WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE iPhoto S. Ashinead-BartUtt Savinc; the Guns after the Batti.k of Lule Burgas. WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE By ELLIS ASHMEAD-BARTLETT SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE LONDON "DAILY TELEGRAPH " Author of "PORT ARTHUR, THE SIEGE AND CAPITULATION," "THE PASS- ING OF THE SHEREEFIAN EMPIRE" In Collaboration with SEA BURY ASHMEAD-BARTLETT ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK MCMXIII GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY V Printed in England PREFACE This book is intended as a record of those dramatic days my brother and myself passed with the Turkish Army in Thrace during the battle of Lule Burgas and in the subsequent retreat on the lines of Chataldja. I have to acknowledge my great indebtedness to him for the assistance he has given me in writing parts of it, and also in preparing it for publication. My thanks are also due to the Daily Telegraph for allowing me to reproduce articles which originally appeared in its columns. Since the last chapter was in print the revolt of the Young Turkish party against Kiamil's Government, because of its decision to surrender Adrianople to the Bulgarians — fore- shadowed in the last chapter — has actually taken place, and Nazim Pasha, the late Minister of War, and Commander-in- Chief of the Army, has been assassinated. Whether the Young Turks will endeavour to carry on the war only the future can show, but all the arguments set forth in the concluding chapter against such a course of action still hold good, and a revolution in Constantinople in no wise alters the strategical and financial objections to a renewal of the campaign. Turkey's European Provinces and the fortress of Adrianople are irrevocably lost, and any effort to regain them can only lead to further disasters. E. ASHMEAD-BARTLETT. . London : January 26/A, 1913. V 258377 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I Watting for the War 1 II Scenes in Constantinople 12 III The Efforts of Diplomacy 22 IV The Military History of the Turks 29 V The Modern Turkish Army 50 VI The Authorities and the Correspondents 59 VII The Early Operations 77 VIII Departure of the Correspondents for the Front 93 IX My Journey to Chorlou 108 X My First Meeting with Abdullah 120 XI Lule Burgas— The First Day 139 XII Lule Burgas — The Second Day ^ 152 XIII The Rout 171 XIV How WE Sent the Story of the Battle 182 XV The Retreat from Chorlou to Chataldja 203 XVI The Migration of a People 217 XVII The Capture of Rodosto 229 XVIII The Chocolate Soldier 242 vii viii CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE XIX The Cholera 250 XX The Attack on Chataldja 263 XXI The Turn op the Tide 278 XXII The War Against the Correspondents 292 XXIII The Future op the Turks 313 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Saving the Guns after the Battle of Lule Burgas Frontispiece Constantinople facing page 10 Nogi and Abdullah, our two Saddle Horses, with Hadji, the Albanian Groom 18 feefugees on the March 26 Our Cart with Bryant and Beavor 36 A Turkish Colonel 36 Retreating from Lule Burgas along the Roman Road 44 Greek Villagers and our Motor-car 60 The Track to Stamboul 68 Overturned Train 68 Nazim Pasha, Minister for War, leaving the Sublime Porte on the Eve of Hostilities 74 Refugees' Train Overturned at Seidler 96 Our Tent at Chorion 106 Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett's Motor-car being pulled out of a Rut by Men 112 Turkish Infantry driven out of Lule Burgas by the^ Bulgarians 142 Plan of the Battle of Lule Burgas page 143 facing page Artillery advancing to support the hard-pressed 2nd Army Corps at Lule Bui^as 154 The Turkish Retreat 162 Retirement of the 2nd Army Corps at Lule Burgas 168 Wounded Turkish Soldiers in Bullock Wagons 172 Passing the Bridge at Chorlou after the rout of Lule Burgas 176 A Halt during the Retreat ' 184 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS facing p Crossing the Bridge at Chorlou 194 The Camp of the Routed Army at Cherkeskeuy 204 Turkish Artillery Leaving the Field of Lule Burgas 212 Refugees 224 Train Crowded with Refugees and Soldiers escaping from the Front 234 Artillery on the March 244 Victims of Cholera 258 Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett and Mr. Martin Donohoe, of the Daily Chronicle, with an Armenian Priest, in whose house they stayed at Aya Yorgi 260 A Trench hastUy built by the Turks at Chataldja 268 The Trenches at Chataldja 280 Waiting for the Bulgarians at Chataldja 280 Turkish Soldiers Saving their Wounded Captain 290 The Turks Retreating from Lule Burgas 302 Soldiers and Refugees Escaping from Lule Burgas 310 Map of Thrace at end of volume With the Turks in Thrace. ERRATA PAGE LINE 34 24 for Mahomed II read Mahmoud II. 283 16 for Erzeroum r^od Erzerum. 91 26 'i I ^'^ Karagac rmd Karagach. 274 28 f(yr Kuyuk read Kuchuk. Before the Volume was completely passed for press Mr. Ellis Ashmead- Bartlett was forced to return to Constantino}jle. The Publisher asks for indtdgence if the traiiditeratio7is of Turkish names vary here and there, especially between text and map. CHAPTER I WAITING rOR THE WAR I HAD just returned from the great French manoeuvres in Touraine when the outlook in the Balkans became threaten- ing. There I had followed the operations of five Army- Corps, and had seen them handled with machine-like pre- cision, controlled, fed, and concentrated with such ease that war was made to appear a ridiculously easy game. Over- head seventy aeroplanes, assisted by dirigibles, kept the opposing commanders-in-chief fully informed from hour to hour — one might almost say from minute to minute — of every fresh disposition of the enemy's forces, until many eminent critics declared that anything in the nature of grand strategy or of a surprise was eliminated from war for ever, and that the battles of the future would be won by the side which could concentrate the greatest number of troops at a given point and strike home first. " The age/' they declared, " of the gi-eat general is gone ; battles will now be lost or won by the station-masters along the main lines of com- munication to the front." There is doubtless a great deal of truth in this. Never- theless we were reminded that surprises might still occur by an incident on the last day of the first period of the manoeuvres, when General Marion, the commander-in-chief B 2 t#ttf¥Hfi TURKS IN THRACE of the Army of the East, together with the whole of his staff, and his Corps Artillery, were captured during the battle fought round Craon by two brigades of Blue Cavalry under the command of General Dubois. This incident showed that mistakes will happen even in the most highly organised and scientific armies, and that there is still scope for the in- dividual brain of a commander to seize the psychological moment and change the fortunes of the day by a brilliant coup de main. To outward observation the five French Army Corps in Touraine were manoeuvred with consum- mate ease, yet the machinery which guided and controlled them was of an extremely delicate construction, and, should a hitch have occurred anywhere, the whole complex organisation was liable to be thrown out of gear. I recall how often it was remarked by critics how hopeless a modern army would be unless its organisation were perfect ; how it would flounder about, its units without cohesion and hopelessly intermixed ; its supply trains gone astray, and how finally it would blunder up against the enemy's position without having any definite objective to attack, its weight of numbers entirely lost by lack of co-operation. Little did I think at the time, that within a month I would find myself with just such an army, and take part in the most crushing defeat of modern times. On Monday, September 30th, I returned to London from a visit to the country to find urgent messages from IVIr. Harry Lawson to come down to the office of the Daily Telegraph immediately. I went there and was instructed to hold myself in readiness to start at a moment's notice for Constantinople to join the Turkish Army in the event of war breaking out in the Balkans. I will not relate in detail here the contradictory rumours of peace and war, which kept the whole civilised world in a ferment of hopes and fears for the next fortnight, before little Montenegro finally IN SUSPENSE 3 threw down the gauntlet and commenced the Twentieth Century crusade against the Turk without waiting for her aUies. On Tuesday, October 1st, I spent most of the day at the Daily Telegraph office waiting for the latest news from the Near East and hesitating whether to commence my preparations or to wait just one day longer in case events should take a favourable turn. On Wednesday, October 2nd, I received an express letter telling me to come down to the office without a moment's delay and on arriving there I was informed by Mr. Le Sage, the Managing Editor, that I must start that very night for Constantinople, as the prospects of preserving peace now seemed hopeless. These days, and I have known many in my time, when one has to rush off to a far distant land at a moment's notice, pass in a whirl of things remembered and things forgotten. You seem to crowd into twelve hours the concentrated effiDrts of a week, and then, when you are finally seated in the train and hope to obtain a few hours for calm reflection, you invariably find you have forgotten to do many of the most important things you had thought of earlier in the day, and have also left behind numberless articles which you imagine will be of supreme importance to you at the front. At five that afternoon 1 happened to meet my brother Seabury, and said to him, " I am off at nine to-night for Constantinople." He replied, " I wish I were going too." I said, " Why don't you come ? It may be worth your while ; once you are on the spot I am sure I could get you a job with some paper, although you have not had any previous experience, or in any case I am sure to need an assistant and you might be very useful." For some time he hesitated, but finally made up his mind to come with me and rushed off to pack a few clothes. He b2 4 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE would never have hesitated, had he known the dramatic events which were in store for us both before the month had expired. At nine p.m. on Wednesday, October 2nd, we left Charing Cross for Paris and spent the following day there. We learnt from Cook's that the line to Constantinople via Sofia had been taken over by the Bulgarian Military Authorities, and that the last Orient Express had passed through the day before. We had, therefore, to travel out to Constantinople via Constanza, in Roumania, passing through Vienna and Bucharest, and from Constanza to take the steamer to Constantinople. We found every seat in the Orient Express booked as far as Vienna, and were obliged to take an intermediate train as far as the Austrian capital. As we had a few hours to spare in Paris, we went to call on M. Normand, the editor of IVie Illustratio7i, for whose paper I had written an article the year before on the *' Massacre in the Oasis " on my return from the Italian campaign in Tripoli. M. Normand, a handsome black- bearded man with a clever, alert, humorous face, received us in his office, which was superbly decorated in the style of Louis Quinze and looked less like the dreaded editorial lair than a lady's boudoir. He greeted us with great polite- ness saying, ** M. Ashmead-Bartlett, je suis enchante de vous revoir, bien que votre article sur les atrocites Italiennes en Tripolitaine nous ait perdu six cents abonnes en Italic, et qu'on ait meme brule rillust?'atio?i sur les places pubhques. Mais, M. Bartlett," the editor went on with a serious air, *' il y a encore pire — le Saint Siege a mis T Illusti'ation sur rindex." He ended up with a magnificent gesture ex- pressive of mingled horror and amusement. At five o'clock we left Paris for Vienna. As we had no time to complete our packing in a scientific manner, we had SUSPICIOUS TEUTONS 5 with us in the carriage a miscellaneous collection of bags and packages, including a tent in a canvas bag and a saddle wrapped up in a sack. Our belongings completely filled up a first-class compartment, rendering it impossible for any other would-be passengers to enter. All went well as long as we were in France, the officials being prescient of the pourboii^e which was certain to arise from the chaos around us. The situation, however, changed for the worse as soon as we crossed the German frontier. A horde of fat but alert-looking officials gathered in the doorway, contem- plating with mingled suspicion and horror the amount of our hand baggage, which included a typewriter, a suit-case, a hat-bag, a Gladstone bag, a rug-strap and a dispatch box, as well as the saddle and tent. " JVIein Gott, how many pas- sengers are there for all this baggage ? " asked one of them. We replied, " Two." " Is such a thing possible ? " he faltered. Then, after a few minutes' conversation with his companion, his face lighted up and he said, " Have you the first class ? " We realised we were objects of intense suspicion. The flaxen-haired, vicious-looking conductor gazed in anticipated triumph at the disreputable-looking packages containing our tent and saddle. He was sure that such travellers could only have second-class tickets, and when we proved the contrary he was keenly disappointed. Then, after another guttural conversation with his companions, he asked, " Are you Enghshmen ? " " Yes," we replied. A look of under- standing brightened up their heavy Teutonic faces. Later on another conductor came and eyed the tent and saddle with suspicion. " You should not bring meat with you into a first-class compartment," he said. " Meat ? " we answered, in astonishment. " Yes," he answered, " have you not got a ham in that sack ? " On Friday, October 4th, we reached Vienna, where we 6 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE were obliged to break our journey, as the train for Constanza did not leave until the following evening. We stopped at the Bristol Hotel, and found several well-known war cor- respondents already there, likewise bent on reaching Constantinople. I was delighted to find amongst others my old friends Lionel James, of The Times, and M. H. Donohoe, of the Daily Chronicle. It is always pleasant to know you are going to campaign amongst friends, even though you know them to be the keenest of competitors, who will keep you on the qui vive from start to finish, unless you wish to find your best endeavours ever anticipated by the coups of these highly trained and skilful colleagues. We spent Saturday seeing the sights of the town, and in the afternoon my brother and myself visited the battlefield of Aspern-Essling on the other side of the Danube. At five o'clock we entered the Orient Express for Constanza. On the train we met Reshid Pasha, who was returning from conduct- ing the peace negotiations with the Italians at Ouchy. Poor Turkey ! Here was her representative returning from what proved to be a successful mission of peace, only to find his country on the brink of war with four other nations. He was accompanied by Colonel Aziz, who had been Military Attache in Washington, and who had also accompanied the British Army during the South African War. He told me he was on his way to join his regiment at Mustafa Pasha, on the Bulgarian Frontier, and that he regarded war as certain. We reached Constantinople on Monday, October 7th. The last time I had visited this picturesque blot on the face of Europe, was fourteen years before, at the time of the Greco-Turkish war, when Abdul Hamid still reigned supreme, and all one knew of the Young Turks was the sinister fact that from time to time their bodies were found floating in the Bosphorus, being carried slowly by the tide out towards the Sea of Marmora. THE NEW BYZANTIUM 7 I had heard so much of the Young Turks and the miracles they were going to accomphsh once the country had obtained a Constitution that I hardly expected to recognise Constanti- nople, but to find it a city transformed. I found nothing changed except that the dogs had gone, although, by the way, a fresh generation of these noisy pests is already springing up. Constantinople remains to-day the city of many colours and of decay ; the city which nature designed to be a paradise on earth and which man has transformed into a cesspool of vice, decay, and blood ; a city which from the waters of the Bosphorus looks like a dream of marble hanging on the slopes of purple hills, and which on closer inspection turns ()ut to be a hopeless jumble of tumble-down houses with gangrened and mouldering walls, built along the sides of l^adly-paved, precipitous streets, down which tired horses glide and stumble, with here and there some beautiful marble mosque rising above the gaudy rubbish-heap of an out- worn faith. The Turks have done nothing constructive to beautify the city since their inruption in 1453. They have merely added minarets to the old Byzantine churches, or erected mosques in garish imitations of the Greek buildings. For the rest, they have allowed the city to fall into hopeless decay. We were delayed at the Customs House by an official who insisted that our tent in its canvas case was the envelope of a dirigible balloon. It was only by a liberal donation of backsheesh that we convinced him of the innocent nature of our baggage. We found the wildest rumours floating about the city. Everyone held different opinions and had a different tale to tell on the prospects of peace or war. Some declared war to be absolutely certain and others were equally confident that peace was assured. At the Pera Palace Hotel we found a motley collection of war correspondents of all 8 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE nations, who, like vultures, had gathered in anticipation of the horrid feast of death. In official and diplomatic circles the opinion prevailed that peace was assured because the Turkish Cabinet had agreed to apply the Law of 1880 to Macedonia. This concession, combined with the efforts of the Powers to bring pressure on Bulgaria and Servia to preserve peace, caused a highly optimistic tone to prevail in Constantinople on the day of our arrival, and until we got in touch with the true facts of the position it really seemed as if our journey to the Near East would be in vain. However, on visiting Sir Gerard Lowther I found that he was far from sharing the general optimism and regarded the situation as extremely grave. His views were confirmed and amplified by Count Leon Ostrorog, the Special Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph in Constantinople, who was always better informed on the true situation than anyone else. Europe had up to this time quite failed to grasp the true significance of the Balkan League. It had been built up by years of patient endeavour with the proclaimed object of obtaining the freedom of Macedonia, but with the real intention of proclaiming a twentieth century crusade and of driving the Turks once and for all out of Europe. The only hope for Turkey lay in the jealousies of the Great Powers, and especially in the much-vaunted, but now dis- credited, friendship of Germany, which, the Turkish Govern- ment hoped, would postpone the blow until a more favour- able season, if it could not permanently prevent it. To this hope Turkey clung, until in the end the demands of the Coalition left no alternative but war. Immediately on arrival in Constantinople we began to experience the difficulty of getting at the truth of anything. The Press is not allowed to publish any news of importance without official sanction, but nevertheless the most intimate COUNT OSTROROG 9 