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]