Introduction

The story which is written here by myself and my friend, from the Bulgarian and Turkish sides of the great and amazing struggle in the Near East, does not make any presence of being a history of the war. That must be written later, not by newspaper correspondents, but by victorious and defeated officers, who actually took part in the great battles, or by men who have access to a mass of official information regarding the strategy and tactics of the campaign, and to the detailed dispatches by the Generals which at present are unavailable. In this book there are but meagre descriptions of the battles which were fought with such startling rapidity by the Bulgarians and their allies, and with that irresistible courage and genius which has destroyed the power of the Turk in Europe. The reason for this omission is a simple one. Neither I nor my friend, nor any other correspondents, were allowed to see very much of the fighting, and as I shall have to tell later, we were treated by the military authorities on each side, not as war-correspondents, but almost as prisoners of war not as friends, but as enemies of dangerous character.

To the reader it may seem, therefore, on first thoughts, that there is no reason for this book, and that the story we have to tell is not worth telling. But I hope to show before the end of our tale is reached that we saw things worth describing, and worth remembering. For after all, paradoxical as it may seem, a battle is not the most interesting thing in warfare. War, as I know now for the first time, consists of more than battles. The drama of war is not played out in those few hours when the guns are firing, and the troops are advancing upon the enemy's positions. It is not merely a spectacle of bursting shells and of hills veiled by clouds of smoke which is almost all that one may see on a modern battlefield. I have seen the shells bursting, day after day, and the smoke rolling from the batteries; my friend, who writes this book with me, was close to the guns at Lule Burgas, and was for several weeks at the front, on the lines of Chatalja; but neither of us looks back upon those scenes as the most memorable in our recent experiences.

A battle is soon fought, soon won, and soon lost. It is, as a rule, on such an extended front that no man may see but a little corner of it. But the drama of war is more than that. It is in what goes before the battle and what follows it. It is the strange amazing drama of great peoples suddenly breaking away from all the familiar toil and duties of their life, and plunging into a fantastic and terrible adventure; when all that mattered to them before no longer matters, when all the purpose of their previous life is altered to a new purpose, which is escape from death, and the killing of men. It is a drama of innumerable small, acts of courage, of fear, of hardships, of misery, of horror, of despair, when death itself, so enormous a tragedy in ordinary life, becomes a commonplace familiar thing, so that living men hardly turn their heads to glance at those who fall dead; when death, so terrible in days of peace, is indeed, to many men, a welcome gift, ending the sufferings that are unendurable. All that my friend and I have seen, and it is worth the telling if any tale should be told.

There is much more in this drama of war. Before the battle there is the business the wonderful business of calling peasants from the fields and making soldiers of them, of so bewitching them by magic spells, called by other names in official bulletins and newspaper articles, that men of intelligence, who have spent their lives scraping at the soil, laying by little savings after long days of labor, and proud of their small possessions, in farms and homesteads, are not only willing but eager, and delirious almost with enthusiasm, to abandon their work, to give UP their oxen and their carts, to leave behind them all that they held dear in life, and to go at the word of command, from men they have never seen, to fight a death struggle with unknown enemies.

This business of war is the strangest thing in life, and upon the efficiency of it lies the result of the battle. The Bulgarians, as I shall have to tell, did their business well and they had great intellects at work organizing the war, with a practical skill and business genius, which ensured victory before a shot had been fired, and what is more important, after the shots had been fired.

The feeding of the army, the clothing of the army, the doctoring of the army, the transport of the army, these things were of paramount importance, and to my mind of immense and thrilling interest. And, as some historians of war forget, the real enduring drama of it is to be found not in military facts and figures, but in the human side of it. To students of history it is good and necessary to know the exact disposition of troops on the battlefield, the conduct of certain regiments, the mistakes or brilliant actions of commanding officers, the geography of the battle, and the statistics of victory or defeat, but to most of us these things are dull, and do not speak.

What is not dull, is the human psychology of war, the spirit of a people, conquering or beaten, the emotions of war and the, when they are in the midst of great perils, when they are trying to find a way of escape from a pursuing death, when they are starving and wounded, and tortured by disease. It is of this human side of war that we have to tell, and although many of the incidents in this narrative may seem trivial, it is perhaps because of their triviality that the reader may realize vividly the real meaning of war.

It is a trivial thing for instance to record the successful cooking of a turkey or a pig, and the joy of the subsequent meal round a camp fire. But in war a meal to men who do not know when they will find another is an incident which stands out in heroic proportions. It is trivial to describe the overturning of a bullock wagon on a dark night in the midst of a retreat; but in war, the righting of the wheels, the rescue of the stores, may mean the one chance which lies between life and death. This book is full of such small episodes, and yet I hope they will not be read with impatience, for if so the narrative of any campaign is not worth writing, nor worth reading. In numberless small episodes the meaning, the misery and the spirit of war are to be found.

In this narrative my friend and I have told our own little adventures in an intimate and personal way, and I hope that may be pardoned, because it seems to me that our readers may find amusement and interest in our troubles and trials, and see behind them the innumerable adventures of other men all playing their parts in this great drama in the mountainous country of the fallen Crescent. One part of this story is at least uplifted by the immensity of its tragedy. My friend, Bernard Grant, more lucky than I in the seeing of things, more unlucky in personal hardships, was in the full tide of the retreat after the battle of Lule Burgas, and with pen and camera records that awful chapter in the history of warfare when literally and symbolically the Turk was broken in Europe, and staggered along the way of death to the gates of Constantinople, his last refuge. Nothing since the retreat of Moscow is comparable to this, when cholera lay in ambush for those who had escaped from the Bulgarian guns, and when the remnants of a great army, panic-stricken, leaderless, hopeless, staggered past in a rabble rout leaving upon their track the countless bodies of dead comrades and dead horses as food for dogs and birds of prey.

The Turks, during those recent days, have paid the price of their old sins, of their old cruelties, of their long record of misgovernment, corruption and tyranny. Pity now, and not hatred, is their due, even from their enemies. For the innocent have suffered with the guilty, and the virtues of humble men have been outweighed in the scales of Fate by the infamies of a ruling caste.

This story of personal adventure and of journalistic impressions may obtain a little dignity because it belongs to the chronicles of a campaign which has altered the map of Europe and fulfilled the vengeance of centuries.

Our cordial thanks are due to the Graphic, which I represented with the Bulgarian army, and to the Daily Mirror, for which Bernard Grant worked on the Turkish side, for permission to use material obtained in their service.

With the Army of the Cross

The War-Cry in Servia

It was early in September of 1912 that Europe became alarmed by the menace of war. In all the newspapers there were reports of a general mobilization in the Balkan States, of a martial excitement becoming more noisy and clamorous among the Christian peoples of Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Greece, of a general challenge issued to the Turk in Europe. Macedonia, that vague and troublesome territory which for generations has been the theatre of guerilla warfare, of vendettas, of massacres and murders between Christians and Turks, was to be the cause of quarrel. The liberation of Macedonia from Turkish rule was the watchword adopted by the rulers of the Balkan States to give righteousness to their cause, and to gain the sympathy of other Christian peoples. That each of the States, now joined in an offensive and defensive alliance, had other and more selfish interests to serve, was perfectly clear to all but the simplest of souls. Servia had long set her: heart upon an "open window "on the shores of the Adriatic, Montenegro coveted the Sanjak of Novi Bazar, Bulgaria was ambitious to bring within her frontiers the rich country of Thrace, and to thrust the Turk back into Asia Minor, Greece would not be baulked of Crete, and all these allies in the Balkan confederation had old scores which they were eager to wipe out in Turkish blood. Here, then, were dangerous chemicals of human passions which, if united, would create one of the biggest explosions in history. But in spite of scare headlines in his newspaper the man in the street, in London, Paris, or Berlin, did not believe that explosion would take place. ' The Great Powers will intervene," he said "The Great Powers are at work." That was perfectly true. The Great Powers were at work in their usual way, watching a dangerous situation, discussing it in their council chambers, receiving reports from their ambassadors, exchanging diplomatic notes, issuing through "inspired "organs reassuring words which seemed to promise peace. It is probable that the diplomatic gentlemen who sit in the Council Chambers of Europe as the representatives and wire pullers of the Great Powers began to realize, rather painfully as September waned, their own impotence, and became aware that they were in the presence of strange and passionate forces, beyond the control of old-fashioned diplomacy, and breaking up all the rules of the game. The words "too late "began to be spoken in the clubs, and written in leading articles. The intervention of the Great Powers came at the eleventh hour, and was ignored by the rulers and organizers of the little Powers, who for a long time had been making their plans with a secrecy, a skill, and a swift energy which, now that they have been revealed to the whole world, are acknowledged as a marvellous work of organization. They were playing a gambler's game, and the risks were heavy. Upon the hazards of the game depended the life and death of their kingdoms, but they were prepared to take the risks, having gone too far to draw back and play for safety. From a business point of view they were bound to force a war with Turkey and to finish it, one way or the other, quickly. There were financial gentlemen behind the scenes who had advanced large sums of money for the supply of war material, and would not be kept waiting indefinitely for repayment. They forced the pace. The Kings of Servia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece had pledged their credit up to the hilt. They had drained their coffers dry. They had called up all the resources of their kingdoms to the last ounce of gold. War was the only way out, and a successful war. The Great Powers might issue as many diplomatic notes as seemed good to them, but this situation had gone beyond them. There was another and stronger reason why intervention was too late. The peoples of the Balkan confederation would not be held back in their desire for war. All their pent-up hate against the Turk for his oppression, for his cruelties, for his long tyranny, all their heritage of vengeance, stored up in the centuries, demanded satisfaction. They would turn upon their own rulers and wreck their kingdoms by wild revolutions if international diplomacy was again to trick them out of their passionate desire. It was a psychological moment in Europe when the passions of several peoples, united by a common bond of hate, were ready to burst forth. The lid could no longer be kept down upon these human cauldrons of seething excitement. For once at least in the history of warfare, the rulers, the diplomats, and the financial gentlemen, the wire-pullers of war, had behind them the burning enthusiasm of the men whose bodies were to bear the brunt of battle, and of the women who were to make the greatest sacrifice.

One of the first signs of the inevitability of this war was the assembling of the war correspondents, in "The Street of Adventure," and their departure to the Near East. These men, my comrades and friends, are the harbingers of war, the "vultures "as they have been called. Many of them had last met in the hot sun of Tripoli, some of them came hurrying back from distant countries, and now, with a grim cheerfulness, they had their passport endorsed in the Servian, Bulgarian and Turkish embassies, and prepared for a new campaign. I had the good fortune to be appointed special correspondent of The Graphic and Daily Graphic, with the additional and somewhat alarming task of providing sketches for stay-at-home artists. I was provided with an immense number of note-books and pencils sufficient to write a history of the world with credentials which should satisfy any suspicious foreigner of my harmless and useful character, and with sufficient money to ensure food and lodging in a long campaign. I was, in fact, encircled with gold, for I wore it in a digger's belt round my waist, and under my waistcoat, so that I should lose it only with my life. One article of equipment offered me by my editor I looked at askance, and declined with thanks. It was a heavy Browning revolver, which had been the property of a former war-correspondent. I had an uneasy feeling, however, that I might be the first victim of its deadly powers, and decided that I would keep strictly to the character of a non-combatant. There were moments in the days that followed when I rebuked myself for leaving behind that handy weapon, and one of them was when I was attacked by a pack of wolf -like dogs on the outskirts of a Turkish village. Another time when I hankered after that abandoned Browning was when the Bulgarian Censor refused to pass my first sketches of Mustafa Pasha. Perhaps, after all, however, it was a good thing that I went unarmed.

I was almost the last war-correspondent to leave London, and with my one companion, Mr. Bussey of the Westminster Gazette, I hurried across Europe, afraid that I might be too late to join the Bulgarian forces, and even to get through by rail to their headquarters. The journey was an easy one to Belgrade, and here I halted, and was compelled to wait for a few days before a train left on its way to Sofia. Although impatient at the time, I do not now regret this temporary delay, as I was able to study the spirit of war in Servia before making acquaintance with the Bulgarians, who are very different in their characteristics.

My first view of Belgrade was from the broad waters of the Danube, as I crossed in the ferry boat from the Hungarian bank. The white walls and red roofs of this town were bathed in sunshine. Belgrade seemed a city of peace secure from all enemies, and unexpectant of war. At the sight of it three young men on the ferry *boat raised their hats and cheered. They were Servians who had come from Austria as volunteers. One of them looked like a young actor, with a pale face and long black hair. He pointed to a soldier pacing on the fortifications, with the sun glinting on his bayonet.

"In a little while," he said, "we shall all be chasing the Turks. We will show them how the Servians can shoot!" A girl by his side put her hand on his shoulder with a caressing touch and laughed airily, as though he had spoken a good jest.

A good-looking man in a bowler hat and black overcoat, like a city clerk, spoke to me in German.

"I am an agent for aeroplanes," he said. "I am bringing over three biplanes. It is a wonder the Austrians let them through." He laughed, and then said with a queer catch in his throat, "I believe we are going to surprise Europe. This war will be a quick thing when it begins."

These words on a boat across the Danube set my pulses beating. Simple as they were, they conveyed to me a sense of the unnatural excitement which the spirit of war had stirred in such men as the long-haired boy with the pale face, and in this man with the bowler hat like a city clerk. Then, when I landed, I plunged into an excitement of my own, for on the quayside, after my passports had been scrupulously examined by a very fat officer with a very gorgeous uniform, my luggage was pounced on by a band of hairy brigands, who without paying the slightest attention to me, proceeded to fight among themselves for my bags. They shouted and cursed each other, and then exchanged lusty blows, and it was full twenty minutes before the victors piled my luggage on to a miserable looking cab drawn by two lean horses, and allowed me to depart after heavy payment. I now found that I was in extreme peril, for my coachman whipped up his sorry steeds and started off on a wild career over the roads of Belgrade that is to say over rock strewn quagmires, gaping pits, and ruts like deep ditches. The carriage lurched now to one side and now to the other, with its wheels deep in the ruts, or perched high upon piles of loose stones, and at times it seemed that only a miracle could save me from instant death. Never have I seen anything like the streets of Belgrade before the war, when an elaborate plan for repairing them had been checked in the midst of chaos by the calling out of all able-bodied workmen to the Colours.

I found the city still waiting for the news of a war which seemed so long delayed after the preliminary challenge that many people were becoming skeptical of its beginning. It was a city abandoned by all its men except those too old and those too young to be called up from the first reserves of the Servian army. It was a city of restless expectancy, full of peasant women whose husbands had gone to the front, and elderly shopkeepers who had no assistants behind the counters and few customers. They were all waiting for the declaration of war, and for the news of the first battle, but no word had yet been published to relieve the tension.

Yet there were crowds of men about the streets who slouched about in an aimless way, carrying bundles on their backs, or with their hands thrust deep into their breeches pockets. They were elderly men who belonged to the last reserve, and were waiting for the word to join their battalions. Many of them had come from remote Servian villages, and their costumes were of startling variety and colour. Some wore sheep-skin coats, with the shaggy wool inside, and the skin decorated with crude paintings or garish embroidery. Others had brown woolen vests and a loose under-garment of the same material, reaching to their knees. Nearly all of them wore loose gaiters worked with red stitches or woolen buskins of elaborate patterns. Others wore flat oval sandals almost as big as a tennis racket. It was curious to see the sentries standing outside the Royal palace with these peasant leggings and peaked shoes showing beneath their military coats. Even their uniforms were things of shreds and patches, for the whole supply of modern uniforms had been used for the army on its way to headquarters and the front, and the soldiers on garrison duty in Belgrade had to be content with the blue coats which had been discarded after the assassination of King Alexander.

Soon after my arrival at Belgrade I saw a picturesque cavalcade clattering through the streets. They were mounted peasants from the country districts, and they were as wild a set of men as one might find in Europe. Their horses were lean and shaggy, with wooden saddles made of sticks tied together, and with reins and stirrups of coarse rope. The men had long black hair beneath sheepskin caps or broad felt hats, and short brown jackets with loose shirts tied about with coloured cloths.

The women who had lost their husbands for a while, some of them forever, were doing the men's work in the fields and in the market-place. I was interested to see the immense crowds of women coming from the churches where they had been praying for their men. They seemed to carry their household goods about with them, like gypsies on the tramp. They were laden with great bundles which were hung on to heavy notched sticks, from which also were suspended earthenware bottles, boots, and domestic utensils. These women were ablaze with gaudy colour. They wore heavy woolen kirtles, generally of red and blue stripes, tucked up round the waist, and woolen or leather aprons embroidered with floral patterns. Like the men, they wore also coloured gaiters or red socks and flat leather sandals. It was not an uncommon sight to see a woman walking with bare feet and legs, though her body was clothed in the thickest garments in spite of the warmth of the October sun.

While I was in Belgrade the news came that Montenegro had fired the first shots in the war and was advancing victoriously. But here in Servia there seemed to be no hurry to begin. Their statesmen were temporizing with the great Powers, still "considering" the diplomatic notes. Their chief anxiety was to gain a little more time so that, they might assemble all their fighting men and collect their munitions of war. Some of the big guns had still to be delivered. The supplies of shells had not reached the front. But the enthusiasm of the people was wild and unrestrained, and they were more impatient than their rulers. The call to the Colours had been answered by the peasants, by the townsmen, by clerks and shopkeepers as though it were the invitation to a national festival in which religion was mingled with merry-making.

I saw a good deal of all this. A holiday feeling was in the air. In the villages the clang of the anvil sound of the saw, the call of the ploughman to his bullocks ceased as though the Sabbath bells had rung, for the blacksmith, the carpenter, and the laborers in the fields left their work to join their battalions. The men who had been called gathered in groups outside the village inns and were surrounded by excited women. It was the women who seemed to be urging their men on and firing them with enthusiasm. Every Servian sweetheart was eager for her lad to join in the war against the Turk the Terrible Turk, whom they had been taught to hate in their nurseries and in their churches, and in tales of old barbarities round the winter hearth-sides. Every Servian sweetheart had already made her boy a hero, however stolid he seemed in his sheep-skin coat, however dazed he looked at this sudden call from the familiar things of daily toil. She put a medal about his neck, blessed by the priest, and a proof against bullets. As additional safeguard she gave him a charm which he wore in a little bag next to his heart. It was to be a Holy War, a new crusade against the Crescent, and so these fighting men went to the front, strengthened by the prayers of the church, by the blessing of the priests or popes, as they are called by whispered words of old mothers who pulled their boys' heads to their breasts, and said: "God is with you, little one. He will shield you from all harm. He will give power to His own side."

The women of Servia gave a brave example of courage to their men. Four years ago they enrolled themselves in a "League of Death," making a vow to die rather than surrender the liberty of their country to Austria or to any other enemy. They practiced shooting, and old women and young vied with each other in becoming good shots. It was an extraordinary sight to watch those peasant girls and women of good class standing shoulder to shoulder, armed with rifles, and drilling like men, and lying prone before the butts, with a shooting instructor in command. A friend of mine, Mr. T. E. Grant, the brother of my collaborator in this book, was made an honorary member of the League of Death, with much ceremony, and has in his possession the silver medal with a design of the skull and crossbones, which is a proof of his membership. He was warned solemnly not to be seen with this medal in his possession by any Austrian or Turk, for it would lead him into serious trouble. This women's League of Death was perhaps a little theatrical in its object. The Servian women did not join the fighting ranks of their army in the war against Turkey. But their display of martial spirit increased the enthusiasm of the men, and in Servia the spirit of war thrilled like an electric charge to the most desolate farmsteads and to the tiniest hamlets. Everywhere people gathered together, not to work, but to talk. There were straggling processions of peasants winding down the hillsides and along the village roads, followed by women and children. From afar one could hear the sound of their singing. In the market squares they gathered round village orators who poured forth fiery eloquence, praising these poor peasants as heroes and Christian champions. Here and there before a wayside icon or Calvary a solitary woman bowed her head with clasped hands, praying under the open sky and in the public gaze for the man who was dearest to her in the world, and who had gone forward with the fighting line. Down some of the roads passed long lines of baggage wagons and ambulance wagons lumbering slowly along rough tracks as though already laden with wounded, hidden by white canvas and marked by a blood red cross; and here and there I could see against the sky-line the silhouettes of mounted men, and the flash of light on guns and wheels. Servia was collecting its army, hurrying up its materials of war, abandoning all the work of peace.

Yet in spite of these signs of martial preparation, this turmoil of excitement in places where, as a rule, there is a drowsy quietude, it was difficult for me to realize that these people were preparing for a grim and terrible struggle, in which death would be the victor, whoever won. In Belgrade, in spite of so many of its male citizens having departed, the normal things of life seemed to continue. The business of the city seemed to go on, quietly and languidly. A stranger would not have known without his newspaper that this was the capital of a State which was only waiting for the last word before plunging into war. With this knowledge I understood the significance of little things, the feverish way in which a man seized upon a newly-published paper, the emotion of two men seated at a cafe table arguing with nervous, restless hands, the groups of the last reservists standing at the street corners as though waiting for some drama to begin, the sudden rush to windows as a body of infantry passed down a street, led by dapper officers who smiled up to the windows as they passed; the cheers and shouts that greeted one of those straggling bands of peasants who came in from the country, without uniform and without arms, but with the look of men who were spoiling for a fight.

I sat with Servian officers in a cafe* and found them gay fellows, but it seemed to me, perhaps unjustly, that, in those days before the war, when they laughed and raised their glasses, and said: "To our first dinner in Constantinople," their gaiety was a little forced and covered a secret anxiety. They were not quite sure then of the weakness or the strength of the Turk. They were already wondering what Austria would do in the event of Servian victories or defeats. They were uneasy, also, with a tense expectancy, and the delay in declaring war was setting their nerves on edge. The ordinary citizens suspected Austrian spies everywhere, and I happened to be one of the victims of their suspicion.

Looking back upon the incident now I can laugh at it, but it was awkward at the time. Shortly after my arrival in Belgrade I was arrested as a spy, and was lucky in escaping a night in the cells. In company with two other war correspondents I went to the railway station to enquire whether there was any chance of a train to Sofia. The station had become a camp of reservists waiting to go to the front, and with their baggage piled about them they lay and squatted on the station steps, sleeping, or waiting with the patience of dumb animals. The doorways were guarded by rough-looking soldiers in hairy coats, with fixed bayonets. The scene struck me as strangely picturesque, and I pulled out my note-book to make a sketch of it.

I had scarcely roughed in the outlines of the station when one of the soldiers came up to me, and after watching for a few moments, tapped me on the shoulder, pointed to the sketch, and straightway broke forth into an outburst of language, the threatening tone of which was the only sense I could make of it.

I spoke to the man in French, English and German, but he knew nothing but Servian, and entirely misunderstood my wealth of gesticulation. It was clear enough that he took us for Austrian spies, and we looked at each other with smiles that were not altogether cheerful, when after further speeches in Servian we were placed under arrest.

We were promptly taken through the town, attracting the unpleasant attention of passers-by, and feeling like criminals caught red-handed in crime, until after a long walk over the abominable roads we arrived at the police headquarters. Here we were taken before one of the officers, a young man with a solemn face and suspicious eyes, who bowed to us as we entered with our guard, and then listened to the long explanation which centered round my captured note-book. The officer regarded my unfinished sketch upside down, and it appeared to me that he took the gravest view of it, as well he might, if judged as a work of art. Unfortunately the language difficulty again presented itself, for the officer could not speak one word of English, French, or German. Undaunted by this he interrogated me at length in his own tongue, and seemed to imagine that my silence in answer to his questions was due to my guilty conduct.

My friends and I pulled out our passports and other documents and exhausted ourselves in the endeavor to prove our identity as English correspondents. The officer examined the passports, but it was obvious that they only served to increase his horrible suspicions. He motioned us to our seats, spoke some rapid sentences to the guard, and then, ignoring us completely, smoked a cigarette and stared up at the window. A long and painful silence reigned in that room. My friends and I shifted in our seats, exchanged uneasy glances, whispered, coughed, smiled, but the young officer smoked on with sublime impassivity. I began to be seriously alarmed, not for my safety, but for my dinner. I was already getting very hungry.

Finally our suspense was ended by the appearance of a dirty, beery, and blear-eyed old fellow, who spoke atrocious German and announced himself as police interpreter. Through him we were interrogated by the officer. The first question was, '' Are you Austrian?" which we answered with a chorus of "No!" The second question was "Are you Italian?" Again we protested our entire innocence of any blood but pure English. After a great deal of questioning as to our business in Belgrade and especially as to the meaning and purpose of my unfortunate sketch, the officer had a long and whispered conversation with the snuffy old gentleman who had succeeded miserably as interpreter, and finally told us, through that medium, that we were free to leave Belgrade at the earliest possible moment. It was a doubtful kind of compliment, but we accepted it gladly, and after having shaken hands soberly with the young officer breathed again the air of liberty.

The affair was trivial enough, but it was a sign of the times, when in Belgrade every foreigner was suspected as an Austrian spy, until the contrary had been proved, and where the nervous tension was so great that the sketch of a railway station seemed to have a most dangerous significance.

Belgrade during those days before the war was not a cheerful city. There were no theatres, for the actors had put aside their grease-paints and put on the livery of war, and only in one restaurant was an orchestra, which played patriotic airs to the elderly men who had been left behind. When darkness fell the city was very quiet, only solitary figures hurried through the ill-lighted streets, and after ten o'clock no one seemed alive, except a few soldiers.

Outside the King's Palace a new building which has taken the place of the old building where the ill-fated Alexander and his queen, Draga, were killed the sentries paced up and down with fixed bayonets, and their footsteps echoed in the solitude. Away on the hill above the Danube the great building of the Headquarters Staff had lighted windows, across which shadows passed. From the ramparts there came, now and then, the shrill note of a bugle. The garrison was awake and watching.

A Servian friend pacing by my side listened to the bugle note, and grasping my arm said: "To-morrow, I think, the war will begin."

"Are you nervous?" I asked.

"War is a dangerous game," he said. "Who can tell which way it will go?"

At that moment there was no man in Europe who could tell. But in a few days the revelation came, for the Turks were already in retreat.

The Tocsin in Bulgaria

It had been easy to reach Belgrade. It was difficult to get away. Day after day all passenger trains were held up while the lines were used for the munitions of war, which were being sent along in enormous quantities to the base of the Bulgarian army, and to the Servian stations of Nisch and Sarabrot. All this was done without undue haste, in perfect order, and with magnificent organization. The preparations for war were being made with clockwork regularity and with splendid precision of effort. At last it was notified that a train would go with passengers to Sofia, and I said farewell to comrades in Belgrade. Among them were Major McHugh of the Daily Telegraph, Mr. Charles Hands of the Daily Mail, Mr. Frank McGee of the Daily Mirror, Captain Osborn of The Times, and Mr. Norregard of the Daily Mail, famous men in Fleet Street, and good fellows all. They wished me God-speed and envied me, for wonderful stories had reached them of the generous things in store for war-correspondents from the military authorities in Bulgaria. It seemed that we were to be provided with horses and servants, that we were to be fed by the army, and that we were to have full facilities to go to the front. They did not anticipate such generous treatment from the Servians, and were busy searching for their own horses, servants and provisions. Little did they know the painful truth awaiting me.

I shall not soon forget that journey to Sofia. It was not war, but it was still less magnificent. Before the train started there was a wild stampede on the platform by a battalion of peasant reservists and all sorts and conditions of people who had been waiting for the first and perhaps the last chance of getting through to Nisch, and on to Bulgaria. I narrowly escaped death from naked bayonets, which jabbed about in the midst of a maelstrom of surging humanity, storming the doorways and clambering upon the roof of the train. When at last I got on board I found myself wedged in the corridor between piles of baggage, soldiers, peasants, and foreign journalists, with the prospect of a long journey in the most uncomfortable situation. "A la guerre comme a la guerre," and I put up with the discomfort cheerfully, but was anxious about provisions. I had only a piece of cheese and a little drop of brandy, while fellow passengers prophesied that it would be two days before we reached Sofia, with luck. The prophecy was fulfilled, and if I had had to stay fixed in between the baggage in my corridor, without food, I think I should have died before reaching the journey's end. But a lady was my good angel. She had taken possession of a slip of a carriage, with exit on one side only, and, with her little girl and one friend, had made a private and comfortable sanctum for herself in this overcrowded train by locking the door and pulling down the blinds. To the honor of all the rough fellows who were wedged with us in the corridor it must be said that they respected that lady's compartment, and never attempted to open it. But she took pity on me when I was nearly fainting with exhaustion and invited me inside. I accepted with gratitude and made friends with the lady's daughter, an elfish little beauty of ten years, whose vivacity and gaiety and unceasing interest in all the strange scenes about her were delightful to see. She gave me my first lesson in Bulgarian, done into French, and accepted, very gravely and graciously, a piece of my cheese in exchange for chocolate. I sing the praises of the little one, for she showed a fine courage when grown-up men were faint of heart, and was still gay when all of us were gloomy. For that train journey was no joke. We stopped at every wayside station, as it seemed interminably, and at last at night we were turned out on to the platform of Sarabrot, hungry, chilled to the bone with a biting wind and a hard frost, and without a place on which to lay our heads. Here we waited all night until the dawn, and the one room in which there was a shelter from the wind was crowded to suffocation by peasants lying asleep on their bundles and filled with a warm, foul heat that sickened me. It was a weird scene in the dim light of flickering lamps. A few well-dressed ladies sat drowsing among the hairy peasants whose snores made a rumbling music through the room, and one gentleman excited my admiration because among all the queer costumes of the Servian villages, among these peaked caps, leather coats, baggy white breeches and woolen leggings he stood immaculate in a frock overcoat and tall hat, as though he had just stepped out of the Rue de Rivoli. He was a French journalist on his way to the front. Outside the station door there was all night long the tramp of soldiers, as battalion after battalion of Servian troops marched up to entrain for their headquarters. Officers moved up and down the ranks with lanterns which threw pallid rays of light upon those grey-clad men. Presently a long troop train came into Sarabrot and the soldiers were packed into open trucks so tightly that they could not move. Their bayonets made a quick-set hedge above each truck, and for more than an hour these men were kept waiting before the train carried them away through the frosty night. They were very silent. There was no laughing or singing now. They talked to each other in low voices, as though the darkness held some terror for them. For the first time I realized the grim reality of all this business in the darkness. There was something rather horrible in all those peasants being carried away like cattle to the fighting lines. They were like dumb-beasts going to the slaughterhouse.

It was a night of queer conversations. They come back to my memory as though through the blur of steam round the stove in the crowded waiting room. One man slouched up to me in the dim light and said: "I guess you're an Englishman, anyhow?" I returned the compliment and said "You're an American." But I was wrong. He was a Bulgarian born and bred, but had been in America for years and had now come back in a thin flannel suit and a straw hat from a township in the Western states.

"I heard the call," he said, "and was ready to take my place in the firing line. I shall be glad to give Hell to the Turks."

A strange fellow and a strange adventure! As the days passed I met many queer types of Bulgarian reservists who had heard the call and answered it, because in their blood there was the same hatred of the Turks.

The journey came to an end at last, and in Sofia I said farewell to my little Bulgarian fairy who all through the night had sung little songs to herself and smiled with dancing eyes at the peasant soldiers in their heavy blankets and at the passing battalions. To her war was a curious and fascinating peep-show; as yet she did not know the horror of it, nor its tragedies. Her mother knew, though she spoke bravely about the officer husband who had gone with his comrades to the front.

Sofia at last! In a little while I too would be on my way to the front. So I fondly believed, though as the days passed this belief began to wane. But I watched the preparations for war with an absorbed interest, and for a little while at least was content with my surroundings.

The war spirit reigned in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, which since the 'eighties has grown from a Turkish village into a great city with many splendid buildings. Outside the old white Mosque with its tall and slender minaret, the one thing of beauty which has been inherited from the Turks, there passed all day long small companies of soldiers heavily laden in their field kit, and bands of Macedonian exiles who had volunteered , for the war. Smart Bulgarian officers drove about in pony-carts, two-horsed drosckies, and rare automobiles, or paced hurriedly about from the ministry of war to the headquarters of the garrison, stopping only for brief salutes and handshakes with their comrades in arms. Through the streets there was the rumble of bullock-wagons and forage-carts dragged by buffaloes who stared at all this activity with sullen eyes, resenting their captivity and their labor. As in Belgrade, there were more women in the town than men, and they stood in the doorways or in the market-places with children clinging to their skirts, as though, now that their men had gone away, they had no other household duties. These brown-skinned, black-haired, liquid-eyed women in their embroidered skirts, striped kirtles, white petticoats and red stockings were amazingly picturesque. Their heavy aprons were worked all over with fantastic patterns in coloured wools, and many of them wore white scarves about their heads and shoulders, almost like the women of Mohammedan towns.

With a grave and quiet dignity priests of the Orthodox Church, wearing high black caps and long black gowns, passed among these crowds of soldiers and peasants and women and children, and now and then a young soldier ran across the street to kiss the hand of one of these bearded priests and to bend a knee before his blessing.

I watched the army of Macedonian recruits pass through Sofia and followed them on to the plain of Slivnitza, the old battleground between the Servians and Bulgarians, where with a patient enthusiasm they were learning the simplest evolutions of military drill. There were about five thousand of them, and they seemed to me the most picturesque fellows in Europe. They marched by with a long and swinging stride, old men who remembered many a massacre of their brethren by the Turks and many orgies of wild and terrible revenge, with young lads who had inherited the tradition of hate against the Moslems, who had made Macedonia a place of terror.

I was astonished to see girls from eighteen to twenty years or so dressed in the rough sheep-skin jackets and white woolen trousers worn by the men, and taking their places in the ranks. The drummers beat their pigskins with wild passion which stirred the Macedonian blood, and there was the squeal of primitive bag-pipes as the little army of volunteers paraded on the plain.

For hours they went through their exercises and never seemed to tire, and at intervals they shouted strange war-cries, and gave vent to shrill and far-carrying cheers, and flung up their fur caps into the air. At a little distance in the shadow of the great mountain which dominates Sofia, was one of the Macedonian encampments, with low tents of canvas on hoops, and huts built of straw, in a corral of light carts with their shafts thrown up like flag-staffs. Bullocks and buffaloes roamed on the outskirts, and as the darkness fell the light of camp-fires threw a lurid glare upon the scene.

Then I went into the peasant quarters of Sofia, exploring the old streets which still survive from the days of Turkish rule, with wooden houses and carved doorposts and high sloping roofs. The Bulgarian peasants were sitting in little wine shops, or cross-legged in the doorways of workshops, or standing in groups outside the paper shops staring at highly coloured prints, depicting the early scenes of the war. There was a crowd of them in a gunsmith's shop, handling cheap revolvers, and studying them with greedy eyes. I do not think there were many men in Bulgaria, or many women, who did not buy some kind of firearm or deadly weapon. In some of the side streets I saw men sharpening long knives on their shoe leather and feeling the temper of the curved blades.

Presently, except for a few soldiers on garrison duty, Sofia was abandoned by most of its active citizens and by all the troops who had filled its streets.

