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.