible fate awaits
+     the Catholics....
+
+     Here I have made acquaintance with the Montenegrin troops, rather
+     different from ours! They get leave to go home and see after their
+     wives and children whenever they ask it, and lax discipline does
+     not seem to affect their heroism. They fight like lions, but do
+     nothing else except shoot birds and fish in the interval. Every
+     ship that touches here is greeted with a volley, though ammunition
+     is sometimes scarce, but the Montenegrin can better spare bread
+     than shot. He will do nothing but fight, and ships often remain
+     unladen here for days, because there are few Albanians in the place
+     to do the work. My soldiers carry sacks and burdens of all kinds to
+     and from the ships, and the Montenegrins laugh at them and say: "Is
+     that how you fight, Brother Shumadinats?" [Shumadia is a forest in
+     the centre of the Kingdom of Serbia.] They are amused to see our
+     men one day unshaven; they are most particular themselves to shave
+     each day whatever happens. The priests alone wear a beard, for they
+     are not supposed to fight.... The Montenegrin soldiers' wives come
+     once a week to look after their husbands, wash the linen, and help
+     to clean up....
+
+There is, of course, a certain amount of Serb intolerance in that
+letter, but it represents on the whole the truth.
+
+So much for the different nations of the Balkans. The personalities of
+the Peninsula might provide a happy solution for the problems which the
+conflict of these mutually antipathetic racial elements create: for
+there is no fact more clear than that the general interest of the
+countries could best be served by a wise policy of compromise and
+co-operation, bringing its different elements together as the Swiss were
+brought together by a geographical rather than a racial reason. But
+unfortunately there are no personalities alike honest in outlook and
+great in power.
+
+Four able and far-seeing men I have met in the Balkans: M. Nikolitch,
+President of the Serbian Parliament; General Demetrieff, Commander of
+the Third Army (which won the most notable Bulgarian victories), now
+commanding a Russian army; M. Venizuelos, Prime Minister of Greece; M.
+Take Jonescu, of the Roumanian Cabinet. All men of power, none seemingly
+has sufficient strength to impose his will not alone on his own country,
+but on the other Balkan States, and weld them into a Confederation which
+would be held together by a sense of common interests and common
+dangers.
+
+King Ferdinand of Bulgaria has kept for years the centre of the Balkan
+stage to the European onlooker; and is still a great enough figure to
+give pause to those Bulgarian Nationalists who would exact from him
+reprisal for the terrible misfortunes of their country. But he is a man
+of audacity rather than of courage, and his ambition has been always
+more personal than national--to be Czar of the Balkans rather than to be
+the maker of a Balkan nation. Gifted with a great deal of diplomatic
+ability and with a soaring imagination, King Ferdinand has a serious
+obstacle in his personal timidity. To play a gambler's game one must be
+prepared at times to take the great risk. But King Ferdinand has many
+fears. He fears, for instance, infectious diseases morbidly, and the
+thought of a germ in the track could turn him from the highest of
+enterprises. Perhaps it was the fear of disease rather than of wounds
+that kept him so much in the rear of his army during the 1912 campaign
+against Turkey. But whatever the cause, his absence from the front
+showed a serious weakness of character in a man who aspired to carve out
+an empire for himself. The Bulgarian authorities, deceiving the Press
+almost as assiduously for the purpose as for the false representation
+that all the destruction of the Turkish forces was ascribable to the
+Bulgarian arms, gave to Europe inspiriting pictures of His Majesty
+following close on the heels of his soldiers in a military train which
+served him as a palace. The fact was that the ambitious but timid king
+kept very well to the rear, at Stara Zagora first and afterwards at Kirk
+Kilisse, with a great entourage of secret police. And when armistice
+negotiations were in progress he kept separate from his Cabinet as well
+as from his army. Affable in manner, industrious, pertinacious, well
+aware of the advantage of advertisement (my first meeting with His
+Majesty was due to the fact that he mistook my map case for a camera,
+and sent for me to photograph him while he stood on the bridge over the
+Maritza at Mustapha Pasha), of high ability, King Ferdinand did great
+things for his adopted country, but showed a fatal weakness of character
+when he had drunk deep of the wine of success. It is the fashion to
+blame him wholly now for the wild attack on Serbia and Greece. He may
+have been in part the victim of his advisers' folly in that. But without
+much doubt he could have vetoed the fatal move, if he had known his army
+from personal observation, if he had been down to the lines at Chatalja,
+and had looked closely into the besieging forces around Adrianople.
+Common sense would have told him that the attack on his allies was
+hopeless, if strength of character had not told him that it was wicked.
+But he neither knew the facts nor understood the ethics of the position.