Day by day as the war grew inevitably nearer all the able-bodied men of Bulgarian nationality were called to the Colours and passed away to the wild country which faced the Turkish frontier. I sat with men in the cafes who a few weeks before had been teaching art, history, or economics to University students, and with men who had been busy with all the enterprises of a modern and progressive city. They found their uniforms strange and uncomfortable; they seemed to be living in a fantastic dream, in which all that matters in daily life became shadowy and insignificant. These men of peace and learning and commerce were going to fight, to lie out on wild hills, to suffer hunger and fatigue under the great sky, in the darkness of mountain passes, to kill or be killed. They did not pretend to like the prospect. It was simply inevitable. They had got to go through with it. They joked and laughed, but in the midst of their laughter there came brief silences and a joke ended in a sigh.

In a little while all these amiable, brilliant men, most of whom spoke half the tongues of Europe, and all of whom were wonderfully courteous to us war correspondents, left Sofia with the great battalions of armed peasants, with the Macedonians in their sheepskins and the Servian allies in their patchwork uniforms. I saw the last troops of mounted infantry ride past my windows. They had twined scarlet flowers about their caps and upon their rifles, and in the bridles of their horses. These flowers were as red as blood.

Sofia became very quiet, so quiet that at night the silence was unearthly. There was no clatter of horses' hoofs, for there were few horses left. The theatres and music-halls were shut, for there were no audiences, but only a few poor companies who had been stranded in this country when the war was beginning. No one was allowed out of doors after eleven at night, but often a little before that time I went for a lonely walk and paced down utterly deserted streets, and then retired before the quiet pad of wild-looking fellows with guns slung across their shoulders and long shaggy coats, who stood under the light of street lamps and stared at me suspiciously before advancing.

The King's Palace was very silent, and no lights gleamed in the windows. King Ferdinand, that man of mystery who has baffled the world, left his capital secretly on his way to his headquarters at Stara Zagora. Few people knew of his going, for the Royal Standard still floated above his palace and there was no crowd to cheer the Sovereign-General of the Bulgarian army in the field. In the same quiet way on the previous night the Turkish Ambassador had handed in his papers and driven away to the station where a train was waiting for him. His departure was the most significant event, for it was the first definite sign that all arguments had ceased with Turkey and the Powers, and that war was to begin.

But there were only one or two officials and a few journalists to watch the solitary figure of the Turk take his place in the train. There had been no picturesque or dramatic scene with the mob as spectators. Even the news that the King had signed a manifesto declaring war was withheld for some time. Secrecy and silence were the watchwords of the Bulgarian Ministers and officers. All the preparations for the war were made with an intense and wonderful secrecy never before achieved even by the Japanese. Upon the eve of war all mails and telegrams were stopped, and Bulgaria isolated herself from the rest of Europe as though she had built an iron wall around her frontiers.

Journalists were unable to send dispatches to their newspapers without having them so heavily censored that they had no meaning or no interest. Even private letters were being censored, and correspondents had the painful duty of reading out affectionate missives to their wives to serious men in uniform.

One scene in Sofia is worth remembering. It was down at the old Turkish mosque which remains as a relic of the Moslem domination. From the top of the tall white minaret which rises above the old houses straight into the clear sky the muezzin called to prayer at sunset, and down below in the square a few Turks of the lowest class took off their jackets, spread them on the ground, and facing Mecca raised their hands to Allah before prostrating themselves. The Bulgarian peasants paid no attention to them as they passed, and these Turks were able to pray to God in their own way without fear of attack or insult from people who were at war with the Moslem Power. There was no attack upon the little Turkish community. When I asked a Bulgarian official whether there was any danger of this he seemed surprised at the question. "We are not savages," he said. "That would be the last thing possible in Sofia. Our people get on very well with the Turks in Bulgaria."

It is a strange fact that in that town were ten Turkish members in the Sobranje, or Bulgarian Parliament, who voted for the war subsidies and for all the measures preparing for the war against their own race. They had been so long in Bulgaria that their interests were closely bound up with the Balkan States. It is a strange and pitiful thing that in this twentieth century men will go out to kill other men against whom they have no personal quarrel, and with whom in peace "they get on very well."

But the Bulgarians had not forgotten the old blood feuds between Turk and Christian, nor the days of their own subjection to the Moslem rule; and though they found the individual Turk a harmless fellow in their own country, their hate was as active as ever against the Mohammedan Power in Europe. "This will be a cruel war," said a Bulgarian officer, as he sat at my table in one of the cafes at Sofia. "There will be no non-combatants and no quarter." Are not all wars cruel? Even before a shot had been fired there was misery in the Balkans, for all the supplies of life had been requisitioned for the army; the horses, the bullocks and the carts had been taken from the farms; and in the villages of Bulgaria the women and children were staring at the desolation of their homes.

It was nearly twenty-four hours after King Ferdinand had signed the manifesto proclaiming war that it was published in the capital of Bulgaria. It was known to me and to a few others an hour or two after the King had put his signature to the fateful document, and it seemed very strange that the Bulgarians in Sofia should still be ignorant that their country was in a state of war.

But I was startled in the early morning of Friday, October i8th, by the sound of shouts in the streets. Cheer after cheer came faintly up to my windows from the distance. The people knew at last. They cheered as though wonderfully good news had come to them with a promise of great gifts. But I confess that believing then in the Turks' power of resistance, and with an imagination more active and more morbid, perhaps, than that of the peasants in Sofia, I seemed to hear a melancholy echo of those cheers which sounded like the cries of wounded men. It was the screaming of the jackdaws which seldom ceased in the gardens outside the Royal Palace.

Later in the day gangs of newsboys rushed through the streets with papers containing the declaration, and the manifesto itself was handed through a side window of the War Office to thousands of people who clamored for it. It was strange how it seemed to give joy to these people whose brothers and husbands and lovers were, perhaps, already facing the Turkish guns. I think the secret of this psychological phenomenon was the enormous relief that action had taken the place of words after weeks of doubt and nervous tension. At ten o'clock the bells of Sofia began to ring. There were the big, deep bells of the old cathedral, in which a Te Deum was to be sung, and the silvery chimes of many Greek churches, and together they all blended into a vague and beautiful harmony of clashing notes like Debussy's "Cloches a travers les feuilles." It was market day, and thousands of peasant women had come in from the country districts laden with great bundles of produce and great milk cans slung across their shoulders on big poles, glistening like quicksilver in the brilliant sunlight. The women's white head dresses and short embroidered kirtles and lace petticoats made a charming picture, as they all made their way to the great cathedral. The cathedral square itself was filled with Macedonian peasants, still waiting for their rifles before going to the front, and in their sheepskins and white woolen breeches they stood in long ranks, bare-headed and reverent before the church. There were remarkable faces among them, young men with long flaxen hair parted in the middle and waving out each side, who looked like pictures of John the Baptist by Italian primitives, and also men with brown rugged faces and white beards and bent backs who, in their ragged skins and fur caps, looked like a collection of Rip Van Winkles just down from the mountains. Here and there stood a smart Bulgarian officer in a long blue cloak and top boots, and here and there a tall priest in his high black cap and long black gown with sleeves immensely wide at the end, and forked beard. The banner of the Macedonian volunteers was wreathed with flowers, and women gave posies to all the soldiers who passed.

Presently a tremendous outburst of cheering rose in great waves of sound to the high domes of the cathedral. They greeted the arrival of Queen Eleonore, who drove through the crowds in a motor-car. She passed quite close to me, and I saw how pale she was as she bowed to her people. For weeks she had been presiding over Red Cross Committees, and I think that when she went to the cathedral she was thinking how soon it would be now when all those bandages and dressings would be needed.

In the cathedral itself the scene was solemn and beautiful, and even foreigners like myself were uplifted and stirred by the emotion of a service in which the help of God was invoked for Christian nations who once more declared a crusade against the Turk. There was but a twilight in the church, in spite of the bright sun outside, but shafts of light struck between the massive pillars and played about the enormous candelabra of cut glass suspended from the roof, and glinted upon the gold leaf of the icons and holy pictures on the screen which hides the altar. The Queen knelt down before the sanctuary steps, and all around her were kneeling men and women of the highest and lowest classes of Bulgaria Ministers of State, public officials, generals and staff-officers, peasants of the poorest kind, all mingled without distinction of rank, all deeply moved, even to tears, when from the Metropolitan and his priests there came words of appeal to God for those who were fighting under the Cross against the Crescent, and, for the first time in the history of Bulgaria, prayers for the rulers of the four Balkan Powers who had put aside all jealousies and enmities to join in a general advance against the powers of the Turk in Europe. From the west end of the church the music of the choir throbbed under the roof, so softly at first that it seemed very far away, as faint as angelic voices heard in dreams, but swelling and rising into a great volume of beautiful sound, and wailing at times plaintively in Oriental half-tones which have a strange and haunting effect upon the senses. The sermon was spoken by a young priest from the high pulpit outside the sanctuary, and his voice was very clear and strong, as in the Bulgarian tongue he called to the patriotism of the people and to the spirit of their faith. "We have done," he said, "all we could to obtain justice for our Christian brothers, and yet to obtain Peace. Peaceful methods have failed, and now we must obtain justice and peace with the sword. God calls us to help our brethren, and He will aid us now that we answer the call. It is the Cross against the Crescent. The great Christian Powers have failed to obtain justice, and so to us falls this mission to wipe out from Europe the last remnants of the stain of barbarism and oppression."

Once again the Christian Church blessed her soldiers, spoke no word of anger against those who went out to kill, inflamed the ardor of men who needed no spur when the smell of blood was in their nostrils. Oh that this tragedy of war, so bloody and so damnable, should still be mocking at the spirit of love and peace preached by the ministers of the Christian Church, always trying to console themselves that the cause is just, that God is on their side! But who knows? Those who have been working behind the scenes for interests which may only be whispered? The peasants, who know no politics and are but dimly aware why war has been declared, but rely just upon the simplicity of their hatred for the Turk? Such thoughts came to me, foolishly perhaps, for after all I think this war was justified, if any war is just.

No such doubts, I think, crept into the mind of those who knelt in the old Cathedral of Sofia and who crossed themselves when the Metropolitan in his high-domed cap, in his robes of cloth of gold, a dazzling figure enframed in the glitter of the icons, raised his great cross and held it up before the people.

They went out again into the sunlight and cheered themselves hoarse again, and then waited for news. It was long in coming. For a day and a half there was no word from the front. All the war-correspondents were still kept back in Sofia awaiting orders to move forward, chafing at the long delay. Then came the first few facts, welcomed greedily by hungry souls. The Bulgarian troops had driven back the enemy. Turkish villages had been occupied. King Ferdinand himself had entered Mustafa Pasha, and had decorated his wounded with the cross of valor. The grim business had begun in deadly reality, and the Cross had gained the first fruits of victory.

Meanwhile the war-correspondents were getting anxious, impatient, despondent. The war had begun, history was being made, and we, who are the chroniclers of history, were still being kept back from the scenes of action.

Upon the first day of our arrival we were all very busy and hustling in the task of obtaining an outfit for the great campaign, and the Minister of War warned us that it would be necessary to take a good supply of provisions, and next, if not first, in importance the warmest clothing to guard against the cold, which would not be long delayed. So the war-correspondents went out on foraging expeditions, and I encountered many of my confreres in the shops, struggling with a barbarous mixture of tongues in the endeavor to explain their necessities to Bulgarian shop-keepers.

There was a great raid on blankets, sleeping-rugs, tinned provisions, cheeses, chocolates and other articles likely to be of precious value in a severe campaign; but as the officers of the Bulgarian army had obtained a good start, prices had advanced to famine rates, and the stock of such things as water bottles, kit-bags and tinned meats was already exhausted. Some of the foreign war-correspondents were already in field kit, and walked about a civilized city in heavy coats, riding breeches and leggings, with slouch hats and pouches, like brigands in a comic opera.

The Hotel Bulgarie, in Sofia, was for more than a week the headquarters of the war-correspondents of Europe. Some of them had broken their way through to the capital of Bulgaria, after journeys in troop trains which had put a severe strain upon their powers of endurance before the campaign had begun. Then there were greetings between men who had last met each other on former fields of battle or on other camping-grounds of history. Their numbers increased at an alarming rate. The war-correspondents made a big battalion in themselves! There were enough of them to guard a mountain pass. Men of the old school who had gone on the lone trail in ancient wars men like Frederic Villiers and Bennet Burleigh shook their heads in dismay at this new-fashioned assembly of young journalists, photographers, artists, cinematograph men, and descriptive writers, who came to make a Barnum and Bailey circus in the Balkans.

They were all desperately eager to get to the front. With anxiety and haste they applied to their respective legations and to the Ministry of War, and to the official censor, for the necessary permission to follow the army. A photographer's shop in Sofia did a good trade, because each correspondent had to present two copies of his photograph to the military authorities, one of which was to be attached to his permit. But the man with the camera was unduly hustled. Beads of perspiration broke from his brow when, in all the languages of Europe, determined men insisted upon having their portraits within an hour.

"It is impossible!" said the photographer in Bulgarian, German, French and English. "To-morrow you shall have them."

"To-morrow!"

We were aghast. Perhaps we should have to start to the front that night. Had not the Minister of War said: "Gentlemen, hold yourselves in instant readiness"? Had not there been a wild stampede for sheepskin jackets, sleeping rugs, provisions, and the thousand and one things which seem absolutely necessary to maintain life in a country without shops, away beyond the mountains?

But after all the photographs were in time. There would have been time enough for oil paintings of the correspondents to be presented to the Bulgarian War Office, as a souvenir of stirring tunes. For a week we were kept on tender-hooks, and six times a day each correspondent made his way to the Censor's office to inquire whether the permits would be given and when the train would go to the front. He received us most politely. All his assistants Bulgarian officers, poets and professors received us most politely. They invariably clicked their heels together, bowed, shook hands and said: "To-morrow, almost certainly."

It seemed as though to-morrow would never come. The cheeses which we had packed into our baskets against the time when we should be hungry in the field began to scent our clothes. Our sheepskin jackets hung upon the pegs and looked silly. Our water bottles mocked at us, for was there not good wine at the table d'hote of the Hotel Bulgarie? The luxury of this hotel life disgusted men who had prepared for the hardships of a campaign and would not be balked of them.

Time passed in expectancy and in despondency. It was futile staying in Sofia abandoned by all but foreign Jews, wolfish dogs, Macedonian exiles and peasant women. We had almost time to learn the Bulgarian language at least as far as the alphabet and mastered mysteries which make a Bulgarian newspaper a thing of terror, and our own name in the characters of the country, a strange and fantastic thing.

Yet laughter rang out in the Hotel Bulgarie, called the I.C.C. or the International Club of Correspondents, for there were gay fellows here. The merriest and brightest of them was a party of Italian journalists, who had been comrades in Tripoli, led into conversational adventures by Marinetti, the master Futurist, and a fellow of infinite vivacity, of explosive eloquence, of declamatory genius. At the slightest provocation he would recite one of his Futurist poems, or uphold the ideals of his destructive creed. There were other men of renown and character; the handsome sleepy eyed Ludovic Nodeau, one of the most famous of French journalists; the Marquis de Segonzac, a chic type of the French officer and sportsman; Dr. Zifferer of the Newe Freie Presse, a man of infinite resource, with a schoolboy's laugh, and a spirit of adventure; Henry Nevinson, with his quiet dignity and paladin look; Percival Phillips, who leaves Fleet Street only for a stirring scene of history and comes back only to await another; S. J. Pry or of The Times, with a host of humorous little anecdotes gathered in the Western States, in South Africa, and in other streets of adventure; and many more men worth meeting and worth knowing.

But the laugh the men enjoyed was that of men who find their position farcical. For after all there was no war in Sofia. It was a deserted city, as peaceful as a church yard. Away at the front men were killing each other in heaps. The Red Cross was very busy. But to Sofia the news came only on the wings of rumour and very late. I began to doubt whether it was worth while to go to the theatre of war. For to a journalist it is only an additional exasperation to see things which he cannot describe, and by official orders we were forbidden to describe anything. I read the regulations for war-correspondents and their severity was appalling, We were forbidden to describe the disposition of troops, to give the names of generals, the names and numbers of the wounded, the success or failure of Bulgarian troops, the state of the soldiers' health, the conditions of the climate.

I put a polite question to the Censor:

"Will you tell me, sir, if there is anything about which we shall be allowed to write?"

He thought deeply for a moment, and then answered with great gravity:

"There is much interest in Bulgarian literature."

"Perhaps I may also be permitted to describe the song of the birds?" I inquired.

"By all means," said the Censor, very cordially.

I felt like a man in a dream. Was this war real? Surely it was merely an illusion, a fantasy. It had no reality for me, because I had not yet heard the sound of a shot, and in the Hotel Bulgarie at Sofia journalists were playing billiards and telling stories of ancient things.

At last, however, the call came. Most of us were given permits to join the Second Army. Each of us donned a red brassard bearing the letters B.K., which being interpreted meant war correspondent, and a train was in readiness to take us to the army headquarters at Stara Zagora. A crowd assembled to see our departure, and some of us blushed with embarrassment outside the Hotel Bulgarie where our great horde assembled with bag and baggage, like the touring company of a melodrama with its theatrical properties.

But it was good to be on the way to the front; good to look forward to those adventures with the troops which now seemed assured to us.

In the General Quarters

My journey to Stara Zagora, the general quarters of the Bulgarian army, lay between the long chain of the Rhodope Mountains and the distant range of the Balkan Mountains. The prospect was enchanting, and I forgot at times the specter of war which haunted this country, while I gazed upon these mountain slopes with the leaves of their stunted oak trees glistening with the gold of autumn tints, and here and there on the high peaks the pure beauty of new-fallen snow.

Great flocks of sheep tended by shepherds dressed in skins or wrapped in long cloaks moved in the plains below the hills like white clouds lying upon the grass, and down the rock gorges little rivers rushed through overhanging foliage. But when the twilight came, and the darkness, the scene changed and became somber and wild as the mountains rose to greater heights and loomed through the shadows like great fortresses. All along the line of the valley peasant soldiers guarded the bridges, sometimes standing solitary black figures silhouetted against the glimmering sky sometimes in small camps where they had built up dwelling places of twigs and straw, and where their camp fires glowed red through the darkness. Now and again I saw a distant glare in the sky, where a village was on fire below the crest of the hills. As I came near to Philippopolis I was not many miles from the Turkish frontier, and I saw crowds of refugees, Turks as well as Bulgarians, who had come into the town for safety. These poor people, who had abandoned their homes, seemed to carry all their household goods on their backs, and the women, especially, were beasts of burden and heavily laden with great packs, while their children clung to their skirts wailing and frightened at all the mystery and terror around them.

Stara Zagora, for a time the general quarters of the Bulgarian army, is in appearance of a typical Turkish character. The tall and slender minarets of Turkish mosques rise as white as columns of snow above the little old houses of a town where the memory of a terrible massacre in the Russo-Turkish War still haunts the imagination of its inhabitants. In the wild retreat from the Russian guns the Turks swept the town of human life, and those who came to it afterwards found the corpses of women and children lying in the snow as they had been cut down. The wells were choked with dead bodies, and the horrors of that slaughter cannot be told.

Now I found many Turks in Stara Zagora living on peaceful terms with their Bulgarian neighbors.; Indeed, apart from the soldiers and the women and children, most of the people here were Moslems, and it is much to the credit of the Bulgars that these Turks had no anxiety as to their lives and property, but continued their ordinary business with quiet cheerfulness in the market square and in the lines of small booths along the streets.

I watched many groups of them curiously, for it seemed a strange thing to see these people in the red fez of the Mohammedan Power sitting cross-legged in the public thoroughfares cooking hot cakes over open ovens and chaffering their wares as though there were no war between the Cross and the Crescent. Through the public gardens of Stara Zagora moved silent figures in the white yashmak with which the Turkish women veil their heads, long robes wrapped about their bodies, and revealing, as they walked, baggy trousers tightened at the ankle.

The town is as picturesque as an artist's dream of old Bagdad in the time of Haroun al Raschid, and as I wandered about its streets, among Eastern types of people with liquid-eyed women glancing above their white veils, and hook-nosed old men squatting on boxes outside their booths, I found it difficult to believe that I was still in Europe. It was one of my first glimpses of the Near East, and in spite of all its squalor and all its smell it seemed to me worth a far journey from home. In the twilight time enchantment stole into the town, and it was good to sit under one of the trees outside the barely-furnished cafe or under the vines that trailed across the street from roof to roof, while there was a pearly glamour of light upon all the walls, and strange figures lurked about in the hiding places of the shadows.

Here, in Stara Zagora, I saw some of the business of war and many of the personalities who were behind the business, and little scenes of tragedy, which were the first signs of the price that must be paid for war. I watched battalion after battalion of peasant soldiers tramping over the uneven ways, through the mud and the slush, on their way to the trenches, to feed the guns. They trudged along with silent feet in their soft leather shoes, and slouched past without a word to that mysterious front, from which many would never; come back to their little homesteads in the hills. These were the men who have shattered the power of the Turk in Europe, the men who were the heroes of the war. They were not professional soldiers, they were just rough, simple, ignorant peasants, with many fine qualities of endurance, indifferent to pain and hunger and hardships, grim and resolute in their way of warfare, careless of death. Like all peasants also, they had qualities of brutality which do not belong to people of the cities. The killing of men was no more to them than the killing of pigs. The stench of blood did not sicken them, and with old savage instincts they were infuriated by modern methods of fighting the shooting of an unseen enemy at long range, but were eager to see into the whites of their enemy's eyes, and to use the knife upon him. The history of this war would have been very different if the Bulgarians had set out to fight a nation less utterly demoralized than the Turks, for their bayonet charges when the peasant soldiers flung off their sheepskin coats and rushed forward in the full fire of the guns would have been checked by walls of dead. As I watched the armies of reservists pass in a never-ending tide, the faces of thousands of men seemed to blend into one face, the typical face of the Bulgarian soldier, square-cut, with a short beard, sullen eyes, and the look of one of his own oxen beast-Iike and menacing. With them went great guns drawn by long teams of buffaloes, and flocks of sheep, and tremendous convoys, all part of a great scheme of organization carried out with that business genius which was the whole secret of the Bulgarian success. No men were sent to the front without the supplies of food necessary for their fighting strength. None of these reservists were sent to places where they were unsupported by artillery and unprovided with ammunition. It was only the Turks who were sent out to fight without food, to die anyhow.

Other processions passed through Stara Zagora day by day, and they told the other side of the story. For they were the prisoners captured by the Bulgarians in their victorious advance. These Turkish soldiers came in with a hang-dog look, spent with fatigue, their faces drawn and pinched by hunger and despair. One of the officers told me stories of the sheer starvation in the Turkish army a pound and a half of bread between ten men each day, and afterwards no bread at all, but only uncooked maize and roots in the fields.

The first batch of prisoners who were brought in had been taken after a desperate skirmish in which most of their comrades were slain.

"The Bulgarians cut us up into small pieces," said the officer, as he calmly lighted a cigarette.

There were no insults levelled at them as they passed through the streets, and they were treated with kindness by their captors who provided them with food and cigarettes. They ate the food like famished animals, and then as though utterly indifferent to their fate squatted down against the prison walls or in the open courtyard, staring back at the people who came to look at them, with grave inexpressive eyes.

Now and again in Stara Zagora a crowd gathered to see the King. He came driving down in his automobile with his two sons, the Princes Boris and Cyril, from a brewery on the hillside, where he had taken up residence. I saw him several times, a tall handsome man with a soft grey beard and the Bourbon nose and eyes that smiled with a strange inscrutable smile. I tried to read in this face the genius of a man who comes of the blood of the Coburgs and the Orleans, who gained his kingdom by the hazard of fate, who kept it by personal ability, courage, and subtle diplomacy, who as a foreigner won the favor of his people after years of unpopularity, who nourished secret ambitions which he prepared to realize by years of quiet intrigue, of organizing, of industry, and who at last, when all was ready, flouted the Great Powers who were suspicious of him, and made the great move which put all to the hazard.

He was an imposing figure in his general's field uniform, and as he raised his hand to the salute all heads were bared before him. But the people did not cheer him. They stood very quiet as though overawed by the sovereign presence, and they whispered to each other as he passed by. These people of the Near East had the Oriental attitude in the presence of kingship, the attitude of fear rather than enthusiasm, as though there was a terror in his power. And King Ferdinand treated them as an Oriental monarch, ignoring them utterly after the first grave salute. He passed among them as a Sultan.

The military attaches of many nations were with us in general quarters a gallant little group of men in a strange variety of uniforms, and holding converse with each other in a strange variety of tongues. All but one of them walked, dined, and I almost fancy slept with their swords, which clanked in a fine martial way at every turn they took. The exception was Colonel Lyon, our own attache, and one of the most charming gentlemen it has been my good fortune to meet. He was shy of his sword, and kept it well in the background. These attaches were billeted in private houses, but dined at the villainous little shanty called the Zlaten Lev, or Golden Lion, where I had a small cell called a bedroom (with a nest of mice playing great games with me at night) in a coffin-like box called a bed. The catering was supplied by a German Jew, who charged enormous sums for the vilest food; but the soldier men had the first call, and correspondents like myself had to be content with licking our lips and scenting the meats from afar until the attaches had satisfied their appetites, when we partook of the crumbs that fell from the rich men's table. The sight of the attaches at dinner was satisfying from a picturesque point of view, though not from a material standpoint, for the great bare room, which in the days of peace had been used for cinematograph shows, was dimly lighted by candles stuck into wine bottles and shedding flickering rays upon the brilliant uniforms.

The attaches, in spite of being well fed, were very restive, because the authorities would allow them to see nothing of the war. To all their protests evasive answers were returned, with a promise that later on they would be personally conducted over the battlefields after the battles. To the Roumanian attach who asked why he was not allowed to see anything worth seeing a plain answer was at last given.

"Do you think," said one of the Bulgarian officers, "that we are going to show you our way of making war, when your people may be the next we have to fight?"

The same reason stood good for the Austrian emissary who made extensive reports to his own Government of all that came within his range of vision. The American attache, a smart young officer named Sherman Miles, son of a famous American General, complained to me that he was becoming fat with overfeeding, and craved for starvation diet and the rigors of a real campaign. My reply was that while he fed so sumptuously I was in the gravest danger of a lingering death from hunger.

Fortunately I discovered another restaurant, frequented by junior officers of the headquarters staff, by magistrates, Red Cross ladies, and secret police, who kept their ears wide open for the conversation of special correspondents. It was a place of tumult, where people almost fought for food and seized upon dishes that had been ordered by others. But here in the din of many tongues one might talk to Bulgarian officers who became more communicative as the wine passed, and from whom I obtained many details of the campaign of which, so far, I had not seen very much. I became an habitue of the place, though I was disconcerted for a time by seeing the plates licked up by a man with a great tongue who stood receiving them through a little window.

My only adventure in Stara Zagora was on the outskirts of the town, where I wandered one day alone in search of a gypsy encampment. This was one of the most extraordinary places I have seen in my travels, and I was glad to escape with my money and my life. The Romany folk those queer people who have no nationality, no patriotism, no bond with any ruler among whom they stay for a while, who never take part in any war beyond their own private feuds, and who pay no tribute to any state, had built up a temporary village on some marshy ground beyond the town. There were streets of mud huts not bigger than pigsties, and so small that to get inside they had to crawl through the doorways like beasts. The place was filthy beyond description, and it was pervaded by pestilential smells which seemed to rise from the very ground upon which the hovels had been built. Hundreds of children, many of them stark naked, played about the open patches, fighting and screaming like a forest full of monkeys; and squatting in the shadows of the walls, or drawing water from the wells, or pacing slowly through the Liliputian streets was the adult population of this Romany camp. There were many beautiful women and girls among them, dressed in loose trousers tight at the ankle and in cotton jackets tied loosely with gaudy sashes. One of them came running up to me, showing her white teeth and flashing her black eyes at me, and then seizing me by the wrist made signs to me that she wanted to tell my fortune. I resisted her blandishments, but in less than a minute I was surrounded by half the population, mostly women and children, all clamoring for backsheesh, all plucking at my clothes, while here and there among them stood tall gypsy fellows armed with long sticks. I was in a tight corner and had anxious thoughts about the money belt round my waist. But by good luck a police officer came riding through the village, and suddenly at the sight of him there was a shrill whistle and a general scamper like rabbits frightened to their holes. I followed the mounted policeman until I was clear of the village, and though he could speak nothing but Bulgarian I understood his questions to mean that the gypsy camp was not a nice place for a Christian gentleman.

When I went back into Stara Zagora I received the welcome news that once more we were to move on, and that this time we might see something of the fighting in Turkish territory.

The Victories of the Allied Nations

For some days after the first shots in the war had been fired Europe outside the fields of war was kept in suspense by the amazing secrecy with which the operations were being conducted by the allied nations. Even when the first successes were reported, in scanty messages heavily censored, they were received with skepticism by the critics in most nations and classed as "frontier skirmishes." That was true enough, but as later events showed they were the beginning of a masterly plan by which the allies, working as though under the dictation of one supreme intelligence, closed in upon Turkey, massing their troops upon lines which led straight to her most vulnerable points. Gradually it became known that on all three lines the Turks were falling back, abandoning position after position, town after town, without standing for any decisive battle. That surprising withdrawal did not yet awaken the suspicion of the arm-chair critics as to the weakness and hopelessness of the Turkish armies. They saw in this falling back a subtle scheme of strategy devised by Nazim Pasha, the commander-in-chief of the Ottoman armies. He was merely, they thought, enticing the allies into a frightful death-trap. The jubilation that was heard in the capitals of Montenegro, Servia, Bulgaria and Greece, seemed but the hysterical enthusiasm of people rejoicing too soon and too much for successes which would not count when at last the Turks reached their own vantage ground and hammered their enemies with deadly and irresistible might. The military stay-at-home correspondents of the world's great newspapers were almost unanimous, with a few brilliant exceptions, in their belief that the Turk would prove victorious in the long run, and none of the small victories reported by the allies would make them yield up this view. They clung to it almost desperately at last, until the utter rout at Lule Burgas compelled them to admit the strange reality of things.

The first successes seemed too easy and too swift. Even little Montenegro, which with a theatrical impetuosity had plunged first into the fray, had not found the Turk so terrible as he was painted in the world's imagination. Montenegro took so many prisoners that like the old woman who lived in a shoe she had so many of the children that she didn't know what to do. The town of Podgoritza was filled with them, and they made a public spectacle for people in holiday mood, among whom in the most democratic way the King moved like a peasant king, embracing and decorating his son in the public gaze. On October i8th the troops of the Montenegrin main column under the Crown Prince Danilo and those of General Marturovitch's army effected a junction before Scutari and began the investment of that town, while the bombardment of the Tarabosch fortifications was carried on across the lake by the Montenegrin artillery with great vigor. This little corner of the war with its mountain fighting was the most picturesque of all, though not the most important, for the Montenegrins were helped by the wild Christian tribes of Albania, who for four years had already been carrying on a sporadic warfare with the Moslem tribes with intermittent success, so that Moslem and Christian villages were delivered to the flames as each side gained the upper hand.

Meanwhile the Greeks were attacking Turkish ports, occupying Turkish islands in the Aegean Sea, and advancing northwards to join hands, if possible, with the Servians at Monastir and Salonica. In that part of the map Turkey was harassed at many points.

But it was upon the Servians and the Bulgarians that the fate of the Balkan Confederation depended, and the Servians showed quickly that they were carrying out their part of the contract with almost incredible success.

As I have already said, the Servian headquarters were at Nisch, where I had an opportunity of seeing the entrainment of the troops, and from this point their columns struck straight down into Turkish territory to Kumanova, where they had their first great battle, after the fall of Prishtina to the west, where another column pressed back the Turkish front.

The real battle began with fighting to the south of Prepolatz, preceding the capture of the important position of Rujanatz, commanding the road towards Kumanova and Uskub.

Early on October 18th Servian outposts reported that a Turkish military movement was being effected, and the Servian troops took up defensive positions. They had barely reached their places when a force of Arnauts, supported by Turkish regular soldiers, opened a heavy fire upon them. A great artillery duel followed and the Turks attempted to press back the Servians but failed. The fighting lasted all day, and as darkness fell the enemy had forced their way within close range of the Servians. It seemed as if the battle were lost, but the Servian commander ordered a bayonet charge. It was one of the first of those charges which struck terror into the hearts of the Turks. The Servian soldiers sprang from their trenches, hurled themselves with desperate and exultant courage upon their foes, and in the darkness a terrible carnage took place until the Turks fled in hot retreat. Upon the following days the Servians captured other positions, until the way lay open to Kumanova.

That battle-ground was the scene of the first great tragedy which befell the Turkish forces. They had twenty-five thousand men, a large number of guns of the most modern type, enormous stores, and a formidable position. But the Turkish generals were men of no ability, without intelligence of their enemy's strength and dispositions, and utterly lacking in decisive spirit. One of them, Sara Raid Pasha, came up from the south with three divisions when the battle had been raging some time, and when the Servians had captured many important positions; but instead of flinging his forces upon the Servian flank he drew off in retreat. The commander-in-chief of the Servian army was General Patnik, and it was to his genius that a great victory was achieved for the allies. The fighting, except for short intervals at night, lasted continuously from Tuesday, October 22nd, to the afternoon of Thursday, the 24th. The Crown Prince Alexander was at least nominally in command of the troops and repeatedly exposed himself to danger with an almost reckless courage. But he inspired a similar valor among his men, and they charged with the bayonet to the very muzzles of the Turkish guns in spite of having to advance over the dead bodies of their own comrades. For two days the Turks resisted this attack, and the guns were well served by men who in the end died at their posts. But the Turkish infantry could not withstand the bayonet charges, and, as though at a given signal, they broke and ran. In a little while the remnants of an army became a frightful rout. The men flung away their rifles and ammunition with swift flight only in their thoughts, the guns were abandoned, there was no attempt to save the stores, and utterly demoralized they stampeded along the road to Uskub. Here, according to all accounts, a new panic seized upon them, increased by the terror of soldiers who had taken no part in the battle at Kumanova, but heard the accounts of the terrible bayonet charges from those who fled. Uskub was abandoned also, and the Servians entered it in triumph, upon a road strewn with dead bodies, with all the litter of a great rout, and ending at a city deserted by its garrison, who with inconceivable cowardice had left behind them a mass of artillery, ammunition, and weapons. Not yet has the secret of that panic been fully told, but as I write I have before me one little object picked up upon the battlefield which seems to reveal one reason for that orgy of fear. It is one of those wooden bullets found in thousands at Kumanova as they were flung away by Turkish soldiers. This story has been denied by those who have a powerful interest in denying it. But the evidence is too strong for denial, and my wooden bullet bears silent and terrible witness of the guilt by which fraudulent contractors and bribed; officials betrayed the lives of men and the fate of our Empire. Eye witnesses report also that the bayonets and swords which lay strewn in thousands on the way from Kumanova to Uskub were all blunt, so that they were useless in the hands of men faced by Servians with weapons sharp to kill. Perhaps the wild retreat of those Turks was not due to mere cowardice, but to the knowledge that they were betrayed by their own Government, incorrigible in corruption. From the lips of dying men, from those who staggered hopelessly away from the battlefield on the way of retreat there must have been many curses for those who had sent them to fight with bayonets that would not pierce, and swords that would not cut, and bullets that would not kill.