Cabinet secrets are common property within a few hours. No one seems capable of keeping a secret, and all news filtering from mouth to mouth in the coffee-houses and mosques becomes hopelessly garbled and distorted, with the result that in the course of a few hours a score of people Avill tell you different stories of events which have obviously originally emanated from the same source. For two days we wandered around Constantinople en- deavouring to get in touch with the true situation, so as to find out whether it was worth while going to all the trouble and expense of making preparations to take the field. On the second day Count Ostrorog invited my brother and myself to lunch, and finally removed all doubts in our minds. Count Ostrorog had all along unhesitatingly preached the certainty of war in his despatches to the Daily Telegi^aph. He was on intimate terms with everyone in the diplomatic and official world ; he possesses a sound knowledge of the Turkish character, history and politics, and always had access to the Sublime Porte. He was at one time legal adviser to the Young Turks and to the Committee of "Union and Progress," and has had much practical experience of the difficulties of attempting to graft modern civilisation on to a Mahommedan community without infringing the sacred code of Islam. At lunch Count Ostrorog told us that there was a rumour that the Montenegrin Minister had asked for his passports and was about to leave Constantinople. In the middle of lunch the Count's secretary, M. Pech, arrived and confirmed the report. The surprise of everyone in Constantinople was intense when it became known that Montenegro, the smallest and weakest State of the Coalition, the " opera bouffe " State of the Balkans, had thrown down the gauntlet and declared war. On hearing this all-important piece of news, I lost no time in visiting the War Office, known in Turkish as the 10 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE Seraskerat, in the hope of seeing Nazim Pasha, the Minister of War, as I wished to find out what facilities would be given to war correspondents to carry on their work at the front. Great excitement prevailed in the streets of Stamboul through which we had to pass on our way to the War Office. Military preparations were being hastily pressed forward. The narrow, filthy, cobbled streets were crowded with Turks, reading the little sheets issued by the Ottoman Agency, announcing the outbreak of war with Montenegro. There were young Turks dressed in the latest European fashion, with little save the red fez to denote that they were children of the Prophet ; old men in gaudy turbans and coloured robes sitting cross-legged in front of their tumble-down shops ; wild-looking individuals from Turkestan in long smocks embroidered with gorgeous flowers ; negroes with their happy, smiling faces, to whom war made apparently not the smallest difference ; here and there veiled Turkish ladies in black satin dresses and shoes from the Rue de la Paix ; fat Jewesses and crowds of peaceful- looking peasants from Anatolia who had come to the capital out of curiosity, or who were obeying the summons of the mobihsation. Many of them had brought their sheep and their turkeys or their oxen with them, hoping to do a good " deal " before leaving for the front. Sometimes the crowd would be ruthlessly pushed aside to make room for detach- ments of fully accoutred Turkish infantry marching to the station to entrain for the front. On reaching the War Office we found large numbers of troops being drilled and equipped in the great court- yard in front of the building, while a band was playing Turkish military airs to stir up the patriotism of numbers of recruits and reservists who were endeavouring to master the intricacies of the Mauser rifle, which large numbers had never seen or handled before. The courtyard in COLONEL IZZET 11 front of the Seraskerat was a great centre of attraction for the people of Constantinople, who spent the day gazing in wonder and admiration at the splendidly-equipped battalions as they were in turn marched off to the station to entrain to join the army of Thrace, which was now being formed between Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse. We were unable to see Nazim Pasha, the Minister of War, on this visit, but my brother and I here made the acquaintance for the first time of Colonel Izzet Bey, who was destined to play a very important role in our lives, as he was placed in charge of all the war correspondents and military attaches. We hoped to learn much valuable information from Izzet, but quickly found that he expected us to keep him informed of what was happening. He started by asking us whether we had heard any news of a declaration of war by Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece. I very soon learned to know also that it was utterly useless to hope for any reliable information from the War Office, as Colonel Izzet did little to assist the corre- spondents except to invent a daily victory for the Turks. The information which he gave us regarding the movements of troops and the concentration of the various army corps was generally fabulous, and consisted of what the army should have done rather than what it actually did. This mania for dissimulation and for keeping up false pretences when the truth must eventually leak out is a marked charac- teristic of Turkish officialdom. CHAPTER II SCENES IN CONSTANTINOPLE On the following morning my brother and myself accom- panied Count Ostrorog to the Sublime Porte to visit Ghazi Moukhtar Pasha, the Grand Vizier. The Sublime Porte is sublime only in name, being an unpretentious, dilapidated and rather dirty square building, while the paving stones in the courtyard have subsided in many places, allowing the water to accumulate in pools. A number of troops were concentrated in the courtyard to cope with a possible outbreak, as disturbances had been freely threatened unless the Government showed a firm front to the demands of the Balkan States. We were received on every hand with the greatest cour- tesy and politeness, the Turk being by instinct the first gentleman in Europe. But, on the other hand, we were kept waiting nearly three hours before the Grand Vizier arrived at his office from his country seat, it being typical of Turkish methods that he should arrive at two o'clock at his office, when Islam was on the verge of one of the greatest crises in its history. We waited in the room of Ghazi Moukhtar 's Chef de Cabinet, a handsome and very smartly dressed young Spanish Jew. The room was thronged all the time with an anxious crowd of deputies, journalists and the like. They discussed the situation from a variety of standpoints, all their arguments leading by GHAZl MOUKHTAR 13 devious routes to the certainty of war. Presently an old man, an ex-deputy, came up, and bid Ostrorog farewell, saying that together with his two sons he had volunteered for service in the army and that all three were leaving for the front that afternoon. At length, about two o'clock, the Grand Vizier drove up. Ghazi Moukhtar, the celebrated defender of Kars in the Russian War of 1878, is a splendid specimen of the old type of Turk, and showed but few traces of his ninety years. On the other hand, it was easy to see that a man of such advanced years must be lacking in that vigour of mind and quickness of decision necessary to cope with the tangled and troubled situation in which the Ottoman Empire was placed. Ghazi Moukhtar has been nicknamed the MacMahon of Anatolia, and this title well describes him. He is a simple, honest soldier, possessing none of the brains or finesse or far-seeing ability so necessary in the statesman who hopes to guide his country successfully through troubled waters. The Ghazi is very plain and blunt in his speech, and did not hesitate freely to express his views before Europeans who could at once make them public. The Ghazi's colleagues in the Ministry knew his proclivities for free speech, which had frequently landed them in trouble before, and finally they had induced him to promise never to grant any further interviews, but on this occasion, having escaped from his chaperons, he quickly forgot his promise and indulged in a torrent of opinions. He spoke French slowly and distinctly, but seemed to have some difficulty in grasping what was said to him. I asked him what the attitude of the Government would be now it had consented to apply the Law of 1880 to Macedonia. He replied, " Turkey has reached the limit of her concessions in Macedonia, and nothing but war remains unless Bulgaria and Servia consent to demobilise." I told him I had been 14 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE with the Itahan Army in Tripoli and had been responsible for exposing the massacre in the Oasis. This seemed to please him very much. Then the tactful Count Ostrorog, who always knows how to say the right thing at the right moment, referred to his glorious defence of Kars against the Russians which had earned for him the title of Ghazi, which means, " the man who has defeated Unbelievers," and expressed the hope that he would again take the field in command of the Turkish armies. The old warrior was delighted at this piece of obvious flattery, and the recollection of his former glories coming into his eyes, he replied, " I often think of it and long to be in the saddle at the head of my troops, but I am old and infirm." " But Highness, one could never take you for an old man," the diplomatic Count Ostrorog replied, " you are surely not so old as Fouad Pasha, who commands the cavalry." " Ah, my friend," the old man replied, '' I was a marshal when Fouad was only a colonel." Ghazi Moukhtar has all the charming simplicity of the peasant. His face is full and of a healthy colour ; his beard thick and white. Save for a slight palsy and hesitation in his speech, one would never suspect his age. Afterwards we touched on the question of Montenegro's declaration of war, and he expressed himself as totally mystified by the attitude of the httle mountain State in precipitating the struggle. " Why has Montenegro declared war on us, apparently without consulting her aUies?" he said. "1 always thought that Montenegro worshipped Russia as a god, and that a single word from the Russian Government, which professes to be so sincerely anxious to preserve peace, would have held the Montenegrins in check." The old warrior made no further comment, but his remarks showed clearly the intense and very natural suspicion with which the pacific efforts of Russia and THE ANATOLIAN PEASANT 15 Austria were regarded by the Turks. Poor old Ghazi Moukhtar only remained Grand Vizier for a few weeks longer. The defeat of Lule Burgas discredited his Ministry, and he was obliged to resign to make room for Kiamil Pasha, who was supposed to be an Anglophil. At this time there was ample evidence in Pera and Stamboul of the activity with which preparations for war were being pushed forward. Regiments of Turkish infantry were being constantly marched through the streets to entrain for the front at the Cirkedge railway station in Stamboul. Most of the men were Redifs, and had been hastily called up from all parts of the empire. Physically they could hardly have been bettered. Tall, strong, deep- chested, and accustomed to hardships and to a meagre diet from earliest childhood, they were defenders of which any nation might have been proud. They showed but little trace of enthusiasm, marching through the streets with dull, expressionless faces, more like animals than men. Reservists were arriving from Anatolia at the rate of seven thousand a day, and were immediately marched off to the various barracks to receive their uniforms and equipment. These peasants were intensely picturesque. They were dressed for the most part in bright-coloured cotton shirts ^nd ragged trousers, with coloured turbans wound round their heads. Many arrived in Constantinople barefooted, and strongly resented having to wear military boots. As they were quite unaccustomed to foot-gear their feet speedily became sore, and two weeks later, during the retreat from Lule Burgas, it was a very common sight to see men deliberately throw away their boots in order to facilitate their escape from the stricken field. y Although the conscription had only called for men between the ages of twenty and forty-five, there were many above and below this age who had volunteered to serve with the army. 16 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE The hard lives of the peasantry in Anatolia cause men to age rapidly, and thus a great many of these reservists had an appearance of extreme age and venerability, and looked as if they ought to be on their way to collect old age pensions rather than to shoulder a Mauser rifle. These reservists seemed extremely cheerful and full of fight until they reached the barracks, but the finished article turned out there seemed to lose most of his patriotism and enthusiasm for the war. I suppose a few nights in crowded quarters with barrack fare, and a few days spent in long hours of drill, carrying heavy packs on the back, caused these simple Anatohans to take a different view of the struggle. Possibly also for the first time the awful state of confusion which prevailed every- where was brought home to them, and they began to have serious misgivings as to the outcome of the war. The recruits and reservists, as soon as they arrived in Con- stantinople, were marched to the barracks. The men formed up in double file or in fours, and, holding each other's hands, marched through Pera and Stamboul to the music of primitive flutes and diminutive violins, played by the shepherds among them, whilst the others chanted monoto- nous refrains. From time to time the music would stop and the whole group would utter a deep-throated cheer. In the mosque of St. Sofia we saw numbers of these Redifs, who had obtained an afternoon's leave after receiving their uniforms and kits, gazing in wonder and awe at this miracle of marble and mosaic and at the golden dove above them, before kneeling in silent prayer to Allah. It was an object lesson to watch the sublime faith which these innocent victims of oppression had in the justice of their cause and in the certainty of their victory. How few realised that within three weeks nearly all would be dead or back at the lines of Chataldja, and that St. Sofia would have been turned into a THE CORRUPT VET. 17 vast hospital for the wounded or for the countless victims of cholera ! The Turkish Government, having little or no money to spend on the war, adopted the very simple expedient of commandeering anything it might require for the service of the army. Receipts were given for horses and carts, the money to be paid after the war in the event of the property not being returned to its rightful owners. No one had the slightest faith in the ability or even in the intention of the Government to meet its liabilities, and there was a rush of all cab owners or horse dealers in Constantinople to sell their animals to Europeans, before they could be commandeered by the agents of the Government. Thus, excellent horses could be obtained at about half their usual price, the attraction of cash down in the place of a Government receipt proving irresistible. The veterinary surgeons hired by the Government to pass horses as fit for service made large fortunes in bribes, and many a horse owner saved his animal by a timely gift of a couple of sovereigns to the veterinary surgeon, who would at once pronounce it as lame or permanently unfit for service. I know of one man who made £1000 in this way alone. The first to be taken were the tram horses which were required for the use of the artillery, after which the cab horses were gradually snatched up. In consequence, only the most wretched old screws were left to drag one about Constantinople, and as the insatiable maw of war gradually made fresh demands, these also were commandeered, and very frequently one would see a two-horse carriage being dragged along by a single animal which would not have fetched two pounds as sausage meat in normal times. On the way back from the Sublime Porte, where we had visited the Grand Vizier, our carriage was stopped in order that the two fine Arab horses which dragged it might be noted 18 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE by the military authorities. This was probably the last drive they ever took through the streets of Pera, as few of the horses survived the hardships of the campaign in the cold table- lands of Thrace. They were too hght for the heavy Turkish cavalrymen or for the heavy transport wagons, even if proper care had been taken of them. But in the care of their horses, as in everything else, the Turks showed lament- able negligence. The horses seldom, if ever, received sufficient food, and their saddles fitted so badly and were kept on for such long periods that they developed huge festering sores, until, finally, at the end of their powers of endurance, they dropped by the roadside to die of hunger and exposure. Toward the end of the mobilisation in Constantinople the city was almost without wheeled transport. Only the horses of the ambassadors and a few old screws remained in the streets. A few days later the Government decided to seize the horses of all foreigners resident in the city, with the exception of those belonging to ambassadors and bankers, the exemption of the latter being delightfully sig- nificant of the empty state of the Treasury. We encountered great difficulty in buying horses to take us to the front. Such animals as remained were leading much the same existence as the Huguenots after St. Bartholomew's Eve. They were hidden away in obscure streets, behind locked doors, in stables to which admittance could only be obtained by knocking the requisite number of times. Then the bolt would be stealthily withdrawn a few inches, a head would look out to see if you were a friendly cash-down purchaser or a vile confiscatory soldier, who would not only take the horse in return for a worthless bit of paper, but also the harness and cart and any fodder which happened to be in the stable. As the days passed and the male population was \l'hoto S. Aslimcad-BartUtt NoGi AND Abdullah, our two Saddle Horses, with Hadji, the Albanl\n Groom. WAR'S INSATIABLE MAW 19 gradually drafted to the army, Stamboul grew more and more to resemble a city which had been swept by a great pestilence. The shops and booths were almost deserted and the contents were being disposed of by boys in their teens or by old men too worn out for service in the field. None but old men were to be seen in the shadowy bazaars, where beneath vaulted Byzantine arches they sat cross-legged all day before a jumble of carpets from Aleppo, silks from Damascus, gold- work, jewels, silver, and shoddy trifles from Birmingham and Manchester. Almost the entire able- bodied male population had been swept northwards by the tide of war, leaving their homes, their families and their countless petty trades to take care of themselves. Sir Walter Scott's words describe the state of Stamboul, and indeed of every hamlet in Turkey, better than any words of mine can do : — " For naught, he said, was in his halls But ancient armour on the walls. And aged chargers in the stalls. And women, priests and grey-haired men. The rest were all in Twisel glen." Throughout the whole of European Turkey and Anatolia the men had been called to the front. Every village, town and hamlet had sent its tale of men. War is an insatiable maw which gathers to its cruel feast whole provinces at a time. The normal Hfe of the nation must be carried on by old men and women and beardless youths, whose turn is likely to come at any moment. The loss in wealth which this