+
+General Demetrieff, Commander of the Third Bulgarian Army, the victor of
+Kirk Kilisse and of Lule Burgas, the reluctant attacker at Chatalja,
+impressed me as a man of fine character. For some few days I was a
+member of the officers' mess at Erminekioi, which was the headquarters
+of the Staff before the lines of Chatalja, and had the chance of seeing
+much of the general. He struck one as a frank, courageous man. He
+answered questions truthfully or not at all, and was notably kind to the
+very small group of correspondents who had got through to the front. His
+personal staff worshipped him, and told with pride that most of the
+staff work with him on the battle-field was under fire. When it was
+clear that the attack at Chatalja had failed, General Demetrieff neither
+attempted to tell falsehoods nor shut himself off from visitors. He
+ascribed the cessation of the attack to the outbreak of cholera in the
+Bulgarian lines (and the statement was probably in his mind not only the
+truth but all the truth: in any case one could not expect him to
+disclose the shortage of big gun ammunition): was avowedly disconsolate
+but not in the least discouraged. I cannot imagine General Demetrieff
+having any hand in the making of the second Balkan war against the
+Serbians and Greeks, and think that the Bulgarians had in him a man of
+honesty and courage as well as of great military skill. No other general
+of the Bulgarian Army impressed me in the same way, certainly not
+General Savoff.
+
+Of the Bulgarian politicians, M. Gueshoff, Prime Minister at the
+outbreak of the first war, and M. Daneff, chief Bulgarian delegate at
+the Peace Conference and Prime Minister at the outbreak of the second
+war, had the chief parts in the glories and tragedies of 1912-13. M.
+Gueshoff seemed a well-meaning but weak man. He was fond of insisting
+upon his English education and of advancing that as a proof of his
+complete candour. I imagine that he played no directing part in the
+drama of his country's sudden rise to power and more sudden fall, but
+did just as his king directed, sometimes probably under protest. M.
+Daneff was a more virile man, and his force of character, with little
+guidance from experience, of liberal education, or from wise purpose,
+had much to do with the downfall of Bulgaria. Of the Balkan Peace
+Conference which met first in London in December 1912, M. Daneff
+attempted from the outset to be dictator. He never lost a chance of
+being rude to an opponent or fulsome to a supporter. He diplomatised by
+pronunciamento and made a vigorous use of the minor newspaper Press with
+the idea of overawing the chancelleries of Europe. I am sure that the
+British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had nearly as much amusement
+as chagrin from the incidents of the Conference. Just when the Turkish
+delegates were being gently coaxed up to drink the hemlock, Bulgaria
+would publicly dance a wild triumph of joy, and announce that the very
+last drop had to be absorbed or Bulgaria would not be satisfied. When
+the Turkish delegates were thus startled away and all the pressure of
+European diplomacy was being brought to bear upon the Turkish Government
+to bring them back to the point, Bulgaria threatened publicly to break
+up the Conference and resume the war. Europe was given a short
+time-limit in which to act.
+
+M. Venizuelos, Prime Minister of Greece, has proved in his own country a
+great capacity for good government and wise diplomacy. There was a
+strong movement made at the outset of the Balkan Peace Conference to
+have him appointed head of the Balkan delegation. Success in that would
+have made the chances of peace better; and probably he had an
+expectation of being chosen as being the senior in official rank of all
+those present. But the jealousy and distrust of Greece was great: and M.
+Venizuelos did not prove himself the man of genius who could overcome
+the handicap which his nationality imposed. True, the task was almost
+impossible. But still nearer to the impossible would it be now to unite
+again the warring factions in the Balkans. M. Venizuelos, of the highest
+talent though he be, will not be the maker of a Balkan Confederation.
+
+M. Nikolitch, President of the Serbian Parliament, is an amiable and
+clever man with far more culture than is usual in the Balkans. He has
+translated English classics into the Serbian tongue, and is an
+industrious student of social and political philosophy. But he has
+nothing of the brute force that is needed to control the warring
+passions of the Balkan States. As the Minister of a Balkan Union to a
+great Power he would be admirable, for he has tact and wit, and a
+knowledge of the value of truth. When it was made plain that Austria was
+to have her way and Serbia no territory on the Adriatic, the
+disappointment of Serbia was bitter: and there was some special blame of
+Great Britain that she "had not considered her obvious interests," and
+brought this friendly little state to the sea. M. Nikolitch had the
+diplomat's faculty of taking a defeat smilingly. "The most unhappy thing
+about it," he said to me, "is that now Serbia will not have England on
+her frontier." It was a neat touch to speak of the sea as British
+territory.