It was from the time of that defeat that the Turks became paralyzed, as it were, by the fear of Servian I and Bulgarian bayonets; the very name of "La nosche," or the knife, as they call those weapons, was like a dreadful spell which scattered a Turkish force even; before a man had died. In Uskub the cry of the: "Servians are coming with the knife "made it impossible for the officers to rally their troops or to check the retreat, and later in the war I heard a hundred times from Bulgarian officers that when a bayonet charge was ordered the Turkish lines would begin to waver and break. Towards the middle of November the Servians advanced upon Monastir, in which a remnant of the army defeated in Uskub had taken refuge. The Servian Crown Prince demanded the surrender of the city, and on the i8th the Turks capitulated with 50,000 regular troops. Among them was Fethi Pasha, formerly Turkish Minister in Servia, who in the beginning of the war had said: "We shall soon invite our friends to dinner at Belgrade."

Another section of the defeated army had fled to Salonica, and they also became prisoners of war in the hands of the Greeks, who took possession of the city.

These astounding successes cleared the western part of the war area from Turkish troops, destroyed the last trace of Turkish power in Macedonia, and enabled a large body of Servian troops to reinforce the Bulgarians in the direction of Adrianople. The strategy which had been devised in the war councils of the allies had been worked out with magnificent accuracy, determination and efficiency. There had been no flaw in a plan which depended upon the courage of many individuals and the skill of many generals.

I must now turn to the Bulgarian army, which after all was the most important part of this united attack. There were, as a matter of fact, three Bulgarian armies, and it was my bad luck to be appointed, with most of the other correspondents, to the Second army, which was entrusted with the siege of Adrianople. At first, to amateur strategists it seemed that this second army would have to do the hardest and most interesting work carrying Adrianople by storm and then smashing their way down to the lines of Chatalja. That was a plan of campaign which seemed simple, direct and necessary, especially to the ordinary English intelligence, accustomed in the South African war to frontal attacks and "bee-line "advances. But the Bulgarian intelligence, subtle as the Japanese, and controlled by a master mind in the person of General Savoff, the Commander-in-Chief, had quite a different plan. The First and Third armies operating from the two bases of Jamboli and Harmanli, were to pass to the eastward of Adrianople while it was securely held by the Second army, and to strike down towards Constantinople by way of Kirk Kilisse, Bunarhissar, and Lule Burgas, cutting the Turkish lines of communication to Adrianople and so completing the isolation of that great city and the impotence of the army within. This plan of campaign was put into practice with a power of organization which has never been surpassed in the history of war. With astounding celerity, in spite of the apparently slow method of transport by ox-wagons, the Bulgarians brought up their munitions of war, food for the armies, and all their convoys, crossed the Turkish frontier, made a new base at Mustafa Pasha, advanced to Adrianople and rushed the first positions which guarded the city. In a later chapter I shall tell the story of that siege in some detail, as I watched it from the hills, but here it is sufficient to say that the Turkish garrison was securely held on the west, north and south. On the east the main army of the Bulgarians advanced to Kirk Kilisse, which was on the extreme right wing of the Turkish front, so that its capture would turn their position on the east. The Turks themselves considered the position of vital importance and entrusted its defense to Mukhtar Pasha, the son of the Grand Vizier.

Fighting began in the surrounding country of Kirk Kilisse on October i8th, and continued persistently for a week. The Bulgarians fought with an enthusiasm and reckless courage which caused them to suffer severe losses, but also gained for them steadily, as the days passed, the most important positions commanding the city. Then shell fire was directed upon the Turkish forts, which they finally carried by assault, and supported by a tremendous artillery fire the infantry rushed the trenches and carried some of the Turkish batteries. At eleven o'clock on the morning of October 24th the city fell and the Bulgarians entered in triumph. Nearly two thousand prisoners were taken, though a great part of the garrison had retreated in disorder to Bunarhissar, and there fell into the Bulgarian hands a large number of quick-firing guns and other pieces of artillery.

A Bulgarian officer who was wounded during the last assault upon Kirk Kilisse gave me some vivid details of its capture. To the music of the "Slivnitza March" regiment after regiment advanced to attack the chain of hills which stretches out before the city to the north, and after a long series of struggles when they were swept by artillery fire which inflicted severe losses upon them the storming column established itself on the heights. The occupation of these hills secured the Bulgarian advance and enabled other great bodies of troops to be brought up from the rear. King Ferdinand came into the firing line one night and his presence inspired his troops with fresh enthusiasm. The Turkish outposts in small villages adjacent to the city made but a feeble stand, and many surrendered as the Bulgarians closed in. Before the town the Bulgarian army dug trenches and thek heavy guns bombarded the old fortifications. The Turkish artillery fire was at times strangely inaccurate and their shells dropped either too short or too far. At eleven o'clock in the morning of the final assault the peasant soldiers left their trenches, and with incredible gallantry made repeated bayonet charges. Those reservists flung off their heavy coats, and threw down water bottles, knapsacks, and all impedimenta, so that they might have a free play with the bayonet j and again and again, reckless of death, charged with fierce exultant shouts, only to be swept back by a withering fire. Seven times the Bulgarians swept up to the Turkish position and seven times they were driven back by the enemy's battalions. When for the eighth time the Bulgarians began to storm the positions, the Turks, whose far-extended artillery was almost silenced, were so shaken that only a crippled resistance was offered.

"We came up in waves," said my friendly officer, "and my own men were like tigers in their fierce courage. They were utterly indifferent to the storm of bullets, and advanced over hundreds of their dead comrades as though their corpses were but paving stones to victory. They were animated by one thought victory or death. I was struck down in the last rush, and knew no more until the business was over and the Bulgarian flag flew over Kirk Kilisse."

The Turkish retreat now began, a disorderly panic, a sauve qui peut. The main body fell back on Adrianople, but many were cut off and captured. Others fled south and south-west. Others were attacked by the Bulgarian column advancing from Mirko Tirnovo, to the east. The Bulgarians who entered the captured city in triumph still had some sharp fighting in the streets and vineyards before they were absolute masters of a town which was strewn with the dead and dying. A great deal of booty fell into their hands. Seven batteries of quick-firers, eighteen guns of old pattern, twelve siege guns, many depots of munitions of war, immense stores and a great quantity of forage, were rewards of victory. The Commandant of the defending army, Mahmoud Mukhtar Pasha, left all his personal kit in a military club as a sign of his desperate and hurried flight. Two aeroplanes, which the Turks had never used for lack of trained pilots, were also left behind.

This great battle was a triumph for the Bulgarian reservists, the peasant soldiers whom I had seen padding on the way in their leather sandals and heavy coats. They had the honor of filling the places of greatest danger and of bearing the heaviest shock of battle. It was due to their irresistible spirit and reckless courage that the formidable positions had been so swiftly taken.

In spite of the great exhaustion from which the victors were suffering the pursuit of the Turks was immediately undertaken. One of the Bulgarian columns began an advance on Bunarhissar to cut off the line of retreat, while another pushed along the coast to Viza in order to bar the way to Constantinople.

The greatest battle of the war, the most crushing defeat of the Turks, one of the most terrible scenes in history, took place on the Bunarhissar and Lule Burgas line, where the Turks made their last stand before breaking into panic-stricken flight which shattered for a time the hope of Turkey in Europe.

The Turks under Abdullah Pasha lost, it is reckoned, not less than 50,000 men and almost all their guns, and in their retreat became such a rabble that they had no further fighting value until they had re-formed at Chatalja. in perfect order and co-operating with splendid discipline took possession of Baba Eski, and then with forced marches made a great wheeling movement by way of Bunarhissar towards the road from Lule Burgas to Chorlu.

The great battle began on October 29th, and lasted for nearly three days.

The town of Lule Burgas lay in a cup-like hollow surrounded by hills, and the first sound of the Bulgarian advance came from the crackling of the rifle fire as their infantry advanced upon the farthest ridges. Abdullah and his general staff were quartered at the village of Sazikoy in a little four-roomed hut, from which they directed the operations of the army which lay scattered along a wide front. A powerful rear-guard remained to hold the town, and two squadrons of cavalry rode out to the hills.

Upon the ridges nearest to the town the Turks had massed their infantry and guns, and early in the morning of Tuesday, October 29th, they became exposed to the Bulgarian shell-fire, which was hurled with deadly accuracy.

For some time the Turks held their ground, but they were being killed in large numbers, and a continual stream of wounded men came down the hills into the town if they had strength to reach that refuge, while others dropped and died upon the way, without doctors to attend to them or stretcher bearers to carry them. The thunder of the guns, the bursting of the shells, the continual fusillade of musketry made an inferno of noise, and presently the storm of lead which swept the ridges demoralized the infantry so that on some of the most exposed positions they broke, fell back in disorder, and then came rushing towards the town in panic.

Other battalions of Turks still held to their trenches and defended themselves with a grim courage, but the Bulgarians now considered the time ripe for a general advance, and they could be seen clearly outlined on the ridges which faced the Turkish trenches, rushing up in open order and in enormous numbers.

They were received by an outburst of musketry, and the Turkish guns played upon them, but though many fell their comrades still advanced, and the Bulgarian batteries unlimbered on the crests of the hills as coolly as if they were in maneuvers, and set to work with magnificent precision.

One column of Bulgarians made a right flanking movement with the obvious intention of cutting the railway line and breaking the communication with Adrianople. They were held in check by a large force of mounted and dismounted cavalry, but after a desperate defense these men had to retire with great loss.

The Bulgarian right wing now made a determined attack upon the town of Lule Burgas, where among the inhabitants there was already a reign of terror, and where the rear-guard was already becoming demoralized by the wild confusion in the streets owing to the pouring in of wounded men and the frantic efforts of refugees to escape from the shells which now began to burst over them.

A great force of Bulgarian infantry swept down one of the hills and advanced upon the trenches in face of them, supported by their artillery firing from higher ground. They were reinforced by other battalions who made their way through clefts in the hills, and together in one great body they swept forward, undeterred by the fire from the trenches and almost unhurt by the Turkish artillery, which at this supreme moment failed to get the range of the advancing hordes.

The Turkish rear-guard fell back, and abandoned the town of Lule Burgas, which was entered by the Bulgarians, whose first action was to hoist their flag on the mosque.

This success was important, but the Bulgarians had by no means gained a complete victory, for the right of the Turkish army was still in position, and still of formidable strength, and the Bulgarians themselves in Lule Burgas were severely tested by a counterattack led by Bourk Pasha, the commander of the Fourth Army Corps. Many of the Bulgarian infantry were forced to retire, and only darkness put a stop to the conflict, in which for a time the Turks regained some of their ground.

The night passed almost silently. The sky for miles around was illumined by the glare of villages burned by the Bulgarians in their advance, and on the Turkish side wanderers in the night came upon signs which gave no promise of success next day. For the countryside was covered with bands of men who had lost their regiments, with wounded men crying in vain for help, and dying for lack of attention, while those who had strength to walk searched vainly for any Red Cross camp or military hospital.

Worse still, for those who were to fight again, the Turkish army was already starving, for with an utter lack of organization the transports had gone astray, and the Turkish soldiers were left to their fate without food except such nourishment as they could get from raw maize.

Abdullah Pasha, the Commander-in-Chief at Sazikoy, was a gloomy man, receiving ominous reports from different army corps that ammunition was running out, that the men were exhausted with cold and hunger, and that they had no confidence in their troops. On the morning of Wednesday the battle was renewed along the whole Bulgarian front by a terrific shell fire to which the Turkish artillery could only respond in a feeble and ineffective way as their ammunition was almost spent.

Abdullah Pasha hurled his Second Corps, which formed the center of his army, at the advanced positions of the Bulgarians in the hope that the attack might be pressed home by the Third Corps coming up from Viza under Mahmoud Mukhtar.

The attack was made with heroic courage, but as the Turkish artillery were almost out of action, except in the case of isolated batteries who still had some ammunition, the Bulgarians found new victims for the fire which they hurled unceasingly upon their enemy's lines. The last of the batteries of the second corps were destroyed, and the Turkish infantry died literally in heaps before the living remnants of their forces rushed back through a very hell of bullets.

Abdullah watching the battle from a high graveyard saw that his second corps had failed.

He then gazed despondently upon his left wing extended far away, over twenty miles of ground. No messengers came to him, no telephones kept him in touch with the commanders of the army corps; he was a commander-in-chief without means of communication with his scattered divisions. But through his glasses he could read the tale of defeat which was annihilating the hopes of Turkey in Europe.

The First and Fourth Corps of the army were receiving the brunt of a tremendous attack by the Bulgarians, and it was clear once more that the Bulgarian artillery was immensely superior in numbers of guns and in wealth of ammunition. The Bulgars captured the railway line, swept back the Turkish cavalry, and outflanked the Fourth Corps.

One last chance remained, and it belonged to Mahmoud Mukhtar, who was now forcing his way forward with the Third Army Corps. He came with men not yet spent with hunger and fatigue, not yet demoralized by the enemy's shell fire. He came also with guns and ammunition. It was just possible that he might turn defeat into something like a victory.

I was told afterwards by a wounded Bulgarian officer that he had never heard anything so terrific as the noise of the guns that broke forth when Mahmoud Mukhtar's corps came within range.

The Bulgarians saw their danger, the supreme importance of this critical time in the progress of the battle, and at great risk to their position they withdrew many of their batteries from the center and concentrated them upon the new line of attack. They also swung round battalion after battalion of infantry and sent them forward to check the Turkish Commander's advance.

Those men, said my informant, were the greatest heroes of the war. They exposed themselves to death with a valor unsurpassed in history. Officers and men threw away their lives in a kind of passionate frenzy in order that those who came after them might reap a victory out of death. During these hours there was a rich harvest of deaths, which made widows of hundreds of women in Bulgaria. But the Turks were beaten, Mahmoud Mukhtar's guns were silenced. His ranks broke. His divisions fell back. Many of his battalions were annihilated.

Abdullah Pasha and the general staff knew in their hearts that the battle was lost, but they made one more despairing effort. The Second Corps had been severely handled, but it still remained a fighting force. Once more the men who belonged to it, who were more hungry now than when in the early morning they had gone hungry into the battle who knew the full terror of the Bulgarian guns, who had retreated over the bodies of their dead comrades, were again sent forward to the firing line.

Their heroism deserves a tribute. Spent as they were they obeyed the order to advance. Even for a little while did they stay, facing a fire more frightful in its concentrated fury than anything that had yet burst out. But this was beyond human endurance. With cries of despair, the Second Corps, a mass of shattered, bleeding men, turned and fled. When the news came to Abdullah Pasha he knew that he could no more than save the wreckage of his great army by collecting them in a general retreat.

That retreat from Lule Burgas was in its accumulation of horror one of the most tragic episodes in the history of human tragedies. It began in something like order. It degenerated into a fierce, wild and chaotic flight. Its way was marked by dead bodies It escaped from one foe, but found another and even more terrible one in ambush. Not even the shells of the Bulgarians were so deadly as the cholera which now attacked the retreating Turks.

But this story will be told later in this book by an eye-witness of its horrors, and this chapter may end at this point in the war between the Cross and the Crescent when the decisive battle round Lule Burgas revealed to the world the miracle as it seemed of the Bulgarian victories.

In Mustafa Pasha

On October 28th, 1912, I arrived in the Turkish town of Mustafa Pasha from the Bulgarian headquarters at Stara Zagora, through the valley of the Maritza.

The scene that lay on my way was full of fascinating interest. I saw endless convoys of bullock wagons and buffaloes with transports for the army besieging Adrianople. It was a strange sight these league-long caravans crawling along the roads deep in mud up to the axle-spokes. I passed trains carrying an enormous amount of war material. Some of the trucks were laden with great siege guns whose muzzles were thrust upwards like chimneys. On the frontier was a solitary little house in Turkish territory, once a Custom House of the Ottoman Empire, now with the Bulgarian flag flying from the roof as a symbol of conquest.

It is impossible to describe the desolate aspect of the countryside. It was abandoned by all human interest save the business of war. It was given over to the invading soldiers, and there were great camps for forage and provisions, with thousands of bullock wagons corralled so that they were like villages or gipsy encampments.

My arrival in Mustafa Pasha was a queer experience. The town lay four miles away from the station, and from what we heard of its conditions and the difficulty of obtaining any kind of lodging in a place which had been captured by an invading army, it was urgently necessary to get there quickly, as it would be a question of first come first served.

The little battalion of war-correspondents raced each other from the station on horseback, in ox-wagons, and on foot, in friendly rivalry. With Mr. Horace Grant, of the Daily Minor, renowned as a sprinter, I arrived panting in advance of the others, and hastened to interview the Mayor, in whose hands I was told all the arrangements for lodging rested.

At that time the Mayor was a Greek who had stayed after the flight of Turks. He was a grave, handsome, bearded man with an enigmatical smile, and he smiled upon me in this way when I asked for rooms.

"There are empty houses," he said, "with broken walls and roofs and windows. If you care for one of them, and if the soldiers will let you "

He did not complete his sentence, but raised his hands with a gesture of helplessness.

In spite of my rush from the station I had to wait many hours before any kind of lodging could be found for me. I used the time to make a hurried exploration of the first town taken by the Bulgarians.

It seemed deserted by all its former inhabitants. Many of the houses seemed to have been broken by some earthquake. Those still standing had been stripped bare. Little gardens, which once perhaps had been beautiful with flowers and trailing plants, had all been ruined and trampled down. Soldiers were camping on bare boards in the houses once belonging to Turkish notabilities, surrounded by their baggage. The Mosque, where many prayers had gone up to Allah, had been filled with sacks of flour and other stores.

I mounted the winding stairs of the minaret and stood where the muezzin had called to prayer. Below me was a wonderful view adown the valley of the Maritza, with its broad and shining stream running straight to Adrianople, the beleaguered city.

Standing there alone, as it seemed, in the blue sky, I looked down upon the old town, and saw battalions of troops marching across the great bridge by which the Bulgarian army had entered the town. The Turks had tried to blow it up before their retreat, but had only succeeded in smashing a part of the parapet, which was now mended with a wooden rail. From a high tower in the center of it waved the Bulgarian tri-color, and a reservist soldier hi his sheepskin coat stood there as a sentinel.

Afterwards I stood on this bridge as the soldiers passed on their way to the front. They had wound flowers round their bayonets, and had put garlands about their caps. A priest of the Bulgarian Church, in a long black gown and high black cap, cheered them and waved his arms as battalion after battalion marched past him. He was delirious with enthusiasm for the war against the Crescent, and they answered his wild and exultant cries by waving their caps on their bayonets and bursting out into some religious chant.

That evening after dark I was allotted quarters in a little farmhouse a mile outside the town. I was to share it with three other Englishmen Mr. Pryor, of the Times, Mr. Horace Grant, of the Daily Mirror, and another special correspondent selected haphazard by fate and the authorities, but good comrades all. We went to our new home with a bullock-wagon laden with our baggage, amidst which I had a big clothes basket containing all my worldly goods.

Would that I had the space to write the epic of that preposterous basket, which was a terror to all my companions, a horrible anxiety to myself, and an endless nuisance. It got lost on wayside stations, it became the resting-place of hairy savages, it disappeared and reappeared in strange ways and strange places, and with my name in Bulgarian characters, it attracted the astonishment of the porters in Charing Cross when I brought it home, after many vicissitudes, in triumph.

On the night journey to the farmhouse outside Mustafa Pasha it was nearly upturned in a quagmire, where I had already plunged up to my knees, and then I abandoned it to its fate, as hugging stone walls, stumbling over boulders, losing my galoshes in the mud, and following a man with a lantern in a dazed way through a maze of winding lanes choked with bullock convoys and with soldiers carrying naked bayonets, I made my way to our new home.

It became our house of refuge for many days, and barn as it was, I loved the place as a quiet retreat from the hurly burly of the town. That night and for many nights we slept in our clothes upon Turkish divans, with caps pulled down about our ears and rugs heaped upon us to keep us sheltered from the cutting draughts and the intense coldness of the night.

In our ears was the solemn music of great guns booming like distant thunder claps. It was a music which thrilled my pulses and called me out to the hills next day on the road to Adrianople where the siege had begun.

Looking back upon the days that passed I seemed to have been living in a continual nightmare full of black and white beasts, of curly horns, of trampling hoofs, of armed men surging like a living tide, through narrow streets incessantly by day and night, of gun-carriages, and bullock-wagons in a great tangle of spokes and wheels and shafts, of bayonets glistening like silver, of bearded faces and black eyes staring at me as a great army passed onwards through the town of Mustafa Pasha.

It was more than an army; it was a nation.

Across the bridge which the Turks tried to blow up before they retreated upon Adrianople Bulgaria passed on its way to war. All its manhood, its young boys and its elderly men, its peasants and professors and business men and poets came pouring across that narrow way which spans the shining Maritza. The tide never stopped for one moment. Convoys more than two miles long, piled high with forage and ammunition and provisions and surgical appliances and all the necessities of life and death converged from many country roads upon this single bridge, followed by great battalions of peasant soldiers, shouting and singing as they saw their flag upon the Turkish tower, or silent and breathing heavily after a long march which tested all their strength. In the main street of Mustafa mounted officers tried to control this traffic, to disentangle a wild chaos of sullen oxen and plunging horses. There were shouts and curses and slashing of whips as the heavy carts lurched over the boulders and deep ruts. The noise of all this struggling mass of men and beasts stunned my ears, made me dazed, almost drunk. I tried to dodge it all, to get back to my little farmhouse outside the town by quiet ways. But there were bullocks in all the lanes up to their bellies in mud and water, and after darkness fell it was a perilous adventure to get back to that little place in the middle of a maze of winding ways where I had found shelter.

For as I stumbled through the pitch blackness of the night, groping along high walls, staggering over heaps of stones and timber, splashing up to the knees in puddles as deep as ponds, the dogs of Mustafa Pasha began to bark, snarling and snapping their teeth. I saw the glint of their eyes, and waved my stick at them. In dark doorways shadows moved, and I heard whispers about me. Now and then a figure crossed my path calling out something in a language I did not know. Suddenly I felt warm breath upon my face. I had stumbled again upon a bullock-wagon.

I clutched one of the great curly horns, and saved myself from being trampled to death. It was good to get inside the wooden gate of the farmhouse, and very good to take off my mud-caked boots, flinging myself upon one of the divans in a big bare room, where a tall Bulgarian peasant came to give me a greeting in his strange tongue.

He found me a curious thing. As I sat writing he stood, a mild eyed giant, staring at me, like a man watches a peculiar animal.

But the town had a call to me. I wandered out again to see the fantastic pictures which have etched themselves into my brain. I went deliberately once more into the middle of the nightmare. In most of the little houses abandoned by the Turks, Bulgarian soldiers were crowding round ovens and wood fires. The light flickered upon them luridly, upon those tired, hungry men who clamored for chunks of black bread and coarse red wine. They wore belts crammed with cartridges, and propped their guns between their knees and got a little respite from the long march forward to the front.

Outside the Mosque there were camp fires burning. Except for the ruddy glare of the burning embers all was blackness below the roofs, and there were black figures, like devils, sitting on their haunches in the warmth; but above, very white and ghostly, like the tall tower of a dream palace, rose the slender minaret, reaching to the stars. In the alley- ways and courtyards other black figures were squatting in the darkness. I heard a strange, sucking, gurgling noise. It was the noise of soldiers drinking soup before they lay down to sleep in their heavy sheepskins and woolen cloaks.

So it was in Mustafa Pasha. Beyond lay the hills which billowed down in waves to the plain of Maritza and away to the besieged city of Adrianople.

I walked that way, pressing on to get nearer to those rolls of thunderous sound which told the tale of a great siege. For hours that noise had been in my ears, vague and murmurous, with low and sullen vibrations. But as I walked to the hills, past rows of shattered houses, where a hot fight had taken place when the Bulgarian army made its first advance, past buildings reduced to mere heaps of brick and dust, the booming of the guns was more intense, coming in great shocks of sound across the countryside.

Far away I could see little black dots, moving along the ridges of the hills, like armies of ants. They were Bulgarian soldiers pressing forward to the besieging army. And away eastwards, in little valleys that dipped down below the ridges of the hills, there were clouds of white smoke, which rope up into the clear sky like wisps of cotton wool. They were burning villages fired by the Turks before their retreat to the fortifications of Adrianople, or by the Bulgarians who followed them.

Through my glasses I could see one of them clearly, in every detail, as the village stood silhouetted on the crest of one of the ridges. A tall mosque stood like a black finger pointing up to the sky, and below it the smoke curled up from all the roofs of the Turkish houses. I counted four villages on fire, but as I watched another not far away began to smoke, and for miles around the white wreaths of smoke curled like feathers above the ridges.

I had a companion, and we two were hushed to silence as we gazed upon those fires, and read into that smoke the tale of destruction, of ruined homesteads, of blackened farms, perhaps of death. The sun was warm upon our faces, the Maritza river glistened like gold, there were little flowers in the clefts of the rocks, and Turkey had the beauty of enchantment on this autumn morning. But tall, black pillars of smoke, westward of the burning villages, rising suddenly, lingering for a moment, and then fading away, showed that the work of war was in progress, and that man was spoiling the beauty of the world.

For those black pillars were the smoke made by the bursting shells from the Turkish batteries. Between the sullen booming of the great guns I heard the staccato note of the Maxim guns with swift, rushing reports that struck the air like the tattoo of drums. I had an almost irresistible desire to get nearer to those death-machines, to see more than the smoke of them, to watch their bloody work, to see the shells bursting, to gaze upon the dreadful beauty of their destruction. But the military authorities forbade me to go beyond a fixed limit, and on that day I had to be content with this vague and distant view, with imagination to pierce through the veil of smoke.

I went back into the mud of Mustafa Pasha.

Mud! I had heard the word before, but never knew the meaning of it until I came to this Turkish village, after its capture by the Bulgarians. Now I understand. It was a terrible thing, this mud through which I stumbled ankle deep along the roads, and sometimes knee-deep in the lanes.

I could never escape from it. All day long, wherever I walked, the filthy slime splodged over my boots, so that I slipped and staggered like a drunken man. It caked one's clothes, splashed one's face, was gritty between one's teeth. It was horrible and disgusting and shook our nerves, because it was impossible to walk a yard in a straight line or to avoid plunging into quagmires. The bullock wagons as they crossed the bridge of Mustafa Pasha flung the mud away from their wheels. The gun carriages and the ammunition carts churned it up. Officers galloping towards Adrianople were followed by spurting fountains of mud.

It was bad before the great rains of mid-November. Afterwards it became a slimy horror. The Maritza rose higher and higher, and its broad stream, flowing swiftly towards the besieged city, was thick with yellowish foam, a mixture of mud and melted snow, brought down from the mountains.

Then the Maritza overflowed its banks, and Bulgarian officers watched with increasing alarm the rapid advance of those sweeping waters. They were destroying cart tracks, barring the way between one force and another by breaking down the pontoon bridge. The military camp which guarded it was swamped out.

For miles along the winding road to the besieged city the fields around were turned into lakes, above which the naked arms of great trees stretched out as though for help. Villages which I had seen burning two weeks before were now encircled with water, and had become wet, black ruins.

Then gradually the torrent of the Maritza slackened its force, and officers watching the measuring rod below the bridge saw with joy that the water was sinking again steadily.

But the flood had brought new volumes of mud which overspread the town and the countryside, and on the southern side of the river there was one great quagmire, a dangerous place for horse and man, as I learnt when I rode there one day up to the stirrup leathers at times in water. A friend of mine on a bigger horse sank deep into the swamp and had great trouble before he reached safer ground.

The mud there could not be escaped, and out in the trenches the Bulgarian soldiers ate and slept and lived , in mud, and cursed it fiercely. This slush, which oozed between their sandals and their leggings, and which I bespattered them from head to foot and got into their food, and kept them wet and miserable, was more hated by them than Turkish shells and Turkish bullets, at which they laughed, until perhaps their laughter turned into a groan.

Mustafa Pasha, once a prosperous little Turkish town, was, indeed, little better than a mud-heap, for, as I have said, many of its houses were battered to pieces, and rats played about in the ruins of the homesteads.

I wandered round the back part of the town peeping through casement windows or through gaping holes in the adobe walls, at the piles of refuse which lay scattered on the floors. They had been picked over by Bulgarian soldiers and Bulgarian peasants, but yielded but little booty. Thousands of letters written in Turkish characters, perhaps with love letters among them, full of Oriental passion and poetry I could not read them were littered in those broken and deserted homes, where horses were then stabled, or where cattle wandered in.

Strolling about in this deserted quarter I came suddenly upon a little building which seemed to tell the whole tale of human life, and the terrible irony of it all.

It was a tiny Roman temple, the tiles showed through the crumbling plaster outside, afterwards converted into a Christian church, and later into a Mohammedan Mosque. Before the Bulgarians came it was already a ruin, but for two thousand years and more it had stood here in Mustafa Pasha, a witness of civilizations coming and going, of one religion giving place to another, of life and death.

And there Bulgarian soldiers were feeding their horses under the shadow of its walls, a telegraph apparatus was propped against its buttresses, and rats played about its dark chambers, among the litter of cattle.

All the refuse lying about the town had a strange attraction for me. I had become a rag-picker, and like Autolycus, a snapper up of unconsidered trifles. One day I captured a Turkish flag, without a shot, from a street corner, and a dainty fez spangled with tin.

I was forbidden to go in search of loot, and the military police had no mercy on peasants who prowled round the deserted shops or among the muck heaps with sharp eyes for anything of value. I have seen many men and women marched away between bayonets for this offence. But the chief commodity of Mustafa Pasha was the wealth of mud which poured over its stones, and squelched over the roads. Wending through the muck of it soldiers and transports still passed on their way to Adrianople, that city of tragedy beyond the hills that frowned upon the valleys.

Across the bridge one day came King Ferdinand with his general staff, and for once the roadway was cleared of the transport wagons, and swept clean of mud. The King proceeded to the Bulgarian church, a simple old building just outside the town, where a private service was held for his Majesty and his staff.

Returning afterwards over the bridge the King stopped and examined the damage done by the Turks when they attempted to destroy it in their retreat.

I happened to be standing near, and seeing that I was an English correspondent, the King walked towards me and shook hands. He asked the name of my paper, and when he heard that it was The Graphic said that the paper was an old friend of his. He spoke almost perfect English and was very genial and cordial in his manner, although as I shall have to tell later, he had no desire to encourage war-correspondents in their anxiety to watch the operations of war.

Of the Press photographers he had a special dislike, amounting almost to a dread, and one of his remarks to me, when he perceived that he was being snapshotted, was an epigram which amused me a good deal.

"This photography," said the King, "is not a profession but a disease."

He continued to chat with me in an informal way, and I remember one sentence which revealed a touch of triumph at the Bulgarian successes.

"The first time I came over this bridge," said his Majesty, "I was received in state by the Turkish authorities, who conducted me over the town. Now I come "

He did not finish his sentence, but laughed and made a significant gesture indicating that he came as a conqueror, and in very different circumstances.

He walked with me a little way to the parapet of the bridge and pointed out the beauty of the scenery on the banks of the Maritza, upon which the sunlight gleamed.

"It is a beautiful country," he said, "perhaps one of the most beautiful views in the world."

Then he referred to the Batak atrocities which had occurred five years ago, and remarked that the Turks were as brutal now as they were then.

"Intelligence has come to us," said his Majesty, "of horrible deeds committed by the Turks in their retreat, of children found decapitated and women mutilated."

This conversation with the King was very interesting to me and gave me the opportunity of studying the personality of a man who has changed the map of Europe, and organized one of the greatest wars in history. Simple as his words were there was an air about the man which impressed me as the sign of a strong, dominant, and able character, with the simplicity and directness that belongs to those who do big things in a big way, and rise above the trivialities of ceremony and self-assertion.

Before describing in detail the progress of the siege of Adrianople I must narrate the impressions that came to me when for the first time I looked down upon the beleaguered city. My first view of the city was from the last ridge of the long range which sweeps from the north down to the valley of the Maritza. I drove part of the way with three comrades, in a three-horsed carriage with loud tingling bells, which by much scheming and not a little money I had managed to bring from the Army Headquarters at Stara Zagora.

It was nearly the death of me, for my driver was a reckless fellow who urged his sorry steeds forward over boulders, ruts and swamps, careless of the laws of gravity, and drove recklessly upon the edge of little precipices, with yells and shouts. Sometimes for half an hour at a time we crawled slowly at the tail of long convoys of bullock-wagons, and sometimes had to pull up for long waits while there passed a train of oxcarts bringing back wounded men under the Red Cross. I peered under the hoods of these jolting carts and saw human forms lying huddled up in straw.

Not a groan came from them, though the agony of that road over loosely strewn stones and in deep ruts must have shaken the life out of many a poor devil who had been picked up in the trenches. Some of the men were sitting up in the straw with bandaged heads and arms, while others walked, trudging bravely along with their arms in splints, though their faces showed the extremity of their suffering and weariness. Two convoys and ambulance wagons became tangled up with a long line of gun-carriages and limber-wagons bringing up howitzers and siege-guns for the great attack on Adrianople.

I was glad to escape from all the hurly-burly of the road, and especially from the sight of the wounded, which sickened me with pity. Leaving my carriage in a loop of the road, I climbed, with my companions, afoot, to the crest of the hill, and after slipping down and struggling up again, came at last to a ridge which looked straight down the valley. There, not very far away, was the besieged city, Adrianople, its minarets and turrets glistening in the sun.

It lay outspread in a dip of the valley at the far end of the Maritza, which ran like a gold snake across the green carpet of the landscape. Immediately below me, nestling at the foot of the ridge on which I stood, was a Bulgarian camp. Here were the Macedonian volunteers, not of much use in the trenches, but ready for bayonet work and hand to hand fighting, and away across a white winding road which ran almost parallel with the river, in a hollow of the billowy slopes, was the main body of the Bulgarian army, a huge black patch on the grass, but plainly visible as a great camp of armed men, with many guns and wagons. On the other side of the river were other masses of Bulgarian troops, crossing by pontoon bridges and sweeping in a wide devour to the main army beyond the reach of the Turkish guns.

Now and again from the ridges just above Adrianople there came a little cloud of white smoke, appearing at first like a puff ball but gently wafted into thin wisps along the hill-sides. I could hear the loud crash of the great guns, and now and again the quick rattle of machine-guns.

The spectacle around me was grim and terrible, and when the sun began to sink into a great blaze of blood-red light overspreading the western sky above the somber line of hills, it assumed an awful grandeur and beauty. Four, five and then six villages a little way across the river began to burn with a fierce and swift destruction. The Bulgarian troops had fired them, not I believe out of mere blind hatred of the Turk, but strictly for military purposes. They burned like flaming torches, great tongues of fire licking from roof to roof until the villages were burning furnaces of red light, intense and vivid as molten metal, with black patches breaking through the glare where houses had once stood, and with trees in the foreground silhouetted as black as ink. Those great bonfires were of an indescribable beauty, and I gazed at them fascinated by a land of joyful terror difficult to define.

When the darkness came, wrapping me about like a velvet cloak, I could see nothing but the shadow forms of the hills, and in the blackest pits of them twin cascades of fire and volumes of rosy smoke. Above, the heaven was spangled with bright stars, and a pale moon looked down from a sky still shimmering with faint light. All the beauty and majesty of the universe seemed to be gazing down upon the theatre of war, where the homes of men were being burned and a body of men was stealing across the countryside with deadly weapons to attack a city in which there was a living terror.