represents to a community is far greater than the amount of money consumed by the war. The sacrifices demanded of Turkey in this most fateful winter in her chequered history are horrible to contemplate. The sulFering and poverty in many a home in Asia Minor will only be known to the sufferers themselves — who will bear them c2 20 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE without a murmur — and to the bread-winner, if by chance he survive the struggle and return to his native village the richer only in glory and in his hopes of eternal salvation. From the very day the first shot was fired by Montenegro the Turks began to disseminate false news of purely imaginative victories. They were published broadcast in their local Press and by the Ottoman Agency, an institution which works hand in glove with the Government. I myself, and many of my colleagues who knew little of Turkey or of the Turkish character, were taken in at the start, because we never believed that a reputable Government would adopt such childish measures to conceal its reverses. Yet officers, including Colonel Izzet, who, I really think, himself believed some of the stories he told us, were instructed to send news to Europe w^hich did not contain a single element of truth. The first night he came to dine with us at the hotel he gave us the news of the fighting on the Montenegrin frontier. " The Montenegrins," he said, " have crossed the Turkish frontier, capturing several villages and massacring the inhabitants without distinction of race or creed, sparing neither old men, women nor children. Afterwards three battalions of Turkish infantry advanced and defeated the Montenegrins, driving them back across the fi-ontier." " But," I asked, " if we telegraph this news, will the censor pass it ? " " Yes, he will pass it all right," replied Colonel Izzet. " Will he pass the part about the massacres ? " " Yes," came the prompt response, " I can assure you he will pass the massacres." We could hardly restrain our laughter. The above is typical of the methods of the official Turkish Press Bureau. We were repeatedly officially informed by the Headquarters Staff, as the above example shows, of successes gained by the Turkish troops on the Montenegrin frontier, and were given the names of towns OFFICIAL LIES 21 and villages taken from the enemy. Yet, when the English papers reached Constantinople a few days later, and we read for the first time the Montenegrin reports of the engage- ments, we found that they claimed the victory and the possession of the same towns and villages, with the not inconsiderable addition of more than three thousand Turkish prisoners. When the war became general we heard equally divergent reports from the Servian, Bulgarian and Greek frontiers, until the task of the wretched war correspondent became hopelessly bewildering as long as he remained in Constantinople. It was not until we started for the front, and could see for ourselves, that the veil fell from our eyes and the naked truth stood revealed in all its dramatic intensity. The Turks, following the unfortunate precedent of the Turco- Italian War, embarked on a vast campaign of make-believe, in order to throw dust in the eyes of the public, and would in no circumstances admit a reverse until the truth became so obvious that it could no longer be concealed. This is both a foolish and a short-sighted policy. Sooner or later the truth always comes out, and as the Government had systematically announced decisive victories, the ultimate revelations were all the harder for the public to bear. In addition, this campaign of lies effectually alienated the sympathy of most of the correspondents who had arrived in Constanza pronounced Turcophils. CHAPTER III THE EFFORTS OF DIPLOMACY Although the war was certain from the very first, dull- witted, hea\'y-footed diplomacy went on playing its hollow farce right up to the moment when the first sound of the cannon brought down the fragile edifice of pretence and conceits about the ears of the diplomats like a pack of cards. On Sunday, October 6th, the Sublime Porte, anticipating that the Powers would bring pressure to bear on Turkey for the enforcement of the reforms in Macedonia, announced that it was prepared to enforce the Law of the Vilayets of 1880, which the Sultan Abdul Hamid had refused to ratify. The news of this became public on Monday, the day we arrived, and in consequence superficial observers imagined that peace would be preserved. But the Turk had been promising reforms in Macedonia for nearly a century without any practical betterment of the lot of that unfortunate province. It was unlikely, therefore, that the Balkan Coalition, which had been preparing for the war to save their co-religionists in Macedonia for more than twenty years, would withdraw at the eleventh hour and declare themselves satisfied with a hollow promise, which had so often been made and so often broken in the past. On the same day the Powers agreed to M. Poincar^'s proposals that they should unite to bring pressure to bear in the Balkan capitals in the interests of peace. This was A FUTILE DEMARCHE 23 done quite seriously three weeks after the Balkan States had begun mobilising with the avowed object of driving Turkey out of Macedonia. Russia and Austria, as the Powers most directly interested, were to make joint demands at Sofia, Belgrade, and Athens, while the Powers were to present a collective Note to the Porte demanding the practical fulfilment of Article 23 of the Treaty of Berlin. Russia and Austria were to make their demands on Tuesday, October 8th. By a strange coincidence, on the morning of that day, before the Ambassadors had had time to present their Note, Montenegro, the smallest of the Leaguers, declared war on Turkey. Now, Montenegro has always been guided in her actions by Russia, and Russia has provided her with both money and arms. Yet on the very day that Russia was presenting a Note in the interests of peace to the Balkan Allies, little Montenegro declares war. A general war might surely now have been regarded by European statesmen as inevitable, but still diplomacy con- tinued its policy of pretence, and the next step was the presentation of the Austrian and Russian Notes to the Balkan Allies, a few hours after the news of Montenegro's action had come to hand. The Notes formulated the following demands : — (1) That the Powers will energetically reprove all measures tending to bring about a rupture of peace. (2) That, taking as their basis Article 23 of the Treaty of Berlin, they, the Powers, will take in hand the reahsation of the reforms in the administration of Turkey in Europe, it being understood that the reforms will not infringe the sovereignty of the Sultan or the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire. (3) That should war nevertheless break out, the Powers will not permit at the end of the conflict any modification of the territorial status quo in European Turkey, 24 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE This sounded very virtuous and to the point, and must have soothed the amour propre of the statesmen who drew it up. Unfortunately, it was presented three weeks after the mobihsation had begun and when the angry armies were already facing one another on the borders. Also the statesmen of Sofia and Belgrade were sufficiently astute to know that the Powers were far too busy quarrelling amongst themselves to take any effective collective action. Had not Montenegro already crossed the Rubicon and defied the Concert of Europe, which in spite of the frantic efforts of its conductor Poincare was already playing hopelessly out of tune? As a matter of sober fact, although unknown to European statesmen at the time, the Balkan question had passed entirely beyond the powers of diplomacy to influence the issue one way or the other once the mandate had gone forth for the forces of the Coalition to mobilise. All the well- meant efforts of Europe to preserve peace, although out- wardly accepted with good grace and fervent thanks by the prospective combatants, who were determined to preserve all the etiquette and outward formula of diplomacy until the first shot was fired, were being secretly laughed at by the military authorities of all five interested parties, who were in entire control of the situation and determined to make war just as soon as their military preparations were complete and at that psychological moment when they could strike with most advantage. In Europe the idea was generally held, and diplomacy seems to have accepted it as well, that the real issue at stake was the question of Macedonia. This was an entirely erroneous outlook. The Macedonia question has been going on for thirty-two years and will probably continue for a good many more before it is finally settled. Macedonia was merely the preliminary dry bone, over which the dogs THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRUSADE 25 of war were quarrelling, in order to obtain an excuse to reach the rich meat which lies behind. The struggle had been working up for years and nothing could settle it except the arbitrament of arms. The issue at stake was a national one and was regarded as such not only by the Turks, but by the Slavs. It was the final effort to drive the Turk out of Europe across the Hellespont, into Asia. That is how the Turks read the situation and that is why they were determined to fight the matter out once and for all, even though they had been caught at a great military disadvantage. There were many who believed up to the last moment that there would be no war, because neither Turkey nor the Balkan States would dare disobey the mandate of the Powers that they must not fight, and that even if they did so none of the combatants would be allowed to reap any rewards either territorial or pecuniary from their victory. This last threat, however, hit both ways, because if the victors are to gain no material laurels, the losers cannot suffer any loss. But in reality the beseechings and threats of the Powers carried very little weight with the Turks or with the Balkan States. Both knew perfectly well that throughout the negotiations Europe had been hopelessly divided, and that concerted action to preserve peace had been brought about only with the utmost difficulty, in spite of the repeated declarations of Foreign Ministers that all the Powers were in complete accord. For instance, over the question of the guarantees, every Turk thoroughly believed, whether it was true or not, that Sir Edward Grey only consented to bring pressure to bear on Turkey with the utmost reluctance and as a very last resource. Thus the collective Note was still-born before it was delivered. The Turkish Government, and also the AlUes, knew perfectly well that, however much the Powers 26 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE might threaten and back up their threats with a united protest, the moment the first shot was fired the collectiveness of Europe would at once evaporate into thin air, and that an entirely new diplomatic situation would be created, over which the Powers would be hopelessly at loggerheads and unUkely ever to agree, so that there would still be an excellent chance of the victor reaping material as well as moral rewards from the war. All the good offices of Europe were brought to naught by the mistrust in which both Russia and Austria were held by the Turks, as well as by the Balkan States. No one in Turkey believed that Austria and Russia were working in the interests of peace from the humane stand- point, but merely to postpone the struggle, because they themselves were not ready to take part, and to fish for spoils from the troubled waters of the Near East. To make an analogy showing the true position of Russia and Austria ; here was a case of vast importance which had suddenly come into court for settlement. Austria and Russia were the two K.C.'s who were to lead either side, but who happened at the moment to be busy elsewhere. They were not, however, willing to see their junior counsel, Turkey and the Balkans, fight it out between them, and they were thus making frantic efforts to have the case postponed until the next sessions, when they hoped to be present and play the leading role. At the same moment that the Russian Note was presented in Sofia, Russian officers were giving their Bulgarian and Servian cousins, who were leaving St. Petersburg to join their regiments on the frontier, such an enthusiastic send-off as effectually to calm any misgivings which might have been felt in Bulgaria as to the ultimate attitude of Russia. The scenes at the railway station in St. Petersburg were de- scribed as foUows in The Times of Saturday, October 5th. RUSSIAN SYMPATHIES 27 "Although the hour of departure had been kept secret, the station was crowded by an enthusiastic throng, cheering and singing ' Shumi Maritza ' and * Bozhe Tsurya Khrani.' " Hundreds of Russian officers were present. They carried their Bulgarian comrades on their shoulders into the railway carriages. In the Imperial waiting-room a delegate of the Slavonic Society, in an impassioned speech, acclaimed the present union of the Balkan Slavs, and wished them a speedy victory. But if Providence ordained reverses, let them remember that their Russian brothers would not forsake them. All the Russians present shouted * Verno,' •' Verno ' (true, true). A Servian priest then solemnly blessed the departing warriors, bidding them restore the Cross on St. Sofia." The next move in this stupid game of make-believe was the presentation by the Powers on Thursday, October 10th, of a collective Note to the Sublime Porte, demanding the fulfilment of Article 23 of the Treaty of Berlin. This provided for the reform of Macedonia under European control, and would have meant in effect the virtual loss of that province to Turkey. Everyone knew that the Turkish Government would have had to face a counter-revolution if it had acceded to the demands of the Powers. The Com- mittee of Union and Progress had very cleverly announced its intention of supporting the Government in defence of Ottoman Rights, thereby ensuring its return to power if the Government should give way to the pressure brought to bear on it by the Powers. Nevertheless the Note was pre- sented with all due ceremony, diplomacy thinking, like a second in a Prussian duel, that if men were to kill one another they might as well do it according to the strict rules of etiquette. Turkey, of course, politely and vaguely expressed her inability to comply with the demands of the Powers, 28 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE and Europe waited for the next move in the game. This was to come on Sunday, October 13th, when the Balkan League, its war preparations completed, threw off the veil, repudiated the authority of the Great Powers, and declined to accept their promises to take in hand the realisation of reforms in Turkey. Further, it declared it would only be satisfied with radical reforms, sincerely and honestly carried out, and in conclusion the League invited Turkey to apply the reforms indicated in Article 23 of the Treaty of Berlin. It insisted that the principle of Nationalities must be observed, called for the administration of the Provinces under Belgian or Swiss Governors, required the formation of elective assembhes, and the formation of a local gen- darmerie and militia, and stipulated that reforms must be applied by a council composed in equal numbers of Christians and Moslems under the superintendence of the Ambassadors of the Powers and the Ministers of the Balkan allies in Constantinople. Further, Turkey was asked to complete the changes in six months and to recall her orders of mobilisation. The Powers were aghast. The naughty children of the Balkans had actually dared to defy their mandate and it now dawned on European statesmen, apparently for the first time, that there was no possible means of bringing them to order. Any attempt would probably have meant a general conflagration in Europe. Of course the end had now come. On Tuesday, October 15th, Turkey decided to break off diplomatic relations with the Balkan States, and on the same day the preliminaries of peace with Italy were signed at Ouchy. On October 16th, the Turkish Ministers left the respective Balkan capitals and on Thursday, October 17th, Turkey declared war on Bulgaria and Servia and we enter upon the last phase of Turkey in Europe. On the following day, Greece followed suit by also declaring war on Turkey. CHAPTER IV THE MILITARY HISTORY OF THE TURKS Before the outbreak of the present' war there was a widespread belief in the mihtary prowess of the Turks, the average person regarding them as a warhke nation who have been trained in the use of arms ever since Constanti- nople was captured by Mahmoud in 1453. As a matter of fact, this is an error. After the first wav^e of Mahommedan fanaticism had spent itself, the military power of the Empire was fur- nished by the Janissaries, who were not in the first place Mahommedans, but Christians in the employ of the Sultans. One hundred years before the conquest of Constantinople the Sultans hit upon the idea of forming a personal bodyguard by seizing the children of their Christian subjects at a tender age, forcibly educating them as Mahommedans, and training them in the use of arms. These troops were called " Yeni Tcheri," or *' new soldiers," a term which afterwards became corrupted into Janissary. Celibacy was imposed on them, and they were enrolled in a sort of military family and supported at the Sultan's personal expense. Their very banner bore as its badge a saucepan with the arms of the Padisha upon it — a potent reminder of the source of their sustenance. The idea was to form a Pretorian Guard of soldiers, having no ties or affinity with the conquered peoples from among which they were 30 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE seized, or with the turbulent conquering castes which were a constant source of unrest in the Empire. The Sultans were not slow to discover that in the Janissaries they had found an excellent instrument of despotism, for they were not only useful as a conquering foil, but also as an infallible means of maintaining order amongst the heterogeneous medley of creeds and races within the borders of the Empire. Their institution was rendered additionally necessary by the fact that the Turkish population of Anatolia could no longer support the terrible drain of human life which the constant wars of the Sultans imposed upon it, and this was the only safe means of ob- taining recruits from the subject Christian races. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Suleiman the Magnifi- cent, the Conqueror of Rhodes, multiplied the Janissaries into a huge standing army. In one year he caused to be circumcised no fewer than 40,000 Christian children. The Turks then began to lose their warlike habits and the Janissaries fought all their battles for them. They remained almost invincible up to the year 1580, but then the decUne set in, and so rapid was the process of disintegration that early in 1680 Savary de Breves, the French Ambassador in Constantinople, wrote a book on the approaching break up of the Ottoman Empire. He had never heard of the status quo and could not foresee that for two and a half centuries the pariah dogs of Europe would be too busy quarrelling amongst themselves to devour the putrefying corpse of Islam. Under a strong Sultan the disciphne of the Janissaries was maintained and they were a source of strength to the Empire. When the ruler was effete, discipline was relaxed and the Janissaries degenerated into a horde of proud Pretorians running the country in their own interests and setting up or pulling down the principal Ministers of State at will. By THE TURBULENT JANISSARIES 31 1622 they had abeady become such a nuisance that Osman II. decided to disband them and to substitute a national army recruited from all classes of his subjects. A horde of Ulemas, Sipahis, and other palace parasites, fearful that their privileges and perquisites might be cut short by a Sultan with such a misplaced passion for reform, joined hands with the Janissaries and applied to the Sheik-ul- Islam for permission to dethrone a ruler who dared to flaunt the sacred Code of Mahomet in such a flagrant manner. The Sheik-ul- 1 slam, whose posses- sions were also in danger, readily acceded to their request. So the Janissaries, after massacring Osman and his Grand Vizier, indulged in an orgy of pillage which had never been equalled even in the troubled history of Islam. It was not until 1826 that any Sultan found himself strong enough to disband these dreaded Pretorians. Then, at the order of Mahmoud II., twenty thousand of them were massacred and the remainder, sixty thousand in number, were disbanded ; the Nizam, or recruited army, being substituted. Henceforth, by a strange anomaly, the recruits for the army were drawn from amongst the least warlike section of the people, namely, the peasants of Anatolia, the reason being that the Ottoman Government has never been sufficiently strong to subdue the warlike tribes — which inhabit, for the most part, the mountainous districts — and to enforce military service on them. The Kurds in the Caucasus, the Arabs in the Yemen, and the Albanians on the Adriatic have been in more or less open rebellion for some years. Against these hardy warriors the peaceful peasants of Anatolia are constantly being mobilised, only to perish in battle, or more often from neglect and starvation, in the outlying provinces of the Empire. The best blood of the nation has been drained from the heart of Anatolia to be spilt in the burning sands 32 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE of the Yemen or in the mountains of Albania and the Caucasus. The wastage of hfe has been tremendous. Meanwhile the fertile soil of Anatolia is deserted by all save old men, women, and children. The Anatolian peasants who were marching to do battle against the Balkan Crusaders, knew that a similar measure of neglect and suffering would be their only reward. Thus it was they marched in silence and sadness to sell their lives like heroes at the command of a Government which had not even made arrangements to supply them with the bare necessaries of life. If we briefly survey the history of Turkey in the last 100 years, since the abolition of the Janissaries, we shall find that she has been beaten in every war in which she has been involved, with the exception of the war of 1897 against Greece, when she possessed such immense numeri- cal superiority as to render victory over the none too courageous Greeks inevitable. In the defence of armed fortresses, however, the Turks have repeatedly shown proof of astonishing courage and endurance, and it is on this trait in their military character that their reputation as soldiers is based. But the defence of fortresses, however stubborn and prolonged, is not sufficient of itself for the winning of wars, although it may seriously delay an invader and inflict severe losses upon him. It is merely a useless waste of life when there is no field army to give battle to the enemy, when his forces have been weakened by a prolonged siege, or prepared to take the offensive after relieving the beleaguered fortress. But whenever the Turks have given battle in the open field, or essayed an offensive movement of any kind, they have been badly beaten, not because they lack courage, but by reason of the inefficiency of their officers, the want of training among their men, and a general deficiency of any form of military organisation. THE TURKS IN DEFENCE 33 The heroic defence of Plevna in the war of 1878, when 40,000 Turks, under Osman, held more than 100,000 Russians at bay for nearly six months, and were only finally defeated by the slow process of a regular siege and by the arrival of two Roumanian Army Corps, is the latest and greatest feat of arms upon which the reputation of the Ottoman army is based. It should be remembered, how- ever, that after Osman had surrendered while trying to fight his way out of the beleaguered fortress, the Turkish power collapsed, and within a few weeks hordes of Cossacks had overrun the whole of Turkey in Europe, while the main Russian army was encamped at San Stefano within ten miles of the Capital and only prevented from setting up the Cross in Byzantium by the presence in the Bosphorus of the British Fleet. The course of nearly all Turkey's wars in the nineteenth century has been much the same. First a few successes, then a mismanaged advance ending in disaster, followed by the heroic but useless defence of some fortress, and after that the deluge. Unfortunately for Turkey, the jealousies of the European Powers have always saved her Empire in Europe from dismemberment, and she has been allowed to remain in possession of territories which she was unable to defend, and which were involving her in constant and bloody wars. The loss of life and the suffering which this policy of the Powers has involved, are appalling to contemplate. The best blood of Turkey has been drained from the fertile vilayets of Asia Minor to be spilt in a hopeless struggle in the land of the giaours ; thousands of Russian peasants have perished fighting for a country in which they had no interest, and the Christian, Greek, and Bulgarian inhabitants of the Balkans have been repeatedly ravaged and decimated. When we consider the terrible list of wars which Turkey has had to fight in the last century, and when we consider D 34 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE that her armies have been almost entirely recruited from among the Mohammedan subjects of the Empire, we no longer wonder that the country is backward and misgoverned, our only surprise is that the Turkish race has not ceased to exist. The strain upon the vitahty of the Ottoman Turks has, of course, been very severe, and to-day they number less than one-third of the total population of the Empire. All over Europe the nineteenth century was marked by the awakening of national feeling among subject races. Italy was destined to free herself from the Austrian yoke, but the first rising was that of 1821, when Greece revolted against Turkish rule and the Turks retaliated by hanging the Patriarch on his own church door in Constantinople, and by massacring or reducing to slavery the 70,000 inhabitants of the island of Chios. The war was destined to last eight years. During this time the Turks, unable to subdue the Greeks, sent to Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, for assistance. The latter with his very efficient fleet and army was on the point of reducing the Greeks to submission or rather annihilation, when the Powers stepped in and destroyed the Turkish fleet at Navarino. Soon afterwards Russia declared war and occupied Adrianople in 1828 without encountering much resistance. Meanwhile Mahomed II. had in 1826 disbanded the Janissaries, and made futile efforts to carry on the war with a hastily recruited Nizam (regular) army. At the Conference of London in 1830 the Powers ordained that Greece should become an independent kingdom, and the Russian army was politely but firmly requested to leave the neighbourhood of Byzantium and to return to its native lair. Turkey was only to enjoy two years of peace, for in 1832 Mehemet Ali, who was nominally only the Governor of Egypt, appointed by the Sultan and removable at will, THE FIRST CONSTITUTION 35 declared himself independent and quietly annexed the whole of Syria to his newly-created kingdom. Mehemet's son, Ibrahim, at the head of an Egyptian army, easily destroyed all the Turkish troops that were sent against him, and the Sultan in his extremity was constrained to call upon his old enemies the Russians for assistance. Mehemet made peace, but obtained the Viceroyalty of Syria for his life- time. Soon afterwards, however, having reformed his army under French supervision, he proceeded to invade Turkey, annexed Crete, and destroyed all the Turkish armies which were sent against him. The break-up of the Ottoman Empire appeared to be inevitable, when, by a stroke of genius, the Sultan sum- moned representatives from among all nationalities and creeds of his subjects and read the famous Hatti Sherif of 1839, which, besides granting a constitution, proclaimed the equality of all races wdthin the Empire, and generally promised the dawn of a golden age in Turkey. The apparent intention of the Sultan to reform his decaying Empire so worked upon the sympathies of the Powers, and more especially upon those of England — to whom incidentally the break-up of Turkey was by no means welcome — that they intervened, and after a blockade of Alexandria by the allied fleets, the rebellious Pasha of Egypt was constrained to abstain from further assaults on his master's property. But even now, after almost twenty years of continual warfare, Turkey was not destined to enjoy peace in which she could recover from her almost mortal wounds. An insurrection broke out in Kandia, and the Emir-el-djebel (Prince of the Mountains), not at all liking the equality of all races and religions which the Hatti Sherif had pro- claimed, raised the Holy Standard in Arabia, and massacred all the Christians whom he could lay his hands on. The insurrection spread so wide, and was accompanied by such d2 36 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE fearful bloodshed and atrocities, that the Powers were once more obliged to intervene in order to rescue the Sultan from his unruly subjects. Europe now looked forward to a few years of peace in the Near East, as all possible combatants were apparently exhausted, but such hopes were vain, for no sooner had the Emir-el-djebel been subdued than the Shah of Persia suddenly invaded Turkish territory. This attack was rather like the case of one old inmate of a workhouse attacking another with his crutch when the master had his back turned, for the Shah ruled over the only Empire in the world which for decrepitude and bad government could compare with Turkey. The Shah was repulsed after much bloodshed, but in the meantime anarchy broke out all over the Turkish Empire, due chiefly to the reforms which the Sultan was misguided enough to attempt to enforce. Sixty- eight years later, the Young Turks were destined to pro- duce an exactly similar state of affairs by their ill-fated Constitution. Anarchy reigned supreme in Turkey for years, but without any interference of the Powers, who were for the most part far too busy in quelling their own disturbances at home, which culminated in the revolutions of 1848. During this time the awakening of national spirit among the Slavs of the Balkans began to take definite form. They were too weak to free themselves from the Turkish rule by their own unaided efforts, and so their hopes were centred on Russia, who was looked upon as the great liberator. So, in 1853, Russia, stimulated by the weakened state of the Ottoman Empire, embarked on her great attempt to drive the Turks out of Europe, and to set up the Czars in Byzantium. Europe, and more especially Austria, had been so shaken by the revolutions of 1848, that Nicholas I. expected to be % u N L, Kr^^ "*" ^^MHHM ■ l^_ *i^^^J [/^/wio S. Askiiiead-Barttett Our Cart wnii Bryant and Bf.avor. yhoto ii. Ai/iiiuail ±>utcutt A Turkish Colonel, AN ITINERANT SULTAN 37 allowed to fulfil his crusade in peace, but he reckoned without the ambition of Napoleon III. and the fears of England. At first the Russians were everywhere successful, the Turks, however, distinguishing themselves for the heroic defence of Silistria in Bulgaria, and of Kars in Asia Minor. Then England and France invaded the Crimea, and Russia was compelled to abandon all hope of reaching Byzantium. The Turkish troops which were attached to the allies in front of Sevastopol proved themselves of little value in the field. Once again the Turkish Empire in Europe was only saved from complete disintegration by foreign intervention. Left to themselves the Russians would in all probability have succeeded in setting up the Cross on St. Sofia. After the Crimean War, the intercourse of Turkish rulers and statesmen with Western civilisation proved a further source of weakness for the Empire, in that it rendered them less and less qualified to govern their Mahommedan subjects. The Sultan Abdul Aziz in 1867 took the unprecedented step of visiting Queen Victoria, Napoleon III., and the Emperor of Austria. There was a terrible outcry among Mahommedans against this unheard-of innovation, but the Sheik-ul-Islam, hard-pressed to justify his master's breach of the laws of the Koran, invented the fable that " The Sultan had embarked on a voyage of conquest, and that so great was his prestige and the fear of his power, that each country in which he had set foot had at once submitted to his rule. By an extraordinary act of magnanimity, however, he had personally visited each sovereign and restored his possessions to him." This childish fable quelled the outcry in Islam, and had the additional merit of giving rise to some admirable hons mots on the subject in Paris at the expense of Napoleon III. Turkey was now entering on the last phase of her 38 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE chequered history in Europe, and the final struggle of the Slav nationalities for independence was about to begin. The foundation of a Bulgarian Exarchate — independent Bulgarian Church — in 1842, was their first step toward independence. In 1875 isolated rebellions broke out all over the Balkans, but were subdued by the Porte without much difficulty, and Bismarck was able to declare in the Reichstag shortly afterwards that the "Political heaven had never been clearer." Three weeks later the Servians rose to a man in revolt against the Turkish yoke and the Balkan Peninsula was plunged in the throes of a ghastly war. European diplomacy was destined to prove equally badly informed in 1912. Turkey's situation was complicated by the fact that Gladstone had allowed himself to be hoodwdnked by the Russians into believing that the Turkish troops possessed a monopoly of the atrocities committed in the Balkans, whereupon he started his Turkish atrocity cry and turned away the sympathies of Europe from the Ottoman army. Meanwhile, the Sultan, Abdul Aziz, was deposed, through the machinations of the newly-founded "Young Turks" under Midhat Pasha, and the Sultan Murad sub- stituted for him. Abdul Aziz shortly afterwards committed suicide with the assistance of two assassins whom Murad sent to him, and Murad soon going mad, the notorious Abdul Hamid was set up in his place. The Servians were getting the worst of the war, and practically all their resistance had been crushed when, in 1877, Russia declared war against the Porte and marched to the assistance of her Slavonic cousins. Then came the heroic defence of Plevna, after which the Russians occupied the whole of European Turkey up to the walls of Constantinople. By the Treaty of San Stefano Turkey granted autonomy to the Bulgarians and ceded the whole of the Eastern Balkans up to Adrianople to them. To the Servians was given a large THE BILL OF INEFFICIENCY 39 portion of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to Montenegro a portion of Northern Albania. Roughly speaking, these nascent Balkan States were given the territory that they are now claiming after the accomplishment of their successful crusade. Once again Russia was to be baulked of the fruits of victory. The Powers stepped in, revoked the Treaty of San Stefano, and at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 Roumania and Bulgaria were created autonomous princi- palities to serve as a buffer to the ambitions of Russia, a large portion of Roumelia being restored to Turkey as well as the fortress of Erzerum in Asia Minor. Some idea of the drain which these successive wars made on the resources of Turkey may be gathered from the fact that the Crimean War cost Russia £160,000,000 and some 100,000 men. For the war of 1877-8 she brought some 460,000 men into the field at a cost of £200,000,000. The cost to Turkey and her losses in men are not known, but they must have been almost as great. At this time began the migration of the Turks out of the conquered provinces in Europe back to Asia Minor, rather than live under Christian rule. The migration was destined to culminate in the war of 1912, when practically the whole Ottoman population abandoned Turkey in Europe. In 1885 Eastern Roumelia fell to Bulgaria, which kingdom remained under the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan until 1908, when Prince Ferdinand seized the opportunity afforded by the Young Turk revolution of declaring his principate an independent kingdom, with himself as Czar. At the close of the campaign of 1877-8, national senti- ment had not reached a high state of development among the Bulgarians, so that when Bulgaria was made an independent principate by the Treaty of Berlin, she was only too contented to become the instrument of Russia, and would have offered no resistance to being incorporated in 40 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE the Empire of the Czar. But the spread of Western ideas and education soon began to foster the spirit of independence in Sofia, and before long the statesmen of St. Petersburg were obhged to recognise that they had created a nation with definite ambitions, which would block the road to Byzantium to them for all time. Accordingly, after a short time, they began to devote their energies toward the acquisition of territory in the Far East. Meanwhile, the tyranny of Abdul Hamid was to ensure to Turkey thirty years of comparative external peace ; but they were dark years for the Christian subjects of the Empire. This tyranny of Abdul Hamid was merely the policy which the Turkish Government has always pursued, carried to its highest form. The Turks are the fruit of the blending of the warhke autocracy of the JNIongols with the religion of the ascetic Arabs of the desert. The result of this combination was a fanatical and courageous race, which, after flooding the fertile lands of Asia Minor, swept on over Byzan- tium, and only exhausted its force against the waUs of Vienna. Upon their inruption into Byzantium, however, these fanatical and ascetic warriors came into contact with the most effete and corrupt civilisation that the world has ever seen. Byzantium was a cesspool of vice and corruption, polluting all streams which flowed through its foetid waters. So the Sultans of Turkey left their tents and went to live in the palaces of the Greek Emperors, where, in the scented luxury of the harem, their energy was sapped by a life of erotic indulgence. As their love of luxury and extravagance increased, so arose the necessity of draining more and more money from their conquered provinces, and as they no longer possessed the physical energy to initiate sound methods of government, they entrusted the task of collecting their revenues to the corrupt Pashas of the different provinces, to THE DECAY OF ISLAM 41 whose interest it was to extort the uttermost farthing from their down-trodden subjects, regardless of all the economic principles of taxation. The Turks have never been a constructive race, or attempted to create a centralised Empire like the Romans. Their object has been to obtain as rapidly as possible, and with a minimum expenditure of effort, a land in which to live and a plentiful revenue. They have conquered those who were too weak to resist, but with the strong — the inhabitants of the mountains or the frontier districts — they have compromised, so that their Empire is a patchwork of races and creeds ; some enjoying complete autonomy, others a modified form of vassalage ; others again being subjected to heart-breaking subjection. The orthodox Christians have from the earliest times formed a State within the State, having their own patriarch, archbishops, and bishops, and enjoying complete religious freedom. This has not saved them, however, from the most appalling economic oppression, for the Turkish Government of the European provinces has always resembled the head- quarters staff of an army camped in a hostile country, only anxious to draw the maximum of supplies for its men, regardless of the fact that in doing so it is reducing the land to a desert. To-day in Thrace, the only roads, the only wells and fountains, the only decent buildings, are those left by the Romans, and the country which 1000 years ago was one of the principal granaries of Europe, is now one of the world's waste places. The same ruin and decay are to be seen in Constantinople, which, when Constantine was Emperor in Byzantium, must have been one of the wonders of the world. Now the statues have disappeared from the Hippodrome ; the palaces of the Greek Emperors no longer hang like marble dreams 42 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE upon the shores of the Bosphorus ; the streets of Stamboul are badly paved, decrepit, and narrow as rabbit warrens ; the sanitary arrangements of the city are non-existent, and when a house tumbles or is burned down, it is not rebuilt for years — the great fire of four years ago destroyed 15,000 houses in Stamboul, and no attempt has been made as yet even to clear away the ruins. The policy of extortion was never more ruthlessly pursued than during the reign of Abdul Hamid. The ambition of this modern Nero, so soon as he had got rid of the constitutionally-minded Midhat Pasha by having him strangled in some remote Arabian gaol, was to awaken the primitive fanaticism of the Mahommedan world by stamping out all Western ideas and innovations with a ruthless hand, and to weld together his empire by appealing to the spirit of Pan-Islamism. A study of history had taught him that directly any section of the Christian subjects of the Empire became too prosperous or powerful, they purchased arms and revolted against the tyranny of the Khalifate. Accordingly, when any of his Christian subjects showed signs of incipient prosperity, agents were instructed to excite the fanaticism of their Mahommedan neighbours, until such time as they should faU upon the rebellious Christians and reduce their villages and lands to a wilderness. In this way he caused some 30,000 Armenians to be massacred in cold blood by the savage Kurds, not because he disliked them as a race — his own mother was an Armenian — but because he thought that they were becoming politically dangerous, and because he wished to nourish the spirit of Pan-Islamism with a little Christian blood. The Albanians he kept in hand by taking the best of their manhood to serve in his own highly-paid bodyguard. In Macedonia, which was inhabited for the most part by TURKTSH JUSTICE? 43 Greek and Bulgarian Christians, he pursued a poHcy of rigid repression which effectually stifled the economic and intellectual progress of the province. The different vilayets were abandoned to the tender mercies of corrupt Pashas, whose instructions were to extort the uttermost farthing from their Christian subjects. The principal instruments of extortion which the Pashas employed were the army, the law, and the roads. Any Christian with property was liable to be seized and imprisoned repeatedly, each time having to pay the tax for exemption for military service, irrespective of the number of occasions on which he had already paid all that was due from him. Christian landowners also frequently found that their property had been claimed by a Mahommedan, who was in reality an agent of the courts. The claimant would produce perhaps twenty professional witnesses — of whom a large number were attached to every court — in support of his claim, and the landowner would find himself involved in litigation culminating probably in the loss of his land, and even imprisonment, unless, being wise in his generation, he went immediately to the judge and paid his price, in addition to rewarding the claimant and his regiment of professional witnesses. Then, too, light women of Christian origin were induced to supplement the wages of sin by coming to court to swear that they were Mahommedans and had been violated by a number of unfortunate Christians who had fallen victims to their charms. This is a capital offence in Turkey, and the whole lot were immediately arrested and left to rot in gaol, until such time as their families should purchase their freedom. Road-building, however, was the sport in which the Pashas most dehghted. The order would go out from the Sublime Porte that a road was to be built — say, from 44 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE Monastir to Uskub. The simplest way to construct it was by means of the corvee, and a few weeks' work from the inhabitants of each village would probably have completed the road. But this did not suit the Pashas, so they took the peasants from the neighbourhood of Monastir and sent them to work around Uskub, while the peasants from Uskub were sent into the Monastir district. There these unfor- tunates were left without provisions or instructions until such time as they should begin to murmur at their treat- ment. The Pasha at once announced that a revolt had broken out, and would descend with a swarm of gendarmes and Bashi-Bazouks upon the villages of the unfortunate men of the corvee, pillaging their homes and confiscating all that they could lay their hands on. In the end the road would remain unbuilt, while the Pasha and his minions pocketed about five times the amount of money necessary for its construction. It is only fair to say that, in the Mahommedan province of the Empire, the unfortunate Mussulmans were equally, if not more, oppressed by the Pashas and other officials. Gradually, and as education spread in Macedonia, the Macedonian revolutionary committee sprang into existence, and unrest among the Christian population became wide- spread. Then the Nero of the Bosphorus set in motion his pet policy of atrocities, in order to crush the spirit of the rebel- lious Macedonians, with every refinement of cruelty. Word was passed to the Bashi-Bazouks to massacre and plunder the Christians, which they at once proceeded to do with the best will in the world. The Albanians, also, were told that there was no objection to their crossing the frontier and enjoying themselves in Macedonia, which they proceeded to do with the peculiar ferocity of this race. A typical example of the atrocities is that of the three Albanian landowners, who, having MIGRATION OF THE CHRISTIANS 45 drunk rather too freely at luncheon, went out into the fields and started shooting at their Christian labourers, three of whom were wounded and one killed. When an old workman cried shame on them, saying that the dead man had left a wife and children to starve, they became penitent, and, sending for his family, proceeded to kill them also to save them from the horrors of penury. But the Turks had yet to " Learn in some wild hour How much the wretched dare." Many of the Christians, after seeing their houses burned and their women outraged, took to the mountains, and, forming themselves into bands, offered effective resistance to the Turkish police and Bashi-Bazouks. Then Abdul Hamid sent an army to subdue the province, and in 1901 no fewer than 100,000 Turkish soldiers were quartered in Macedonia. As the Government failed to provide these soldiers vdth any of the necessaries of life, they soon started to roam about the country pillaging the peasants for food — although, being drawn from among the peasants of Anatoha, they were by nature the kindliest and gentlest of men. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the Greek Christians started to massacre the Bulgarians, and the Bulgarians the Greeks, while both equally massacred and were massacred by the Turks. So that complete anarchy reigned in Macedonia, and Abdul Hamid had attained his object, in that he had rendered the province too weak to revolt against his will. Things became so bad that by 1902 the major portions of the educated Bulgarians had migrated across the frontier to Sofia, where they filled many important positions. In that year 20,000 out of Sofia's population of 60,000 were refugees from Macedonia, and their total number in Bulgaria exceeded 200,000. The sight of half-starving Macedonian 46 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE refugees arriving at the frontier with fearful tales of persecu- tion and outrage excited the most intense feehng among all sections of the Bulgarian and Servian populations. It is, in fact, twenty years since these two little States first started arming with the definite purpose of ending an intolerable situation, and of winning freedom for their fellow Slavs in Macedonia. The expediency of declaring Macedonia an autonomous province was more than once discussed among the Powers, but on each occasion they allowed themselves to be seduced into inaction by that red-handed old tyrant of Yildiz Kiosk, Abdul Hamid, who used to meet their ultimata with a semblance of penitence, and produce an elaborate scheme of reform for Macedonia, which was immediately afterwards restored to the shelves of the Sublime Porte, until such time as another ultimatum necessitated its re-appearance in public. Fortunately for him, the Powers were at this time too much occupied with their own schemes of robbery to bother about Macedonia. England had the Boer War on her hands, Russia was busy making conquests in the Far East, and the German Emperor was busy fraternising with Abdul Hamid, with the object of obtaining railway concessions in Asia Minor. So that in the end all that was done was the creation of an international gendarmerie in that country. All this time, unobserved by the Powers — save perhaps by Russia and Austria — the little Slav nationalities of the Balkans were arming, arming, arming, and looking forward to the moment when they could start their heroic crusade against the putrefying Colossus of Turkey, and win freedom for their brethren in Macedonia. In 1908 came the Young Turk revolution, which was heralded as the dawn of a golden age for the Ottoman Empire. Racial animosities were to disappear, constitutional THE ATTACK ON THE KORAN 47 government was to take the place of a soul-killing despotism, the finances and the army were to be reformed, and a new Turkey was to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the old regime. Government by " atrocities " was to end, and so confident, or rather ignorant, were the ambassadors of the Powers that they allowed the international gendarmerie to be abolished, upon which the old atrocities at once broke out again in Macedonia. What a harvest of disillusionment the Young Turks were destined to reap I Their Western education had taught them to care nothing for the Koran, and so, in the circumstances, they saw no reason why the different races of the Empire should not become united despite the differences of religion which had always separated them. They made the same mistake that had been made in the Hatti Firman of 1839 ; they tried to unite all their subjects with the spirit of Ottoman nationality, irrespective of the Ottoman creed. They were foredoomed to failure, because the Ottoman has no nationality apart from his religion. Islam is at once his fatherland and his religion. So it was impossible to Ottomanise the Christian subjects of the Empire without converting them to Mahommedanism. Incidentally, the Koran had taught the Turk to consider himself as belonging to a superior caste, so the Arabs of the Lebanon, among whom the Mahommedan religion had preserved a large measure of its primitive purity, objected strongly to being told that they were brethren with the despised Christians of Jerusalem and straightway broke out into open rebellion. The Albanians, too, had no desire to abandon their proverbial freedom and anarchy for the taxes and military system of a well-ordered Government. They had no objec- tion to belonging to the Turkish Empire as long as the honour brought no unpleasant obligations with it. When 48 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE the Young Turks tried to recruit them for service in the Yemen they flatly refused to go and fight against the Arabs, with whose cause they rather sympathised. So Albania broke out into open revolt. We have already pointed out how in the first glow of good intentions, the Powers had consented to the abolition of the international gendarmerie in Macedonia. But the Greek and Bulgarian bands saw no fun in abandoning their dreams of freedom for the sake of being Islamised. So anarchy broke out worse than ever, and was compli- cated by the depredations of Turkish soldiers, who, having been sent to fight the Albanians and not being supplied with any food, became disbanded and prowled about Macedonia in search of the necessaries of fife. The Young Turks were awakening from their dream of a golden age, to find the Empire breaking up around them. The possibility of Ottomanising the Turkish Empire had passed for ever. The Ottoman population only equalled about one-third of the total population of the Empire, and so dead was the spirit of Islam, so incapable the Turks of government, that for sixty years Turkey's Grand Viziers had been almost exclusively Christians, Catholic Albanians, Jews, Armenians, or Greeks. In other ways the Young Turk Revolution dealt a serious blow at the old faith of Islam. First of all the committee dethroned Abdul Hamid, who, despite his corrupt and cruel government, was none the less respected by his people as a religious symbol. In his stead they tried to set up a constitutional Government, which was manifestly absurd in a nation consisting of thirty-two different races, and where the only education of the majority of the people consists in a mechanical knowledge of a few religious shibboleths. The doctrines of the Young Turks were in no sense "OUR HOME IS ANATOLIA" 49 national. They were but lightly planted in a thin soil of European customs and beliefs, and had no root in the fertile flower garden of picturesque customs and beliefs, which was Islam. To the masses of the Mahommedan subjects of the Empire, the rule of the Young Turks meant little less than foreign domination. In the old days, when the soldiers of Islam marched to war they marched at the call of the Padisha to do battle in the sacred cause of Islam against giaours whom they had been taught to despise and hate. They marched with enthusiasm because, although perhaps personally they had no interest in the war, they were marching to fulfil a religious obligation. On the present occasion they were marching at the orders of a Government in whom they had no belief to do battle against Christians, whom they had been told to regard as brethren, for a land in which they had no interest. So little interest in Turkey in Europe have the Turks from Asia Minor, that on one occasion when an officer endeavoured to excite his men by telling them they were fighting for their country, the men replied, " But this is not our country ; our country is in Anatolia." In 1911 Italy made her sudden descent on Tripoli, and in October, 1912, the Balkan League, judging the moment propitious, began their twentieth century crusade for the liberation of Macedonia, to the horror and astonishment of the virtuous Western Powers, and to the secret amusement of Russia, who, after all, could reasonably expect to see one day a Slavonic emperor enthroned in Byzantium. E CHAPTER V V THE MODERN TURKISH ARMY Amongst the radical changes which the Young Turks hoped to bring about was the complete reform of the Army. To aid them in their task, instructors were hired from the German Army, and the work proceeded apace. For the first time annual manoeuvres were instituted, and I have read a report on those which were held around Adrianople in 1910, which shows the army in a very favourable hght. It is WTitten by a French officer. How- ever, it is one thing to manoeuvre four divisions of picked troops in time of peace, and quite another to handle four army corps in time of war. One of the generals in com- mand in 1910 was the unfortunate Abdullah Pasha, and I believe he largely owed his promotion to the command of the army of Thrace to the fact that he was considered to have done so well in the manoeuvres of 1910. As I have already remarked, a study of the military history of the Ottoman Empire during the past century will show that the Turks have always been beaten in war — with the single exception of the war with Greece in 1907 — but that isolated bodies of troops, when well commanded and placed behind entrenchments, have often put up the most heroic resistance. This seems to point to the fact that the senior officers have never been capable of handling large bodies of men; that THE OLD REGIME 51 grand strategy in war is almost unknown in Turkey, and that the soldier himself lacks that dash and initiative in offensive movements which are so characteristic of the French and also of the Japanese. The old type of Turkish soldier who existed up to the end of the Hamidian regime possessed many excellent qualities which rendered him individually a stubborn and formidable opponent for the best of troops. He was hardy and could exist on rations which would spell starvation for the troops of any other race. He was willing and obedient, and would follow his officer any- where. He was accustomed to look after himself in the field and to regard the commissariat train as a doubtful ally which might, but which probably would not, be available at critical moments on a campaign. Therefore he learnt, not to be dependent on it, but to shift for himself, to collect provisions when they were available, and to husband them carefully against a rainy day. He cared little about the outward trappings of war. In appearance he was slovenly to a degree which would have made the Potsdam Guards blush with shame and horror ; but on a campaign each man collected those articles of clothing and more especially of foot-gear which he found the most useful and the most comfortable. Thus, even as late as the war with Greece in 1907, it was very seldom one saw a battalion with a common uniform. The troops resembled a collection of unemployed on a hunger march rather than a regular army. Some of the men wore boots, some sandals, some merely had rags tied round their feet, and some preferred to go barefooted. Of tactics and battalion manoeuvres the Turks knew little and cared still less. In their place they possessed a natural instinct for war which caused them to stick together in moments of emergency and invariably to choose a strong e2 52 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE defensive position without having to have the ground carefully selected for them by their officers. The old regular battalions possessed another great advantage, namely, that the men served together for very long periods at a time, knew and trusted one another, and resembled a large, united, and happy family. Great numbers of the men served long beyond the period rendered com- pulsory by the conscription. This was due to the fact that no register of births existed throughout the Ottoman Empire under the Hamidian regime and therefore many were able to escape the conscription altogether, while others were able to purchase exemptions, with the