+
+There remains to be considered M. Take Jonescu, who is credited with the
+chief share in the unscrupulous diplomacy which has made Roumania for
+the while paramount in the Balkans. It was certainly a masterpiece of
+Machiavellianism, applying the tenets of "The Prince" with cold
+precision, and marks its author as the master mind of the Balkans
+to-day. Give such a man a good soldier people to follow him and an
+honest purpose, and a Balkan Confederation might be achieved, with some
+further blood-letting perhaps. But it is not possible to believe that
+the Roumanians, frivolous, pleasure-loving, untenacious, could impose
+their will for long upon the coarser-fibred but more virile Slavs of the
+Peninsula.
+
+No, there is not a personality in the Balkans to-day at once forceful
+enough, honest enough, and skilful enough to give the Peninsula a union
+which would enable it by means of a bold decision now to ensure internal
+peace and freedom from outside interference. A great man could build up
+a greater Switzerland, perhaps, of the Slavs, the Greeks, and the
+Roumanians in the Balkan Peninsula with Great Britain, Russia, and
+France as joint sponsors for the freedom of the new Federation. But one
+hardly dares to hope for such a happy ending to the long miserable story
+of the Balkans.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Adrian, Emperor, 89
+
+Adrianople, 14, 65, 68
+  description of, 90
+  Turkish occupation of, 26
+
+Adriatic coast, 150
+  Sea, 45
+
+Aegean Islands, 62
+  Sea, 45
+
+Alani, the, 10
+
+Albania, 14, 17, 62
+  condition of, 194
+
+Albanian character, 173, 193
+  massacres, 89
+  mountains, 152
+
+Alexander of Battenberg. _See_ Alexander of Bulgaria
+
+Alexander, King of Bulgaria, 47
+  abdication of, 48
+
+Alexander the Great, 6
+
+American war correspondents, 99
+
+Amurath I., Sultan of Turkey, 27
+
+Amurath II., Sultan of Turkey, 27
+
+Architecture, 158
+
+Arjenli, 131
+
+Armenia, 6
+
+Art, applied, 163, 164
+  modern, 164, 165
+
+Arts and crafts, 162
+
+Asia Minor, invasion of, 17
+
+Asiatic invasions, 11, 12
+
+Assyria, 6
+
+Astrakhan, 9
+
+Austria, 28
+  and Serbia's trade, 125
+
+Austrian ambitions in the Balkans, 45, 46, 49
+  war correspondents, 99, 105
+
+Autonomy of the Christian Provinces, 57
+
+
+Bajayet, Sultan of Turkey, 27
+
+Balkan Alliance, 18, 21, 45, 53, 55, 57, 59, 74, 174, 194
+  possibilities of, 82
+
+Balkan casualties in the war, 87, 88
+  character, 124
+  Committee, the, 91
+  development, 174
+  diplomacy, 56, 57
+  disunion, 75-77, 79
+  mountains, 3, 151
+
+Balkan Peace Conference, 1912, 75, 78, 80, 81, 176, 188
+  second phase, 84, 85
+  spokesman, 83
+
+Balkan peasants, 176
+  peoples as linguists, 148
+  politicians, 176
+  priests, 176
+  statesmen, 78, 92
+  War of 1912, 46, 54, 107
+  War resumed, 84
+  women, 159
+
+Baltic Sea, 4, 6
+
+Banking, 168, 170
+
+Bashi-Bazouks, 26, 39, 43, 190
+
+Basil, the Bulgar-slayer, 14
+
+Beetroot cultivation, 169
+
+Belgrade, 16, 124, 146
+  siege of, 27
+
+Bessarabia, 32
+
+Birrell, Major E. T. F., R.A.M.C., 143
+
+Bishop Babylas of Montenegro, 36
+
+Black Sea, 3, 5, 120
+  littoral, 150
+
+Blood-mist, the, 175
+
+Bosnia, 39, 49
+
+British Army Medical Detachment, 69
+  opinion, 83
+  Red Cross Hospital, 143
+  surgeons, 142
+
+Bucharest, 30, 109
+
+Buda-Pest, 109
+
+Bulgaria, 13, 22, 37
+  an autonomous principality, 44
+  beaten, 88
+  boundaries of (1830), 44
+  foreign influences in, 97
+  government of, 40