But before the darkness came, in the beauty of this day upon the hills, I sat down to a picnic luncheon to the music of the guns and afterwards played a game of chess with a German confrere, while a big black bearded Professor a Gargantuan in size and appetite played patience with a tiny pack of cards while he drank Erbswurth soup and munched tablets of chocolate.

After that game, played in the strangest surroundings, I walked towards an adventure. Two miles away from my hill was one of those burning villages which have followed the retreat of the Turks and the advance, of the Bulgarian army.

It was a place called Pashachivlik, once a place of Turkish homesteads, with neat little wooden houses and big farms enclosed by a circle of great hay-stacks. Turkish peasant farmers had gone home to this place after their long day's work in the fields, glad to see the lights twinkling in their windows; women had brought children into the world in those old cottages; from generation to generation small black-eyed boys and girls had played in the barns and in the gardens.

Now it was all just a black, blazing ruin.

The peasants had fled with their children, and the only living things left were lean dogs, who howled around the relics of their old homes, and one miserable donkey with singed hair and burnt feet, as black as the cinders upon which it lay.

I wandered about the small streets, half suffocated by the poisonous smoke which rolled out of the gaping windows and shattered roofs, scorched by the intense heat of this horrible bonfire.

Now and again there would be a clatter and rumble, and down would fall a pile of bricks, or a great beam, scattering sparks as it hit the earth.

At some hazard I went into one or two of the ruined houses, and picked up the pages of Turkish books, and scraps of letters written in Turkish script. Afterwards I found that looting was going on in a more serious way. Peasants were creeping about the heaps of burning timber filling their sacks with the relics of these homesteads. One old man and woman had laden a donkey with grain seized from a barn which had almost escaped destruction.

But they started back panic-stricken and tried to hide their booty when a couple of soldiers came running up and shouting. Long guns were slung about them, and one of the soldiers poked his bayonet at the old man and threatened to run it between his ribs if he did not unload his sacks.

I managed to convince the soldier that I was a man of blameless character and good-will, and in return for cigarettes he led me away to a camp on the banks of the Maritza, where I was introduced to a Bulgarian officer who spoke perfect English, learnt in America. He was in command of a cyclist corps guarding a pontoon bridge across the Maritza, with orders to blow it up and ride away if any Turks happened to break out of Adrianople in strong force.

In this little camp by the shining waters of the broad river I was regaled with good soup and baked pumpkin, and other gifts, offered with delightful friendliness by men who looked very savage in their sheepskins and mud-stained uniforms.

Later I got into my carriage again, and in a spirit of recklessness and folly drove far along the winding road until it seemed that I must soon have reached the gates of Adrianople. My comrades and I were well within the firing zone, and as the shadows fell we were surrounded by the sullen booming of the guns. At last we turned and followed the long procession of Red Cross carts, little hay-carts stuffed with straw, upon which lay Turkish and Bulgarian wounded, with a red cross flag trailing behind.

It was the long trail of blood away from Adrianople, where the Bulgarians had suffered heavier losses than they care to tell, in spite of their victorious advance. The sun glowed red above the western hills, and the mountain ridges were a deep purple and velvet black against the translucent sky, as I drove back to the tune of my jingling bells.

When I came back into Mustafa Pasha, walking the last part of the way, the searchlights of Adrianople swept across the country, touching the crests of the hills with silvery rings and searching into the hollows of the valleys. Then waving arms of light enveloped me for a moment in their glory. It seemed as if the eyes of Adrianople had searched me out, a little, lonely figure in the great darkness, stumbling over the rock-strewn ground.

On Friday, November 15th, when the afternoon sun turned the Maritza into a broad stream of shining gold, I turned out of the main street of Mustafa Pasha to watch an incident in a back-yard. In a war where thousands of men have been killed it was but a trivial affair, merely the hanging of two Turks who had been caught red-handed after murder. But to them it was important enough, this episode in a back-yard, where they were to play the final act of life, and to the Bulgarian spectators it was invested with the dignity of vengeance, for many massacres and many murders done by the Turks in the days of their power.

To me, a man unfamiliar with such sights, it was a strange and dreadful lesson in human psychology.

I had seen, some days before, the two prisoners brought into Mustafa Pasha by an escort with fixed bayonets, and had heard the tale of their deeds. They were Bashi-Bazouks, renowned in their district for many murderous acts upon defenseless Christians.

It is said that one of them, the elder of the two, had murdered twenty-three people with his own hand, and that the other had cut up women and children. The crime for which they had been taken and condemned was the cold-blooded murder of three Bulgarian soldiers billeted in their house.

They were to be hanged, and the ropes were ready for them, dangling from the branches of a stout tree in a ruined garden at the back of some deserted houses. An old ladder was propped up against the tree, and a few packing-cases had been piled up insecurely beneath one of the nooses. There was nothing beneath the other noose, but at the last moment a soldier brought up a cabinet about a yard high, with broken panes and feet. It seemed to him good enough to support a Turk during his last moments.

There was a little crowd in the ruined garden, trampling over the bushes and refuse and rubbish heaps which smelt horribly. Among them were photographers, a few journalists, Bulgarian peasants, soldiers, and police. One soldier drew his sword and obligingly hacked down some of the boughs which stood in the way of the cameras. The gentlemen of the Press were, for once, to have a close view. I wondered what was the fascination which made men eager to see other men die, which prevented me from turning away from the approaching horrors.

Before I could get an answer to the riddle there was a sudden hush, and through the back-yard the condemned men came with their guards. Their wrists were tied tightly behind their backs, and their feet were also bound, but loosely, so that they could shamble forward. They were pushed on between a quickset hedge of bayonets, like beasts, but as they came near to where I had stood I was struck by the dignity of these two murderers, and by the courage with which they faced their doom.

One of them was an old man with white hair and beard, a thick bare neck, and great shoulders. His companion was a younger man, though perhaps fifty years of age, very tall, and with a long, lean, aquiline face, and a short black beard. Both of them wore the Turkish fez, and were well dressed as men of some rank.

It was clear that they accepted their fate. Both of them stared up at the gallows tree, and their eyes did not flinch from the sight of those dangling ropes. Then they looked round upon the crowd about them, at all those watching eyes and pointing cameras and pitiless soldiers.

An officer read out their indictment and condemnation. It was a long document of several pages and many paragraphs, and it seemed to me too long while men waited for death. At the end of the oration there was a movement among the soldiers, and a young officer, speaking to the condemned men in Turkish, said that they would be allowed five minutes to say their prayers.

They had more than five minutes. I think it must have been fifteen minutes while those murderers prepared themselves for death. Their bonds were cut from their wrists and feet, and they used their time busily, and as calmly as though they were making ready for a night's rest, or a morning's work. I saw the older man most clearly.

It was the strangest, most fantastic, most tragic thing I have ever seen. This old fellow, with the mild eyes, who was accused of almost unspeakable crimes, prepared to go to Allah with a clean body and a prayerful mind. He took off his shoes and washed his feet very carefully in water brought to him by a soldier in a tin can. Then he washed his face, hands and arms v>v vigorously, and afterwards, in fresh water, rinsed out his mouth. Raising his hands to his ears with that gesture which is characteristic among Oriental people, and familiar to us in stage caricatures of old Jews, he listened for the voice of God, and then prostrated himself upon the ground.

An officer had his watch in his hand, counting the minutes, but before he had called out the time limit the old man was on his feet again, and walked under the gallows tree. He took off his silver ring and flung it on the ground, with a gesture of disdain, as though wealth were but dirt now, and then handed other small objects of value a silver box, a cigarette holder, a watch to a young officer standing close to him. The second man was ready too and a moment later the dreadful work began.

An officer called to the crowd for any man who could tie a good knot. Two peasants at the back of the garden volunteered with smiling faces, and showed their skill by trussing up the condemned men as they would poultry for the market. Not a murmur of anguish or of anger came from the lips of those two strange beings.

I had one last glimpse of their faces, grave, imperturbable, almost beautiful in their mournful dignity. I had to repeat to myself the tale of their crimes to prevent the surging up of a great pity for these two criminals. They had the look of martyrs. Then swift hands thrust white sacks over their heads, and drew them down almost to their feet, so that they were terrible and grotesque forms, like dummy figures. Even now, when darkness came upon them and their fate was very near, no cry escaped from them.

The old man bent his head forward so that the noose might be slipped over it. Two moments more, and the bodies hung from the gallows tree. Powerful men sprang to them, and dragged at their feet and swung free with them so that death might be quick. I think they died quickly, though the tall man's body jerked more than that of his old comrade in crime. The crowd laughed a little at those dummy figures. It seemed to them amusing to see how grotesque they looked those two Turks who could no longer murder defenseless Christians. It seemed to them good to see the dogs die, and when they were cut down and flung upon the ground with sprawling arms and feet, men could not restrain their mirth. My God, what a comedy, in the sunlight of a beautiful afternoon!

The Siege of Adrianople

It was obvious, even before the war had begun, to all those people who, with a little military knowledge, were studying their war maps, that Adrianople would be one of the most important points in the great campaign. It was the strongest fortified position on the main line to Constantinople from Bulgaria, and its strategic position was of immense significance to the Turkish army. It would be necessary for the Bulgarians to invest the city with a very powerful army before they could attempt any flanking movement from the north-east. Neither the Turks nor the Bulgarians under-estimated the supreme importance of this position, and long before the war had been declared they were both making secret preparations, on the one side for defense and on the other for attack. For some months, fully anticipating the war which to the general public in Europe seemed to be so sudden, the Turkish military authorities, under the direction of Nazim Pasha, the Commander-in-Chief, had been gradually strengthening the Ottoman defenses, and concentrating troops in the area between Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse, behind a chain of forts built up in 1909) ?> by Field Marshal von der Gottz. In spite of the Oriental railway having only a single track of line,

its capacity was tested to the utmost, and there was a steady stream of war guns and munitions pouring up. At the general mobilization of the Turkish army the troops were sent forward at the rate of 20,000 a day, great bodies of cavalry and infantry being sent along by road. They contained some of the pick of the Turkish army, but the majority of them were Redifs or reservists from Anatolia, wiry men and good fighters, with a fanatical hatred of the Christian and an Oriental carelessness of death, but untrained in the use of arms and very poor shots. The garrison of Adrianople before it was closed by the siege amounted roughly to 50,000 men, the officers of whom were quite confident of being able to defend themselves against any force of Bulgarian and Servian troops which could be hurled against the network of forts, field works and mines. The whole strategy of the Turkish commanders seems to have been based upon the assumption that the Bulgarians would not take the risk of advancing south on the eastern side of the city while they contained such a great army in their rear, to cut them off in case of retreat. If this assumption were right, the Turkish army in Thrace, numbering at least 100,000 men outside Adrianople, would be free to take the offensive and drive the Bulgarians down the valley of the Maritza.

On the other hand, the Bulgarians had no intention of making a dead stop outside Adrianople. As the world now knows, their strategy was much more daring. They also had been laying their plans to concentrate heavily and swiftly upon the Turkish city, and were confident that they could at least close in upon three sides of it with such irresistible strength that the garrison would be unable to dislodge them from their positions and drive them back through the pass of Mustafa Pasha into Bulgarian territory. Having established themselves to the west, north and south of Adrianople, they would smash their way down from the north to the eastern side, and by a formidable attack upon Kirk Kilisse cut the communication between the grand army of the Turks and the garrison inside the city, thus completely isolating it, and rendering its force impotent for the rest of the war, even if it were not compelled to surrender. As the story of the war shows, the Bulgarian plan was entirely successful, and General Savoffs strategy was justified in the most brilliant way.

No sooner had war been declared than the Second Army of the Bulgarians advanced towards Mustafa Pasha, from which the outposts of the Turks fell back. The town was deserted by most of its inhabitants, all but the Christian population flying in terror to the shelter of Adrianople, abandoning their shops and the heavier furniture of their houses, and taking with them only what they could load upon their bullock and donkey carts. The soldiers before retiring made an ineffective attempt to blow up the great bridge over the Maritza which leads into the town, but did their work so badly that very little damage was done. It was one of their fatal acts of incompetency. That one bridge was worth a victory to the Bulgarians, for it became the passage way of thousands of troops, of vast convoys, and of all their siege guns, and the destruction of it would have made a great deal of difference to the rapidity and success of their advance. It was with a joyous triumph that the Bulgarian officers found it safe and sound and passed over it for the first time to take possession of the town. General Ivanoff, in command of the Second Army, installed himself and his staff in the Turkish Municipal Buildings, which were then used henceforth as the headquarters. The Bulgarian flag was hoisted over it as a sign of conquest, and the Turkish flag of the Crescent was hauled down and torn in half. By a curious act of fate the remnant of it is now in the possession of an English writer, and hangs as a trophy in his study. It is the property of the man who writes these words.

The first battle which the Bulgarians had to encounter in their attempt to seize the advanced positions on the way to Adrianople was at Kadikoi, on the right bank of the Maritza, and on a high plateau led up to across the valley by hills rising to various heights, the elevated ground forming a wedge between the Maritza and Arda rivers, at the junction of which is Adrianople itself. The battle took place on October 22nd, and the Turks, who were entrenched, fought stubbornly. But the Bulgarians showed an irresistible determination and that marvellous spirit of gallantry which inspired their peasant soldiers from the outset. In spite of the strength of the Turkish positions the Bulgarians swept them from their trenches, and afterwards established; themselves here in a most formidable manner. Down below the Arda valley runs at the foot of the Rhodope mountains to the west, and a few days later the Bulgarians advanced in this direction and established themselves victoriously after severe fighting, maintaining a perfect line of communication with their main army. A number of Turkish villages were burned around Adrianople, so that they might not afford cover for the Turks in any sorties which they might be able to make. Fighting was also going on to the north-east of the city by the Bulgarian army coming southward in preparation for their great plan of campaign. The Bulgarians found these positions much harder and suffered considerable losses. I was told by some of the Bulgarian officers that these losses were increased by the treacherous behavior of Turkish soldiers who raised the white flag on several occasions, and having deceived the army fired upon them from close range. Eventually, however, the Turks had to retire, and in one part of the retreat, which took place in a great hurry, abandoned two batteries with their ammunition wagons and accoutrements . At the village of Jenidze, between Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse, two depots of arms, cartridges, and equipment, were found by the Bulgarians.

The Bulgarians advanced their howitzer and field guns to closer positions under the cover of night, but they were still awaiting many of their heavier guns which had not yet been brought up to the front.

The position of Adrianople during the last days of October and throughout November became very serious to the garrison and the inhabitants. The Turkish defeat at Kirk Kilisse had completely isolated the city and cut it off from all means of receiving new supplies. Their gravest danger was starvation. In ordinary times the population of the city numbers about 100,000; this had been considerably reduced by the panic-stricken flight of many of the citizens before the war, the richest among them travelling to Constantinople, others taking refuge in Kirk Kilisse, which in their innocence they believed to be a safe place of retreat. Both these withdrawals were more than made up by the great garrison, and the task of feeding such a vast number of people must have taxed the brains of those in charge of the victualing department. Fortunately for them, a siege had long been contemplated, and stores had been piled up in the city in vase quantities, but even with that foresight it was impossible to ensure food for a long time. Refugees from the town told us that the water supply had been cut off, and that no water could be obtained except from the Maritza, which was a dangerous source for people without the most elementary knowledge of sanitation. The desperation of their position after the battles of Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas urged the Turks to make sorties in the attempt to turn the Bulgarians out of their entrenched positions and break a way through to the main army. Some of these repeated sorties were of a formidable character, and although repulsed cost the Bulgarians a heavy list of casualties. In one of them, during the first days of November, the Turks opened fire from all their forts round the city and tried to retake a position in the northwest. Twenty battalions of Turkish troops advanced with great courage, but the Bulgarian artillery, directed in its fire by a captive balloon and an aeroplane, obtained their range, and eventually turned them back on to the defenses in great disorder. The noise of this conflict was terrific and lasted for many hours. It shook the houses of Mustafa Pasha as though by the tremors of an earthquake, and terrified the Christian inhabitants, many of whom came outside their houses and farms after darkness had fallen and when the uproar was most appalling, listening with white faces and hushed into silence except when some old woman would break into a loud moaning or when little children began to wail, terrified by this thunder in the night. The official bulletins of war issued in the Censor's office at Mustafa Pasha were very laconic after these repeated sorties, when indeed they mentioned them even by a few words, which ended invariably with the good news "Turks repulsed with great loss." Never was any mention made of their own losses. But from other sources I heard that these were serious. A Bulgarian priest, who used to drive repeatedly to the danger zone in a carriage which was about as picturesque as my own, ' told me that on one day alone the Bulgarians had lost i 800 men. A friendly officer also gave me some details. He admitted that the Turks had improved their position after the first Bulgarian successes, and had recaptured some of their forts, driving out the former victors by a fury of shell fire which they were unable to sustain. On another occasion two battalions of infantry advanced upon a Turkish mine, which blew up suddenly and caused a frightful slaughter. The position of the; Bulgarian trenches in the advanced front was not at all enviable, because in addition to the way in which they were exposed to the Turkish shells from neighboring forts they were in danger of starvation. For many days it was impossible to reach them with food supplies owing to the severity of the enemy's fire, and they had to endure all the terrors of continued hunger.

In spite of these inevitable losses and difficulties the Bulgarian siege of Adrianople was conducted with the greatest skill. I watched their preparations for its investment with increasing admiration. They made them with a cold, quiet and almost leisurely deliberation, without any undue haste, yet never with delay. Without any flurry the long tide of traffic rolled on towards the front, and to a man without military knowledge it seemed incredible that the Turks should not make more desperate efforts to stop this work before they were surrounded. Why did they not break their way out to fire upon those long, slow convoys and to break the line of the deadly advance? After the one big fight at Kadikoi it was only when the Bulgarian army had taken up strong positions that the Turks began to make their sorties. Then, during the early days of November, the Servians came with two divisions to garrison Mustafa Pasha and to complete the investment. The Turks spent an immense amount of ammunition in trying to unmask the positions of the allied armies, but the latter continued to make their entrenchments and to bring up their siege guns without answering the Turkish fire unless there was an actual sortie.

Strictly speaking, there was never a bombardment of Adrianople, though when the guns were banging away both officers and correspondents used to talk of the "bombardment." It consisted really in a general shell fire of that nest of forts by which the city was surrounded and in determined rushes of advanced trenches. The Bulgarians were reluctant to throw their shells into the city itself. As much as possible they desired to restrain themselves from the work of needless destruction and to avoid the sacrifice of human life. At least that is the reason given to me by many of the officers, and I do not doubt their word. After the battle of Lule Burgas it was not an essential part of the plan to take the city by assault. History was saved from a dismal chapter of horror, when a city with many great buildings would have become a heap of ruins and mangled bodies. The mosque of Sultan Selim did not lose its towers. It was only on the outskirts of the city that some damage was done by the dropping of shells. It was enough to hold the place in a ring of iron and to prevent any attempt either to bring in supplies or to force a way out. The Bulgarians desired the correspondents to emphasize this merciful side of the siege, and I believe there was some sincerity in their anxiety to avoid the frightful business of actual bombardment j but the cynical mind would point out that they never really obtained a position from which they could have carried out the task. Nevertheless, the situation inside the city must have been quite infernal, and the stories which were told by stray fugitives who managed to escape and to surrender to the Bulgarians were suggestive in their grim descriptions. Terror was continual in its hold upon the great body of inhabitants, many of whom were peasants who had abandoned their homes and their prosperity in surrounding villages, and who now cowered in huddled masses within the walls, poverty-stricken, starving, and in the very morass of misery. They were faced with the extreme horror of starvation, for, with the greatest possible care, rations were running out and the store dwindling. But it was in its nervous effect that the siege seems to have been most terrible. The noise of the guns, which was terrific even as far away as Mustafa Pasha, was absolutely hellish in Adrianople itself. By day it kept people quivering with the shock of it as the great crashes followed one another with a fury of sound; at night the noise became infernal in its violence, stunning the ears of the inhabitants and making the very houses tremble. It was like living in a continual earthquake. To those poor people in Adrianople the nervous strain was increased by the ordeal of suspense. Ignorant of the military situation, inside as well as outside, they never knew from one day to another whether the besieging army would not carry the city by assault and come through the streets with a general slaughter and an orgy of blood and loot. They could not go to bed on any night without the possibility of being awakened by the shouts of Bulgarians, by shots in the streets, and by the clash of cold steel. And when the garrison made their sorties, generally under the cover of darkness, there was no sleep for any living soul, because the adventure might end for all of them in massacre and death. Generally it ended in the return of the attacking column, not in full strength but dreadfully thinned, sometimes but a miserable remnant of the body which had marched out, and with a wreckage of maimed and shattered men. Out beyond the fort were men who never came back, the cold husks of men. On the other hand, I am told that at times a great hopefulness animated the population, unnatural and unreasonable, and followed by a violent reaction and a renewal of their deep despondency. The success of one of the sorties which had made a surprise attack upon the Bulgarians and inflicted great damage upon them raised the spirits of the people and became exaggerated in a fantastic way, so that it was imagined that the garrison army would smash through the enemy's positions, follow their retreat, and slaughter them as they poured in a rabble through Mustafa Pasha. Old Turks licked their lips at the thought of the vengeance, and promised themselves a cheerful time with curved knives and upward thrusts. These savage thoughts prevailed also among the peasant soldiers on the Bulgarian side, who were disheartened by the failure to capture a city which had seemed like a ripe pear ready to fall into their hands, and they were angered by the great losses which they sustained from the surprise attacks and the continued shell fire. They also made vows of vengeance, and kept their bayonets very sharp and covered them with grease. The besieging soldiers suffered most from the torrential rains which preceded the rising and flooding of the Maritza. Their trenches were filled with water. They lived like half-drowned rats. They slept in puddles. At night, as they lay in the trenches wet to the skin, the cold was intense, and they shivered in the grips of ague and suffered horribly.

So the siege went on, tedious and interminable, and as often as possible I went out to the hills, dodging the vigilant officers who had a quick eye for the red brassard of a correspondent, and riding or walking as far as possible from the main road until I had reached the last hill which looked down upon the city.

From afar the turrets and roofs and domes and minarets of Adrianople appeared like a mirage through a haze of sunshine and a thin veil of mist. The sky was very clear above it. Only a few fleecy clouds rested above the horizon. But suddenly, as I watched one day, a new cloud appeared like a great ball of snow, which unfolded and spread out in curly feathers, and then, after a few moments, disappeared. It was the bursting of a great shell, and the report of it came with a crash of thunder which seemed to shake the hills. Two, three, four shells burst together like bubbles, and then there followed long, low rolls of thunderous sound like great drums beating a tattoo. The noise had a peculiar rhythm, like the Morse code, with long stroke and short signaling death. It was made by the Bulgarian batteries on the hill forts, and it was answered by the Turkish batteries from neighboring hills. Presently, as the wreaths of smoke from the guns faded into the atmosphere, I saw that tall, straight columns of smoke were rising from the city of Adrianople and did not die down. They rose steadily and spread out at the top, and flung great wisps of black murkiness across the sky. It was the smoke of buildings set on fire by the shells. Other towers of black smoke rose from valleys which dipped between hills. The Turkish shells, far-flung from their fortifications, crashed into little villages once under Turkish rule and now abandoned by all inhabitants. Soon there would be nothing left of them but blackened stumps and heaps of ash.

As I stood watching one day I saw two scenes in this grim drama which made my pulses beat with a great excitement. A great bird flew across the sky towards the city, and as it flew it sang a droning song like the buzzing of an enormous bee. It was a monoplane, flown by a Bulgarian aviator, who had volunteered to reconnoiter the Turkish defenses. It disappeared swiftly into the smoke-wrack, and for some time I listened intently to a furious fusillade which seemed to meet this winged spy. After half an hour the aeroplane came back, flying swiftly away from the shot and shell which pursued it from the low-lying hills. Its wings were pierced, so that one could see the sky through them, but it flew steadily from the chase of death, and I heard its rhythmic heart-beat overhead. Its escape was certain now. It had mocked at the pursuit of the shells, the loud beat of its engine above me was a song of triumph. I watched it disappear again to safety. So it seemed; but death has many ways of capture, and when I came back to Mustafa Pasha that day I heard that the unfortunate aviator, after his escape from the guns, had fallen from a great height within sight of home, and that the hero's body lay smashed to pieces in the wreckage of his machine. Then on another day I saw another drama in the air. While my eyes watched the smoke-clouds from the siege guns something twinkled and glittered to the left of the four tall minarets of the great mosque of Adrianople. It was the smooth silk of an airship which caught the rays of the sun; this cigar-shaped craft rose slowly and steadily to a fair height, though I think it was tethered at one end. It rose above peaceful ground into a great tranquility, which lasted about ten minutes. Then suddenly there was a terrific clap of thunder and a shell burst to the left of the airship. I gave a great cry. It seemed to me that the frail craft had burst and disappeared into nothingness. But a few seconds later, when the smoke was wafted away, I saw the air-ship still poised steadily above the earth, untouched by that death machine. A second shell was flung skywards, far to the right; and for an hour I watched shells rise continually round that airship, trying to tear it down from its high observation but never striking it. I do not know the names of the men who piloted that ship, but, whoever they were, they may boast of a courage which kept them at their post in the sky amid that storm of shells.

It was at night that the bombardment of Adrianople reached the heights of a most infernal beauty. Then the sky quivered with flashes of light, and tongues of flame leaped out from the hill-sides, and fire-balls danced between the stars. As I lay in bed after a day on the hills the noise of the bombardment chased sleep away, and every great gun shook the old Turkish farm-house in which I lived as though heavy iron bedsteads were being dumped down upon the roof. Then there came a continued roll of great artillery. It was so loud and seemed so close that for a moment the wild idea came to me that the Turks had smashed their way out of the besieged city and that there was fighting in Mustafa Pasha. I rose and dressed hastily, lighted a lantern, and went out into the darkness. All around me was the barking and howling of dogs, hundreds of them, baying back an answer to the guns. I stumbled through quagmires of mud and pools of water until I came to the bridge of Mustafa overlooking the wide sweep of the Maritza.

I passed on through the village, and past many lines of sentries and men encamped round fires outside the mosques. Then in the shadow of a doorway I stood still and watched the sky, upon which was written the signs of death still seeking victims and destruction away in the city below the hills. There was no moon, but the sky was thickly strewn with stars, and it seemed as though some flight of fallen angels were raging in the heavens. I saw a great shell burst below Orion's belt, and the pointers of the Great Bear were cut across by a great sword of flame. The

Milky Way throbbed with intermittent flashes like sheet lightning, and the pathway of the stars was illumined by the ruddy glare of burning houses and smoldering villages. I had an irresistible desire to get closer to all this hellish beauty, to walk far across the hills to a place of vantage from which I had seen the bombardment by day. But when I raised my lantern and walked forward I was arrested by a Bulgarian officer and this was the end of my night's vigil.

As all the world knows now, the city of Adrianople did not fall before the armistice arranged between the allies and Turkey; and its garrison, which had maintained such an heroic defense, deserved the fullest honors.

The Battle with the Censors

The war correspondents who had been sent out by most of the important newspapers in Europe to chronicle this new chapter in history took an active and daily part in one great combat, which increased in ferocity as time went on. It was not an affair of shot-and-shell, but of violent words and heated arguments.

Personally, looking back upon this side of the campaign in cool blood, I cannot blame the military authorities for the attitude they adopted towards the correspondents. After all, war is not a theatrical exhibition nor a peep-show for descriptive journalists and men of literary attainments. It was a business in which great nations had staked all they had. It was a matter of life and death to them.

Now, a war correspondent may be a man of honor, of good sense and discretion, he may even be in deep sympathy with the forces to which he is attached, and be extremely reluctant to publish any news likely to hurt their chances in the field or to put valuable information into the hands of the enemy.

But, when all that is admitted, the fact remains that his presence at the front must always be a source of grave embarrassment to the commanding officers, because by the very duties of his profession he is a spy, bound to reveal the truth of things whenever possible and as much as possible to the public supplied by his paper. If he sees a great defeat or the loss of some important position he will do desperate things to put the news on to the cable. If he sees the disposition of troops he wishes to explain them as clearly and accurately as words will show. Perhaps if his article only reached the country for whom he is writing it would not much matter. The man lounging in a club in St. James's Street or reading his sheet in the Hampstead Tube might read the truth and do no harm with it. But in the modern world truth may not be isolated. A few seconds after it has been published in one country it is being tapped-out over the wires to other countries, a thousand miles away or more, where such information is read greedily and passed on to those immediately concerned on the enemy's side. It may forewarn generals in the field. It may give them the secret of their opponents' plans. It may demoralize a nation or encourage them to further resistance.

All this is obvious. It is clear, therefore, that the military authorities of a nation at war have every right to regard a war correspondent as an unmitigated nuisance and to deal with him accordingly by a severe censorship and strict regulations. No one may abuse the Bulgarians or the Turks for taking these precautions.

But I think the Bulgarians were somewhat to blame for encouraging the correspondents in the first place and then making fools of them. In Sofia, for example, when the correspondents arrived, not in single spies but in battalions, they were not warned off. No one took the trouble to say: "Look here, gentlemen, we like you very much and we think you are all men of talent and distinction, but we absolutely refuse to allow you to go to the front." If something like that had been said the majority of them at least would have accepted their disappointment and returned home to their various offices. But, on the contrary, the most alluring promises were held out. If we were only patient for a while until arrangements could be made, we should all be taken to the front. No one was refused, whatever he belonged to, a big or a little paper. If the junior reporter of the Sewing Machine Herald or the funny man on Comic Cuts had arrived he would have been received with smiles and bows, given his armlet and papers, and told that in a few days he would see something of the fighting. A great corps of correspondents assembled and the Censors were thoroughly scared, but still they had not the pluck to turn anyone back before the campaign had begun. The correspondents were encouraged to buy kits, to hire interpreters and servants, to buy up a store of provisions. Finally, they were all conducted in a special train with a restaurant car to the general headquarters, and the same foolish game began of postponing the evil day when they would no longer be patient, but demand to see without further delay the things they had come out to see.

Finally, when at Mustafa Pasha we were within reach of something really interesting, when the noise of great guns was actually in our ears, and when a great siege was being carried out almost within walking distance, the Censors suddenly asserted their severity and the correspondents were dealt with as men of dangerous character. We were ordered to stay inside the town, and not to trespass beyond bounds under the peril of instant arrest. Every kind of obstacle was thrown in the way of men who by individual resourcefulness and personal influence outside the Censor's office obtained items of information, for the most part of a harmless character, not contained in the official bulletins. Again, I do not blame the Censors for their methods, but for their manners. Frankly, their manners were exceedingly bad. They forgot too often that they were dealing, not with truant boys or with ticket-of-leave convicts, but with gentlemen, among them being some of the most brilliant men in Europe.

These professors in Bulgarian colleges, these ex-schoolmasters in uniform, adopted a bullying and tyrannical demeanor which was quite unnecessary. They subjected men who were superior to them in education and in social rank to petty insults and irritating humiliations which turned their friendliness into enmity; as, for instance, when they posted notices in Mustafa Pasha forbidding civilians to enter into conversation with the correspondents or to give them information.

They were also foolishly illogical and petulant in their methods of censorship, and I had a special cause of complaint when they refused to pass my sketches showing reservists marching into the town in peasant dress the objection being that they were not in full uniform while numbers of photographs revealing the same scenes with, I am bound to confess far more fidelity, were passed without a word.

There were also several instances of flagrant favoritism, to use no stronger phrase, and it rankled with the majority of the correspondents that messages should be passing freely to certain papers because some of the Censors were nominally correspondents of those papers, and so favored their special representatives.

I am bound to say that most of my own particular troubles were due to an insubordinate character and a deliberate violation of the rules laid down for us. I broke bounds consistently and impudently and, I hope, took my punishment like a man. But in one case at least I had a white and blameless conscience, having sinned in ignorance.

This little story of adventure which I have to tell will illustrate the difficulties of a correspondent in time of war.

One of my friends, Mr. Pryor, the managing editor of The Times, having decided to leave Mustafa Pasha, I offered to place at his service my famous carriage with three horses and a chime of bells. He accepted the offer gladly, for it seemed to be the only means of transporting his luggage to the station, four miles away.

We sat lingering over the luncheon-table it was a frugal meal, but good to men who never know where they may get another and I then went round to the stables to fetch my three-horse shay.

A tragic discovery awaited me, and I was overwhelmed with grief and rage when I learnt that my three lean horses and beautiful springless carriage had been commandeered by unknown thieves and had disappeared, so I was told, in the direction of Adrianople.

Lamentations were useless, and I returned with the painful news to Mr. Pryor. As his train was due to leave at seven o'clock there was no time to be lost, and by good luck we succeeded in borrowing an ambulance-wagon under the Red Cross which was on its way to the station, where there was a temporary hospital for the wounded.

The representative of The Times clambered into the wagon, already crowded with peasants, and sat down on his baggage in the straw with Mr. Horace Grant, of the Daily Mirror, and Mr. Victor Console, of the London News Agency.

I trudged behind the wagon, listening to Mr. Pryor's harrowing description of his psychological sensations. To a strong man this jolting over ruts and stones was almost unendurable, and one could only imagine the tortures of such a journey to a man suffering from wounds.

At the station we found a hubbub of excitement, owing to the presence of the King, who was going back to his headquarters at Stara Zagara in the royal train.

Another train with wounded men was also being made ready under the orders of the military officers. It was some time before we could enter the presence of the Commandant in order to obtain permission for Mr. Pryor to travel to Stara Zagora: that permission was granted readily enough, for he had already received a document from the Censor's Office. But suddenly the Commandant turned to me and to the other two men who had come down to say farewell to Mr. Pryor.

"Where are your papers?" he asked.

I handed him my passport and official badge as war correspondent. He waved them aside.

"Where is your permit to come to the station?" he asked again. "By what authority do you leave the precincts of Mustafa Pasha?"

He frowned terribly, and I had dire forebodings. I explained to him gently and politely that I had merely come to act as a porter to my distinguished friend, and that I had been prompted only by the instincts of courtesy. The Commandant's frown deepened. His face filled me with fright, and I expected to be shot against the back wall of the station yard. He contented himself, however, by ordering our instant arrest, and then sat down to write a long letter to the General of the Headquarters Staff in Mustafa Pasha complaining of our misguided conduct.

It seemed as long as a love-letter. He lingered over it and pointed his phrases, and frowned horribly at the end of every sentence.

Mr. Pryor, of The Times, was seriously disturbed. He apologized in his pleasant way for having led us into this trouble. Then, after a warm handshake all round, we were marched away from him under the guard of a most grim-looking soldier with a rifle slung behind his back. He mounted a horse, shouted some Bulgarian words to us, showed us the muzzle of his rifle, and pointed to the long, dark way back to Mustafa Pasha.

We understood him perfectly. Stepping out at a hard pace we preceded him along the road, looking back now and then to see that dark mounted figure following closely at our heels.

It was a pitch-black night without a moon, and we floundered into quagmires and stumbled over boulders, and felt very sorry for ourselves. Lean, wolfish dogs came out of the darkness, snarling and barking at us. Now and again black figures peered at us as they passed like ghosts. The searchlights of the Bulgarian army swept across the sky and touched our faces with their long rays.

