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
[54]
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
[55]
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
[56]
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.
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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.
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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
[59]
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,
[60]
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.
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
[61]
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
[62]
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
[63]
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
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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
[65]
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
[66]
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
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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.
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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.
[69]
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
[70]
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
[71]
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.
[72]
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, a