+  liberation of, 30
+  under Serbian rule, 17
+  a Turkish province, 22, 25
+  and universal suffrage, 40
+  at war, 127, 128
+
+_Bulgaria of To-day_, extract from, 23
+
+Bulgarian ambitions, 61
+  aristocracy, 179
+  army of 1912, 41
+  atrocities, 43
+  atrocities in Macedonia, 51
+  autonomy, 40
+  blunders, 86, 87
+  censorship. _See_ Censorship
+  character, 177-180
+  church, 26
+  commissariat, 69-73, 128
+  crops, 168
+  diplomacy, 85-87, 188
+  diplomatic intrigues, 49
+  Exarchates, 52
+  finance, 64, 168
+  generals, 59
+  hegemony, 48
+  hospitals, 143
+  industry, 167
+  medical service, 138, 139
+  military tactics, 66-71
+  mobilisation, 59, 63, 134
+  peace negotiations, 79
+  peasants, 141
+  preparedness for war, 55, 127
+  Press Bureau, 185
+  revolt of 1875, 39, 47
+  Secret Service, 60
+  system of land tenures, 168
+  War of Liberation, 42
+  women, 135
+
+Bulgars, 3, 4, 9, 11, 13
+
+Buxton, Mr. Noel, M.P., 158
+
+Byzantine art, 164
+  traditions, 164
+
+
+Cafes, 160
+
+Carpets, 164
+
+Caucasus, the, 9
+
+Censorship, the, 94, 98, 100, 101, 115, 121
+  humours of the, 100
+  the second, 102
+
+Cettinje, 35
+
+Charles, King of Roumania, 39, 41
+
+Chatalja, 61, 68, 117
+
+Cherson, 5
+
+Chersonesos, 5
+
+Choleraic dysentery, 133, 138
+
+Chorlu, 68
+
+Churches. _See_ Architecture
+
+Congress of Berlin, 44, 45
+
+Constantinople, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 20, 26, 43, 61, 62, 137
+  fall of, 27, 89, 90
+
+Cotton-spinning, 171
+
+_Credit Foncier_ system, 169, 171
+
+Cretan excavations, 4
+
+Crimean War, 32, 38, 107
+
+Crusaders, the, 20
+
+Cyrillic characters, 35
+
+
+Dacians, 6, 7
+
+Daneff, M., 202
+
+Danilo I., King of Montenegro, 33
+
+Danube, 2, 3, 7, 28, 146
+
+Dardanelles, the, 62
+
+Decius the elder, 8
+
+Decius the younger, 8
+
+Demetrieff, General, 67, 136, 198, 201
+
+Disease, ravages of, 140
+
+Dnieper River, 5
+
+Dniester River, 5
+
+Don Cossacks, 15
+
+Don River, 3
+
+Dual Monarchy, problems of, 28
+
+Dulcigno, 46
+
+Durazzo, 14
+
+
+Eastern Church, 16
+
+Eastern Rumelia, 48
+
+Egyptian influences, 4
+
+Embroideries, 164
+
+Emigration, 166
+
+English war correspondents, 99
+
+Enos, 88
+
+Ermenikioi, 136, 138, 201
+
+Eski Sagrah, 96, 97
+
+Eski Zagora, 20
+
+European capital, 174
+  diplomacy, 39, 40
+  diplomacy and Roumania, 85
+  finance, 64
+  policy, 50, 55
+  policy in 1912-13, 45
+  Powers, interest of, 96
+  Powers, intervention of, 58
+
+Euxine, 6
+
+Exarchate Christians, 177
+
+
+Ferdinand, Czar of Bulgaria, 47, 49, 50, 108, 152, 154
+  his character, 198-201
+
+Ferdinand of Coburg. _See_ Ferdinand of Bulgaria
+
+Filimer, King of the Goths, 9
+
+Finno-ugric tribe, 3
+
+Forty Holy Martyrs of Bulgaria, 14
+
+Fratricidal war, 87
+
+Frederick Barbarossa, 16
+
+French war correspondents, 99
+
+
+Gallipoli, Peninsula of, 75
+
+Geographical position, 1
+
+Gepidae, 11
+
+German Powers, 193
+
+German war correspondents, 99
+
+Getae. _See_ Dacians
+
+Goths, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 20
+  invasions of, 75
+
+Greco-Bulgarian disunion, 79
+  _entente_, 76
+
+Greco-Turkish wars, 107
+
+Greece, 37
+
+Greek atrocities in Macedonia, 51
+  character, 188-191
+  church, 22
+  civilisation, 4
+  coast, 150
+  diplomacy, 93
+  Empire, 2, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 20
+  Empire, fall of, 21
+  governors in Roumania, 31
+  official report, 76
+  Patriarchates, 52
+  patriotism, 167
+  Prime Minister. _See_ Venizuelos