Out of the deep silence of night there sounded the boom of great guns and now and then a rifle shot. It was all very grim and creepy, and we were heartily glad to see the twinkling lamps of Mustafa and to get entangled once more among the bullock wagons and to surrender ourselves as prisoners at the headquarters.

Our soldier dismounted, and with his rifle very handy marched us up the stone steps and took us into the presence of one of the officers in command. He received our explanations with gravity, and taking possession of our papers told us to report ourselves next morning.

"Then we may go?" I asked. He clicked his heels together, bowed, and said; "Gentlemen, you are free."

It was an anti-climax. I expected at least to spend a night in a cold cell with a sentry outside the door. However, we made the best of our disappointment and grinned into the glum face of the soldier, who looked bewildered at our sudden release.

"Now for supper!" I said, and the sentiment was echoed heartily by my friends.

But our troubles were not at an end. As we came to the churchyard gate which leads through to the farmhouse in which we had made our refuge a lonely place in a labyrinth of winding lanes a stern voice rang out into the darkness, and we found ourselves confronted by a man who barred our way with his bayonet.

We pointed to our red armlets, swore at him gently in English, explained to him in French and German, and walked away. But we heard the click of his rifle and another shout, and halted without second thoughts. At night in time of war it does not do to hesitate. Armed men are very quick on the trigger when there are shadows about. We spoke to the man with the gun in mild and persuasive speech, but he could not understand a word.

Still keeping his bayonet across our path, he shouted again and again into the black silence of the churchyard in a voice that might have awakened the dead under the white tombstones, Presently there came a patter of feet, and we were surrounded by soldiers with guns and peasants with lanterns, all peering at us and speaking to each other rapidly and excitedly.

Our farm-house was only a few yards away, but at that moment it seemed a long way off. Fortunately, one of the men recognized me as one of the strange trio staying at the farm with a mysterious habit of washing our faces in the morning.

He explained the situation to the soldiers, and then made us understand that the sentries had been changed and that a Servian battalion had been placed in the church. He was good enough to lend us the light of his lantern to the farm-house gate, and when we came inside our own room at last, after a ten hours' fast, we were very happy men.

But there was a tragedy under the roof-tree, for the tall, mild-eyed peasant who had been our host had disappeared, and his wife was weeping. That very day he had been taken off to serve with the troops. All day long soldiers had been poking into farms and outhouses, sheds and barns, and taking every sturdy man they could find in Mustafa Pasha. For the army is greedy for men and does not listen to the wailings of women. The spirit of war knows no mercy. The end of the adventure, as far as we were concerned, was less amusing than the beginning. Upon requesting to have our papers back in the morning we were told that we were to be expelled from Mustafa Pasha for having disobeyed the regulations. We were not the only correspondents to be dealt with in this way. A little party of Italians were also to be expelled for having walked out over the hills towards Adrianople. The correspondent of the Havas Agency had had his horse taken from him and was on the black list, and only three or four men were allowed to remain.

This was the climax in a continual campaign of oppression against the war correspondents, who since their arrival in Turkey had been dealt with in the most severe way and practically prevented from sending through any dispatches of importance. It was a hard thing to be turned back from Mustafa Pasha after the many delays in reaching this point, and the weather increased our dejection. There was a heavy downpour all day, the roads were deep in mud and water, the endless convoys of bullock wagons sprayed up fountains of slush as they ploughed through the narrow streets, soldiers with water dripping from their sodden clothes jostled on the footway, and a heavy veil of mist hung over the Maritza. And all through the day our ears were dinned by the sound of great guns which spoke of a fierce battle beyond the winding road to Adrianople.

Upon hearing of my own dismissal I had a wordy conflict with the Censor. I pointed out to him that the particular crime with which I had been charged that is, going to the station without a permit was utterly preposterous in its absurdity. He regretted that he could not see eye to eye with me on that matter. I argued that the mere dictates of courtesy had led me to accompany my friend as the porter of his luggage. He reminded me that I was living in time of war, when rules must be obeyed. This was, of course, perfectly reasonable in theory, but I objected strongly to be the victim of its practice. I made up my mind that I would not leave the town that evening whatever might happen afterwards, and left the Censor satisfied with having done his duty by me according to the strict letter of the law.

With two of my companions I had returned to the farm-house where we had obtained lodgings, and was sitting down to a frugal meal after a long fast when we were startled by strange noises in the farmyard outside.

It was the noise of heavy wheels, of footsteps stumbling through the darkness, and of voices speaking in loud tones.

A few minutes later the door opened and a police officer with two soldiers carrying lanterns came into the room. The officer spoke in Bulgarian, and then, finding that we did not understand a word, produced from his hat a letter written in French. It was very brief and to the point, and commanded us to pack our baggage without delay and to accompany the soldiers to the railway station in a military wagon. A train would be waiting for us to take us back to Stara Zagora, with thirty-one other correspondents who had been sent away from Mustafa.

We stared at each other in dismay. Our poor dinner was still uneaten, and we were very hungry. Our baggage was unpacked and in a state of chaos. But the order which had come from General Ivanoff, chief of the Headquarters Staff was not to be disobeyed, especially as the police officer and the two soldiers showed us clearly enough that they would carry out their instructions in spite of our protests.

Then followed a wild scramble for all our kit, which we thrust in a most disorderly fashion into sacks and bags by the light of the soldiers' lanterns.

Half an hour later we said farewell to the woman of the farm, who had treated us with kindly hospitality in the absence of the farmer, who had been taken off to the war.

She seemed sad to lose us. Strangers as we were, she doubtless felt that the presence of men-folk in the house was some protection in time of war.

Once again we stumbled out into the cold rain and the darkness, and clambered into the military wagon brought for our conveyance to the station. I shall never forget that long drive, as we sat huddled up among our baggage on the straw, with our heads touching the top of the canvas hood, staring through the opening into the blackness of the night.

Through that narrow archway above the driver's head I could see the pale faces of oxen and buffaloes roving all around us and illuminated faintly by the light of flickering lanterns. We became entangled in these convoys, and there were long halts; while through the darkness there sounded the shouts and curses of the leaders and drivers, the squeaking of wheels, the suction of hoofs tramping through the quagmires, the cracking of long whips, and the barking of dogs. Innumerable figures passed on like ghosts in the night silently and stealthily.

Lanterns gleamed momentarily on naked bayonets, on soldiers' caps, on white hoods and cloaks, on the faces of bearded men; eyeballs flashed up at us through the darkness. Thousands of eyes stared through the blackness into the depths of our cart.

They were the eyes of two divisions of Servian soldiers passing on their way to the front.

An officer called halt, and we were surrounded by armed men. He spoke to me in German, and was surprised when I told him that we were correspondents sent away from Mustafa Pasha.

"The train has gone," he said; you cannot get to Stara Zagora to-night."

That was a horrid blow. If the train had gone we should have a long night in a station without food or shelter.

But my police officer said that, trains or no trains, we must go to the station and report ourselves there to the military commandant. The Servian officer had no authority to countermand that order; so after courteous words he saluted, and we went on our dismal way through the rain and the mud.

We had frozen feet when we staggered out on to the platform, and cold hearts when we were told that the train for Stara Zagora might go at any time within the next ten hours. What had become of the other thirty-one correspondents was still a mystery to us. We could only presume that they had caught an early train and were well on their way to the general quarters.

We three were lonely men, and fate seemed against us. But we made the best of a bad business, and in a narrow little washing-room, like a prison cell, crowded with soldiers of the Red Cross waiting for a fresh batch of wounded, we succeeded in getting a cup of hot drink, by means of a spirit-lamp lighted with cotton wool in place of a wick, and with reckless generosity shared our biscuits with men who watched our preparations with hungry eyes.

It was nearly four in the morning before word was brought that the train for Stara Zagora was shunting into the station.

When we clambered up with our bags and our baggage we were amazed to find it full already, and still more amazed when we discovered that the thirty-one other correspondents whom we believed to be in their beds at Stara Zagora were actually on this train, which we had caught ten hours later!

They had been shunted on to a side line and kept there through the night. It increased our own discomfort, for there was only place for us in the narrow corridors, on piles of luggage, where we lay in cramped positions vainly hoping for sleep.

The journey that followed was indescribable in its utter weariness and horror. The train halted on the line for hours at a time to wait for the passing of troop trains. The night passed, and the dawn came pale and chill; and then the day dragged on and Stara Zagora was still far away. Our hunger became an obsession, our thirst was intolerable, and the last straw came to break our spirits when at Novi Zagora we were all bundled out of the train on to an open platform to wait for another train to take us the last ten miles.

We waited for two hours and more, and when we had entered the second train it shunted a little way, puffed and panted as if its strength was utterly exhausted, and came to an abrupt stop, which lasted for a long time.

I think we were now so utterly miserable that a reaction set in. It was necessary to summon up a little gaiety to relieve this intolerable situation. It was provided by Signor Marinetti, the master Futurist, a man whose fantastic philosophy I have often attacked in the public Press, but a man who in private life has an inexhaustible vivacity and fund of high spirits, a keen sense of humour, and a most daring eloquence. There was one lady in the carriage with us, a Bulgarian lady of some beauty. Marinetti found no difficulty in getting into conversation with her, and with a little wizened fellow in her company, who was a master of mathematics. In Italian, of which she understood no word, he praised her beauty, spoke passionately of the philosophy of love, divided the philosophy of life into terms of poetry and mathematics, and denounced all mathematical masters as men of hard nature and unimaginative souls. The lady was fascinated and mesmerized by Marinetti's speech, and he then sang little songs to her, and in spite of the cramped and crowded carriage danced little dances to her, in the Italian, Arabic, Persian, and Futurist styles.

Finally he was prevailed upon to recite his great poem, "L'Automobile." Before doing so he begged me to open both the windows, so that he might have fresh air, and took off his coat so that he might have free play for his eloquence. Then he began his recitation, in which he describes the beauty, the joy, the exultation, the swift ecstasy of the soul of the auto mobile as it rushes over mountains and down the valleys and along the high roads singing the song nf speed. It is a thing of genius, and Marinetti, the composer of it, threw his whole heart and soul into it, until the veins stood out on his forehead, and his face was scarlet, and his voice rang out like a trumpet. The sound of his far-carrying voice startled the people in the neighborhood of the train. Hairy savages with naked bayonets came rushing up. Peasants crowded about with gaping mouths and wondering eyes. The first recitation of the master Futurist in Novi Zagora was an immense success and cheered up our drooping spirits wonderfully, until at last the train went on.

But fate made fools of us again; for when we jumped down upon the platform of Stara Zagora we learnt that the General Staff had removed from that town, and that as war correspondents we were utterly helpless and utterly stranded.

The Censor's office was doing no business in the way of bulletins, but was in command of a black-bearded Bulgarian, who adopted an insolent and cynical manner to the expelled correspondents.

When I desired him to pass a telegram to my office he said that it was five minutes to six and he could not be kept waiting for his dinner. To this I replied that I had been kept waiting fifty hours for my dinner.

But protests were useless; for several days many of the correspondents found it impossible to forward messages of explanation to their newspapers or messages of appeal to their Ministers. The Censor censored them. He seemed to delight in censoring everything and anything. The correspondents wandered miserably about a deserted town, cursing their fate and cursing the Censor, and declaring that they felt like shipwrecked mariners cast up on an island inhabited by savages and wild beasts. They could not even get permission to return to Sofia until a week had passed.

Meanwhile I had managed to smuggle a message through to Mr. Pryor, of The Times, who was then in Sofia, and he went to a great deal of trouble, and used all his great influence to get me reinstated, with my two comrades in misfortune. His efforts were successful, and to our great relief and surprise it was intimated to us by the Censor that we were to be conveyed back to Mustafa Pasha. But we were not allowed to leave until all the other correspondents had departed for Sofia, lest, in their wrath and indignation at what appeared like favoritism, they carried out the violent threats which they had uttered in public places and in the ears of spies.

The journey back was almost as tedious as the one I have already described, but we were glad to get once more to Mustafa Pasha, to hear the guns again, and, as I hardly like to tell, to break bounds in the same old way, so that we might again see something of the siege of Adrianople.

The Way Back from the War

For two weeks I watched the first men back from the quickest war in history.

They came back, not with medals on their breasts and with bands playing them into the towns, but with bandages round their heads and limbs through which the blood had oozed with horrible stains, and with the jolting of trains and the shrieking of whistles for their music.

I do not know how many thousands of wounded men I saw, but they numbered many great battalions, and the roads of Turkey and Bulgaria were rutted deep by the wheels of league-long convoys bringing back these victims of war.

The Bulgarians issued no lists of their casualties. With that amazing and almost inhuman secrecy; with which they veiled all but the barest facts of the war, they steadily refused to give the names and numbers of the dead and wounded, so that few peasant women in Bulgaria knew whether their men would ever come back again. But they were not able to conceal the wounded men. The bright sun of autumn in the Near East shone down upon those winding caravans of Red Cross wagons jolting down the hill-tracks and over roads axle-deep in mud; the rain which swept the sunshine out of the sky at times poured down upon men lying in misery and in sodden straw, and peasants standing by the roadside with great flocks around them, which they kept driving forward to the front as food for men who were food for powder, saw their comrades passing, passing, passing, day after day, towards hospitals in Turkish villages and Bulgarian towns. The agony of that long journey from the front must have been terrible.

The men who fought at Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas had sixty leagues and more to cover in hay-carts and bullock-wagons before they reached the railways. Many of them never reached the railways; the last flicker of life was shaken out of them before they came to the trains; the drivers called: "Hai-de! Hai-de!" not knowing that a corpse lay in the straw behind them. The faces of some of those wounded men were terrible as they passed me. They were the faces of dead men with living eyes, of an earthen colour already, splashed by blood, and stamped with the sharp imprint of pain. Some of them had their tongues lolling out, parched with thirst, and others were terribly smashed so that never again will they be able to follow the plough in the field. At the railway stations all ordinary trains were held up while the ambulance trains poured through in one long traffic of human freight. For hours, and sometimes for two days at a stretch, while I waited for a passenger train to take me fifty miles or so further to the front, I stared at the convoys of wounded and became weary of all their woe. Poor devils! These heroes of the war against the Turk knew the meaning of heroism to the last bitter drop of the cup. Perhaps in the ox-wagons they had prayed for the train. Now, in the train, they suffered a new horror. They were packed into cattle trucks, twenty and thirty, sometimes even fifty, together, lying in the straw as one great heap of wounded and mangled limbs. I looked into many of these trucks, and sickened at the stench arising from the rotten straw, and the sour smell of muddy clothes.

The men sat on the legs of their comrades, or lay with their arms about each other, or stood clasping iron railings and gasping for breath at the ventilation-holes. Now and again a deep groan or a long-drawn whimper came from some heap of straw and rags, but for the most part the men were strangely quiet and amazingly strong in endurance. It was curious to notice what a large proportion of the slightly wounded had been struck in the left hand the forward hand when holding a rifle and I was overwhelmed with admiration for the courage of these peasant soldiers who had the heart, even on such a journey as this, to laugh and joke during the frequent halts. Their greatest suffering was not from their wounds, but from a burning thirst which seemed to consume them. From every carriage as the train drew up came the cry of "Water!" And it was a pitiful thing to see how they drank greedily from the long brown jugs or the tin bottles held up to them by the women of the Red Cross.

The Red Cross women did their work well. They had but little sleep; sometimes for several days at a time none at all; but cheerfully and untiringly they sped along the platforms, carrying the precious water, as well as tea, brandy, soup and bread to those truckloads of wounded. I shall not soon forget one of these women at Stara Zagora. She was splendid a bonny woman, with laughing eyes, and a plump figure in her white cap and dress, but in spite of her plumpness agile and quick and indefatigable. Her smart shoes were splashed with mud; she went through puddles and into the lashing rain to the furthest trucks, she climbed into the trucks themselves and gave refreshment to men too weak even to ask for it. She had been at work three days and nights and still seemed fresh and untired.

One of the most pitiful scenes I saw was on the station at Jamboli, one of the points from which the Bulgarians struck at the heart of Turkey. While I was waiting there, a great number of men were brought in from the battle of Kirk Kilisse discharged from the field hospitals, where the surgeons were very busy, to go to the central hospitals for medical treatment. Some of the men were terribly damaged and could hardly drag one leg after the other. Many of them were carried into the station by the Red Cross assistants, or on the shoulders of other soldiers less seriously wounded.

Several young officers, with their smart uniforms torn and caked with mud, had empty sleeves, and others who had been shot through both legs were helpless cripples. As it happened, the King was on the station in the Royal train where he had slept every night and journeyed every day from point to point. He came out of the train and held a kind of reception of some of the wounded, going from man to man and thanking each for his gallant service.

At first, the irony of the scene embittered me. I had a kind of anger in my heart that the words of a King might be supposed to cure a wound or ease a man tortured with pain. But in a little while I was no longer ironical only a little wondering. For, indeed, these words from the King did cheer his men; and it was curious to see how some of them who had been bent double straightened themselves up a little in the feeble effort to salute the Sovereign, and how the young officers with the empty sleeves flushed with excitement as the King grasped their left hands, and how even those who were carried upon the shoulders of their comrades smiled in a twisted way and murmured incoherent words when the King spoke to them. And after all the old ideals are strong in the hearts of men, and sentiment is more powerful than pain. The most curious and startling thing I saw was outside the station of Mustafa Pasha. I had become entangled in a seething mass of soldiers and of buffaloes and ox-wagons and horses, and stepped aside out of all the confusion towards a little house which stood solitary on the road-side. I noticed that a sentry hugged his rifle in his sheepskin outside the door, and that groups of peasants kept stepping up to the window to stare inside before going on their way. I, too, went to the window and then recoiled.

Inside a bare room a doctor and nurses were busy about the body of a man stretched out on a deal table. I saw the gleam of the surgeon's knife . . . all the horror of a terrible operation in one swift glimpse! I turned away hurriedly, and listened to the piping of a shepherd boy close by, and heard the laughter of the peasants and the shouts of "Hai-de! Hai-de!" as the drivers called to their bullocks. To that little house of pain on the road-side, stretcher-bearers were carrying other bodies for the surgeon's knife; and out of a side-door came two men with a stretcher upon which a form lay very quiet and still. War was reaping a harvest of lives, and, as I walked along the road, the guns of Adrianople boomed across the hills. And in the fields, where black and white sheep were browsing, the shepherd boy was piping his merry song.

WITH THE ARMY OF THE CRESCENT

The Crisis in Constantinople

Now that I write these reminiscences of the campaign in Turkey, it seems to me that all that I saw and suffered for I had to endure many small hardships and even perils, and many experiences of real horror it seems to me that it was a nightmare, from which I have awakened.

I saw the worst side of war; not the fierce struggle of the battlefield which has a thrill and excitement which are almost, intoxicating, but the utter misery of a great retreat, the ravages of disease in a beaten army, the despair and terror of great masses of humanity, plodding onwards from the fear behind them, starving, dying in heaps, hopeless.

As a photographer I took many pictures of these things for my paper, the Daily Mirror, and they are familiar now to many people. Yet though they represent faithfully the living pictures of the Turkish debacle they do not convey the full meaning of its tragedy. Only those who saw the reality may understand it. It needs a greater power of words than I possess to describe the scenes which my camera has helped to portray.

The call to the war came to me in Egypt when I was busy with the ceremonies attending the departure of the Holy Carpet to Mecca, and with the holy camel which is selected for the honor of carrying that carpet before retiring to a life of dignity and ease after the fulfilment of its sacred duty.

It was on the last day of September that I received a cable ordering me to prepare to go to a war in the Balkans, and on the following day, the first of October, another telegram instructed me definitely to proceed to Constantinople.

The news came to me as a complete surprise, and I confess that I had moments of excited thoughts when I pondered over the fate in store for me during the following weeks. It would be a great adventure, anyhow! Perhaps it would be good fun.

On October 2nd I left Cairo for Alexandria, which was more stifling than ever, and then joined the S.S. "Osmanieh" for Constantinople.

There I first came in touch with the war-spirit. On board there were a good many Greeks returning from Egypt in response to the call of the army. They were all very excited, very enthusiastic at the idea of attacking the hated Turk. They seemed confident of victory, and appeared to me rather hysterical, as though their condition had got the upper hand. I could not help thinking that some of them would not be so cheerful when they came face to face with the Turkish forces, of whom, at that time, I thought a good deal as fighting men.

On October 4th I reached Pyraeus, in the morning, and after the passengers had been landed in small boats I took the train to Athens. In this city of ancient fame I found the war-fever raging. There were excited crowds in the streets, the newspapers were being read feverishly for the latest reports, and I passed processions and groups of men wearing ill-fitting khaki uniforms, and carrying under their arms the ordinary clothes which they had just taken off. Everywhere I went I was reminded of the undying and inherited hatred of the Greek for the Turk. It seemed an obsession with them, so that even the ancient monuments of Greece served as texts for my guide in his denunciation of Turkish rule.

When I went to see the ruins of what was once a great temple to Jupiter, many of its Corinthian columns now fallen and shattered, most of its fine carving destroyed, my Greek guide did not fail to remind me that it was the Turks who had helped to ruin this great relic of ancient glory when they invaded Greece some three hundred years ago.

In an open space near the ruins a body of Greek soldiers was drilling in preparation for the coming war. They were smart fellows, but did not have quite the heroic aspect of those descended from the blood of those ancient Greeks whose genius is still revealed by the monuments that have survived the destroying hand of time.

Yet I think, from the memory of their ancient history, the modern Greeks still draw an inspiration, and it is this recollection of their old pride and fame that influence their hatred of the Turk, who for centuries has been their enemy and oppressor.

Climbing the steep way to the topmost tier of the theatre of Bacchus, built 300) ?> years B.C., with seats carved out of rock where 30,000 spectators might find room to see the ancient drama, I looked down upon the great panorama of Athens, with all its broken temples and palaces, the records of a long and wonderful history, in a city where people have made many wars. Now there came up to me the sound of bugle notes and drums stirring the hearts of the Greeks with valor for a new war, to which they looked forward with eager expectancy. I returned to Pyrseus in the glory of a wonderful sunset and saw boat-loads of reservists coming in from surrounding islands to join in the coming fight, all gay and high-spirited as though war were a merry game.

At Smyrna, on my way to Constantinople, there was no great excitement, and it seemed to me that the inhabitants were equally divided among Turks and Greeks. In the evening our ship called at Mitylene, and here there was a great din as though a war had already broken out.

But it was a war of boatmen, who came in swarms to the ship, struggling and shouting, as each tried to gain a few pence by being the first to board us. This always happens in these ports, but it was more noticeable in the darkness of a night with a boisterous wind and a heavy sea running. The scene reminded me of a pack of wild beasts fighting over a single bone.

We left Mitylene early in the morning of the 6th, and arrived at the entrance of the Dardanelles in the afternoon. We had to cast anchor and wait for a pilot ship to guide us round the submarine mines. After a long wait it came, and we made a successful journey through the straits. We passed many forts, and I scanned them through my glasses, but all seemed very quiet, and there was no sign of that approaching war when this passage of the Dardanelles would be perhaps the track of many warships.

Late at night we anchored off Constantinople, and on the following day, after repeated examinations of my passports, I was allowed to land and enter a city where the tocsin of war was calling up a great army and summoning the Turks to a death-struggle.

It was a city wild with excitement, and full of confusion, noise, and tumult. Battalions of soldiers, in khaki uniforms, wearing the inevitable fez, or turban, marched through the streets; bands of reservists, with a fierce and martial look, came swinging by with bands playing strange Oriental music. Smart officers rushed about in automobiles, crowds of Turkish citizens wandered aimlessly about as though waiting for the beginning of a great drama, veiled women passed under the shadows of the walls, generals and staff officers assembled in groups outside the Ministry of War, and everywhere there were signs of feverish anticipation.

Exciting scenes took place when soldiers seized upon the horses hi the streets, cab-horses and carriage-horses, except those for which the owners had special permits. The horses were taken to the barracks, and if fit for military service the owner was given a receipt to the effect that if the horse returned from the war it would be given back, but that if not he would be paid its value. Nothing would be paid for hire, and no one seemed to like the arrangement except the army officials.

A party of journalists arrived from London in the afternoon, among them being Mr. Lionel James of The Times, Mr. Donohoe of the Daily Chronicle, Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett of the Daily Telegraph, Mr. E. Ashmead-Bartlett, his brother, Mr. Ward Price of the Daily Mail, and Mr. Baldwin of the Central News. They were all confident that war was inevitable, and I think the majority of them were of opinion that the Turks would prove victorious in the struggle, or at least fight with a dogged and resolute courage.

On the following day I crossed over to Stamboul and took photographs of the crowded population in that strange quarter, so vile in its filth and squalor, so picturesque in its Oriental life, so turbulent in its passions.

Thousands of poorly clad peasants kept pouring into the city to join the Colours. They marched in procession headed by a musician with a fife or stringed instrument, and as they marched they burst forth into a kind of chant, repeating the same words monotonously but rising into waves of rhythmic sound. I did not understand those Turkish words, but they were translated for me, and were "Burn the Bulgarians! Burn the Servians! Burn the Greeks!" Straggling bands came down the streets shouting defiance and ridicule at the enemies of Turkey.

These Turkish peasants were for the most part men of fine physique, and their gaiety and high spirits seemed to prove their fighting valor. As they passed in thousands, and as I watched their faces and heard their laughter and shouts, no thought came to me then of the change that would come over them in a few weeks only a change which made them different beings, which stamped their faces with marks of torture, which doubled up these big fellows into twisted, writhing creatures, which made living skeletons of them, and took the brightness out of their eyes, turning it to the leaden glaze of agony and death.

Through the sunlight they passed to their fate, confident of victory, ignorant of the sufferings that lay ahead, giving praise to Allah that they had been called out to kill their Christian enemies.

Little did these Turkish peasants guess that the Government which was organizing this war, which was flouting the Christian allies, and returning contemptuous answers to their challenge, had already forfeited the power of Turkey in Europe, by hopeless inefficiency.

Some of those proud officials who came driving down the streets in motor-cars, receiving with impassive faces the salutes of the people, were hiding in their hearts the guiltiest of secrets. Some of them knew that the Turkish artillery would lack ammunition to fire its guns on the field of battle. Some of them knew that these soldiers were being sent out to starve; some of them knew that the service of the Red Crescent was hopelessly inadequate for a great campaign. What they hoped to do was to muddle through. With a spirit of fatalism, said, "What must be must. Kismet."

On October 8th I cabled to my office asking them to get the British Foreign Office to wire the Embassy here with a recommendation that I should be allowed to accompany the Turkish troops. Having come straight from Egypt I was of course unprovided with any kind of pass.

As another precaution I also called on Colonel Tyrrell, the British Attache in Constantinople, whom I found very courteous and charming, and willing to help me in every possible way. On this day we received news that Montenegro had declared war and with impetuous courage had flung her troops into the fighting line.

The few days that passed now were occupied in all the business of preparing for a campaign of which no man could guess the duration, and in searching out from a foreign city the thousand and one articles essential to the life and health of a correspondent who would have to sleep out in the open country, perhaps in rain or snow, who would be beyond the track of civilized towns and who would have to depend on his own baggage for daily food and drink. It was a harassing task, and no sooner had I bought everything that seemed essential than fellow correspondents warned me that I had forgotten a score of other things just as important.

However, there are good shops in Constantinople, and I succeeded in getting riding clothes and warm underwear and provisions which seemed enough to last me for a year, although as a matter of fact they could not have kept me going for more than a month or two.

The next part of my program, and the one which gave me the greatest anxiety, was the search for a horse, because obviously it was no use starting on this campaign without means of transport.

Mr. Ward Price of the Daily Mail met me at the Sublime Porte, and as he was engaged in the same search we went together to see any horses that might have been left over after the general military requisition.

We could find nothing worth buying only a few old crocks who looked as though they would fall down and die under the weight of a man, and a few others of better class which had been hidden by their owners, who asked fantastic prices. Finally after penetrating into all kinds of out of the way places I managed to get possession of a nice little black horse, which for certain personal reasons I christened at once Peter of Cornhill.

He bore me valiantly on many long rides, and was my silent companion in many scenes when he and I were both disheartened, weary, woebegone, and hungry. Later on I bought a second horse which I called Michael, and among other valuable purchases were two tents, a great stock of photographic material and various cooking utensils. My outfit accumulated in the Hotel de Londres and caused continual interest to the visitors. But having at last worked through my list of requirements, built up from the lists of other correspondents, the idea came to me and to them that after all these things might have been bought without a purpose and would be wasted. For although Montenegro had started fighting, days passed without any declaration of war from the other States or from Turkey.

The newspapers declared that the Great Powers were actively at work, and in Constantinople the opinion gained ground that after all war would be prevented. Our stores began to look silly, and I almost repented of the energy with which I had gone a-marketing.

On October I3th, however, I called on Nazim Pasha, the War Minister, and asked permission to take his photograph. If war did break out it was upon the shoulders of this man that the weight of it would fall, and the world would want to see his portrait.

I found him a quiet, genial, benevolent looking old gentleman, and I was tempted to take him aside and ask him privately whether war would be declared or not. But as he spoke no word of English the idea fell to the ground, and I had to content myself with the opportunity of getting a good photograph of the Minister seated at his desk from which he directed the business of the army. There was much bowing and saluting and he seemed pleased with the compliment paid to him by my camera.

Meanwhile Constantinople was becoming congested with Redifs, coming from all parts of Turkey in Europe and Asia Minor, and filling the city with the noise of martial preparations. The only possessions they brought with them were a few odd things from home in a rough pack on their backs.

On October 18th I saw the Sultan go to the Mosque. He was accompanied by his own body-guard in gorgeous uniforms. The people assembled in great crowds to watch his procession, and I managed to get a clear view of this ruler of a great Empire which, unknown to the world as yet, was tottering to its fall.

The Sultan himself was the tottering ruin of a man, a poor, weak, withered old gentleman, utterly without dignity, nervous of the crowds. The people did not receive him with any sign of enthusiasm. Only here and there a man cheered, and then became silent as though ashamed of himself.

But that lack of demonstration was perhaps due to the Oriental reverence for the person of the Sultan and not to disloyalty or dislike. I think during those days before the war the Turks were uplifted by a fanatical enthusiasm for the Mohammedan faith, of which the Sultan is the ruling head.

Two of my colleagues, Mr. Banister and Mr. Castle, surprised me by their sudden and unannounced arrival, and according to instructions from the Turkish military authorities we all doffed our English headgear and adopted the fez.

On October 7th it had been announced that Turkey, under the pressure of the Great Powers, had consented to the application of Article 43 of the Treaty of Berlin, providing immediate reforms in Macedonia and other vilayets of European Turkey. It was supposed to be a great concession, and many innocent people believed that it would have the effect of preventing war.

But the promise of reforms came many years too late, and was merely scoffed at by the Balkan League. In Constantinople its only effect was to arouse popular indignation and what they considered a humiliation to their pride. This led to an exciting scene in the city some time later, when an extraordinary exhibition of the popular desire for war and a popular belief in victory was given by the students of the University.

After holding a patriotic demonstration in the College of Law, they marched in a rowdy way to the Sublime Porte, shouting out that they wanted "War, and no concession!"

On the road they met Nazim Bey, the War Minister. He was in his carriage, which had to stop owing to the great crowd. The students surrounded him, shouting "We want war!" and were pleased when he made the answer, "Nobody wants peace!"

Afterwards, at the Sublime Porte, where Ministers were sitting in Council, about 5,000 students stormed the gates, broke some of the windows, and yelled "We want war!" "We won't have the Treaty of Berlin!"

Things began to look serious until Mahmoud Mukhtar, the general who was afterwards defeated at Lule Burgas, appeared before the students and explained that the Treaty of Berlin did not mean the granting of independence to Macedonia. He was hissed a good deal, and the students shouted, "Let the Treaty be torn to bits!" Finally, after the Grand Vizier had addressed them, they consented to disperse.

Other rowdy scenes of this kind took place in Constantinople, and I remembered them afterwards when this clamor for war had been satisfied, and when the Turks were in panic-stricken retreat. It was the terrible irony of fate.

On October 17th, after a long period of uncertainty, war was. declared by Turkey on Bulgaria and Servia. The text of the Note delivered by the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Bulgarian and Servian Ministers was as follows:

"The general mobilisation and concentration of Bulgarian and Servian troops on the Ottoman frontier, and the daily attacks on the fortified positions, together with interference in Ottoman internal affairs and inadmissible and inconceivable pretensions, have rendered impossible the maintenance of peace between Turkey and Bulgaria and Servia, which the Imperial Ottoman Government has always been desirous of conserving.

"In consequence of this the heads of the Royal Legations of Bulgaria and Servia and their staffs are informed that they must take their passports and leave the territory of the Turkish Empire as soon as possible.

"As a result of this Note a state of war exists to-day between the Turkish Empire and the kingdoms of Bulgaria and Servia."

There was no formal declaration of war to the people in Constantinople on that day, but the news came to them, and they received it, not with any demonstrations of joy, but without any sign of alarm or misgiving. As far as I was concerned, a man appointed to depict the scenes of war as near as possible to the righting lines, the end of the long delay came as a great relief.

I was heartily tired of stopping in Constantinople. In Fleet Street phraseology, I wanted "the real stuff."

Yet that night, as I went through the streets and across the Galata bridge, something of the meaning of it all came to me, something of the solemnity and fatefulness of this new chapter in history of which the opening words had now been written. I wondered vaguely if the city of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor, would ever be wrested from the Mohammedan power, which had turned the great church of San Sofia dedicated, as I have been told, by Constantine to the spirit of "Eternal wisdom "into a Moslem mosque.

I stood there looking up to the beauty of its tremendous dome, and saw the wonders of its marbles and mosaics. Now the streets of Stamboul, above which rose the domes and minarets of many mosques, were seething with crowds of Turks, the descendants of those who, as one reads in history, came under Mohammed II. to raise the Crescent upon this birthplace of Christianity in the Near East, and on the north side of the Golden Horn I looked across to the Christian quarter of Galata and Pera, with its aristocratic residences, its fine shops, its embassies and legations and consulates.

For a moment the thought flashed across my mind, what would all these Christians do if excited either by the victory, or still further the defeat, of Turkish arms if the Mohammedans of Stamboul, to whom already a Holy War was being preached, came pouring out with fanatical hatred of the Christians who lived so close to them?

But the idea was too fantastic to be entertained for more than a moment, and I came down to solid ground again when I remembered the business that still had to be done before I could leave for the front.

Fortunately, by this time I had received the recommendation from our Foreign Office, and I had also interviewed Issett Bey at the Turkish War Office. This man of courteous manners and polite speech was in charge of the foreign correspondents, and on October 2ist he sent for me to attend the War Office at 2 p.m.

There was a general assembly, and Issett Bey introduced us to Waffsy Bey, who was to come in command of us at the front. The interesting announcement was made that we should leave Constantinople by special train for the fighting line at 4.32 on the following Wednesday.

Afterwards I remembered the time given, and laughed at it; 4:32 was so very exact! However, we made a careful note of it, and after much bowing and ceremonious salutes we were all asked to come into the courtyard to be photographed for the Ministry of War.

This operation having been accomplished, there were more bows, smiles and hand-shakes, and we separated to do what business we had in hand. I made good use of my time by getting a permit from

the War Office to pass two horses, without which they would have been seized by the army.