result that the authorities, in order to fill the ranks, often kept unfortunate paupers with the colours after their time was up, or would force them to serve afresh after they had been released from their first term. The officers of the old Turkish Army were on a par with their men. They were superannuated, ignorant, almost untrained, totally devoid of any knowledge of the science of war and slovenly in their outward appearance. They served in the junior grades of subaltern and captain all their lives, but few ever obtaining promotion, in fact, the majority never expected promotion and were quite content to fill their humble roles. A very large proportion also were promoted from the ranks, and had nothing to qualify them save their knowledge of the men. They served for years in the Yemen, in Macedonia and in the wilds of the Caucasus, forgotten by the War Office, often going for long periods without their pay, but nevertheless faithful to Islam. These old officers were the backbone of the old Turkish Army. They knew- their men and were respected and loved by them. On a campaign the men had the most implicit confidence in them, and would follow them anywhere. THE GERMAN MODEL 53 The whole army marched to war at the command of the Padisha, not in defence of the territorial possessions of the Ottoman Empire, but in the cause of Islam against the infidel. Such was the old army which generally managed in the midst of reverses to cover itself with glory and to maintain the reputation of the Turkish soldier for stubborn courage. The advent of the Young Turks to power brought about changes in the character of the army, which have had the most disastrous results during the present campaign. An army can only be reformed from the top, not from the bottom, but the Young Turks tried to change the rank and file without first reforming the War Office and creating a General Staff; for without efficient organisation and leader- ship, all drastic reforms in the men and material must necessarily be wasted in time of war. The Young Turks wished to create an army on the model of the German, without stopping to consider if the material they were handling could be moulded into a new form without destroying all the durable qualities which had so often saved the Empire from complete disaster and disruption in the past. They set themselves the task, with the aid of German instructors, of substituting a national spirit, based on the territorial boundaries of the Empire, for the old cry of Islam, which had so often aroused the patriotism of the Turkish soldier in the past, and of sub- stituting science, tactics, and the stern discipline of Prussia for the old natural instinct for war and self-rehance which had characterised the troops of the old regime. They thought that by changing the outward trappings of the soldier ; by clothing him in the most modern of khaki uniforms ; by placing putties round his legs and boots on his feet, and a khaki-coloured kalpack on his head in place of the traditional fez, and generally making him outwardly 54 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE up-to-date in appearance, they could construct an army on the model of the German, equal to it in efficiency and ability for the grand manoeuvres of war. It was the outward appearance of the soldiers as they left Constantinople for the front, which led so many critics to believe that the Turkish army was highly organised and more than capable of holding its own against the Allies. Truly the appearance of some of the battalions, as they paraded on the great square in front of the War Office before marching to the railway station, was magnificent, and seemed to ensure success. The Turk is naturally big and deep-chested, and when clothed in khaki with his great-coat strapped to his back, with the peculiar headgear consisting of a kind of combined shawl and hood, which could be passed over the kalpack to protect him from the cold, and which added several inches to his height, and with his brand-new Mauser rifle at his shoulder, he looked a warrior of which any nation might be proud. But a closer examination, more especially when the troops were on the march, showed defects which were not at first apparent. The uniforms, which on parade seemed to fit so closely and to be so comfortable, soon began to lose their smart appearance and to sag ominously ; the men began to stoop under the weight of ill-fitting knapsacks held to their backs by unaccustomed straps, and to fret at the great- coats slung round their bodies. Ill-arranged putties began to get loose and to flap round the legs of the marchers, who looked down at them in dismay, and after a few hundred yards many were already limping from sore feet, and hating the sight of their new boots. Many of the reservists carried their Mauser rifles in that gingerly manner in which a man will hold a young child, if suddenly called upon to do so, being totally unaccustomed to this new army, and having been schooled in the simplicity of the old Martini, CHANGES IN PERSONNEL 55 Thus long before the station was reached the illusion had vanished, and it was obvious that these Anatolian peasants were being sent to the front ill-trained and ill-disciplined, with ill-fitting and unaccustomed kits, and armed with a rifle which but a small proportion knew how to handle. From the very first we noticed a remarkable shortage of officers. Whole battalions would be equipped and drilled, and marched off with hardly one officer per company. In their dealings with the old type of regimental officer the Young Turks made the most fatal mistake of all. Because they saw European armies with young regimental officers who enjoyed steady promotion, they said, " We must get rid of all these old subalterns and captains who were promoted from the ranks, and who are old enough to be colonels and generals, and replace them by young officers." Therefore, with a stroke of the pen they placed all the regimental officers over a certain age in retirement before they had a sufficiency of young officers to take their place. Thus for the last three years the Turkish Army has been woefully short of officers, and when the war broke out it was no fewer than two thousand below its proper establishment. This fatal step destroyed the efficiency of the battalions to a lamentable extent. The old idea of the battalion being a happy family, where men and officers knew one another and had served together for many years, dis- appeared, and the confidence of the men was shaken by the introduction of a younger generation with new ideas of discipline, which did its utmost to impress on the men that the significance of their faith was as nothing, compared with the necessity of maintaining the territories of the Empire intact. Neither was the new generation of officers prepared to lead the lives of their predecessors, who always remained with their battalions and shared the hardships and dis- 56 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE comforts of their men. The one idea of the new type of officer was to obtain a billet on the Staff which would give him an easy berth, and they spent every spare moment they could obtain in applying for leave and hastening to Con- stantinople, where they delighted to parade their fine new uniforms among the foreigners in the cafes and hotels of Pera, for even Stamboul no longer possessed attraction for their Europeanised minds. Large numbers of officers were also sent to be educated in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, and this move — sound in theory — has also had a highly detrimental effect on the character of the Turkish officers and discipline of the Army. The primitive fighting virtues of an Oriental race almost invariably disappear in the ratio in which the individuals are brought in contact with, and imbibe the ideas of, more civilised communities. We saw this among the European- trained Japanese officers in the Russo-Japanese War, and we see it still more clearly marked in the case of the Turk. A few years amongst the gaieties of the capitals of Europe invariably gives the Turkish officer a distaste for the hard life and poor fare of his own country. His faith in his religion disappears, and his patriotism weakens because he asks him- self, " What am I fighting for ? Merely a worn-out religion and a crumbling empire which offers me none of the attractions provided by the higher civilisations." But worse than this. Having received a scientific military training and having been brought into contact with European armies and European methods, he returns to his own country full of his own importance and possessed with a profound contempt for his less fortunate comrades who have not received the same education as himself. He believes himself to be their superior because of his theoretical knowledge, and entirely forgets that all theoretical knowledge is quite wasted without practical experience of regimental Hfe and the THE OCCIDENTAL ORIENTAL 57 handling of troops in the field. His natural desire is to avoid serving with his regiment at any price. He feels that only a billet on the Staff is good enough for him, for this will not only enable him to show his scientific knowledge of war, but also to remain in the capital and to live under conditions which approximate more closely to those he has been accustomed to in the European capitals. If he is obliged to join his regiment he looks upon his superior officers, trained in the old school, with con- tempt, considering himself vastly their superior. He is continually levying veiled criticisms at his superiors, and undermining the discipline of the regiment by the open disapproval he displays for the orders he receives. His outwardly smart appearance is in glaring contrast with the slovenly uniforms of his comrades, and he feels himself entirely out of harmony with those whom he now regards, from his enlightened standpoint, as little better than barbarians. In consequence of the fatal step of having got rid of nearly aU the old officers without having others to take their place, whole battalions left for the front with hardly any officers at all, whilst the cafes and hotels and streets of Pera and Stamboul were crowded with young officers in beautiful uniforms, who had nothing in particular to do, who were too proud to serve with their regiments and who had nominal, or were awaiting billets on the staff. Many of them never went near the front, and many who eventually did find their way up there, only stayed for a few days and seized the first available opportunity to return to the more congenial haunts of Pera, where, over coffee, liqueurs and cigars, they would describe the lamentable state of the army to an admiring circle of friends, and explain the causes which led to its defeat, without realising that they themselves were largely responsible for the debacle. 58 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE In the early stages of the war many officers, as soon as the retreat on Chataldja had begun, left the front without leave and hastened to Constantinople, without reporting themselves to anyone. Thus the generals had no idea what had become of them and could take no steps to recall them to the front. This finally became such a scandal that Nazim Pasha took drastic steps to check the evil. No officers were allowed to leave without permission, and they were obliged to report themselves to the War Office on their arrival in the capital. This brief summary will show the lamentable state of the Turkish Army when the war broke out. The Army Corps were split up and scattered over the Empire ; the battalions were short of officers ; the men had lost confi- dence in themselves and in their officers, and, above all, they were called upon to march to the defence of territories, in which they had but little interest, for the first time, not because Islam was threatened, but because the integrity of the Empire had to be preserved. CHAPTER VI THE AUTHORITIES AND THE CORRESPONDENTS The life of the modern war correspondent cannot be described as being exactly a bed of roses. The glorious days of the profession, when William Russell and Archibald Forbes and their like flourished, have gone, never to return. Then the war correspondents were few in number, their papers were in no great anxiety to receive news almost before the event to be described had taken place, and the war correspondent would stay at the front for a certain period, then make his way leisurely to the nearest pillar box and slip in an uncensored letter describing his experiences. He did very little cabling, except on occasions of extreme importance, and then he had the entire field to himself and had nothing to fear from rivals hastening to get in their despatches ahead of his. I often wonder [how the great ones of the past would have fared under modern conditions, when competition is so keen that the war correspondent is kept in a continued state of nervous unrest from the moment he arrives at the scene of hostilities to that happy hour when he receives a cable to the effect " come home at once, spend no more money and all will be forgiven." At the date when war broke out on October 16th, some thirty-five odd correspondents were assembled at Con- stantinople waiting for the first sound of the guns and for 60 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE the desired permission to accompany the army. Of these by far the larger number represented Enghsh papers, and almost every journal of note had a representative at the front, while some, like the indefatigable Daily Mirror, for instance, had a perfect bevy of photographers. Amongst well-known men assembled in Constantinople were Lionel James, The Times, M. H. Donohoe, the Daily Chronicle, Ward Price, the Daily Mail, Pilcher, The Morning Post, Allan Ostler, Daily Express. The French Press was also well represented ; M. Rodes was there for Le Temps, M. Raymond for U Illustration. The German Press was represented by Major von Zweiter, and the Austrian by Baron Binder von Kriegelstein. Then there were war correspondents representing papers in Denmark and Scan- dinavia, also two Russian correspondents who were believed by the Turks to be officers on the Headquarters Staff in disguise, and, as soon as the peace was signed at Ouchy, an Italian turned up to act for the Corriera della Sierra. It will be seen that we were a very representative body. Now it is always necessary to pick out at the start of a campaign those who are likely to be formidable rivals, and those who can be more or less disregarded in the great race to get off news first. For instance, I knew from the start that my most dangerous rivals on this campaign would be my old friend Lionel James, the doyeii of the war cor- respondents with the Turkish Army, and M. H. Donohoe, the highly experienced correspondent of the Daily Chronicle. It is now generally the custom for the representatives of at least two papers to work together so as to save expense, and also to obtain that feeling of comradeship which is always agreeable on a campaign. On this occasion Lionel James and Ward Price were working together, the old threepenny Thunderer linked for the first time with the famous halfpenny on account of the affiliation between •«f * " • ^^ FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS 61 those two journals at home. In these circumstances, Donohoe and myself agreed to work together, and it was a great relief to me to feel I had such a formidable and enter- prising rival acting as a friend to share my fate for better or worse, rather than having to keep an eye on him all the time for fear he should steal a march on me over some important battle. The English war correspondents have little to fear from the competition of their foreign rivals. I do not wish in any way to belittle the efforts of the Frenchmen, who are charming writers and still more charming companions ; but the French system is entirely different from our own. They go in very little for cabling, they do not spend nearly so much money on their work, and, therefore, they are hardly in a position to compete for speed with ourselves. The Germans are much the same. They are so wedded to discipline that they obey every order given them by the authorities, and, in fact, seem hopelessly at sea unless they are being watched over by the Censor and his colleagues. They are themselves the first to admit that they lack that spirit of enterprise, which renders the English Press supreme during campaigns, when every opportunity must be seized like hghtning, and not a minute lost if a rival is not going to beat you and obtain a " scoop." The success or failure of the war correspondent depends almost always on the preparations he has made for sending off news from the front, before he actually starts on the campaign, and the men with experience are always certain, unless by a remarkable series of unforeseen occurrences, to beat those who are without experience and who are making their first campaign. The campaign in Thrace was an object lesson in this respect, and the old hands scored time and time again over their inexperienced rivals. 