+  traditions, 164
+  war of independence, 82
+
+Greeks, 3
+
+Grey, Sir Edward, 85, 203
+
+Grivica Redoubt, 41
+
+Gueshoff, M., 202
+
+Guttones. _See_ Goths
+
+
+Haskovo, province of, 168
+
+Health resorts, 153
+
+Herodotus, 5
+
+Herzegovina, 39, 49
+
+History, Early, 3, 4
+
+Hodgkin, Mr. T., 5
+
+Hospital services, 141, 142
+
+Hungarians, 11, 13, 28
+
+Huns, 4, 7, 11, 13
+  invasions of, 9, 75
+  origin of, 9, 10
+
+
+"International Socialist," 132
+
+Ionian letter-forms, 5
+
+Istros, 5
+
+Italian Peninsula, 1
+  war correspondents, 99
+
+Ivan the Black, of Montenegro, 35
+
+Ivankeui, battle of, 67
+
+
+Janina, 75
+
+Japanese censorship, 98
+
+Jirecek, 2
+
+John Asen, Czar of Bulgaria, 14
+
+John Hunyad, 27
+
+John Paleologos, Emperor of Greece, 21
+
+Jonescu, M. Take, 198, 205
+
+Jostoff, Colonel, 138
+
+Journalism, 108-110
+
+
+"Kara George." _See_ Petrovic
+
+Kirk Kilisse, 42, 65, 139
+
+Korea, 58
+
+Kossova, 21
+  battle of, 27, 33
+
+Kustendil, 168
+
+Kustendjix, 5
+
+
+Lazar, King of Serbia, 27
+
+Levant, the, 4, 5
+
+Liberation, progress since the, 165
+
+Lithuania, 5
+
+Lombards, 8, 11
+
+London Morning Post, 54, 100
+
+"Lord Salisbury's principle," 93
+
+Lule Burgas, 68
+  battle of, 72
+
+
+Macedonia, 44, 74
+  atrocities in, 51, 52, 53
+  Empire of, 6
+  massacres in, 51, 89
+
+Marcianople. _See_ Schumla
+
+Mariano Bolizza, 36
+
+Maritza River, 90
+
+Marmora, Sea of, 62, 120, 150
+
+"Mass at St. Sofia," 146
+
+Massacre, the national sport, 177
+
+Medicinal springs, 153
+
+Mediterranean littoral, 2
+  Sea, 4
+
+Michael, Czar of Bulgaria, 15
+
+Michael the Brave, of Roumania, 30
+
+Midhat Pasha, 169, 170
+
+Midia, 88
+
+Military attaches, 105, 107
+
+Milosh Obrenovic of Serbia, 38
+
+Mineral resources in Serbia, 172
+
+Minoan civilisation, 2
+
+Moesia, 3
+
+Mohammedanism, 24
+
+Moldavia, 13, 29, 38
+
+Montenegrin character, 173, 193
+  printing press, 35, 36
+  resistance of Turks, 34, 35
+  war with Austria, 35
+  war with Turkey, 35
+
+Montenegro, 17, 28, 32, 33, 37, 46
+
+Montenegro, government of, 33
+
+_Morning Post_, the. _See_ London
+
+Mount Athos, monastery of, 16
+
+Music, national, 163
+
+
+Napoleon, 17, 34
+
+Napoleonic strategy, 113
+  wars, 32
+
+Near East, the, 107
+
+Near Eastern character, 78
+
+Neytchef, Dr., 131
+
+Nicolaieff, General, 42
+
+Niemen River, 5
+
+Nikolitch, M., 198, 204
+
+Nish, 43, 125, 126
+
+Nordic tribes, 4
+
+Norman knights, 13
+
+Normans, 4
+
+Northern invasions, 13
+  peoples, 2
+
+North Sea, 4
+
+Nova Sagora, 135
+
+Novi-Bazar, 46
+
+
+Odessa, 5
+
+Odessos, 5
+
+Olbia, 5
+
+Old Serbia, 74
+
+Oriental Express, 156
+
+Ostrogoths, 7
+
+Ottoman. _See_ Turks
+
+Ox wagons, 130, 131
+
+
+Patriarchate Christians, 177
+
+Peace Conference. _See under_ Balkan
+
+Peace of Bucharest, 88
+
+Peace of London, 85, 88
+
+Persians, 11
+
+Peter the Great of Russia, 34
+
+Petrovic, George, 29, 37
+
+Philip of Macedon, 6
+
+Philippopolis, 8, 44
+  capture of, 20
+
+Phillip, Roman Emperor, 8
+
+Pig-raising, 171
+
+Pirot, 43
+
+Plevna, 41, 46
+
+Pomaks, 22
+
+Prehistoric state, 2
+
+Press influence, 83, 84
+
+Protective tariff, 171
+
+_Punch_ cartoon, 54
+
+
+Religious proselytising, 30
+
+Rhodopes, the, 151, 152, 158
+
+Roads, 167
+
+Roman Church, 16
+  civilisation, 8
+  Empire, 1, 2, 89, 168
+
+Roman Empire, decline of, 7
+  fall of, 8
+  traditions, 164
+
+Romans, 4, 7
+
+Rose cultivation, 169
+
+Roumania, 7, 13, 22, 29, 37
+  Greek governors in, 31