On the following day I obtained a pass for a servant whom I had engaged. He was an Englishman, named Henry, who had spent his life in Turkey, and spoke the language fluently, as well as Greek. I hoped to find him useful both as an interpreter and handy man.

I was then called upon to sign a document pledging myself to stay with the Turkish forces until the end of the war. I confess this gave me some anxiety, for what mortal man could say how long the war would last? Wars, when once begun, especially with a power like Turkey, had a nasty habit of lingering on, as in the case of Tripoli.

Some of my friends, to whom the same ideas had occurred, spoke of arranging to have Christmas puddings sent out to them, and one of them told me that we should certainly spend Easter in Turkey. As I am to be married in June, this gave me additional cause for worry. I have since learnt that he was working on a double salary, so perhaps his wish was father to the thought.

There was now immense activity among the corps of correspondents, all of whom had extensive kits and all of whom had horses, interpreters, servants, and other nuisances. There was a tremendous scramble on Wednesday morning, and at last I succeeded in collecting all my articles of baggage and loading it on to a wagon which I had procured with immense difficulty.

We set forth in a downpour of rain (not a cheerful beginning for the campaign), and lost our nerves and tempers at the outset. At the station I found a chaos of baggage wagons and horses, and everything in a tumult and confusion.

The approach to the train was blocked with carts, mules, horses, donkeys, cabs, baggage, soldiers, officers, porters, and old men, all of them shouting, most of them cursing, many of them screaming for more money for having lifted a box or laid hands on a package.

Everyone, including myself, was in the vilest of tempers. Mr. Angus Hamilton discharged one of his servants twice for insubordinate behavior and crass stupidity, but the man refused to accept his dismissal.

After seemingly endless strife and a gradual disentanglement of all this confusion, the horses and baggage were put on to the trucks, and we left, mopping our brows and trying to regain our peace of mind, for the passenger station.

But here there was no train. The 4:32 did not arrive even at 4:33. It proved to be a myth, and we had to cool our heels and learn the art of patience for a considerable time before at last a train crawled in.

It was loaded with a regiment of Anatolians, who were packed into all the carriages except four, reserved for ourselves. Into this we squeezed, not without difficulty, and I managed to get a place with five other men, wedged in by piles of hand baggage, and supremely uncomfortable even before the train had made a move. Besides a number of French and other foreign correspondents about twenty of these, I believe there were thirteen representatives of English papers and firms. Several others were left behind in Constantinople to come on later.

Our baggage wagons and horses were attached to the train, making it by far the longest I have ever seen, and at six o'clock we slowly moved out, amid the cheers of a crowd for the departing regiment, who were going, as they no doubt believed, to gather laurels upon the fields of war.

Poor devils! They reaped another kind of harvest. It was the harvest of death. They went shouting and singing to their doom.

On the way we passed great camps; the darkness of the countryside was illumined by their fires, in which black shadows moved like a dance of devils.

On the wayside stations there were great crowds of Turks, who waved flags and torches and cheered the men who were preceding them to the front. For the first time I felt the thrill of war, and understood that madness which intoxicates great masses of humanity stirred by the spirit of war, eager to meet the enemy, careless of all else but victory in the field.

The rain had ceased and it was a glorious night. The crescent moon arose, as a symbol of Turkish power in Europe, as a threat to the armies of the Cross advancing under that moon across the distant mountains. The train jogged on. The faces of my companions became blurred and vague. My head jolted with the jerking of the carriage. My brain was filled with a confusion of thoughts, my body was cramped by my uncomfortable position. The conversation of my companions became only a murmur in my ears, and at last I fell into a troubled sleep, while I was carried onward to the great adventure of war.

In the Field of War

On the morning of October 27th I awakened at 5:30 a.m. to find that we had arrived at a place called Seidler.

The train had come to a halt and did not seem to have the slightest intention of ever going on again. I felt both cold and hungry, and making a dive into my haversack obtained the relics of some sandwiches and wine which had furnished my supper on the previous night.

As the train seemed quite fixed, I decided to stretch my limbs, and went for a short walk with my camera, which was always my companion on such occasions. Some living pictures appeared, and I saw the first signs of Turkish defeat, startling at this early stage of the campaign.

There were hundreds of refugees hurrying forward, slowly in spite of their hurry, with what goods they could carry towards Constantinople. Practically all of them had bullock wagons, and the closely-veiled women, wearing trousers, did the same work as the men, ploughing through the mud and water at the head of the carts and putting their shoulders to the wheel when the carts stuck in the deep ruts of the rough track.

It was a pitiable thing to see these people, whom fear had over-mastered, and who under the shadow of it had abandoned their homes and farms to go in search of safety from an advancing enemy.

It was obvious to see how, with frantic haste, they had collected all their little valuables, piled on to the carts as much household furniture as they could carry, and set forth on the long journey to the city, where they had no means of livelihood, but only a chance of life. Upon the tops of the bundles of clothing and the miscellaneous assortment of pots and pans sat the children of these wanderers.

Yet in the light of day these little ones looked happy. To them, not understanding the truth of things, this escape seemed a good adventure, and they smiled down from their high perches as though it were all a joke.

Only their parents, the unhappy peasants who had left their little plot of soil upon which they and their forefathers had labored, only these poor peasants who had turned their backs, perhaps forever, from the little houses and hovels which had been their homes, showed by their faces the fear that possessed them and the perplexity with which they trudged forward.

There were fine faces among these men: the strong faces of peasants who have lived hard, simple lives, and who have been very close to nature and seen its cruelties and hardships.

The old men especially moved my pity. These wrinkled old fellows, with white beards and mild eyes, looked very weary and very troubled. It was late in their life to be turned adrift and to lead their oxen to new, and perhaps barren, pastures. Yet they made no moan, but trudged forward, pulling at the bullocks 156 and shouting strange words into the ears of those unresponsive beasts.

All the women were very much averse to being photographed, and, with the strange shyness and fear of Oriental women before the public gaze, hid when they saw a camera pointing at them.

One of my colleagues, Mr. Banister, had an ugly proof of their hatred of publicity.

He raised his camera to take a picture of the refugees making their way along the track, when suddenly he received a severe blow from behind, and before he could recover himself his camera was torn out of his grasp and flung into a pond. This sudden and violent attack had been made by a man who resented the attempt to photograph his wife. He seemed wild with passion, and raised his fist in a threatening way as though he would do still greater violence.

Mr. G. H. Wilkins, who had come out for the Gaumont Company, and who in moments of crisis was always the leader of my little party and a man of quick decision, pulled out his revolver, believing that the angry Turk might try to use a knife and that this incident might develop into a nasty affray. The man looked at the weapon, which had a wonderful effect in quieting his wrath. He went away vowing to return with a gun, but we saw no more of him.

For some unexplained reason the tram still remained stationary, and from the officers we understood that it would probably be many hours before we moved on.

There was nothing to be done but pitch a camp on the side of the line and to pass the time in preparing a meal. I took the opportunity of climbing into one of the baggage wagons, where I captured a tongue and a tin of biscuits from my stores, while Wilkins, who is an old campaigner, made a successful fire and some excellent tea on the bank of the railway line.

It was glorious weather all day. The sun shone warmly down upon us and gave comfort even to the refugees, many of whom were thinly clad. During the day at least there was no sign of the promised cold, although at night it was chilly enough.

As the sun sank and twilight came, with its deepening shadows, many of the soldiers who had descended from the train took off their boots and prayed. A hush fell upon the scene, and I was deeply impressed with the sight of those men proclaiming their faith under the open sky and praying to the God of Battle to Allah whose name was upon their lips.

They raised their hands to their ears with that strange Oriental gesture which signifies that the man is listening - for the whisper of the great voice of the Almighty One, and prostrated themselves so that foreheads touched the earth, and sat down cross-legged, swaying backwards and forwards until once again their heads were bowed to the dust. But always they kept their face turned towards the setting sun.

These men were praying that the Mohammedan spirit might vanquish all its enemies, as in the days of the Prophet, and that the Crescent might rise supreme over those who challenged its might.

But even while they prayed there came an answer, which perhaps put the first fear into the hearts of soldiers who had come out confident of victory. For late in the afternoon a train arrived from the direction of Kirk Kilisse packed to suffocation with refugees and soldiers, and then we heard with amazement that the place had fallen into the hands of the Bulgars.

It was a deadening blow to the Turks, for that city was acknowledged by them to be of immense strategic importance, and it was believed that it would hold out against the attack of the Bulgarian forces.

Afterwards we heard of the destructive terrors of the Bulgarian artillery, the deadly accuracy of that fire which rained upon the Turkish trenches, and the vast stores of ammunition which fed those insatiable guns. We heard of the frenzied way in which the Bulgarian peasants charged with the naked bayonet, making a series of rushes from position to position, charging over the dead bodies of their comrades, and utterly reckless of their own lives, but doing the most dreadful work when their knives came within reach of the Turkish infantry. We heard of the fierce fighting through the vineyards, the gradual dismay which fell upon the Turkish commanders, the sudden order for a general retreat, the wild flight of the inhabitants mixed up in a terrible confusion with wounded and panic-stricken soldiers, with gun-carriages and limber and transport wagons, and the abandonment of the town with all its wealth of stores.

With Kirk Kilisse fallen Adrianople would be closed in on the eastern side by the besieging army and cut off from communication with the main forces of the Turks.

A train, which had previously arrived, and which was carrying the people who knew the full details of this tremendous calamity for the Turks, passed on in the direction of Constantinople.

But almost immediately four of the coaches overturned, slowly and mysteriously.

I had been watching the departing train, startled by the news which had come with it, and I could hardly believe my eyes when the carriages toppled over in this way. It looked as though a great disaster had happened at this spot, and there was a good deal of screaming from those who had been hurled to the ground. Curiously enough, however, no one seemed badly hurt; but the accident had blocked our retreat for several hours, and Major Waffsy, who, as I have said, was in charge of the war correspondents, seemed rather worried about it.

Before it was quite dark we received orders to take our seats in the train, and the reason soon became obvious.

All around us were thousands of refugees. They were starving. They had no shelter from the night. Their women folk were spent and weary. Their children were wailing, and they had only one consuming and desperate desire to escape from the advancing enemy, whom they believed to be close on their track.

The men clamored to be allowed to crush into the train, although it was already overcrowded. They were fierce in their appeals and in their demands. It seemed as though they would fight their way in, even at the expense of blood.

A strong guard was placed over us and over our provisions. There were some who thought the position quite dangerous on account of there being so many starving soldiers about and our provisions being so near. Francis McCullagh came into my carriage and said:

"Grant, hand me down that bag."

"Presently," I said, being busy with something else at the moment.

McCullagh looked at me gravely.

"I will have it now," he said, "if you don't mind."

I gave him the bag and he took out a small black object which he slipped into his side pocket. It was his revolver.

"Do you think it is as bad as that?" I asked.

He nodded.

"I think it's coming."

Personally I did not take so serious a view of the situation, as it seemed to me with less experience than men like McCullagh that the refugees were helpless against the soldiers.

But, looking back on the incident, I am inclined to think that the peril was there, and that the soldiers were quite as dangerous as the refugees, for they knew perfectly that we had a good stock of provisions. They had seen us opening tinned meats and picnicing on the lines. After all, we were Christians and well fed, and they were Moslems, and starving.

It would not have been wonderful for them to entertain the idea of robbing the Christians to feed the Turks. As a matter of fact a portion of our guard was disarmed and replaced by fresh men, which is a proof that trouble was brewing. Fortunately we had good officers with us who were responsible for our safety, and who were perfectly loyal in their consideration for us. Without their authority there might have been a different tale to tell.

Orders had been given that the train should not proceed further, after the news about Kirk Kilisse, but that we should go back part of the way.

At 9:30 p.m. we began to move for shunting purposes, while officers stood on the footboards to keep order. A little later we started off on our retreat. It was a beautiful moonlight night.

I shall not soon forget the sensation of pity that overwhelmed me at that moment. It was a horrible thing to see in the pale glamour of the moonlight a huddled mass of men, women and children exposed to the biting wind. Many of them were crying with cold and hunger. Now that the sun had gone, and the coldness of night had fallen upon them, the little ones were no longer merry. The sunlight had gone out of their eyes, too. It was no longer a gay adventure. They were crying out for food and shelter.

And the hundreds of poor peasants who had brought their worldly goods in the bullock wagons, over the rough ways and through the mud and ruts, were now ready to abandon their wagons and their goods as well, so that they might get a place of safety on our train.

But even that was denied them. We could not have given a place to any other passenger. A great wail of grief, of infinite despair, one of the saddest sounds that has ever come to my ears, arose from that wretched crowd. The lament of the women, the cries of the little children, the deep groans of the men mingled in a dreadful chorus of despair.

They watched our train glide away, thinking, I am certain, that with us went their last chance of safety, and that when the train had gone there would be only one way of escape through the dark gate of death. Several men tried to scramble on to the footboards, but were roughly pushed off by the soldiers, who then it searched them, as though suspecting that they carried weapons.

It was horrible. It made our hearts bleed. The people who read of wars do not realize this dark side of the picture, surely more terrible than when men are falling in the heat and shock of battle.

Towards Lule Burgas

I awoke from a fitful sleep, disturbed by dreams in which all this misery was re-enacted, and found that the train had arrived at Chorlu.

It was then seven o'clock in the morning, and we received instructions to disentrain. It was good to get out into the fresh air, to blow the cobwebs out of our eyes, and to stamp a little warmth into our feet, but the hours that followed were full of worry and trouble.

My servant Henry, who was a willing but not very capable man, without any self-reliance and rather "old-womanish "in his character, tied two of our horses to trees, but owing to an insecure fastening, and the worst of luck, one of them got loose in a few minutes and disappeared goodness knows where.

I was very vexed, for this was a personal disaster which might cost me dearly. I sent the man off to find the missing animal, and used such strong language that he bestirred himself.

To my joy he returned with a horse. It was not my horse, it is true, and unfortunately it was not so good as mine, but still it was a horse. I did not inquire too closely into the facts of its previous ownership, but Henry had followed out the one great rule of war, which is everyone for himself.

He had been so successful that I tested him again, and sent him off for a bullock wagon. This time he surpassed himself, and actually came back with a beautiful wagon and two nice little oxen at the same price as the horse.

"Where on earth did you pick that up?" I asked.

Henry replied modestly that it had been quite simple. He had found it near the station, and an old man near by had told him that the owner had gone away by train and left it.

"May I have it?" asked Henry.

The old man raised his hands in a hopeless sort of way.

"It is not mine. It belongs to nobody. I have no use for it."

So it became my property, according to the extraordinary conditions of life prevailing in this Country, where, as I found all the time, men would carry their goods about awhile, then drop them, and abandon them, anywhere, to any fate, while they seized upon some passing chance of escape, or wandered off to die, or slunk into some hiding place which they made their home, until death came in some other form to relieve them of their misery.

My companions, Wilkins and Banister, had decided to pool their servants with mine for the time being, and to camp together. In a country like this, and at such a time, it would have been a mad, even an impossible thing, to play a lone hand and to go upon the lone trail.

One man would have been defenseless against the wandering bands of soldiers and stragglers, hungry for his stores, if he had any, greedy of his horse, if he mounted one. If he had fallen and broken his arm or leg in a lonely place, he would have lain there to die without any hope of help. If he had been attacked by fever or any other illness, not improbable on the line of a retreating army, he would have found no doctor to attend to him, and no medicine to relieve his pain.

Above all, perhaps, wandering about with no companion he would have been utterly miserable and in danger of melancholy madness. It was therefore advisable to get companionship for self -protection.

And here I must pay a tribute to Wilkins of the cinematograph, one of the best companions in the world, because of his continual cheerfulness, his knowledge of handicraft, of horses, and of all rough work and outdoor life. He is an Australian, and has had many adventures in wild places of the world which have taught him valuable lessons, among them being the gift of leadership, instant decision in moments of peril, and a quick way of righting something that has gone wrong. If a cart broke down it was Wilkins who set it up again. If it overturned it was Wilkins who put it on its wheels again. If horses stampeded in a camp, it was Wilkins who was first to come to the rescue. And he did all these things, not in any arrogant way, not in a bullying commanding spirit, but quietly and cheerfully, as though it all came natural to him and was part of his scheme of life. Personally, I do not know what I should have done without such an experienced fellow by my side, and I am glad here to give the praise that was his due.

Together, therefore, Wilkins, Banister and I picked out a nice spot on the side of a hill near the station, which was to be the correspondents' headquarters. We pitched three bell tents, one for sleeping, one for meals and the developing of photographs, and the other for servants.

We also put up two small tents as shelter for our stores, and above this encampment we raised the Union Jack, as a sign to all Turks, and to any foreign Christians who might come that way, that we were under the protection of that great British Empire which, in legend at least, stretches its mighty power over the meanest and furthest of its subjects!

In other words, it was a warning against trespassers.

Towards evening we had shaken down and settled our arrangements in a very orderly and creditable style, and then partook of tinned sausages and tea, which after our fatigue was as good as a banquet. Our camp consisted, in addition to the three principals, of a Maltese person of linguistic attainments but of faint heart, whom I will allude to in future as the white livered one, and who was to act as our chief interpreter and general servant; Henry, interpreter, bottle-washer and general drudge, with Marcus, a Turk with no language but his own, as ostler and part-cook, together with six horses, one motor-bicycle, and a wagon converted into a manger.

When all hands were on deck, cleaning up and making order out of chaos, the two oxen which had come to us as a gift from the gods, escaped in the same sudden and mysterious way, much to the consternation and grief of Henry, who regarded them with feelings of personal pride and satisfaction, as though he had bought them by his own hard-earned money.

I was hardly less regretful at the loss, and having made enquiries in the neighborhood heard that they had last been seen disappearing into the mist over the hillside. It did not seem expedient to go in search of them, as we had been instructed not to leave the camp after 5:30) ?> p.m., and at no time without an officer.

We were war-correspondents it is true, but we were also to some extent prisoners of war, and it was perfectly futile for any one of us, at this time, to attempt to break away in the hope of getting a journalistic "scoop," as it is called.

It would have been an easy way to death, for there were sentries posted around with orders to shoot anybody who failed to give the password to their challenge, and as far as we were concerned the very challenge itself would not have been understood. It was wiser therefore to stay close to camp and obey the regulations.

I slept that night under my canvas roof in fair comfort, although in such close quarters that there was hardly room to breathe.

In the morning I turned out for a ride on "Peter of Cornhill "with Allan Ostler of the Daily Express, and gave the natives of the village a rare treat, for they seemed to think we had come out of a museum, and gathered round in crowds to gaze at us.

The village of Chorlu was a miserable, squalid place, and at this time fairly quiet. I saw it afterwards when it was the scene of a wild and terrible chaos of panic-stricken humanity.

Wolfish dogs prowled about, Turkish women peered at us from dark doorways, hiding their faces as we passed, and the peasants stood about in groups as though they had no work or purpose in life.

I took cafe there at the local tavern, a fine luxury in spite of the dirt and evil smells in the place, and I was surprised when the waiter refused "backsheesh." It seemed to me that he might be ill or in love, and to this day I do not know the reason of this astonishing refusal.

That night we gave a dinner party, on the strength of a turkey, captured, killed and cooked by Marcus.

This man had a genius for looting, and had made a solemn vow to find us food anywhere and everywhere, The turkey had been caught on a raiding expedition, and Marcus enjoyed himself vastly as the aroma of it came steaming out of the pot to his critical and sensitive nostrils. It was a huge success, and we received the compliments of our distinguished guests, Mr. Ward Price, of the Daily Mail, and an English officer who had come out in the hope of seeing some of the fighting.

Mr. Ward Price, who invariably wears an eyeglass and looks the most debonair of men, was the best of companions, unruffled in a crisis, and of persuasive speech in the presence of Turkish officers who desired to thwart our plans. He proclaims that his knowledge of the Turkish language is not as extensive as he would wish, but the way in which he managed to make himself understood in the most difficult circumstances, and to understand what was said to him, continually aroused my admiration.

That night I developed some photographs in my tent under the most uncomfortable conditions, as there was a very heavy thunderstorm, and some of the rain found its way through the canvas.

The noise of the thunder was like the booming of guns, and the rain lashed down with a great pattering on the tent, and I was so absorbed in my own work that I did not hear any other kind of noise.

But presently I was startled by a terrific din from a soldiers' camp near by, and one of my companions came and informed me, through the closed flap in a voice of alarm, that a mutiny was in progress near by, and that we should have to look out for the safety of our stores. I answered gruffly, for I was not in the best of tempers on account of the developing work, and as the noise stayed where it was and did not come any nearer I went on with my task.

I heard afterwards that- the soldiers had been quarrelling and fighting over some tents, and that the uproar had alarmed others who were encamped in the neighbourhood.

On October 27th I dried the films of the photographs I had taken, and had them passed by the Censor after heated argument.

He was, I think, perplexed as to the advisability of letting through photographs which showed in the most vivid way possible the demoralization of the refugees and the tragedy of the flight after Kirk Kilisse. From Constantinople there would be going out optimistic reports to throw dust in the eyes of the world, reassuring accounts of the work of the troops, and the temporary retirement of certain forces in order to lead the Bulgarians into a death-trap.

But the old saying, that the camera cannot lie, presented itself to the mind of the Censor when he held my films up to the light and saw the subjects which had made his face grow grave on the previous day. Even after he had passed them I had grave doubts whether they would get through to England, past all the other officials whose duty it was to hide the ugly truth of things as far as possible.

However, I trusted to luck, and took a ride round the country with some of the other correspondents.

Very soon an officer came riding toward us in an excited way and reprimanded us for being out of camp. We received his words in silence, but obeyed the order. Afterwards we were informed that an officer would conduct a party of us for a short "joy ride " at three o'clock; but this was too much for our pride, and we all refused to go, as we objected to be treated like school-girls.

On the following day we broke all records for breakfast, having bacon and three eggs each, with tea, bread and butter. This sumptuous fare was a safeguard against the weather, which had turned very cold indeed, so that I found a sweater, leather coat and overcoat not more than was necessary.

Waffsy Bey, our commanding officer and chief inquisitor, talked of finding stables for our horses, which was essential for our comfort and theirs, as on the previous night, in our corner of the camp, there had been a great fight among them. A German horse had escaped from another part of the camp and galloped over to us, causing a wild stampede.

We were all asleep in our tent when the affair happened, and were awakened by the tremendous trampling of hoofs, a series of neighings, and all the noise of animals engaged in a desperate conflict.

My companion, Banister, was very nearly kicked to death, as a horse lashed out close to the canvas, and he crawled out, almost undressed, to see what was happening around him.

Wilkins and I also dashed out, and found three of the horses on their hind legs fighting furiously within a few feet of the tent, surrounded by a crowd of servants, swearing in all languages, but utterly afraid to bring the beasts to order and discipline. Wilkins, with his usual energy, seized a long tent pole and brandished it like a Berserker on the war-path, belaboring the infuriated horses with great blows.

He had absolutely no fear of them, though it was a dangerous game to play, and he might have been kicked to death by one of those lashing hoofs. However, his methods proved effective, and the uproar soon quieted down, though not before one of our horses had been badly bitten on his shoulder and stood quivering with excitement and fear.

We now had orders to shift camp into the village of Chorlu, where we were to pay for rooms and stabling.

I think the object of this order was not so much to provide us with more comfort, but to keep us more together and more restricted in our freedom.

After the usual scramble of repacking, shifting goods, and searching for lodgings, we settled down in three rooms, using our camp beds as the most useful and ornamental articles of furniture. Our house was nothing more than a Turkish hovel, bare of any luxuries, horribly dirty, and infested with those small animals of which I have a special and peculiar dread. Keating's powder was in great demand, and I sprinkled all my clothes with it in order to secure some relief from the intolerable misery of providing a banquet for these carnivorous creatures.

The stabling for the horses was good enough, and we made the best of our household arrangements, doing our own cooking and enjoying our own dishes.

I now come to the days of October 2Qth and 30th.

Glorious weather continued, and tempted all of us to the open country, away from this filthy little village, where we were penned up like sheep. From afar I heard the music of the guns. It came in continuous shocks of sound, the crash of great artillery bursting out repeatedly into a terrific cannonade. It was obviously the noise of something greater than a skirmish of outposts or a fight between small bodies of men.

While the war correspondents were cooking food in their stewing-pots a big battle was in progress, deciding the fate of nations and ending the lives of many human beings. That thunder of guns made my pulses beat, throbbed into my brain. I could not rest inactive and in ignorance of the awful business that was being done beyond the hills. Ignoring the orders to remain in the village, I rode out towards the guns.

Although I did not know it at the time, as we were utterly without information, I was riding towards the battle of Lule Burgas, which destroyed the flower of the Turkish army and opened the way of the Bulgarians to Constantinople.

Of the actual battle itself I am unable to speak as an eye-witness. Indeed, there was no mortal eye who could see more than a small part of it, as it covered a front of something like fifty miles, and even to the commanders of the army corps engaged it was a wild and terrible confusion of great forces hurling themselves upon other great bodies of men, sometimes pressing them back, sometimes retiring, swept by a terrific fire, losing immense numbers of men, and uncertain of the damage they were inflicting upon the opposing troops.

Only from those who took part in it have I been able to gather some of the grim details of that great tragedy to the Turks. Certain facts stand out in all their accounts.

The Turkish artillery was overmastered from the first. The Bulgarian guns were in greater numbers and better served, and they had an inexhaustible supply of ammunition.

Not so the Turks. In consternation, in rage, in despair, the Turkish artillery officers saw their ammunition dwindling and giving out at a time when they needed it most: when the enemy's shells were bursting continuously upon their positions, when the enemy's infantry were exposing themselves on the ridges, and when the Bulgarian soldiers made wild rushes, advancing from point to point, in spite of their heavy losses in dead and wounded.

There were Turkish officers and soldiers who stood with folded arms by the limber of guns that could no longer return the enemy's fire, until to a man they were wiped out by the scattered shells. The frantic messages carried to the commander-in-chief notifying this lack of ammunition passed unheeded, because the supply was exhausted.

Abdullah Pasha was a sad man that day, when from one of the heights he looked down upon his scattered army corps and saw how gradually their fire was silenced. Now on his right wing and his left his legions were pressed back until they wavered and broke. And now, with an overwhelming power and irresistible spirit of attack, the Bulgarians cut the railway line, scattered his squadrons of cavalry, broke through his various units, and bore down upon his rear-guard holding the town of Lule Burgas.

I do not believe the Turkish soldiers were guilty of cowardice during those hours of battle. It was only afterwards, when the fighting was finished and the retreat began, that panic made cowards of all of them and seemed to paralyze them.

But from all that I have heard the Turkish soldiers in the mass behaved as bravely during the battle as all the traditions of their fighting spirit have led us to believe. They fought resolutely and doggedly, although, as I know now, they had gone into the battle hungry and were starving at the end of it.

They died in sufficient numbers, God knows, to prove their valor. They died in heaps. Many of the battalions were almost annihilated, and the greatest honor is due to the men of the Second Corps, who after they had been beaten back again and again, after the battle had really been lost irretrievably by the failure of Mukhtar Pasha to repress the general attack of the Bulgarians with his Third Army Corps, which had come up from the direction of Viza, re-formed themselves and marched to an almost certain death.

For a little while they held their own, but the Bulgarians were now in an impregnable position on the heights, and in such places of vantage for their artillery that they could concentrate their fire in a really terrific manner. The men of the Second Corps found themselves in a zone of bursting shells, and in the face of a withering rifle fire which swept upon them like a hailstorm.

A great cry broke from the ranks of the living, in which already there were great gaps, as the dead and wounded fell in all directions. The ranks were broken. It was only a rabble of terror-stricken men, running away from that hunting-ground of death, who came back beyond the reach of the Bulgarian bullets.

The town of Lule Burgas was already in the hands of the enemy. And in the great field of battle, extending over the wild countryside for many miles, divisions, regiments, and battalions were scattered and shattered, no longer disciplined bodies of men, but swarms of individuals, each seeking a way to save his own life, each taking to flight like a hunted animal, each bewildered and dazed by the tragic confusion in which he staggered forward.

This is a connected account of what happened. But in war events are not seen connectedly, but piecemeal, confusedly, and without any apparent coherence, by those who are units in a great scheme of fate. So, looking back upon those days, it seems to me that I lived in a muddling nightmare, when one experience merged into another, and when one scene changed to another in a fantastic and disorderly way.

I first came in touch with bodies of retreating soldiers when, in my ride out from the village of Chorlu, I crossed the railway line and went on towards the guns.

Those men were in straggling groups or walking singly. They were the first fugitives, the first signs, on this day of Tuesday, 29th, that the battle which was raging with increasing fury was not going well for the Turks.

The men were coming away from the fight weary, dejected, hopeless. They had no idea as to the direction in which they wanted to go. They wandered along aimlessly, some this way, some that, all of them silent and sullen, as though brooding over the things they had seen and suffered, and as though resentful of the fate that had befallen them.

I did not grasp the full significance of these wandering soldiers. I thought they were just faint-hearted fellows who had deserted from their battalions. Soon I saw the real truth.

The Great Retreat

Late in the evening of Tuesday, October 2gth, all the war-correspondents were ordered to prepare themselves immediately to go forward to the front and to take provisions with them for three days, as well as blankets.

At 9:30 on the following morning I again rode out of Chorlu, with Banister and Wilkins as my companions, with my one white-livered man. We were determined not to wait for the personally conducted crowd, but to pass on independently. I carried a sleeping bag with a blanket, and biscuits and chocolate.

Wilkins was delayed by his pack-horse, which had to carry his cinematograph apparatus and other impedimenta, so I went on with my colleague Mr. Banister. But we too soon became separated. Later on, when some miles on the way to Lule Burgas, I lost my servant, and I then had to go forward on the lone trail.

In a little while I lost all sense of loneliness. I was in the midst of a crowd. It was one of the most pitiable crowds that might be seen in the world. I passed a continuous stream of wounded men struggling in the direction from which I came.

Some of them had had the good luck to find places on ox-wagons, but most of them, not so lucky for there were few wagons were on foot, and were already utterly exhausted. It was a terrible and heartrending sight.

Those Turkish soldiers were not cowards and deserters. They had taken their part in the firing lines. They were the victims of the Bulgarian batteries. They had been wounded in the arms or legs, and their wounds had not been dressed. They had torn strips off their own clothing to make bandages or slings. Many of them had their heads swathed in. rags, through which the blood had oozed, so that they looked ghastly.

Some of them were hobbling along on sticks picked up on the wayside. Now and again a man would stagger, grope blindly for a moment with both hands, and then collapse, falling limply upon the roadway, never to rise again.

Others made desperate efforts to keep their feet and to reach a place of shelter and safety.

There was no groaning among them, no cries of pain, though I could see by their faces that pain had them in its grips. There was the stamp of hunger too upon their faces, so pinched and drawn that only for the living eyes they would have looked like dead men.

Now and again as a man passed a murmur came from him the name of Allah. Again and again I heard those words "Allah! Allah! Inch' Allah!" in a despairing way, in a harmonious sing-song. But it seemed to me that Allah did not hear these men and had abandoned them, at least there was no mercy for them in this life.

Hundreds passed me, a long procession of pain and suffering, the wreckage of human life cast up to my feet as it were by the waves of battle.

Many of them turned their eyes to me as I sat on my horse, seemed to send up to me a mute appeal for help. But I could do nothing for them. Their numbers were too great.

Only to one poor fellow with glazed eyes, and lips all swollen out so that he was a living horror, I gave a little water from my flask, and although too weak to make the usual Mohammadan sign of thanks he spoke to me from those glazed eyes of his, and I knew that he was grateful.

This road of retreat was a Doleful Way. There was no real road at all, but only cart-ruts across the open country, and beside it lay dead and dying men and horses.

Flocks of carrion crows were hovering about waiting for their banquet of death. Later on I saw the wolfish dogs of the countryside already eating the flesh of these victims of war.

The dying men lay in all kinds of posture, some of them as if they were sleeping quietly and happily, some of them huddled up and face downwards, as a blindness had come over them so that they fell heavily, some of them in horrible contortion, some of them stiff and stark, with their faces upturned to the sky.

None of their comrades of misery tried to lift them up again, or even turned their eyes to glance at them as they passed. They were left there helpless and forsaken, and the greatest gift for which they could hope was a speedy death.

It was hunger and fatigue, as much as loss of blood that killed them. Some of the men in charge of the commissariat of the Turkish army were the greatest enemies of the troops.

Late that afternoon, sickened by all these sights, I stopped to rest my horse and was joined by Major Waffsy and the other correspondents.

Our Turkish officer was very much disturbed by the scenes on the road, which told him the tale of defeat more clearly than anything he might have read in official dispatches.

After fording the river during which the horse of one of the French correspondents took it into his head to take a refreshing roll, much to the rage and dismay of the dapper gentleman on its back we stopped near the village of Karistaran and our conductor decided to camp.

Several of the English correspondents joined forces, and after attending to our horses always our first duty we lit a huge fire and sat round to a dinner of sardines, tongue and biscuits, washed down by tea without milk. We had a camp-fire gossip, chiefly about the war, of which we knew so little; about the possibilities of Turkish victory or defeat, and about the long trail of the wounded whom we had seen that day.

Then we prepared for sleep, rolling ourselves up in our blankets and lying with our feet to the blazing embers. The moon was high and bright, and shed a pale glamour upon the scene, so that it all seemed ghostly in its beauty. Presently all was very quiet, and one after another drowsy men fell into a deep slumber, so that their steady breathing was the only sound beyond the crackle of the fire.

By three o'clock in the morning, however, the frost had taken possession of our blankets, and chilled to the bone we found further sleep impossible, so that we started up and searched for wood to light the fire, which had died out.

This done, we sat hunched up as close as possible to its flames, and in the warmth of them awaited the dawn, more or less in comfort. It was a queer experience, even to journalists and press photographers, who are the adventurers of modern life, and who come across many queer days in the course of a year.

The pale dawn came greyly across the plain, and the shadows of night crept away, and in the hush of the early hour men were silent, wondering what would be the fortune of war that day.

So came the break of day on October 3ist, a date which now belongs to history, remembered with bitterness by the Turks and with triumph by the Bulgarians. Before the sun had dispelled the white, hard frost on the grass there came to our ears once more the thunder of the guns, which had stopped at dark on the night before. We made a hasty breakfast, eager to get close to the battle, not only for professional reasons, but because no men may withstand the thrill which comes when men are fighting.

But our hopes were dashed to the ground, and we were thrown into consternation when Major Waffsy came to us and ordered an instant and hurried retreat. We were disposed to rebel, to protest against this order, which seemed ignominious, and absurd, and unreasonable. But very soon we saw that Waffsy Bey had reason on his side and that things were very serious.

Thousands of Turks were making their way in great disorder in the direction of Chorlu.

They were literally running from the distant guns. They were like great flocks of sheep scared by the wolf, and stumbling forward. Men fell as they ran, stumbling and staggering over the boulders and in the ruts. They seemed to be pursued by an invisible terror, so that they did not dare to stop, except to regain breath to amble forward with drooping heads.

They had no shame in this flight. These tall fellows, of fine physique except for their leanness and starvation looks, ran like whipped dogs, with eyes that glinted with the light of a great fear. It was a distressing and painful sight.