62 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE It is no use starting for the front with the intention of finding means to send off news after you have arrived on the battlefield, although of course unexpected means which you have not included in your pre-arranged plans may present themselves, and should be taken immediate advantage of. The first thing the war correspondent should say to himself is, " Where is the nearest point for sending off censored tele- grams, and where is the nearest point for sending off un- censored despatches should the necessity arise ? " Having decided upon these two points, he should ask himself this question, " What will be the quickest means of getting news to the telegraph stations ? " Having decided on the most suitable means of communication, he must take steps to complete the organisation necessary to carry his good inten- tions into effect. It was obvious in the present campaign that Constantinople was the only place from which to dispatch censored cables, and that Constanza in Roumania was the only place from which to send uncensored cables. The latter would have to be sent by the Roumanian boat which leaves Constantinople for Constanza every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. It was obvious, therefore, that if you missed sending your cable on Tuesday, it could not be sent until Thursday, and that if you missed Thursday, it could not go until Saturday, and that, if your rival sent his by the boat you had missed, he would have his news in the paper two clear days before you could have yours. There was also one other means of speeding up a cable, namely, to have it sent by wireless telegraphy from the Roumanian boat to Constanza, the moment she was outside territorial waters. But this was made very little use of during the war, as the wireless was found to be far too unreliable for long and important messages, and cost two shillings a word just to reach Constanza. BUYING A MOTOR-CAR 63 It became obvious from the start that the authorities in Constantinople would only allow news favourable to Turkey to be sent from the capital, and that in the event of a reverse, Constanza alone would be available. The old hands, there- fore, made elaborate preparations to have their cables dispatched to Constanza with a minimum of delay. Then we had to consider how we could get messages rapidly from the front to Constantinople, in order that they might be sent on by the Roumanian boats. Donohoe and myself had many an earnest conversation on this all-important subject, and finally decided that a motor-car was essential. I will never forget as long as 1 live the troubles we had over obtaining a car suitable for a country where roads are non-existent, and where every ounce of petrol has to be carried. I first of all entered into negotiations with the Pera garage for the hire of a car. I was shown one which, I was assured by the Greek proprietor, had frequently made the road to Adrianople without difficulty, and that he would guarantee it would do so again. I mistrusted the look of the old machine, but he reassured me, and as the price seemed reasonable, namely, one hundred pounds per month, I decided to hire it. The proprietor was exceed- ingly anxious that I should sign the contract and pay him one month's hire in advance without giving the car a trial, as he explained this was quite unnecessary, and he was busy overhauling the machinery and repainting the chassis. The contract contained a clause that in the event of our losing the car or it falling into the hands of the enemy, we should pay the modest sum of £600 by way of compensation. However, I refused to sign or to pay a penny until Donohoe and myself had given it an exhaustive trial by taking it out on a trip to San Stefano. On the afternoon of the trial, my brother, Donohoe, and 64 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE myself repaired to the garage, where we found many mechanics putting the finishing touches to the old buz box and tuning her up. The owner had so carefully painted and polished up an old taxi - cab that its material defects were not apparent to the inexperienced eye. But the bluff was short-lived, for we never reached the Galata Bridge. The old machine smoked and roared and groaned, but could not even take the smallest hills, and finally caught fire in the high street ; the tyres fell off at the same moment, and the chauffeur announced that he must return for repairs, as he did not quite understand the machinery. We returned and told the owner exactly what we thought of him. It turned out on inquiry that this car was one of the original taxi-cabs introduced into Paris, and that, after serving a long term in the Parisian streets, it had been sent to the Near East. The papers the owner had shown us were all forged, and the value of the car was perhaps fifty pounds, yet he had tried to get us to pay £600 in the event of its being lost. We confided our troubles to the obliging Colonel Izzet, who was one of the first to advise us to take a car to the front, declaring that it would be invaluable, as the roads were excellent, and that we could reach Adrianople in it in about five or six hours. Colonel Izzet then produced a sinister-looking Persian, whom he declared was the owner of a splendid new forty horse-power Panhard Limousine — the finest car in Constantinople, which could go anywhere and carry any number of passengers. He offered to give us a trial by motoring us out that very afternoon to San Stefano. This we accepted. The car went very well, negotiating all the bad spots on the road, passing through mud feet deep, and crawling up all the hills without much difficulty. THE MODEST PERSIAN 65 Then came the most troublesome task of all, namely, to settle on the terms of hire or purchase. Colonel Izzet acted as our interpreter and intermediary, and the meeting between the Persian, Donohoe, my brother, and myself took place in the War Office. The Persian turned out a hard task- master and demanded the modest sum of £1000 for the purchase of the car or £lO a day for the hire of it. As these terms proved too stiff we haggled and bargained, and, after threatening to break off the negotiations several times, we got the purchase price down to £900, and the rate for the hire by the day to £8. Finally, we decided to take it for one month on trial, as we were not wholly convinced of what value the car would be at the front. Then a contract was drawn up in French by Colonel Izzet, who took the greatest pains to be fair to us both. This took an endless time, as all sorts of unexpected difficulties arose on such questions as to who was to supply the oil, and how much we were to pay for the car in the event of its being captured or destroyed. The Persian insisted on a guarantee of £1000, minus any sums we had paid by way of hire, but finally we got him down to £850. At last the contract was completed and he was very anxious we should sign it then and there, but this Donohoe and myself declined to do until we had made some independent inquiries to find out if the car was really what the owner professed it to be. That evening we set our independent agents to work, and received two reports on our prospective purchase. It was nearly four years old and had been the property of an Egyptian prince for two years. The prince finally sold it for £450 to a merchant in Constantinople, who, in turn, parted with it a year later to its present owner, the Persian, for £350. The latter had done it up and had hired it at so much a day to tourists visiting Constantinople. It 66 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE was not a forty horse-power car at all, but only a twenty. This was the car for which our good friend the Persian had demanded £1000 or a guarantee of £850. Needless to say when he arrived at the Pera Palace Hotel that evening, all smiles, with the contract ready for signature, he received a somewhat cold reception and was politely shown the door. This, however, did not help Donohoe and myself much, as at any minute we might be allowed to start for the front, and without a car how could we hope to compete with our leading rivals. The Times and the Daily Mail, who had pur- chased one second-hand for a considerable sum? It was utterly useless trying to hire one, as we knew we were bound to be swindled, and had no guarantee that the chauffeur, who was the servant of the owner, would not fail us at a critical moment in the campaign, or perhaps even decline to carry us near to some stricken field. I then went to the principal agents in Pera and examined a new Panhard which they had for sale. It was an excellent car, having just arrived from Paris, very strong, and of 18-24 horse -power. The agents were very agreeable and honest in all their dealings, and produced all the necessary papers from the Panhard Com- pany, showing the actual price they had paid for the car, the cost of its passage to Constantinople, and the Customs duty. They consented to forgo half their usual commission, and the car became our property for £700, which price included accessories and a spare pair of tyres. We thus had a great load off our minds and could now start on equal terms with The Times and the Daily Mail. Little did we realise at the time the endless trouble and bother we would have with the car, with the various chauffeurs who attempted to handle it, and, above all, with the roads, which proved to be totally unsuitable for wheeled THE DRAGOMEN 67 traffic of any sort, except a country cart drawn by four strong oxen. However, let me say here in justice to the car and to our own judgment that it saved us at the most critical moment of the campaign, and enabled us to get off the news of the great defeat of Lule Burgas ahead of all our rivals. I had two rides in it, and Donohoe two also, and as the price paid for these rides was over £700, they were the most expensive journeys we had ever taken or ever wish to take. The experiences I have just related were typical of many others endured by us whilst we were engaged in making our preparations to leave for the front. Every single detail had to be thought out beforehand, and every single article, from a horse to a tin of sardines, had to be purchased from people whose sole idea was to cheat and swindle you. The fitting out of an expedition, the purchase of suitable horses, stores, and equipment, sounds a simple enough under- taking, but, in reality, in Constantinople the task was one of stupendous difficulty, exhausting both to the body and to the patience. The dragomen you engage, who carry about with them pages of references, cannot be trusted a yard, and are an additional burden, rather than an assistance. I and my brother had personally to superintend the buying and packing of every single article we might require for the campaign. The country through which the army would pass on its way to Sofia, which we were assured was our destination, would speedily be swept bare by the passage of two large armies, and we had to take everything necessary in the way of food supplies with us. I therefore bought provisions for two months. We had ample opportunity of studying the character of the Christian population of Constantinople, both Greek and Armenian, and we often wondered at the moderation of the Turk at not having exterminated the lot years ago. There f2 68 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE is an old saying amongst the Turks that it takes two Jews to get the better of one Greek, and five Greeks to cheat one Armenian. These bastard races, which have dwelt for centuries amid a corrupt and effete civilisation, having no tradition of race, have not the slightest trace of a sense of decency or honour. In fact, it seems that almost everyone who comes in contact with Constantinople becomes corrupted by the atmosphere of dishonesty and stagnation. Even Europeans seem to develop a sort of moral anaemia after a few years' residence in the Scarlet City. The Turks of the upper classes, and of the official world, are better than the Christians in one sense, in that they are honest in their dishonesty. They are all open to bribery, but can be trusted once they have taken the bribe, if they see the opportunity of doing any further business on the same terms. Corruption and vice have flourished for so many centuries in Constantinople, that there seems but little hope of stamping it out. The effete civilisation of Byzantium corrupted the Roman Emperors and the Greek and the Ottoman Dynasties in turn, and, until the entire population is replaced by another, Constantinople is likely to enjoy her evil reputation. Before we left we were forced to the conclusion that the best thing that could happen to the town would be its complete destruction by fire, and for the inhabitants to perish in the flames, or to migrate in order to make way for a different race. But would this drastic step have any effect ? Is the character of a race formed by the climate ? as Mr. Maurice Baring believes. These questions cannot be dealt with here. Finally, after endless trouble our preparations were com- pleted, and we sat down at the Pera Palace Hotel to wait in patience for leave to join the army. One of the first steps we took on arriving at Constanti- U'liJto S. Askine-id-Bartlett Tiii: Track 'lo Stamkoui \Photo S. Ashviead Barilctt OVEUTURNKD TRAIN. ^ DIPLOMATIC RED TAPE 69 nople — and it is one of the most important for the war correspondent, to place himself on a satisfactory footing at once — was to find out the attitude of the authorities towards us, and to ascertain what facilities would be given us to carry on our work in a legitimate manner, and at the same time insure to the newspapers that we represented, that they should receive some value for the large sums expended on sending us to the Near East and in fitting us out for service in the field. I do not intend at this stage to deal with the very comphcated question of the future of the war correspondent, but I shall do so at a later stage, when the reader has been able to gauge, from a perusal of this work, the pros and the cons that both sides can bring forward in favour of their arguments for continuation or abolition. On the occasion of our first visit to the War Office, we were received most politely, but, at the same time, informed that all who wished to accompany the army must obtain a recommendation from their respective Embassies. This was quite a reasonable request, but when I applied to Sir Gerard Lowther, I was informed by him that he could give no recommendation without the sanction of the Foreign Office in London. This really seemed a little absurd, Sir Gerard Lowther having known me personally for several years, while, at the same time, I came fully accredited from the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph. But Sir Gerard declared that, the Foreign Office having made such a regula- tion, he must abide by it. Why could not the Foreign Office have informed newspapers of their intention before we left for the Near East ? It caused a delay which in this instance did not matter, but which might have had very serious results had we been granted permission by the Turkish Government to join the army immediately after our arrival. As it was, it entailed much cabling and inconvenience. 70 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE This little incident is typical of the methods of the procedure of the British Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service, which is a gigantic and highly organised piece of machinery for shifting responsibility from one person to another. All other Foreign Embassies appear to exist for the purpose of helping the subjects of their respective nations. The British, on the other hand, appear to exist for the express purpose of placing difficulties in the way of anyone who applies to them for assistance. Then, again, the British Embassies are invariably the worst- informed on what is passing in the country to which they are accredited. The British Embassy in Constantinople was a by-word in this respect. You could obtain more or less reliable news at the French, and Austrian, and German Embassies, or could, at any rate, carry on an intelligible conversation with someone who had some knowledge of the country, and who took some interest in his work, but the inmates of the British Embassy, with one notable exception, were always shrouded in a black mist of blissful ignorance and seemed to feel a personal resentment against the Turkish Government and all the Balkan States for having declared war, thus disturbing the even tenor of their peaceful and harmless, but almost useless lives. The whole Service wants to be thoroughly reorganised on a basis which would make it of more value to England and to English commercial enterprises abroad. It is now a kind of happy hunting ground for youths who v^dsh for an easy life amidst pleasant surroundings in foreign countries, where they suffisr the fond illusion that their social position is bettered by being able to print " Attache to the British Embassy" on their cards. It wants fresh blood and new brains, and men trained in commerce and in the fierce competition which English merchants abroad understand so ] I DELAYS 71 well. Then it might be worth all the expense and pomp which now attach to it. The greater part of the money spent by the State year after year on ambassadors, first secretaries, second secre- taries, councillors, dragomen, and a horde of lesser minions, is thrown into the gutter. Of course, amidst the gloom of ignorance, apathy, and general physical and mental debility which hangs over our Embassies like a leaden pall, there are some brilliant exceptions, but, in the main, few will gainsay the truth of the strictures I have made on a Service which is hopelessly out of date in this age of commercial competition. It was obvious, even after presentation of the necessary letters of recommendation from the Embassy, that the military authorities were determined to delay our departure as long as possible. Day after day we visited Colonel Izzet at the War Office and were informed by him that a Code of Regulations was being drawn up and would be duly presented to us, after which passes to enable us to accompany the army would be issued by the War Office. Day after day we waited, and on each visit we were put off by an evasive reply. It recalled the long, dreary wait in Tokio, which I had experienced before being allowed to join the Japanese troops in Manchuria. The Oriental hates to give a decisive answer either by way of assent or refusal to a proposition, and prefers to keep negotiations running on indefinitely. But Lionel James, Donohoe, and myself had aU had previous bitter experience in the Russo-Japanese War of this love of procrastination, and were all three deter- mined not to put up with it again. We decided to make a joint protest to the officers of the General Staff, and, unless we obtained a satisfactory reply, to leave Con- stantinople and to abandon our mission. This joint demarche 72 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE had the desired effect. The War Office realised that it was ahenating the Enghsh Press, and gave us a definite assurance that we should leave for the front as soon as the Commander-in-Chief of the army of Thrace, Abdullah Pasha, had started himself. Meanwhile the Code of Regulations was drawn up, and we were all asked to sign a document undertaking to remain with the army until the end of the war. This seemed rather hard on us, and we pointed out to Colonel Izzet that our papers might wish to recall us and that the South African War had lasted no fewer than three years. Colonel Izzet reassured our minds on this point in his own inimitable manner. He said : " Do not worry, we have made this regulation in order to discourage too many correspondents from going to the front ; we do not wish to have people remain up there for a few days and then to hurry back to give away our military secrets. But rest assured, any time you wish to leave you have only to say you are ill, and you will find our doctors very lenient, more especially as I shall be the doctor to decide if your state of health warrants your leaving the army." The next point we raised was the all-important one of the censorship of telegrams and letters from the front. The Regulations prescribed that all telegrams must be sent in French, if they were to pass over the military wire to Constantinople. We pointed out that this was a distinct hardship on the English war correspondents, many of whom possessed a most rudimentary knowledge of that language, and but few of whom could profess to write it with any attempt at accuracy. The kind-hearted Colonel Izzet promised to try to obtain an English operator who could handle our despatches, and thus place us on an equal footing with our French colleagues. But this promise was never carried out, and THE REGULATIONS 73 what is more, as the sequel will show, the Headquarters Staff even failed to provide a French operator, and when we reached the front we were politely informed that all our messages must be sent in Turkish. This was the initial source of all the bitter quarrels between the correspondents and the authorities, for it is easy to imagine the value a despatch would be to a paper, which was first translated into bad French, then from French into Turkish, and then back again into French, and finally from French once more into English. Finally, nearly all the outstanding questions were settled or left in abeyance, and in accordance with the demand of the War Office we were each asked to subscribe our signatures to a document in which we promised to remain with the army until the termination of the war, and also promised not to enter the territory of any of the belligerents engaged in hostilities with Turkey. Lionel James, Donohoe and myself, however, were too old at the game to give away our freedom without the certainty of corresponding facilities with which to carry on our work, and we each signed a document drawn up on much the same lines, which allowed many loopholes of escape. But even after all the formalities had been complied with, the authorities were in no hurry to hand over our passes, as they feared we would disperse and make for the front on our own account. We were told that a day would be fixed for our departure, and that we would all be sent north together in a special train with our horses and