+  an independent principality, 32
+  King of, 48, 49
+  liberation of, 30, 31
+  Russian garrison in, 32
+  subjugation of, 2
+  a Turkish province, 29
+
+Roumanian character, 191, 192
+  diplomacy, 92
+  independence, 38
+  war correspondents, 105
+  women, 160
+
+Roumanians, 3
+
+Runes, 5
+
+Russian ambitions in the Balkans, 44, 45, 49
+  garrison in Roumania, 32
+  hospital at Kirk Kilisse, 143
+  intrigue in Bulgaria, 48
+  liberators of Bulgaria, 25
+  Power, 31
+  war correspondents, 99
+
+Russo-Japanese War, effect of, 50
+
+Russo-Roumanian alliance, 31
+
+Russo-Turkish War of 1828, 32
+  of 1877, 41, 43, 170
+
+
+Salonica, 46, 62, 76, 79
+
+Sanitary arrangements, absence of, 140, 141, 142
+
+Saracens, 4, 12, 20
+
+Savoff, General, 117, 202
+
+Schumla, 8
+
+Scutari, 74, 75
+
+Scythia, 5, 8, 9
+
+Seaside resorts, 150, 151
+
+Sebastopol, 5
+
+Seleniki, 129
+
+Semitic invasions, 4
+
+Serbia, 15, 17, 26, 37
+  as a European Power, 16
+  local government in, 172
+  Turkish garrisons withdrawn, 38
+  a Turkish province, 27
+
+Serbian character, 186-188
+  contest for liberty, 38
+  diplomacy, 93
+  emigration to Austria, 28
+  Empire, 33
+  Empire, fall of, 27
+  forests, 172
+  Highlanders, 33
+  increase of territory, 46
+  liberation, 37
+  mineral resources, 172
+  mountains, 151
+  trade, Austria and, 125
+  women, 172
+
+Serbians, 3, 4, 9
+
+Serbo-Hungarian Alliance, 27
+
+Servians. _See_ Serbians
+
+Shipka Pass, 42, 129
+
+Silistria, 168
+
+Simeon of Bulgaria, 163
+
+Slav traditions, 164
+
+Slavs, 3, 4
+
+Slivnitza, battle of, 48
+
+Sofia, 61, 145
+  the Military College, 42
+
+Southern Slav Art Exhibition, 165
+
+Stambouloff, 48
+  assassination of, 49
+
+Stara Zagora, 42
+
+Stephen Dushan, King of Serbia, 16, 17, 26, 162
+
+Stephen the Great, of Moldavia, 30
+
+Sweden, 6, 9
+
+Switzerland, 58
+
+
+Tapestries, 164
+
+Tartars, 4, 11, 13
+
+Tchobanoff, Lieutenant-Colonel, 131
+
+Tchorlu, 42
+
+Tchundra River, 90
+
+Teutonic knights, 13
+
+Theodore Komnenus, Czar of Greece, 14
+
+Thessaly, 2
+
+Thrace, 2, 8, 44, 51
+  an autonomous, 80
+
+Thracian campaign, 54
+  plain, 154
+
+Thraco-Dacians, 3
+
+Thraco-Illyrians, 3
+
+Thraco-Macedonians, 3
+
+Tirnova, 44
+  Church of the Forty Martyrs, 14
+
+Tobacco cultivation, 168
+
+Tourist possibilities, 151, 152
+
+Trade, Early, 5
+
+Trajan, 7
+
+Transylvania, 30
+
+Travel facilities, 155-158
+  risks, 161
+
+Treaty of Adrianople (1830), 44
+
+Treaty of Berlin, 38, 45, 46
+
+Treaty of Bucharest (1913), 17, 171
+
+Treaty of London, 174
+
+Treaty of Paris (1856), 32, 38, 39
+
+Treaty of San Stefano, 43, 44, 46, 47, 50
+
+Trenches, 145
+
+Triple Alliance, the, 50
+
+Turco-Russian wars, 107
+
+Turkey-in-Europe, 61
+
+Turkish Army, 106
+  atrocities, 19, 26, 29, 31, 52
+  character, 181-186
+  corruption, 61
+  cruelty, 185
+  delegates at the Conference, 188
+  domination in Bulgaria, 23, 24, 25
+  entrenchments, 137
+  invasion, first, 15
+  occupation, 17, 20, 158
+  offer of reform, 56
+  Power in Europe, decline of, 45
+  prisoners, 136
+  procrastination at the Peace Conference, 81, 84
+  rally, 88
+  rule in Bulgaria, end of, 26
+  rule in Serbia, 28
+  spy incident, 133
+  tyranny, 24
+  villages, 138
+
+Turks, 3, 4, 13
+  before Vienna, 21
+
+Turnu-Severin, 7
+
+Tyras, 5
+
+
+Unity of Balkans. _See_ Balkan Alliance
+
+
+Valerius, Emperor, 89
+
+Vandals, 7
+
+Varna, 5
+
+Venetians, 16
+
+Venice 34
+
+Venizuelos, M., 83, 198, 203, 204
+
+Vienna, 109
+  siege of, 21
+