Major Waffsy seemed in just as much hurry. The sight of these fugitive soldiers seemed to shake his nerves terribly, and his face was very white and strained. I pitied the man, for he was a patriotic Turk and a courteous gentleman, although sometimes we hated him because he kept us so strictly in hand.

Now he started back on the line of the retreat with part of his charge, who seemed to think that this time he would be a valuable companion; but none of the English went with him. We had decided to give him the slip.

So we tarried over our preparations and deliberately lengthened the time of our packing, and found many difficulties in the way of an early start. Major Waffsy set off without us, not suspecting our ruse, and when he was well out of harm's way we proceeded on our own line of route, which was forward to the battlefield.

I made my way to the river and there saw an astounding sight of panic in its most complete and furious form. It was indeed the very spirit of panic which had taken possession of the soldiers whom I now met on this spot.

Never before had I seen men so mad with fear. I hope that never again shall I see a great mass of humanity so lost to all reason, so impelled by the one terrible instinct of flight.

The bridge was absolutely blocked with retreating soldiers. It was a great stone bridge, with many archways and a broad roadway, with one part of its parapet broken; but, broad as it was, it was not wide enough to contain the rabble ranks which pressed across from the further bank.

They struggled forward, trampling upon each other's heels, pushing and jostling like a crowd escaping through a narrow exit from a theatre fire.

Most of the men were on foot, some still hugging their rifles, and using them to prod on their foremost fellows, but some of them were unarmed. They bent their heads down, drooped as though their strength was fast failing, breathed hard and panted like beasts hunted after a long chase, and came shambling across the bridge as though on one side there was the peril of death and on the other side safety.

The horsemen in the crowd rugged men swathed in drab cloths like mummies taken from their cases, on lean ribbed and wretched horses would not wait for the procession across the bridge, but, spurred on by panic, dashed into the water and forded their way across. All seemed quite regardless of the fact that the Bulgars were several miles away, and that the difference of a few miles would not count in the gap between life and death.

I almost expected to see a squadron of the Bulgarian cavalry charging down upon this mass of men, so abject was their terror. But the plain behind them showed no sign of an enemy. No guns played upon the fugitives. Instead came a force of Turkish cavalry with drawn swords, galloping hard and rounding up the fugitives.

Many officers did their best to stem the tide of panic, and beat the men back with flats of their swords, and threatened them with their revolvers, shouting, and cursing, and imploring them. But all the effect they had was to check a few of the men, who waited until the officers were out of sight, and then pressed forward again.

With a young British officer who was out to see some fighting, I turned again towards the town of Lule Burgas, where a great fight was now taking place, and rode against the incoming stream of wounded and retreating soldiers.

They seemed to come on in living waves round my horse, and I looked down upon their bent figures, and saw their lines staggering below me, and men dropping on all sides. I saw the final but fruitless struggle of many of them as they tried to keep their feet, and then fell. I saw the pain which twisted the faces of those who were grievously wounded. I saw the last rigors of men as death came upon them.

When we got nearer to the roaring guns, breaking out into great volleys which seemed to shake the earth, and to set the air throbbing, the retreat was being carried out in a more orderly fashion. Men were marching in rank, with their rifles slung across their shoulders, and with officers pacing along side. Those who had broken the ranks were stopped, and unless wounded were compelled to come into the ranks again. I saw many men being chased with whips and swords, while non-commissioned officers were set apart to cut off the stragglers. They were spent with fatigue, and suffering from hunger and thirst, and despondency was written on every face, but at least it was a relief to see an orderly formation and a body of men who had not lost all courage and self-respect. Evidently the best of the army was at the front.

As my companion and I were short of food and darkness was coming on, we decided to turn, especially as the fight could not last until the next morning. At dusk we reached the village of Karistaran and met Angus Hamilton and H. Baldwin, and together set out for a night ride to Chorlu.

This was far from pleasant. The army was in full retreat, and the roads and bridges were thronged, so that it was impossible to push one's way through the tramping men who, of course, would not open up for us, and whose rifles were like a moving hedge in front of us.

It was also difficult to ride at the side of the roads, on account of the exhausted and dying soldiers who lay about in the mud while their comrades passed. This was a sickening thing, and I had a sensation of horror every time my horse halted before one of those prone bodies, or when I had to pull it out of the way of one of them.

Another difficulty that worried me was the absence of an interpreter. We should not know if we were challenged, and could not answer if we knew, so that we were in real danger.

As a measure of precaution we rode as near as possible together in a group of four, hoping, in the darkness, to be taken for a patrol. If we had been recognized as foreigners we might have lost our horses, for these Turks, wounded or exhausted, would have coveted our mounts, for which they had a really desperate need.

Reading this in cold blood people may accuse us of selfishness. It would have been heroic, they might think, to dismount and, in Christian charity, yield up our horses to suffering men. But that idea would have seemed fantastic had it occurred to us for a moment. We had our duty to perform to our papers, and what, after all, would four horses have meant among so many? Such a sacrifice would merely have led to our own undoing.

Never shall I forget that ride in the dark night to Chorlu, the vague forms of the retreating army passing with us and around us like an army of ghosts, the strange, confused noise of stumbling feet, of voices crying to each other, of occasional groans, of clanking arms, of chinking bits and bridles, the sense of terror that seemed to~ walk with this army in flight, the acuteness of our own senses, highly-strung, apprehensive of unknown dangers, oppressed by the gloom of this mass of tragic humanity.

At last we reached Chorlu in the early hours of the morning, utterly tired out in body and spirit and quite famished, as we had only had a few biscuits since our very scanty breakfast on the previous day. My chief surprise and congratulation was that Peter, my horse, had stood the strain so well. He was still in good form though tired after his long journey.

It was now Friday, November 1st, and I celebrated the day by having a wash, the first of any kind since Wednesday morning. A soaking wet day developed as the hours passed, and we were all very wet and miserable when we were ordered to get our baggage to the station so that it could be taken to Tchercheskiou, in the direction of Constantinople, on the following day.

It seemed that we also were in full retreat and that we should not be allowed to see any more of the war, or of its accompanying horrors, unless it followed us to the gates of the great city. As will be seen, however, later on, we were unable to carry out our instructions.

Upon the following day I was busy in the endeavor to get something in the nature of a cart, my companions being engaged in a similar quest, but great difficulty was experienced and we did not succeed until late in the afternoon. We then packed and harnessed our saddle horses, and set out in the drenching rain and in the darkness.

The rain lashed upon us, and our horses stumbled in the quagmires of the road, and there was no fun at all for any of us.

The main street of Chorlu was now full of the retreating army.

The men surged through it in one great seething mass, wet to the skin, with heads bent to the storm, splashing and tramping through the mud. It seemed as if all that great army which had assembled under the command of Abdullah Pasha were pouring back in misery to Constantinople, from which they had set out so gaily and so proudly with the word victory already on their lips. What a contrast it was here! These beaten men, these broken ranks, these battalions of despair, turning their backs to the enemy and making their way back to the capital of a ruined Empire!

However, there was no time for thoughts of that kind. One thing was clear. The roadway, possessed by the army in retreat, was quite impassable, and would be so for hours. Our only chance was to get round to the station by a back way, and this we attempted to do.

Then our troubles began.

All the horses jibbed and refused to work. The lashing rain had scared them and made them stubborn. The deep mud in the tracks made it difficult for them to draw any load, and being but poor beasts they had no pride in them, and no spirit.

My horse Peter disgraced himself. He had been a manageable beast as a saddle horse, but now in traces he began to kick and very soon smashed his cart. I sent my servant Marcus back to hire fresh horses, and after a long time away he at last returned with a new horse, which succeeded in dragging a cart to the station.

This left the other carts still stranded in the mud, and Wilkins made another attempt to rescue one of them by means of his saddle horse, with the result that at the first bend of the road the other cart capsized. It was a tragic comedy, and we hardly knew whether to laugh or to groan.

It seemed utterly useless to prolong the situation. We must postpone our departure until daylight, when the rain might stop and the conditions be more favorable. There was in fact nothing to do but get our insubordinate steeds back to the stable, so I set out with my Maltese servant, each of us with two horses.

There followed one of the worst half hours of my life.

In the darkness we became jammed in the midst of a struggling mass of soldiers, bullock-wagons, gun-carriages and horses. My own horses, which I was leading, immediately took fright and begun plunging and rearing in an alarming way, so that my arms were almost jerked out of my body, and I nearly lost my hold on the bridle of the led horse.

It was a fantastic, horrible nightmare. As my horse reared soldiers with fixed bayonets passed beneath my upraised arms. When my horse came down on to its feet again it was still a yard away from me, so that I had to drag it violently back, while the soldiers still continued to press their way between the flanks of the two beasts, almost jabbing me with their bayonets, pushing and thrusting at my horse's side, followed by an endless stream of soldiers, all of them indifferent to my troubles, careless of my horses' hoofs and eager to shove along somehow through this wild tangle of bodies, and wheels and wagons in the darkness.

For a long time I could make no progress. I recovered a better hold of the other horse, but became still more firmly wedged into the living, surging mass.

At last, after making headway literally by inches, I managed to crawl as far as the stable, and then set out with a lamp and an extra man to help my good comrade Wilkins, who was guarding the two derelict carts. Neither of us had seen anything of our former companion, Banister, who had started with us in the first place.

Wilkins was the type of man who helps himself and does not look around for rescuers. When we came up to him, therefore, and hailed him through the darkness, we found that in his characteristic way he had righted the cart and had nearly reloaded it. As soon as we could get the hero's horse we might start it on the road again.

I set out for the station once more, and found the third cart there, with the faithful but irresolute Henry. We pushed it into a position near to some other correspondents who had settled down for the night, left it under their protection, and returned to Wilkins.

We then found, to our disgust, that the man with the hired horse did not return. The frightfully cold gale and the lashing rain had proved too much for his courage and loyalty.

Here was an awkward situation! If we followed our temptation to run for shelter we might lose all our precious stores. With all the retreating soldiers about, a cart full of provisions would have been a grave danger. They would certainly have looted it, and we should have been without any kind of stores for a still uncertain future.

Wilkins and I, after a hurried consultation, decided to sleep on the goods, sending the servants back to the village, not, however, before I borrowed an extra revolver. Not only were we afraid to trust them in a situation like this, trying both to their courage and fidelity, but we could not bring ourselves to put more upon those hired men than we were willing to suffer in our own skins.

So they went off gladly, with the prospect of some kind of shelter against the appalling weather, and Wilkins and I prepared to make the best of a very bad business.

The badness of it became more and more apparent as the hours passed. It was truly the very worst night I have ever spent. We were absolutely wet to the skin, caked in slimy mud, and chilled to the bone. The cold was intense, with a fierce wind blowing which seemed to cut one like a knife, and with the rain still lashing on us. Our boots were soaked through, and every step we took was in a quagmire.

Fortunately, we managed to find some biscuits and cheese, the first meal we had had all day, and drank neat lime-juice, followed by brandy. This did us some good, and put a little warmth into our blood, but the feeling soon wore off. We wedged ourselves as well as possible under the cover of the cart, huddled close together, and tried to forget the misery of our condition in sleep.

But sleep would not come, at least as far as I was concerned. The wind blew in upon us. The rain continued to soak us. Our teeth chattered with the cold, and it gave us but little consolation to think of the army in retreat, suffering more severely than ourselves, not so lucky in having a few biscuits and a sip of brandy starving, wounded, exhausted, despairing in this night of horror. There were hundreds of dead men lying out in the rain and the wind.

Worse still, there were hundreds of dying men, lingering in their agony in the water-pools and the mud, tortured by pain, hopeless of rescue, and crying out, maybe, to God. I thought of all that. I was haunted by the thought of it all through the night.

But it only added to my unhappiness and gave an additional sense of horror, to a night which never seemed to end; while crouched in the cart, with my limbs getting numb, I waited for a dawn which never seemed to break.

Before it was light on the morning of Sunday, November 3rd, Wilkins and I got out of that horrible cart, unable to stay there any longer, lest we should perish of cold. Wrapped in our blankets we ran about in the darkness, stamping our feet, thumping ourselves, and trying to get a little warmth.

Figures moved about in the gloom, silent figures like ghosts wandering aimlessly. Now and again there came to our ears the murmurs of voices from men we could not see.

Now and again footsteps, quite close to us, startled our nerves.

I became aware of a man creeping stealthily about one of the carts. I went after him, and found that it was a soldier out for loot. The poor devil was as cold as we had been, and he had seized upon a horse-blanket. He had also taken possession of my mackintosh, and I shouted to him to let go. Then I seized one end of it, and we had a short tug of war, but the man decided not to press the point, and leaving the mackintosh in my hands slouched off.

Other soldiers cast covetous eyes upon our stores. They were famished, and yet hunger had not made them fierce but tamed them, so that fortunately for us they had not the spirit of the looter, nor pluck enough to show fight.

That seemed to me remarkable. Here were we, two men of a foreign race, in the midst of a starving army, while we had stores, yet there was no serious attack upon us, and our property remained as safely in our hands as if we had placed our cart in the middle of Hyde Park under police protection.

The Terrible Turk, as he has so often been called, and as I had often imagined him, turned out to be a man of law, a respecter of property, and an honest fellow, even when he was gnawed by hunger and supported by enormous numbers of hungry comrades, who in one moment or two could have killed us and taken possession of all we had.

Our two servants at last arrived with the daylight, surprised, I think, to see us still alive, and still guarding our stores. We were glad to see them, but we should have been still more glad if they had come with horses. They had failed to bring them along, and, in consequence, we set about pushing the carts to the station by manual labor, ploughing through the deep mud. In order to relieve the weight I abandoned my best tent a grievous loss.

Later, after we had pulled and tugged the carts a good way, Marcus, our Turk, arrived with two horses, and with his help we at last reached the station.

Here we found our former companion, Banister, who had lost us the night before, and had found his way to the station. A train was just leaving for Constantinople, but before we could load any goods on it, it went off with a punctuality which was something like a miracle.

No Turkish train in my experience had ever gone off so promptly, without shunting and halting half a dozen times after the whistle had first been blown I It was an unfortunate thing for many left behind, because it proved to be the last train to leave for Constantinople.

Anyhow, its departure put an end to our former plans, and made the instructions of Waffsy Bey impossible. There was nothing for it but to trek, so with more delay and many difficulties we hired two horses and bought two others, with an extra cart, when, with many regrets and much misgiving, but in the interests of light transport, we abandoned three cases of stores, and three sacks of personal luggage. Afterwards we loaded and seemed all ready to start.

But Fate was against us. At the last moment a fresh difficulty arose.

Demetrius, the owner of one of the hired horses, suddenly, and for no very clear reason, refused to start. His excuse was that the journey could not be completed that night. We argued with him, but to no purpose, and after various consultations and delays we agreed to sleep in the village and start at daybreak.

Marcus, the Turk, was now our guardian angel. His only word of English was "good," a word which he used on all occasions, and with a variety of expressions. But through one of our interpreters he made us understand that he would undertake to find us lodgings.

We gathered from his gestures and from the crescendo of his "goods," that they were to be lodgings more glorious in luxury than Aladdin's palace. Having agreed to let him work the miracle he took us to the house of some Christians which, if not a palace, was, at least, an excellent retreat from the foul weather. Our hosts provided us with the best dinner we had had since leaving Constantinople, the bill of fare consisting of such sumptuous items as soup, macaroni steaks, cheese, and coffee. Marcus had turned up trumps!

With the memory of the previous night still vivid in my mind, it was good to turn in to the usual floor beds, and under the shelter of a good roof I slept like a top.

But, before retiring, I could not fail to notice the amazing contrasts in the appearance of the village of Chorlu, since I had ridden through its streets, with the led horse. It was an extraordinary change. No longer were the streets flocked by shouting and struggling men with horses, guns and wagons. The retreating army had passed through the town, leaving only its Christian inhabitants. All was quiet. It was as quiet as the death that had come to those wounded men who still lay out on the roads. The silence of it was intense and startling.

On Monday, November 4th, we left Chorlu, after so many delays, on a morning of glorious weather, when the bright sunshine dispelled all but the memory of those days of storm and those nights of frost and cutting rain.

We were now in luck's way, as far as our transport arrangements were concerned, having three carts and four cart horses, and four saddle-horses. We had to leave one of our original horses behind, as the wound on his shoulder became much worse.

Before leaving this village of unforgettable scenes, Wilkins and I saw the Turks blow up the railway bridge.

Our attention was first directed to it by seeing a party of men who were busy below the bridge suddenly rise from their stooping positions and run away as hard as they could. There was a little puff of smoke, but it was clear that the fuse had failed. The men crept back stealthily and again retreated at a hot pace. This time they made a better job of it. There was a big explosion, and a mass of stone- work came toppling down. By this scene, which we watched at a distance, we knew that the Turks had abandoned the railway line another sign of their great defeat.

After travelling some distance with our caravan we pulled up at a deserted farmhouse which we made our temporary home, and where we spread out luncheon.

It was a strange thing to my mind one of the strangest things of war to wander about the country abandoned by its inhabitants so that one might enter any door and live in any house, without asking permission, or finding any living being.

During the whole of the great retreat the countryside was covered with people wandering like ourselves, but more aimlessly, and in a dazed way. They were the fugitive soldiers who had broken away from their battalions, who had no more interest in the war, and whose only thought was to find some kind of hole or retreat where they could get a safe hiding place for a little while, or until death came.

Their one great need was food, and if they could find a few roots or a little maize, they esteemed themselves lucky. Their gospel at this time was "sufficient unto the day the evil thereof," and they took no heed of the morrow.

To many of them there was no morrow. To others who clung on to life, finding some way of feeding themselves God knows how there was no purpose which they could follow, no kind of duty which they could perform. The main body of the retreating army had passed beyond them, they were but individuals of no account to their country, and utterly careless of all but the one essential and primitive instinct, the preservation of their own life.

In a way I belonged to this band of wandering men. For a little while at least I was faced with the same problems, how to live, how to get shelter, how, if need be, to hide.

Marcus was the man who taught me how to live.

He had some secret kind of gift which led him to likely places for food. He was a born looter, of things that were good to eat. His own appetite was great, and was probably the spur which urged him on to high endeavors of a culinary kind, but he was gratified also in seeing other jaws at work upon the results of his looting expeditions, and at these times his eyes would roll with delight.

On this day he explained to us in dumb show, punctuated by many "goods," that he meant to provide something special. He then proceeded to capture nine turkeys, two fowls and a duck.

It was a veritable massacre, and in spite of the nature of the work had a farcical side. For Marcus was a fat man, and he waddled with short little runs after a turkey conscious of its coming doom, and after the end of a panting chase made a furious blow at the poor bird's neck with a long pole. The death was exceeding swift.

This process was then repeated with other waddles and grunts and blows until, as I have said, a great bag was captured. One of them was put into the stewing pot and cooked with the utmost success. The others were hoarded up for future use.

Later in the afternoon, having left the deserted farmhouse and gone on the track again, we met Messrs. Allan Ostler, Ward Price, and Pilcher, who were returning to Chorlu, but we continued on our way as they were only going to look for luggage.

At dusk we passed many burning villages, which were but heaps of blackened ruins in which fires still smouldered and from which there rose the clouds of smoke, pictures of desolation in the darkening twilight of that abandoned countryside and object-lessons of the grim and merciless business of war.

Wilkins and I now rode on to Tcherches Kiou, but found it blocked with soldiers and transport. We decided therefore to return to our wagons and camp. This we did near a broken ammunition wagon which we used as fuel and entirely burned during the night. It made a splendid bonfire and the flames of it burst angrily up giving us both light and heat.

But before this had been set going I took my Maltese servant to find some water, of which we were in urgent need, and after a long and rough ride in the darkness came to a stream at which we refilled our bottles. Afterwards we rode back to camp, and here I found Marcus in command of the cooking department, and very busy with the work he liked best in the world.

He had cut up three turkeys and stuffed them into a horse-pail full of water, which he placed on the fire. There was much dumb show from him. He rubbed his portly stomach, cried "Good! good!" with incessant repetition, rolled his eyes, pointed to the boiling birds, and then stirred them up vigorously with a tent pole.

At last the stew was ready and ten of us partook of the good fare, including two wayfarers who had been attracted from afar by the succulent smell and who could not tear themselves away. Marcus, the great chef, dished up with an exaggerated air of importance and gave us our share in a pot, explaining that it contained enough for breakfast.

He then raised the pail itself to his lips and took a long draught of the steaming liquid before the two wayfarers had been favored with a drop. They eyed him with increasing anxiety as he raised the pail higher and higher, and were enormously relieved when Marcus set it down again and set steadily about a leg, side bone, and half a breast, leaving the remnants to his uninvited guests.

There next followed the question of sleeping, and Banister, Wilkins and I turned into one of the carts.

But it was a painful experience, for after all we found it necessary to breathe. Banister volunteered with some heroism to sit by the fire, and Wilkins and I only opposed the suggestion weakly, for it was the case of preferring our friend's room to his company in such close quarters.

It was a great joy to me when he had departed, for having the middle berth I had been in some danger.

We were up at break of day on Tuesday, November 5th, and regaled ourselves with more turkey and tea. We then packed up again and set out for Tcherches Kiou in dull weather and a wind that lashed us with the sting of whips. We reached the railway station and learnt that the other correspondents had already left for Hadem Kiou, and that it was quite uncertain when another train would go.

One of my companions was anxious to get to Constantinople, and decided that the best way was to make for the seaport of Silivri, and to go on from there by ship. So we set out again, keeping the two horses which had been hired with the men to whom they belonged, while one of the strangers, who had invited themselves to dinner on the previous night, seemed inclined to come with us, chiefly, I think, because he wanted to wear my overcoat, which I had lent him.

We agreed to this, so here we were, with six servants, besides ourselves and three carts quite an imposing convoy. The wind came on to blow worse than ever, but to our great joy the rain kept off.

During the morning we reached an entirely deserted village, which had once been inhabited by Bulgarians.

It was a strange thing to be the only human beings alive in this place of many houses. All was silent. Not a footstep echoed in the streets. No shadow of a living figure fell upon the walls.

We peeped into little windows and saw bare rooms, in which only the heavy furniture had been left. The doors were gaping wide, just as the inhabitants had left with their worldly goods. It reminded me of old fairy tales, where the young tailor, always the hero of them, set out on his way to make his fortune and came to an enchanted village.

It seemed indeed under a magic spell, and the loneliness and silence of the place was uncanny.

But Marcus broke the spell. With his rolling eye he had observed three small pigs, and he instantly started the good work. Wilkins tried his revolver on them, but it was Marcus who did the necessary deed. He never could resist an opportunity like that, and the sight of food running about excited the hunter's instinct in his savage breast.

After this episode we sent the carts ahead, and Wilkins and I stayed behind awhile, keeping the Maltese servants with us.

Just as we were leaving we were stopped by three soldiers, who suddenly came up on pack horses. They assumed a threatening demeanor, and eagerly questioned us in their own language, which we could not understand. Then they demanded our passports and our field-glasses, but we only handed over the former, and those with misgiving.

The soldiers seemed inclined to keep our papers, but finally were persuaded to hand them back. They then intimated that they would ride on with us to inspect our luggage.

We had no liking for their company, and were beginning to get anxious as to the end of the adventure. Our horses were better than theirs, but whenever we got a few yards ahead they shouted for us to stop. Eventually we came in sight of the carts, and saw Marcus riding away to the right. As we learnt afterwards, he was exploring for water.

To our consternation the leading soldier suddenly unstrung his rifle, loaded hurriedly, and fired in the direction of our most excellent Turk. Marcus stopped as though he had actually been shot, although the bullet had gone wide of him, and the carts, which were trailing along the road, also came to an abrupt halt. We rode up to our friend Banister and explained what had happened. The situation seemed to be developing in a serious way, but there was nothing we could do except to tell the servants to parley with the men, telling them who we were, and getting rid of them if possible.

This plan did not succeed as well as we had hoped, for although the men let us proceed on our way, they kept near, riding on our flank in a suspicious, unfriendly way, and we reckoned that they would be looking for food when we camped. If it came to a fight, we should be without much chance of victory, for the men had good guns, and we were not likely to get much support from our servants, who were not of heroic stuff.

Late in the afternoon, when we were nearing the village of Chanta, one of the carts capsized when going down a steep decline. After some trouble we righted it and to our great relief found that no damage had been done to its structure. Afterwards, however, we discovered that the fall had caused much internal trouble in one of the provision baskets; the Keating's powder having escaped into the sugar, and a small pot of jam having spread itself out in an extraordinary way among the other goods.

As it was getting dark and the soldiers were still hovering in the neighborhood with some friends whom they had picked up on the road, we decided to get rid of them in the most effective way by putting up in the village of Chanta, and getting our stores into shelter and safety.

We tried various houses, and one place we went to wanted as much as 7 for the night for three of us. We refused to pay this outrageous price, and at last, after much searching, found good rooms where we established ourselves comfortably, and enjoyed a good dinner of turkey and macaroni, which we needed badly, as we had been many hours without food. As usual, we made our beds on the floor, and slept soundly.

We rose early on the morning of Wednesday, November 6th, and left for Silivri in gloriously sunny weather, and through very beautiful scenery.

From a vineyard near the road we gathered some fine grapes, which were very refreshing.

Many soldiers and refugees were making their way in the same direction as ourselves, and again we saw all the signs of the hopeless demoralization which had befallen the Turkish Army and people.

These soldiers had broken away from many regiments, and were going to whatever place their mood suggested without caring to rejoin their battalions, ignorant of the progress of the war, and under no kind of discipline or command.

Near Silivri we found large camps where there were more orderly bodies of men, still acknowledging themselves as part of an army in being, and awaiting instructions as to where they should go, and what they should do.

Finally we reached the little sea-coast town, and immediately inquired about a ship for our companion Banister, but we were told that owing to the rough sea no vessel was leaving, and we should have to wait until the weather turned.

We got a room and stables at the house of a priest, and from this host we heard many stories of looting in the town. Gangs of disorderly and starving soldiers had come in, forcing their way into houses and demanding food.

With or without leave they had seized upon anything that would satisfy their hunger, and had made raids upon farmyards and poultry, terrifying the inhabitants. We could not find it in our hearts to blame men so desperate for life as these retreating soldiers of the beaten army who had undergone frightful sufferings owing to the appalling lack of organization and the fortune of war which had gone against the Turk.

Their situation in Silivri itself was not so bad, as bread for the troops was sent round by ship, but even these supplies were miserably insufficient for the needs of so many men, and starvation still menaced them.

Before daylight on the following morning I sent my servant, Henry, out to watch for a ship, in hope that one would start early enough to catch a post with my photographic films.

I had been wandering about so long in wild tracks that it was a matter of vital urgency now to dispatch some of my work to London, where they would be waiting anxiously for the next consignment of pictures, and wondering what in the world had happened to me.

To my regret Henry came back reporting that there was no luck, as no ship was getting ready to sail.

During the morning I met Francis McCullagh of the Westminster Gazette, and another correspondent named Long. From them I learnt that photographs were not permitted in the town on any account, and because we neglected this advice, Wilkins and I fell into trouble.

We were both arrested for disobeying the order. Wilkins was using his cinematograph camera, and the officers who pounced down upon him took us to headquarters and destroyed our films.

Later in the day we were again arrested, this time by private soldiers with fixed bayonets.

This time our offence was merely that of walking in the streets.

They did not detain us long, but used a great many words, which from their gestures and facial expressions we understood vaguely to be warning and advice.

It was now decided that my Maltese servant should, instead of Banister, leave by ship for Constantinople with the photographic material, and we got him away at last, with many instructions as to what to do, and orders to return immediately to Chatalja.

After dark, Wilkins and I returned to our rooms, but not without great difficulty. The streets were besieged again by an army in retreat.

Great masses of men tramped by in the darkness, with that nightmare confusion of horses, carts, gun-carriages and wagons, which was becoming familiar to me. This tide of men never seemed to slacken, and came like receding waves from the front, from which they had been forced back by the enemy's guns.

As we sat in our room we listened to the strange swirling sound of all those tramping feet outside, to the vague dull chorus of many voices, shouting in the streets, to the grinding of the wheels, and the creaking of the carts, and the clank of bit and bridle.

But we turned our eyes away from those shadows in the night and our thoughts away from the grim drama of despair, so close to us.

Marcus had provided us with a splendid dinner of roast chicken cooked in the stable, and we thoroughly enjoyed it, with that selfishness of human nature which makes our own creature comforts so much more interesting than the welfare or the sufferings of the world without. Just as we had finished it the Maltese servant reappeared with the message that we could not get on board until the morning.

The morning came, and whether from the effects of the dinner or our previous fatigues, or some cause unknown, Wilkins and I both felt rather unwell.

We improved later and set out for a ride, where we came in touch with more retreating soldiers.

They were in vast numbers, and surged by in disorderly battalions. There seemed enough of them to keep the Bulgarian army at bay, but we knew enough of war by this time to understand that when once a great body of troops has been beaten in battle, and has become demoralized, when its ammunition is spent, and its food supplies exhausted, numbers only increase the tragedy of retreat, and add to the terrors of a great rout.

From the direction of Chorlu we heard the sound of distant guns, and it seemed to us that the Turks were evacuating the place, falling back, further and further, from the advance of the triumphant Bulgarians.

Would they never call a halt? Would they never stop that awful flight until they had regained Constantinople?

It seemed inconceivable that the Bulgarian army should be allowed to walk down without a check to the city of the Sultan.

But Wilkins and I obtained information that the next fighting would be on the lines of Chatalja, the last lines of defense before the Turks would be beaten out of Europe. Perhaps after all the Turks could hold that last barrier and reorganize themselves behind its trenches. That was the meaning of the continued retreat. They were staking all their hopes now upon those defenses.

Wilkins and I decided to make our way in the same direction and to see the finish of the war along those lines. In any case they lay on the road to Constantinople, which must soon be our goal.

After this decision had been reached Wilkins, with his usual energy and ability as a handy-man, directed the operation of making three bad carts into two good ones, and certainly he succeeded wonderfully. Once again I was filled with admiration for the indomitable character of the man who was so splendid in a time of difficulty, and so resourceful and self-reliant when any awkward job had to be tackled.

During the evening that followed Marcus came to our room in great trouble. We were startled by the look of extreme dismay on his face, and by the tragic gestures with which he made clear his incoherent and incomprehensible speech.

He went through a dumb show of collapsing on the floor, with his mouth open, with strange and horrid contortions, and dreadful groans, and rolling eye-balls, continually repeating the words "Henry "and "Haree."

After watching him with increasing alarm and excitement we hurried out, supposing that Henry had died an unnatural death in the stable, or had committed "hari-kiri "because of some secret grief.

We found him alive, however, but suffering severely, being quite overcome by an over-dose of the wine of the country.

He was utterly and dreadfully drunk.

We put him to bed on the floor, and I pondered over the many things which I should have to say to him in the morning.

When the morning came, I was less eloquent than I should have been over-night, for Henry was a sadder and a wiser man, very chastened in spirit, very shaky in his physical condition, and resolute in his promise to become a total abstainer henceforth.

It was now Saturday, November 9th, and we finished our work of carpentering and started at noon with two saddle-horses in one cart.

They gave us a good deal of trouble, as the animals had no liking for the traces, and gave signs of bad tempers and rebellious mood. Eventually by coaxing we got them used to the work, and continued our way in better style.

It was a way through beautiful scenery, enchanting to the eye on this day of sunshine and splendor, but what nature had made lovely, man had made hideous.

The retreating army had left behind it a long wake of horror and misery exhausted men lying by the roadside, unable to move another step, and slowly dying of hunger and thirst and utter weakness, while others still struggled feebly on, groping forward in a drunken, dazed, stumbling way, with their heads drooping upon their breasts, and their eyes half shut.

Everywhere around them lay dead and dying horses and bullocks, and the wreckage of broken carts. The dying horses were writhing in their last agony, or panting with hard-drawn breath, the flies already busy in their wounds and sores, their lean ribs shaken at times by the convulsion of approaching death. The poor oxen looked up with dull, beseeching eyes, and beat their heads upon the ground, before being released from the burden of their life.

This was war. Here was the reality of that romantic business which seems so fascinating and glorious in the writings of imaginative authors who describe it from their arm-chairs. Here was the trail of war, defiling the roads with the wreckage of life, with men and beasts abandoned by all, dying without a friendly hand to help them in their agony.

Now and again a man whose boots had worn away on the long march, stooped down and cut off a piece of hide from one of the dead oxen, binding it round his bruised and sometimes bloody feet. I saw this done repeatedly, and I could not help thinking at the time that the fly-blown hide of an ox might put poison into the blood of a man who used it for his foot-gear. Afterwards, when I saw worse sights than any I have yet described, it seemed to me that this might be one cause of the cholera which ravaged the ranks of the army of retreat.

Most of the men who passed us begged for bread, but we were unable to give them any, deeply to our regret.

But it would have needed a convoy of bread wagons to feed all the men who were starving on the roads, and we ourselves were hungry, though in our baggage cart we still had a few stores left, of which we should have to be very careful.

The idea constantly occurred to us that these desperate-looking soldiers might close in upon us and rifle our bags, but they begged without a menace, and in a most pitiable way. None of them had spirit enough to make an attack upon other people's property.

Some of them seemed to have gone mad, or at least to be light-headed, for without any reason they would raise their guns and fire at some tree or other object in a wild manner. It was rather scaring, because one never knew whether a stray bullet would not end all one's troubles swiftly.

At dusk we pitched our camp, still some four hours away from Chatalja. A party of soldiers joined us and asked for food, but I do not think they liked us so well when they found Marcus skinning one of the small pigs which to them are unclean animals. However, they camped, or rather stopped, nearby, so that we thought it best to keep a watch over our horses during the night.

Wilkins fried our pig over a spirit stove, and with some cocoa and jam we thought it a great meal. Wilkins and I took turns in doing "sentry-go "where the horses were tethered, and in getting a spell of sleep in the shelter of one of the carts.

We were up before dawn on a fine but cold morning, and made an early start.

We had a good journey to Chatalja, arriving at ii a.m. Here we found only a few soldiers and officers. To the latter we were very unwelcome, and they utterly declined to give us any information.

Some of them seemed to be in a savage temper, with Fate which had allowed their army to be defeated, with their men who had not been able to gain a victory, and especially with foreign war-correspondents who had seen the truth of things and the abasement of Turkey's pride.

Some of these officers treated their men like dogs, and the men received the treatment like dogs also, cringing beneath the blows they received. I saw one of the officers punishing two men for some trivial offence. He ordered them to lie down and then beat them with a stick. It was an extraordinary sight. One of the men was quite an old fellow, and as he lay down his grey beard stuck out in front of him, while the officer laid on the blows severely.

I lost some of my respect for the Turkish soldier, the so-called "Terrible Turk "who had not spirit enough to resent this ridiculous method of punishment and took it meekly, lying down.

As we could get no news of war and could find no other correspondents, we decided to make for Hadem Kiou on the other side of the lines. Then came a most difficult journey, parts of the road being almost impassable, so that our carts stuck in the deep ruts and lurched over the boulders, and plunged deep into quagmires, so that every moment we expected them to break to pieces. It was not until after dark that we reached the outskirts of the village, which, as we learnt afterwards, was crowded with soldiers, and the center of the last army of defense.

In the Clutch of Cholera

On the outskirts of Hadem Kiou we were stopped by an officer, and he gave us startling news.

He told us that we must on no account enter the village, on account of cholera.

That was the first time we had heard the mention of that dreadful word. It gave us a sense of fear, as in the presence of an unseen enemy. But not yet did we realize all the ravages it had already achieved nor the frightful way in which it had spread among the ranks of men who had escaped from death on the battle-field, only to be stricken down by a more ghastly fate.

Oppressed by gloomy forebodings, Wilkins and I looked about for somewhere to camp, and at last found an open space which seemed suitable enough.

A gale was blowing hard, and it was very cold, but there was no wood for a fire, and we passed a cheerless night, suffering a good deal from that cutting wind.

Nor could we try to forget our discomforts in sleep, for it was essential to keep a watch over our goods, as we were in the thick of the army, and were constantly aware of soldiers prowling about and creeping close to our carts. Some of them came up boldly and asked for bread, but went off again tamely and despondently when we had to refuse their request.

We rose before dawn again on a warm morning, with a thick damp mist clinging to the fields and trees. We prepared breakfast, but as we were sitting down to eat it we made an unpleasant and even dreadful discovery. It appeared that we were camped on an isolation cemetery for the cholera victims. We called the attention of Wilkins to some carts filled with queer-looking burdens covered by white sheets, which were being brought up to a spot where men in white coats were digging a pit.

"Look there," I said. "This place is a graveyard."

Wilkins glanced over in the direction of the carts and went on munching his meal. fc "It looks like it," he said. "Cholera, I should say."

I watched the grim work going on so close to us. At first, as I have said, the bodies were covered with white sheets. There were piles of them turned out into the deep trench which had been dug for them.

Then came other carts, and this time the bodies were uncovered except by a white powder which looked like quick-lime. They had been heaped into the carts just as they had died, arms, legs and heads flopping about in a horrible and grotesque way. The grave-diggers dragged them out and let them fall heavily, in any kind of posture, into the grave, before shoveling the earth upon them.

It was the most gruesome breakfast hour I have ever spent, and yet, after so many strange experiences and dreadful sights, it did not make so great an impression upon me as I should have imagined, and did not even take away my appetite. It is strange how quickly the human mind adapts itself to the most extraordinary conditions.

But one thing was clear to me. The Turks were in the deadly grip of a cholera epidemic which was killing them off at a great rate.

Ten death carts that came to tilt their loads of corpses into the trench, while we were at breakfast, were only the vanguard of longer convoys, piled up in the same way with a litter of contorted bodies.

I could not guess at the numbers of the dead. I do not know even now the grim statistics of that mortality, and perhaps the world will never be let into the secret, as those soldiers were unnamed, unknown, and uncounted by those who buried them.

But the pestilence certainly thinned the ranks of the army in retreat almost as swiftly as the shell fire of the Bulgarians, and the death-rate was frightful.

It was the first time in my travels that I had ever seen cholera symptoms and cholera victims, but I came to know only too well the look of men stricken with that disease the first stage of collapse, preceded by pains in the body, twisting up the forms of men, contorting them, and making them groan with agony; the gradual change that came over men so that they resembled living corpses, with shrunk and livid features, eyeballs sunk into their sockets, drooping eyelids, and the half-open eyes glazed and apathetic. On the skin, which darkens to a greyish-blue tint, the perspiration breaks out, though the victim shivers as though icy-cold, and his hands and feet shrivel as though death had already touched his extremities.

He is plagued by an intolerable thirst, and greedily gulps down any water, clean or filthy, which he passes on the way, only to vomit it up again. Then death comes to him in a few hours, and immediately his corpse blackens as though he had been buried and dug up again.

These things came to my eyes and sickened me. I could not escape from them. They haunted the highways and byways of this great stretch of country on the way to Constantinople.

I suppose, in spite of all my words, it is difficult to convey even a faint impression of all the horrors of this cholera which ravaged the Turkish troops at this time, and was increased by the utter lack of hospital arrangements and medical attention after the retreat.

Later, behind the lines of Chatalja, the authorities bestirred themselves. They took elementary precautions. They organized some system of medical service, and kept the cholera victims isolated, and guarded the water supplies.

But I am writing now of a time when none of these things were done, and when the sufferers were left to die on the roadside, crying for water from the passersby who had none to give, drinking out of the muddy pools which they tainted with their own poison, and leaving their dead bodies to be the resting-places of flies who carried the infection farther. We tried to skirt those places where the bodies of the dead and dying lay, but it was impossible.

We turned our heads away from the pestilential swamps in which they lay, but breathed in vapours, which for all we knew contained the germs of death.

If we had not been in a healthy condition I do not think we should have escaped.

On the way to this village of Hadem Kiou we passed the Turkish line of defences.

Men were already in the trenches with their rifles pointing the way from which we had come, as though expecting an immediate attack from the pursuing army of Bulgarians. The trenches were well dug, and the best I have ever seen in Turkey, being so straight and deep that the men could stand up in them, and be perfectly sheltered, unless they put their heads above ground.

I took some photographs of them, and was intensely interested in the sight of those waiting men, for it was the first sign I had had that the Turks were preparing to make a final stand against the advancing enemy, and that upon this ground the fate of Turkey in Europe would be finally fought out.

I did not know how far away the Bulgarians were at this time, but judging from the wild retreat of the Turks, which I had followed almost continuously from Lule Burgas, it was clear that they were not very far behind, and that in another day or two I should again hear the sound of the guns.

This thought caused me some anxiety, for it would never do to be caught between two fires, or to be cut off altogether from Constantinople. If the Bulgarians were to prove victorious again on this line, nothing could stop their entry, and it would be essential both to my safety and to my business to be in Constantinople before they arrived.

That day I called on Nazim Pasha, the Commanderin-Chief of the defeated armies, the man most to be pitied in all Europe, because the great force which had been under his charge had crumpled up and fled in all directions. He had now nothing left but to rally the remnant for a last stand, and then save, by diplomacy, what he had lost in battle.

His officers told me that we must go at once to San Stefano owing to the cholera. If we stayed it would be at the risk of life. They also warned us against taking photographs in the stricken area.

They were deeply anxious to hide the secret of this cholera from the rest of Europe. If that leaked out it would encourage the enemy to make a more rapid advance and to attack the lines of Chatalja with great confidence of victory. It would also emphasise in the eyes of the world this utter hopelessness of the Turkish i position, and convict the Government still more of mis- i management and failure in every branch of organisation, j

With these warnings in our ears we made a fresh start and struggled with the usual difficulties of bad roads. On the way we passed an almost continuous line of refugees making for Constantinople, the soldiers of many regiments all mixed up together without order or discipline, and civilians of the peasant class from many villages around.

It was another procession of those despairing legions who had passed us ever since the first retreat after the fall of Kirk Kilisse. Once again we saw the men and women who had abandoned their homes, but who still clung to their poor chattels which they carried in packs until they became too exhausted to carry them any further, dropping them by the wayside, or loaded on to carts which were being dragged on slowly by tired and emaciated oxen and helped over the ruts and through the mire by veiled women who put their shoulders to the wheel.

The children were on the bundles in the carts, staring with wondering eyes at all the scenes of flight, the older ones more terrified, and all of them suffering from hunger and exposure.

There were thousands of these wretched people, tramping along the way of despair, and it was obvious even by a casual glance that many of them were already in the first stage of cholera.

Some of those who collapsed were put on to the carts where they lay with those glazed eyes which seemed already in the blindness of death; others left the lines, groped forward a little, then fell in a huddled heap upon the roadside; others again were leaning up against broken walls, or any kind of support, groaning with internal pains, and showing the symptoms of a great agony.

At dark we were still some way from Tchekmedge where we wished to sleep, but we made up our minds to keep on, as the idea of camping along this line of refuge and in the zone of the cholera victims was horrible to our imagination, and more than our nerves could stand.

Indeed, it would have been folly to attempt such a thing, for the risk of infection was a grave one, and both Wilkins and I knew that if we once became touched with it we should have no more chance of escape than any of the poor devils who were dying around us.

We still had some money left in our belts, but no money would buy medical service in this district, and by no wealth could we bribe death to overlook us. The bacillus of cholera would work its poison in our blood too quickly to enable us to get even as far as Constantinople, and it was not pleasant to think that we might leave our bones on the roadside, to be buried in the way we had seen while having breakfast in the graveyard.

So we pushed on through the dusk and through the darkness, and it was with infinite relief that at last we reached Tchekmedge, where, for a time, we could forget the horrors of the road.

Marcus found us rooms and stables belonging to the village barber, who was also an inn-keeper in a small way.

We ransacked our stores, for having had no food for a great many hours we were quite famished, and managed to get a fair meal of biscuits and cold sausages washed down by cold cocoa. After that we descended to the barber's shop below.

It was filled with a strange and motley crowd of Turkish peasants in quaint costumes, and broken down soldiers, some of whom told the tale of their woes, while others sat quaint and grim, listening impassively, or staring with brooding eyes at the barber, who sat in the centre of the room smoking a huge hubblebubble. Marcus was on a seat beside him smoking a similar pipe, and puffing like a walrus, and presently he related his own adventures to the assembled company with many gesticulations and grunts.

We found Tchekmedge to be a very pretty fishing village, and as it was impossible to use the horses they were suffering from over-fatigue went for a walk. But this was spoiled for us by the number of sick soldiers coming in, pitiable objects, in rags and tatters, and suffering from hunger and disease. We turned back again to avoid the sight of men whose sufferings we could not relieve.

One trouble of our own, which caused us grave anxiety, was the lack of fodder for the horses. For a whole week they had been working on short rations, it was urgently necessary to get fresh supplies.

Marcus spent the whole day at surrounding farms to obtain a stock for immediate and future use, and succeeded, though at an extravagant price. After the labor he came into us during the evening and made a long speech with his arms, eked out by many nods and sundry ejaculations of "Good!" "Good!"

In one hand he held some long strips of meat, which I had seen hanging out on pegs inside his bedroom door, and we at last came to understand that the simple meaning of the speech was a threat to make us a native dish for dinner. He then asked us for a bottle of oil and some beans, and departed with delighted grins.

When the great dish appeared in due course we found it satisfactory, and, indeed, enjoyed it thoroughly, trusting to good luck that we should not suffer any ill-effects. The meat was swimming about with the beans in much oily gravy, and there were also tomatoes in oil. With it came the warning message that enough had been sent for breakfast. Later the chef himself appeared to receive our verdict.

To our reiterated expression of "Good! Good!" which he understood so perfectly, he replied with smiles and many bows, and to our astonishment and admiration sprung another English word upon us before departing. It was "Orright!"

Perhaps we ought to have been a little consciencestricken at our own good cheer, for there were thousands of men that night dying from starvation. The state of these stragglers was absolutely appalling. One man came into the cafe" begging for bread, and said that he had lived for nine days on nothing but a little barley and corn. Another lay down on the floor of the cafe" all night, and died in the morning. Fortunately for us it was not from cholera, but from mere exhaustion.

On the following morning, Wednesday, November I3th, I rode to San Stefano and sent on Marcus to Constantinople with my photographs for despatch to the Daily Mirror.

On the way I found quite close to the town the body of a man who had obviously died from cholera. It seemed to me outrageous that at that place which should have been well within the zone of civilisation, this plague-stricken corpse should be allowed to lie on the highway.

I considered it to be my duty to report the matter to the Commandant, and I think he was surprised that I should take the trouble to mention one body when so many others were lying in a similar state. However, he promised to have the matter attended to, but when I returned two hours later it was still there, untouched, and a horrible danger to the passers-by. The only result of my report was that a soldier had been posted near the spot and made the incoming people take a slight detour, in order to keep at a little distance from the corpse.

I now learned that cholera was raging in San Stefano, so that the Commandant was not likely to bother himself much about a single corpse.

For a wonder, some precautions were being taken, and sentries had been posted at each of the fountains to prevent them from being contaminated by the incoming soldiers. But there was no efficient medical inspection, and cholera victims were only isolated a little from the rest of the population when they were dying or dead.

On my return to San Stefano I met Donohoe of the Daily Chronicle, with Ashmead-Bartlett of the Daily Telegraph, and his brother. They had installed themselves at our "hotel "and invited us to a very good dinner.

Wilkins and I now decided to leave for Aios Giorgios in the morning, as it was nearer the front of the Chatalja lines. We got up, therefore, at daybreak, and prepared to start by mending one of the carts which had been run into by a gun-carriage the previous day. Having achieved this task we loaded and got away by one o'clock, Wilkins driving one of the carts as Marcus had not yet returned.

It was glorious weather, and we made a fairly easy journey to Aios Giorgios except at one point, where we found an impassable road, so that we had to take the horses out of the shafts and lead them down a steep hill.

Eventually we camped on some rising ground above the village, as the place was choked with soldiers and we could get no stables. We pitched the tent, and left the covered cart to the servants for their night quarters.

But now an agreeable surprise awaited us, and it was nothing less than the appearance of Castle, one of my own colleagues, who arrived with Marcus, bringing me eleven letters and news of the outer world, from which I had been cut off for many days. It may be imagined that this was a delightful treat, and with the new member of our party there were many times to talk about, many experiences to relate, and many facts to learn.

It seems that we gave great anxiety to our friends while we were in Silivri, for a rumour had been taken to Constantinople that there had been a massacre of Christians in this place. As a matter of fact, I have since heard that there was some trouble between the Christians and Turks, but it took place immediately after our departure.

We were the last Englishmen to leave Silivri, and the Bulgars were much nearer than we thought, which accounted for the Turkish trenches being manned when we reached them near Hadem Kiou.

The report that five English correspondents (among whom were ourselves) were in grave danger was no sooner received in Constantinople than my brother, T. E. Grant, with Banister, our colleague, who had reached the city safely, and the English officer I have previously mentioned, chartered a tug, and with three German correspondents set out on a relief expedition.

They entered Tchekmedge Bay at 4.30 in the afternoon and anchored near two Turkish battleships. My brother and his companions then put off in a rowing boat towards the fishing village, but had not gone very far when an unpleasant surprise overtook them.

It was a shell from one of the Turkish men-of-war, which whizzed over their heads, followed by broadsides from both battleships. At first, for a moment, my brother and Banister thought they were being fired at directly, but it then became evident that the fire was aimed at the hills above the village, where the Bulgarian cavalry and three battalions of infantry appeared.

It was in any case an unpleasant position, as the Bulgarians were replying with rifle fire.

There were divided counsels in the boat. One of the German correspondents thought it best to make for the pier, as they were not far away, but he was overruled, and the men pulled back towards the tug.

Darkness was gathering, the boat began to leak, and it was a hard pull against the incoming tide, and all the while shells were bursting over the hills and the sound of the answering shots seemed very close.

When the tug was nearly reached a torpedo-destroyer came alongside, and the commander ordered the skipper to leave the bay immediately. The order could not be ignored, so the boat was hauled up and the vessel got under way, and after a rough voyage in the darkness anchored off Stamboul.

Upon returning to Constantinople my brother was relieved to hear from Marcus, who had then arrived, that I and the other correspondents were in no danger, and that the relief ship had not been necessary. Nevertheless, we were very grateful for the trouble taken on our behalf.

On the Lines of Chatalja

On the morning of Friday, November I5th, Castle left us to go back to Constantinople, and I rode out towards the forts of the Chatalja lines, as a battle was immediately expected.

The Bulgarian army was steadily advancing, and the last great struggle of the war was about to begin. On that moniing, however, the guns were silent, and the only battle I saw was between a correspondent and the servant of one of his German confreres.

The correspondent in question had lost a fur coat, Which he valued exceedingly. He had made angry and exhaustive inquiries without getting any clue to its whereabouts, and his nerves were considerably upset by this affair.

Now it happened that Wilkins and I had noticed the German's servant wearing the identical coat, so we sent down a message to the village, and were rewarded by seeing the enraged owner of the coat coming up at a good pace, and obviously in a great state of excitement, brandishing a riding- whip.

The servant, who was wearing the article, was either conscience-stricken or saw danger ahead, for he took off the coat and tried to hide it. But the owner advanced, and without waiting for explanations began to belabour the miserable man with fast and furious blows.

The culprit (who afterwards proclaimed his entire innocence and explained that the coat had come into his] possession by a pure accident) retreated in a damaged condition, yielding up the booty, but was taken in the rear by a little undersized servant of the indignant correspondent.

Imitating his master's example, in the most ludicrous way, as he was not more than half his master's size, he struck a sharp blow at the offending man and caught him on the ear, retreating quickly lest there might be reprisals. The affair struck me as being intensely comic, though I am still in doubt as to the justice of the punishment inflicted. There is just a chance that the man was blameless, because in time of war property changes hands in the most unexpected ways, owing to the hurly-burly and confusion of baggage.

Another episode in the list of the day's events was the return of my Maltese servant, whom I had not seen since he left Silivri on an errand to Constantinople. I heard afterwards that he had put in a very good time in the capital, swaggering about, and relating marvellous stories of his prowess and adventures. As I shall have to tell later, he was, in truth, grievously lacking in moral courage, and betrayed us at a critical time in a most cowardly fashion. But as a braggart he was unequalled.

On Saturday, November i6th, we heard the boom of guns to the left of Hadem Kiou on the Chatalja lines, and excited by the sound which had told us that the righting had begun, we left hurriedly in that direction.

At last the final attack of the Bulgarians was to take place, and we were full of speculation as to whether they would smash through the lines of defence or whether the Turks would stand against them.

It was the last hope for Turkey. If once the Bulgars pierced the line of forts I was convinced that the Turkish soldiers would become panic-stricken again and that another rout would begin, ending in irretrievable disaster and in the utter downfall of the Crescent.

I reached a point two miles away from Hadem Kiou and took up a position on a dismantled fort close to the Turkish lines, where the infantry were in their trenches awaiting the attack to develop, and under the protection of their artillery.

Here I met an old acquaintance. It was none other than Issett Bey, the officer who in the beginning of the campaign had been put in charge of the war-correspondents.

I have already related how his Second in Command went back hurriedly with some of the foreign correspondents, and how the English gave him the slip. Since then most of his charges had wandered away into different parts of the country, camping wherever it pleased them, or wherever they were compelled to camp, and leading the strange fantastic life which I have described in my own adventures.

Now like Little Bo-Peep who lost her sheep, he found that some of the correspondents had come back, bringing their tales behind them.

He did not seem at all pleased to see me, and wanted to know what permission I had to be there on the Chatalja lines.

I explained very politely and very plausibly that he himself had made me sign a document pledging myself to remain with the Turkish forces until the end of the war and that I had been endeavouring to do so ever since!

I am bound to say that I was rather pleased with this explanation, which seemed without a flaw in its logic. It certainly staggered him a little and he did not know what to say in reply, but finally he spoke very sharply and said I was to go at once to San Stefano and on no account come nearer the line of defence.

I started back meekly, for it was no use protesting against such an order, though I intended to give the gentleman the slip again whenever I saw an opportunity.

On the journey Wilkins and I skirted the village of Hadem Kiou because we could see piles of dead waiting to be buried, and everywhere by the roadside lay dead bodies, all victims of cholera.

It was, indeed, quite impossible to ride along the road on this account. The sight was too horrible the most dreadful vision that might meet the eyes of men and the stench from that mass of corruption was unendurable.

The bodies had been heaped up much in the same way that a gardener sweeps up dead and rotten leaves. The legs and arms protruded from a confused mass of corpses. Here and there the blackened faces stared up at the sky with unseeing eyes. At every other yard a dead body lay huddled up on the road just as the living man had fallen before his last gasps.

I had served during these last few days an apprenticeship in the sight of horror. But this was too much for me. Not for great rewards would I have ridden further along that way of death.

So we turned our horses up the roadway and rode up the hillside, getting into the fresh air again and away from the pestilential scenes.

Eventually we reached the camp after dark, and found my colleague Banister, and Tower of the Daily News, who had arrived in a car.

The mission of the latter was to find Francis McCullagh and Long, whom no one had seen since we had encountered them in Silivri, so that their friends were becoming very anxious as to their fate.

Ward Price also called in, entertaining us in his charming and irresistible way, and together we made a simple meal spiced by many anecdotes of our various adventures. Afterwards all five of us turned in, finding just room on the ground of the tent, although there was a slight shortage of blankets.

When the dawn came on Sunday, November I7th, we heard the thunder of distant guns and knew that the battles had started. We instantly decided that; with or without permission, we would ride back to the front and watch the progress of the fight.

It would of course be necessary to dodge the peremptory Issett Bey, but we hoped to escape his watchful eye.

While we were preparing to go out, however, an officer appeared and ordered us to San Stefano, reading an official order and taking our names. This was annoying and awkward. It might lead us into serious trouble if we deliberately disobeyed such very formal and precise instructions. Evidently the Censors were determined to prevent the correspondents from seeing anything of the battle and watching the real state of affairs on the Chatalja lines.

Some of the correspondents decided to return to Constantinople, being afraid of getting cut off from their base; but, after a council of war, Wilkins, Ward Price, and I, decided to risk the wrath of the authorities and to see something of the fighting.

We therefore prepared our horses and kit for a night out. I arranged with my Maltese servant that he should accompany us, explaining to him the risk.

After some trouble with the carts, which wasted much valuable time, we set out ostentatiously in the direction to which we had been ordered.

But this was only a blind, and we soon made an attempt to turn off. The first effort was frustrated by the appearance of an officer, but we managed to give him the slip.

We then got on to the mountain side and rode in the direction of the guns.

The shells were bursting in the sky, and the roar of artillery fire shook the ground and came in great concussions of sound, although, so far, we were absolutely safe, as we had not yet reached the danger zone. We now had the thrill of a really good adventure, and the sight of those shells made us greedy for a closer view of the battle.

But the Maltese servant, whom earlier in this book I have called the "White-livered one," soon began to have signs of funk. He found innumerable excuses why we should not go further.

He had unaccountable trouble with his saddle, and other small accidents which suggested an immediate return. Finally he confessed that he "felt exactly as he did at Lule Burgas."

"There is no need for you to tell us that," said Wilkins, who was beginning to get very angry at this revelation of cowardice. "We know exactly how you feel."

Finally the Maltese was scared out of his wits by the spectacle of the shells bursting ahead, and absolutely refused to go another step. I believe he imagined that we should not go on without an interpreter. He fondly believed that rather than risk such a thing we should return with him.

But he was very much mistaken. Wilkins called him a coward in plain terms, and said that he would have to pay the penalty of cowardice. The man began to whimper when we took his horse and told him to walk back. He did not want to return alone, but, on the other hand, he still refused to go on.

Presently Wilkins pulled out his revolver and threatened to use it if the man did not go back. He ran up to me, hoping that my heart would soften towards him, but I spoke sternly to him. Then he ran over to Ward Price, but obtained no comfort in that direction either. He ran about from one to another like a frightened sheep, so that I was almost sorry for him.

The last we saw of him at that time was when he turned tail and made his way miserably over the mountains in the direction from which we had come.

It may be thought that we were too hard on him and that cowardice is not a crime. But in war cowardice is often a crime. For in his case we were taking a very real and grave risk in going forward without an interpreter, and by leaving us in the lurch he was endangering our lives. If we had been challenged we should not have known what to answer, and we should not have been given very much time for explanation. We should have been dead before the explanation had been made.

The Maltese knew that perfectly well, and when he started out with us he knew also that we were not going on a picnic party, but on an expedition to the front line. If he had refused to accompany us at the outset we should not have blamed him and should have made other arrangements, but to desert us when we could get no other man was the work of a traitor, and deserved to be punished severely.

After this unpleasant episode we went on and had a very good view of the battle raging in the valley below us.

Unfortunately, the night was too bad for photography.

From a dismantled fort we watched a thrilling scene. The Turkish rifle fire from the trenches was very thick. I shall never forget the peculiar rushing whirr of it, terrible in its intensity and in the menace of its sound. When we imagined that one of those bullets, whose shrill note blended into this great chorus of swift shot, might find a living mark it was grim in its significance. There was no lack of ammunition in those trenches at Chatalja.

The Turkish soldiers seemed to be firing almost continuously, reloading as fast as they could and sweeping the enemy's line with a perfect hurricane of lead. Only now and then did the fire drop and languish away. In a few moments it would break out again fiercely, with that kind of screaming song of death which cannot be described in words, but which leaves an ineffaceable sensation in the minds of those who have once heard it.

All the field guns were using shrapnel. The air was alive with those flying shells which burst high up and scattered the missiles of death as they fell. They had a strange and deadly beauty. I was fascinated with those sudden flashes of flame, those white puffballs, those bursting clouds.

Perhaps if they had been as innocent as fireworks the sight of them would soon have become tedious. But our imagination was set at work. One realises the deadly effect of those high-mounting shells. One knows the terror that falls with them.

The Bulgarians seemed to get the distance better than the Turks, whose shells in many cases burst short.

I have since seen criticisms of the Bulgarian artillery. It has been alleged by at least one critic, who can speak as an eye-witness, that the guns were badly served and that the gunnery was not at all good. It is his opinion that there was no real superiority on the Bulgarian side over the Turkish guns, and that it was luck, and recklessness of life, and the irresistible nature of the infantry attacks, which enabled the Bulgarians to achieve their success.

I do not pose as a military expert or as a competent judge of shell fire. But I can only speak according to the impressions of personal observation, and certainly to me it seemed beyond argument that the Bulgarian artillery was .very much better than that of the defence. The village of Chatalja, which lay ahead of us, was in the hands of the Bulgarians, who had made it their headquarters, and now it seemed to be vomiting fire.

There was a great concentration of guns there, and from that direction there came an immense number of shells, which as far as we could see were bursting well over the Turkish lines.

I was unable to form any accurate idea of the losses on my side. Shell fire is proverbially uncertain in its effect, and, as I have said, the Turks were in most excellent trenches, which provided them with good cover.

They continued to maintain a splendid defence, and kept up a withering fire in response to the attack; so that it would have been quite impossible for any battalions of the enemy's infantry to advance in the face of it.

Almost for the first time in the war the Turks seemed to be determined to hold their lines at all costs, and it became clear to me as the battle progressed that the Bulgarians were not going to have that "walk over" which they had so confidently predicted, and which they had almost a right to expect after their previous knowledge of the demoralization and panic of great Turkish armies.

Nevertheless, I also believe now that if the Bulgarians had shown the same determination to carry the position which they had revealed at Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas, and if their commanders had decided to sacrifice the lives of the men as freely as in those early days of the war, they might have succeeded in piercing the lines.

For the strength of the Chatalja defenses have been much exaggerated, and the Turks had to rely upon their own courage and determination rather than upon the impregnability of their position. If the line had once been cut it is probable that their march would have been broken and that the other parts of the line would have crumpled up and retreated.

All that, however, is mere theory, and history has not been written that way. It is probable that after their own heavy losses, heavier than will ever be admitted in official dispatches or national statistics,

I the Bulgarians were not willing to sacrifice themselves to the same extent as in the first battles.

Such were the thoughts which came to me as I stood in the fort watching the grim struggle.

Towards dusk a village to the right of Chatalja caught fire, owing to the shells which had burst over it, and flamed up as a torch, casting a lurid, quivering light above its volumes of smoke, which spread out in far-reaching clouds.

Darkness settling down rapidly, we decided to retire a little way, to a safer position, and wait until morning before watching the renewal of the battle, which was also languishing.

After going about a mile we came to a village and encountered the officer in command. He instantly expressed a desire to see our permits, and we had an uneasy feeling that there would be an unpleasant end to our adventure.

Ward Price had the most impressive looking document, as also the most distinguished and persuasive manner; so we put him forward as the leader of the party, and let the officer think that we were his servants.

He was very doubtful about the led horse, which had belonged to the Maltese renegade. He scented mystery here, and was evidently puzzling his head about it. However, he eventually made up his mind to be kind, and after his preliminary hesitation gave himself a good deal of trouble with regard to us.

The first thing he did was to find some stables for our horses and put a man on guard over them. I am sorry to say that he turned some soldiers out of the stables to find room for us. This was very hard for them. They had been soundly asleep in the straw, and I have no doubt they were in an exhausted and miserable state, like most of the soldiers of the Turkish army at this time.

At his word of command to "clear out "they staggered up and looked half -dazed and sullen, but without a murmur they shambled out so that we foreigners might be left in possession.

It gave us uneasy consciences, but we could not argue with the officer or decline the method of his hospitality and courtesy, so that the matter had to take its course. We saw that the horses had their best meal for a week, and when this duty had been performed followed the officer to a room which he provided for us.

He then left us with a stately bow and a salute, not awaiting or expecting thanks, asking nothing from us in return for these great services, and making us always grateful to a Turkish gentleman, who had behaved according to the best traditions of his class.

The room was very small and dirty, but it was better than a night out in the rain, and we esteemed ourselves very lucky. We settled down to a frugal and somewhat ill-assorted meal, and then prepared to fix ourselves up for the night.

That is to say, we selected our particular shake-down on the floor. One anxiety disturbed us. It was a haunting sense of fear that our horses in the stable, some distance away, might be stolen by some of the needy soldiers.

Arguing the matter out, it seemed unreasonable to entertain such a thought, as the officer had put a guard over them; but our nerves were jangled, and, try as we would, we could not get rid of the suspicion. We decided therefore to visit the horses and report progress whenever we woke up.

It was a most uneasy night. I was horribly troubled by small beasts, who went for circular excursions on my body and defied my attempts to annihilate them.

It was a night of nerves and nightmares.

Sometimes I was awakened by Ward Price, who, with more anxiety than any of us about the horses, made his way over the bodies of my sleeping comrades, and after an absence came back more disturbed than ever in his mind.

One of the horses had changed its position from the right side to the left side of the stable. He could not understand how this had happened. It seemed to him that there was mischief afoot. He did not like the look of things.

Then I took a turn outside, and came back to report that the horses were still safe.

Once I happened to move in my sleep, and frightened a party of rats who were finishing our dinner. In their hurry and fright at the noise I made they shot the biscuits all over the room, and with nerves more jangled than ever we lit the lamp to view the wreck. A small piece of cheese, which we had regarded as a precious treasure, was quite gone, and much of the other food had been demolished; but we gathered up the remnants, wrapped them in Wilkins's mackintosh, and put the bundle under Price's pillow, which happened to be his saddle.

Once more we settled down to a restless slumber, leaving the light up. It kept the rats away, but did not quieten those smaller beasts who were still making journeys about my body.

We rose before daybreak on the morning of Monday, November i8th, and again set out towards the guns on the lines of Chatalja.

We passed many dead bodies on the roadside and in the adjoining fields, gruesome objects in the thick damp mist, where they lay in the sleep of death.

Once again we reached the fort, and saw that the Turkish defense was being well maintained and that the trenches were still manned. This time the Bulgarians were not going to have a walk over. The last defense of the Turks might even now secure the safety of Constantinople.

We could not stay long, however, in this position. The officer in charge of the fort appeared to have orders about us, and made us understand that we must return at once to San Stefano. He gave us a guide, to show us the way and keep an eye on us.

We determined to make our way now straight to Constantinople, and not to the cholera-stricken area of San Stefano. Our guide came a considerable way, and then returned. About noon we parted with Ward Price, as we wanted to pick up our luggage at Tchekmedge, and he wanted to find his servant in another village.

At one o'clock we reached Tchekmedge, and found Marcus and Henry, who had been waiting for us.

We set about packing our cart at once, and leaving Henry to look after the remainder of the luggage, started by two o'clock for Constantinople. It was a fairly good road, but we were delayed by the incurable instinct which Marcus had for looting.

Although we were returning to civilization he could not resist a fine fat lamb which his eyes coveted in a passing flock, and he tied it by the legs to the top of the cart. The few words he had with the shepherd before grasping his prize seemed quite friendly, so I suppose it was not an actual theft, but a gift. Nevertheless, I was angry at the delay and abused Marcus roundly for his folly; but he only smiled at me in a "knowing " way, nodded like a Chinese mandarin in porcelain, and repeatedly used the words "Good!" and "Orright!"

At last we got away again, Marcus shouting "Una ora," which I took to mean that we were one hour from the city, but over a particularly rough piece of road the lamb became partly unstuck and had to be rescued by Wilkins, who re-arranged its captivity.

At last we entered the gate of Constantinople, and after a seemingly endless journey through the narrow streets crowded with excited people and with many of those fugitives who had tramped from the surrounding country amidst all the horrors of retreat, I arrived at my hotel, rejoicing at this return from the wilds.

Here I found my brother Tom, whom I had not met for many months, and here I received my order of recall; so that I was a very happy man.

My adventures were at an end, and my account of them ends also.

But before leaving Constantinople for the joyful journey home I was able to see the terrible conditions prevailing in the city.

Refugees kept arriving in enormous numbers and in the most deplorable state. They camped out in open places round the city and in the graveyards, and many of them died every day from exhaustion and hunger. The condition of the little children was especially terrible.

Cholera continued to ravage these armies of unfortunates, and the Turkish authorities, realizing the immensity of the danger, bestirred themselves, and with the help of medical authorities from other countries organized an isolation system and took sanitary precautions.

They also engaged actively in the work of disarming all civilians, seizing guns, pistols, swords and knives, and every kind of weapon. These were brought in by cartloads and stood at the Ministry of War.

I was convinced, however, that all fears of an attempted massacre of Christians were unfounded and fantastic. The starving people who invaded Constantinople were too broken in spirit and too weak in body to attempt any acts of violence, while the soldiers who had escaped from the Bulgarian guns and from the cholera had only one desire to hide themselves, so that they should not be sent back to the fighting lines.

The Turkish Government was calm and dignified in the face of its appalling disasters, and they set about the task of strengthening their lines of defense at Chatalja and obtaining strong reinforcements of troops from Asia Minor.

Transports arrived, bringing in large numbers of fresh troops from Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Erzeroum, and other provinces; and these men were drafted quickly to the Chatalja lines, behind which they were drilled daily and put into something like fighting shape. Raw recruits as they were, they were in excellent spirits; and at the last ditch, as it were, the Turks regained hope and put themselves in a position to retrieve some of their great disasters.

On the other side the Bulgarians were not in an enviable position. In spite of, and even because of, their rapid series of victories they were much exhausted and unable to force their way through the Turkish trenches. They had lost an immense number of men, they were stricken with disease, and they were embarrassed by the length of that line of communications which they had to maintain.

Political and financial reasons also called a halt, and the time was ripe for parleys and negotiations. I need not enter into the details of those negotiations which led to the truce between the two armies and to the Conference, when, after all the horrors of war, peasant soldiers were to be of no more account, and diplomatists were to wrangle for the fruits of victory and to dispute the forfeits of defeat.

It has now become clear to all students of this war that the Bulgarians were unable to take advantage of their great opportunity after the battle of Lule Burgas. Instead of falling upon the retreating and demoralized army, cutting it off from Constantinople and inflicting the severest damage upon them, they were delayed by their own losses and difficulties, disheartened by the tremendous price they had paid for victory, and afraid to advance upon a rear-guard which might still have sufficient strength to stand at bay. All the early reports that there had been severe rear-guard righting at Chorlu and other places were absolutely false, for as I have shown in my narrative the Turkish rout, dreadful as it was, was unmolested by Bulgarian guns or cavalry. By that one great failure to make the most of their supreme advantage the Bulgarians lost a great deal for which they had fought.