+Villages, the, 154
+
+Visigoths, 7
+
+Vistula River, 5
+
+Vlad the Impaler, of Wallachia, 30
+
+Volga River, 3
+
+Volgars. _See_ Bulgars
+
+Vranga, 43
+
+
+Wallachia, 13, 29
+
+Wallachians. _See_ Roumanians
+
+War correspondent, the, 98, 99, 102, 103, 107, 126, 185
+  advice to, 110
+  new school, 107, 108, 113
+  passing of the, 122
+  a personal record, 116
+
+War of Liberation, 85
+
+Winter sports, 152
+
+
+Yamboli, 42, 65, 69
+
+Yanina, battle of, 67
+
+
+Zablack, 35
+
+
+THE END
+
+_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW SERIES OF COLOUR BOOKS
+
+EACH CONTAINING 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+
+_Large Square Demy 8vo._ Price =7/6= net each. _Bound in Cloth._
+
+(_By Post_, 8/-)
+
+
+BULGARIA. By Frank Fox.
+
+This book will give to the reader an adequate idea of a wild and
+little-known corner of Europe, but to those who look upon Bulgaria as a
+place of endless massacres and savage inhospitality the book will bring
+many surprises. The Bulgarian artist shows us a land in which
+civilisation is evident and art not unknown. The Australian author (who
+was with the Bulgarian Army as correspondent for the London _Morning
+Post_ during the former Balkan War) writes of a people whom he found
+usually courteous, gentle, and worthy. His personal experiences of the
+Bulgarian peasantry are vividly interesting, and hardly less interesting
+is the brief sketch of the early history of Bulgaria, the country where
+the Roman Empire met its doom.
+
+
+ITALY. By Frank Fox.
+
+Messrs. A. & C. Black have published many books on the various cities of
+Italy with colour illustrations. But before this they have not offered
+to the public a handy volume giving a general idea of the country which
+was the cradle of Christian civilisation. Whether to tourists who
+contemplate a visit to Italy or to those who cannot hope for that
+pleasure, _Italy_ will be welcome. The author has left to the vivid
+pictures the main task of describing Italian scenery, and devoted most
+of his text to telling of the spirit of the people and showing how the
+Italy of to-day is linked up with the Italy of the Roman Republic and
+the Italy of the Renaissance.
+
+
+SWITZERLAND. By Frank Fox.
+
+This volume will give to the reader a good knowledge not only of the
+scenery of Europe's playground but of the Swiss people and their life. A
+little nation which has supplied Europe at various times with bands of
+both heroes and waiters, which is celebrated alike for generous
+hospitality to refugees and the most strictly commercial hospitality to
+tourists, has a paradoxical aspect whatever way it is regarded. The
+author seeks to describe rather than to explain the Swiss, but gives a
+closely compressed record of their early history as some key to the
+curiously contradictory elements of their national character.
+
+
+ENGLAND. By Frank Fox.
+
+The task of describing England was for good reason given to a visitor to
+the Mother Country. It will be found that Mr. Frank Fox has done his
+work well. A stranger to England will have his attention drawn to the
+features of her life which are most characteristic: residents in England
+will find interest in studying an impression of their country from a
+sympathetic Australian observer. Within a very small compass there is a
+bright living picture of England, her history, her institutions, her
+people, her green country-side, her historic monuments.
+
+
+FRANCE. By Gordon Home.
+
+Mr. Gordon Home's chapters cover many aspects of French life, and give
+the reader a comprehensive vision of the land from Boulogne to Mentone
+and Bayonne. Political life, home life in town and country, the duel,
+marriage arrangements, the navy, architecture, the doctor, the priest,
+the _midinette_, the constitution, the great rivers, the
+watering-places, hunting, vine-growing, and school life are a few of the
+many topics that come in orderly sequence in the book. After reading the
+volume and studying the pictures, even those who know France well will
+probably understand some aspects of it more clearly, and those who have
+yet to cross the English Channel will go there understanding much that
+might otherwise puzzle them.
+
+
+AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. By G. E. Mitton.
+
+It was through Austria-Hungary that the great crisis in Europe arose.
+Yet how few people know anything about the country, although both in the
+matter of national history and scenery Austria-Hungary is well worth
+considering. Its story of romance, its scenery is not behind any in
+Europe, though, except for the Tyrol and the Dolomites, it is far from
+well known. In the reconstruction of political frontiers which will
+necessarily follow the War, the races of the Dual Monarchy will have to
+be taken into account, and it is essential to know something of them if
+we would be abreast of the times.
+
+
+Published by A. & C. BLACK, Ltd., 4, 5, & 6 Soho Square, London, W.
+
+
+
+
+OTHER BOOKS ON
+
+THE BALKAN PENINSULA
+
+
+CONSTANTINOPLE
+
+Painted by WARWICK GOBLE
+
+Described by Prof. ALEXANDER VAN MILLINGEN, D.D.
+
+CONTAINING 62 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+
+_Published at_ =20/-= _net, now offered at_ =7/6= _net_ (_by post_, 8/-)
+
+     "Mr. Goble has succeeded in a difficult task. He has 'caught the
+     glory' of the Queen of Cities, and, in the wealth of material for
+     choice, has seized on those features which, though the most skilful
+     pencil can convey them only inadequately, best represent their
+     wonderful variety to those who have never seen them."--_Daily
+     Chronicle._
+
+
+GREECE: MONTENEGRO: TURKEY
+
+In the "Peeps at Many Lands" Series
+
+EACH CONTAINING 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+
+_Large Square Crown 8vo, bound in Cloth._
+
+(_By post_, 1/11)      Price =1/6= net each      (_By post_, 1/11)
+
+     This series of little travel books for young people who are of an
+     age to be interested in the countries of the world and their
+     peoples has steadily grown on account of its wide popularity. Each
+     book is written in a simple and very attractive style, and thus the
+     child gains valuable instruction and a vivid interest in countries,
+     great cities, and peoples through the sheer pleasure of reading and
+     by examining the beautiful illustrations. The youthful reader
+     becomes absorbed in descriptions of how children work and play, and
+     in the way of living, in the various countries of the world.
+
+     The volumes are handsomely bound and splendidly illustrated in
+     colour.
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF THE ALLIED NATIONS
+
+A SERIES OF ESSAYS BY
+
+PAUL STUDER, M.A., Professor of the Romance Languages in the University
+of Oxford.
+
+ALEXIS ALADIN, Ex-member of the Russian Duma.
+
+PAUL HAMELIUS, D. es L., Professor of English Literature in the
+University of Liege.
+
+J. H. LONGFORD, B.A., Professor of Japanese in the University of London.
+
+R. W. SETON-WATSON, D. Litt., New College, Oxford; Author of _The
+Southern Slav Question_, etc.
+
+SIDNEY LOW, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford, Lecturer on Imperial and
+Colonial History, King's College, London University; Author of _The
+Governance of England_, _A Vision of India_, etc.
+
+Edited, with an Introduction and Appendix, by SIDNEY LOW
+
+_Crown 8vo._      Price =2/6= net      _Cloth._
+
+(_By post_, 2/10)
+
+     "No student, or even casual lover of books, and certainly no
+     patriot, should hesitate to read this remarkable little
+     volume."--_Daily Express._
+
+     "A valuable supplement to the books relating to the negotiations
+     preceding the war and to the campaign itself."--_Aberdeen Journal._
+
+
+Published by A. & C. BLACK, Ltd., 4, 5, & 6 Soho Square, London, W.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+Both "Serbia" and "Servia", "country-side" and "countryside" are found
+in this text.
+
+At p. 54, the phrase "I was through the war" may be an error for "I went
+through the war", but has been left unchanged.
+
+There is only one typo: "howevre" (on p. 21) has been changed to
+"however".
+
+Four words in the index have a different spelling from that used in the
+text. Kossovo, Nova Zagora, Chorlu and Zablak are indexed as "Kossova",
+"Nova Sagora", "Tchorlu" and "Zablack" respectively. These spellings
+have been left unchanged.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Balkan Peninsula, by Frank Fox
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALKAN PENINSULA ***
+
+***** This file should be named 39688.txt or 39688.zip *****
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