baggage. We waited patiently for this day, which was a long time in coming. Meanwhile Colonel Izzet, who was sincerely anxious to assist Lionel James, Donohoe and myself in any way in his power, proposed that we should take into our employment a special agent well-known to the Headquarters Staff, who would accompany us everywhere and act as interpreter, so 74 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE that we could enjoy a measure of freedom greater than if we were tied up all the time with thirty odd other correspon- dents. This gentleman waited on us at the hotel, and we discovered that he was a police spy who was being fastened on to us to watch our every movement and to make reports to the Staff on our daily deportment. Even at this stag^ the Headquarters had gained an inkling as to who wouhj probably be the dangerous ones on the campaign, and it wsl^ hoped to checkmate any attempt we might make to bring off a coup by this means. As this gentleman could not speak one single word of English or French, he was of absolutely no value as an interpreter, and therefore we politely^ but firmly declined to take him into our service, more especially as we were expected to pay him for spying on us. It was a week after the declaration of war, on October 16th, that Abdullah, the Commander-in-Chief of the army of Thrace, left for the front. We, however, were destined to enjoy a fuller measure of Oriental procrastination. On Wednesday, October 16th, we were all asked to attend at the War Office in order that a photograph might be taken of us in one large group for the Minister of War to keep as a souvenir. I expect he is not so keen on having it in his office now. We were then informed that the special train would be ready for us on Friday, and we broke up like a crowd of happy schoolboys dispersing for the summer holidays at this good news. Friday came and we were told we must wait until Saturday, as the railway authorities could not find a spare train. On Saturday there was a further postponement. On Friday I had an interview with the aged Kiamil Pasha at his private house. He struck me as being a very shrewd old man with a distinct liking at this time for the English. He told me how he hoped {rhoto ■■ J\iily Mh,or Nazim Pasha, Minister for War, leaving the Sublime Porte on the Eve of Hostilities. <^ THE ULTIMATUM 75 Turkey would retain the friendship of England throughout the war. There were rumours at this time that Ghazi Moukhtar Pasha would shortly resign, or be driven from the Grand Vizierate, and that Kiamil Pasha would replace him. In consequence the old man's ante-room was packed with a crowd of political followers and office seekers, who were hoping for places as soon as the expected change should be made. On Saturday we were told that there would be a further postponement. I spoke to Kiamil on the subject of our departure for the front, and he promised to see the Minister of War, Nazim Pasha, after the council on the following day, and to urge on him the necessity of allowing us to leave without further delay. On Saturday we were in- formed we must wait for a few days longer. By this time we were almost in despair, as the fighting had already commenced round Kirk Kilisse and at any moment we expected to hear the news of a decisive battle. That afternoon I went and called on the Minister of War, Nazim Pasha, who received me in his room at the War Office. He gave me a definite assurance that we should start on Monday, and I hurried back to the Pera Palace Hotel to communicate the glad tidings to my friends. Monday came, but no permission, and we made further protests at the War Office, threatening to leave Constantinople and to join one of the armies of the Balkan States, if we were detained longer. This had a decisive effect. That very evening Colonel Izzet came to the hotel, and told us that everything had been arranged at last, and that we were to be at the Cirkidje Station at half past four in the afternoon of Wednesday, October 23rd, to leave for Kirk Kilisse. Meanwhile I had been seized with a violent attack of fever and influenza and was obliged to stay in bed, but 76 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE hoped to be well enough to leave with the others on the appointed day. On Tuesday evening my temperature was still high and I was in no condition to start, much to my mortification. In these circumstances I decided to send on my brother with all our horses, servants, stores, and camp equipment, and to follow myself in the motor-car as soon as I was well enough. I will, therefore, leave him in due course to tell the story of his departure from Constantinople, and of the adventures which befell him en route to Chorion, but before doing so it will be well at this point to give a brief account of the disposition and organisation of the Turkish armies at the outbreak of war, and of the early operations which led up to the final disaster of Lule Burgas. CHAPTER VII THE EARLY OPERATIONS At the outbreak of the war the Ottoman forces in European Turkey were widely scattered and hopelessly disorganised. It was the intention of the general staff, had they been given sufficient time by the Balkan Coalition, to form four armies, namely: No. 1, the Grand Army of Thrace ; No. 2, the Army of the River Struma, concen- trating at Serres ; No. 3, the Army of the River Vodena, point of concentration Uskub ; No. 4, the Army of Thessaly, point of concentration Elassona. I am only concerned in this book with the operations of the Grand Army of Thrace, and I shall say nothing further of the fate of the other three armies, except that they existed only on paper and in the imagination of the Headquarters Staff. They were never organised ; the machinery for forming them was non-existent ; they were devoid of transport and short of artillery. They were little more than hordes of undisciplined men, short of officers, badly commanded and incapable of either taking the offensive or even of holding a strong defensive position. All three were in turn defeated and broken up by the Servians, Montenegrins, and Greeks. The Turks had a pre-arranged plan of campaign which they were never destined to carry out. It was based on the mis- 78 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE taken assumption, which the Turks in their self-pride and contempt for the Balkan States could never get out of their heads, that neither Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, nor Montenegro would ever dare take the offensive against the Ottoman Empire, but would remain quietly behind their frontiers until the Turkish troops were mobilised, concentrated and in a position to attack them. The Turks rightly considered that a success against Bulgaria, in Thrace, would be decisive throughout the whole theatre of war, and that, once the Bulgarians were decisively defeated, the whole coalition would collapse like a pack of cards. Therefore, from the first, their main efforts were devoted to mobilising a powerful Field Army for the invasion of Bulgaria under cover of the fortress of Adrianople. The confidence of the Turks was amazing. I had an interview with Nazim Pasha, the Minister of War, a few days after the outbreak of hostilities, and he expressed his utmost confidence as to the result of the campaign. He said, " We have only two months' more good weather for fighting, as it is too cold in the Balkans for winter operations, but that should give us ample time to cross the frontier and take Sofia." Shortly afterwards, when bidding farewell to some officers who were leaving to join their regiments, Nazim addressed them as follows : " Farewell, my comrades. Do not forget to take with you your full-dress uniforms, because you will need them for the grand entry into Sofia two months from now." These words sound rather funny in the fuller know- ledge of the subsequent debacle. But did Nazim really beheve what he was saying, or was he merely talking to keep up the spirits of the troops, and to put a bold face on what he knew to be a critical situation ? I heard, both before and after the battle of Lule Burgas, that he had NAZIM'S OFFICIAL BOAST 79 warned the Sublime Porte in the strongest language that it would be hopeless to take the offensive in the present state of the army ; that it was inviting disaster to attempt to concentrate on the line Adrianople-Kirk Kilisse, and that the only safe plan of campaign would be to sit behind the lines of Chataldja until the army had been reorganised and the picked troops brought up from Smyrna, Trebizond, and other parts of Asia Minor. At the same interview I had with Nazim he assured me that he himself would personally command the army of Thrace. Yet, a few days later, Abdullah was sent to fill this thankless position and remained in command until the flight from Lule Burgas to Chataldja, when he was removed, or voluntarily resigned, I do not know which. I have always had a strong suspicion that Nazim, anti- cipating a disaster which could not be prevented, purposely refrained from assuming the command at the start of the campaign in order that he might escape the odium attaching to defeat. Whether this surmise is true or not, the fact remains that Nazim, even after one of the most crushing disasters in military history, did not resign his position as Minister of War. He not only retained it, but also took personal command of the army at Chataldja, thus gaining the prestige of having repulsed the Bulgarian attack on the famous lines. Although the Turkish Headquarters Staff never seem to have grasped the extent of Bulgaria's preparations for war and her ability to take the offensive long before the Turkish armies were in a position to offer any sustained resistance, they nevertheless had anticipated that some Bulgarian divisions might cross the frontier by forcing the Mustafa Pasha Pass. But they did not regard such a move very seriously, firmly believing that it must come to a full stop in front of Adrianople, which fortress they regarded as quite 80 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE impregnable and capable of holding its own for a long time even although faced with a regular siege. Their confidence in the ability of Adrianople to hold out has been justified by future events. What they entirely failed to grasp was the ability of the Bulgarians to mask Adrianople and to concentrate the bulk of their forces south of it, and to fight a decisive battle with the fortress garrisoned by more than fifty thousand of picked Turkish troops in their rear. This certainly did appear to be an extremely hazardous undertaking, and few military critics believed before the war started that the Bulgarians would invade Thrace, attack the Turkish main army, and actually advance on Constantinople without first reducing Adrianople. But then the Bulgarian General Staff knew to the last letter the utter state of demoralisation and disorganisation prevailing in the army of Thrace, and their daring plan justified its conception by the rapidity and certainty of its execution. At this stage it will be as well to give a brief summary of the respective strengths of the Turkish forces and those of the Allies. According to General Von Bernhardi, the nominal strength of the Turkish army in time of peace is 275,000 men. The actual strength of the Nizam, or regular army, in 1910 was as follows : — Infantry ... 133,000 Cavalry 26,000 Artillery 43,000 Engineers 4,500 Special Troops (Sultan's Guards, &c.) ... 7,500 Commissariat 3,000 Various 3,000 Total ... 220,000 In addition to these there were 25,000 men in the permanent Cadres, into which the Redifs are incorporated THE TURKISH ARMY SI when mobilised, and 30,000 regular and reserve officers, a total of 275,000 officers and men. The war strength of the Turkish Army is nominally 700,000 men, which includes troops in Europe, Armenia, AnatoUa, and Syria. Owing to the lack of railways, the general incapacity of the Turks for organisation, and the necessity of maintaining strong garrisons in the various disturbed districts of the Empire, probably not half this number could ever be concentrated in European Turkey in time of war, and not more than 300,000 ever reached Constantinople in time to take part in the present struggle. In addition to the regular army and Redif reserves there is the levy en masse (Mustafiz), consisting for the most part of old and non-effisctive men, who could only be utilised for the purposes of local defence and policing. Liability for service begins at the age of 20 and lasts for twenty years ; nine years in the Nizam, followed by nine in the Redif and two in the Mustafiz. The organisation of the Turkish army is by Army Corps. 3 Divisions equal 1 Army Corps (war strength about 50^000). 3 Brigades „ 1 Division (18,000 men). 3 Regiments „ 1 Brigade (6,000 men). 1 Regiment „ 3 Battalions (2,000 men). The Grand Army of Thrace, which should have been con- centrated between Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse at the out- break of hostilities, ready to take the offensive or to meet the attack of the Bulgarians, was, in point of fact, hope- lessly scattered and some of its regular units were never brought together in time to take part in the battle of Lule Burgas. The lack of these trained battalions was largely responsible for the crushing nature of that disaster. The Army Corps had to be brought up to war strength, which they never actually reached, by the incorporation of large numbers of 82 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE Reservists, and by the addition of ill- trained Redif Divisions. The Grand Army of Thrace consisted of four Army Corps, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. At the outbreak of hostilities the 1st Corps, under Yavir Pasha, was split up as follows. The 1st and 2nd Divisions were in Adrianople, forming part of the garrison of that fortress, and the 3rd Division was in Smyrna, where it had been sent during the war with Italy to meet a possible descent of the Italians on the coast. The 2nd Army Corps, under Shef ket Torgut Pasha, was also split up. The 4th Division was between Rodosto and Adrianople ; the 5th at the Dardanelles, and the 6th at Smyrna. The 3rd Army Corps, which was placed under the com- mand of Mahmoud Mukhtar, was concentrated round Kirk Kilisse. The 4th Army Corps, under the command of Abouk Pasha, was partly in garrison at Adrianople, and during the campaign one of its Divisions remained in the fortress and the other two formed part of the Field Army routed at Lule Burgas. Neither of the Divisions stationed at Smyrna reached Thrace in time to take part in the campaign, as they did not arrive at the front until the army fell back on the lines of Chataldja. Their place was taken by Redif Divisions, which in discipline, training, and military spirit could not compare with the regular army. According to the same authority. General Von Bernhardi, Bulgaria, with a population of 4,000,000, has an army the peace strength of which is 59,820 officers and men, and the war strength 330,000, of which 230,000 are infantry and only 6,500 cavalry. The actual number of men in the artillery and commissariat trains is not known, but the army possesses 884 field and siege guns and 232 machine guns. With the THE FORCES OF THE COALITION 83 auxiliary troops formed of men between the ages of forty-one and forty-six, which could be employed in garrisoning fortresses, or on the lines of communication, the total strength of the army could be raised to 400,000 men. Servia, with a population of three millions, has an army 28,000 strong in time of peace, but this number is seldom reached, and sinks in winter to only 10,000 men. The war effective strength of the army is 250,000, of whom 165,000 are infantry, 5,500 cavalry, and the rest artillery, transport, etc. The Servian army possesses 432 field and mountain guns (108 batteries of four guns each). In addition, six siege batteries of six guns each and 228 machine guns. With third class reservists the total strength of the army could be raised to 300,000 men. Greece, with a population of 2,600,000, has an army which in time of war can be brought up to 100,000 men. Montenegro, with a population of only 250,000, can place 45,000 men in the field, of whom 4,000 are mounted. There are in addition 11 reserve battalions only fit for service on the lines of communication. There are 104 field and 44 machine guns. I shall not relate in detail the extraordinary rumours in circulation in Constantinople during those weary days when we were still awaiting permission to leave for the front ; neither will I give in detail the appalling amount of false information served out by the Headquarters Staff to the Turkish Press in order to calm the public, and to bluff Europe into believing that all was going well with Ottoman arms. The daring of these senseless fabrications beats anything ever attempted before in war. We were told of the bombard- ment of Varna and of the dispatch of a Turkish army thither to invade Bulgarian soil in order to cause a diversion and force some of the enemy's troops to leave the neighbourhood g2 84 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE of Mustafa Pasha. We were told of the dispatch of an entire Army Corps to Media, in the Black Sea, under Mahmoud Mukhtar Pasha, which was to form behind the Istrandza Mountains and to act on the right flank of the main army. Then came successive victories over the Servians at Kumanova, the rout of the Greeks near Elassona, the total disruption of the Montenegrin army and finally the successful invasion of Bulgarian territory through the pass of Mustafa Pasha. Finally, it became the fervent wish of every war corre- spondent in Constantinople to leave for the front at the very first opportunity, so that he might pass from the realm of fictitious rumour, which hovered over the city like a dense mist, into the realm of facts which he might see with his own eyes. To have remained in Constantinople much longer would have driven earnest seekers after truth almost to despair, as it was utterly impossible to trust any of the official or unofficial news which circulated hour after hour throughout the town. The Turks kept up the bluff* right to the last minute, and the Sultan issued a proclamation to his armies ordering them to take the offensive everywhere against " Our little neighbours, Greece, Montenegro, Servia, and Bulgaria." The veil was suddenly lifted from all these doubts and uncertainties in the most dramatic manner on Friday, October 25th. On that morning rumours began to circulate throughout the town that Kirk Kilisse had been captured by the Bulgarians and that a Turkish Cavalry Division under Prince Aziz had been almost entirely destroyed. The day will be known in future as Black Friday, because for the first time the authorities made no effort to conceal the truth and published an official account which, of course, minimised the full extent of the disaster, but which nevertheless did not attempt to deny the main facts. NEWS FROM THE FRONT 85 Constantinople was profoundly stirred by the bad news from all parts of the theatre of war, and the feeling of the public was akin to that of the British people on receiving the news of the successive reverses of Colenso, Stormberg, and Magersfontein in a single week. The capture of Kirk Kilisse and the retirement of the Army of Thrace on Baba Eski and Lule Burgas ; the defeat of Zekki Pasha's army at Kumanovo, after his reported victory over the Servians three days previously, and the advance of the Greek Army on Classo came as a complete surprise to the Turkish public. To crown these misfortunes, reports came to hand that the Albanians were wavering in their allegiance, no doubt influenced by the adverse turn events were taking against Ottoman arms. They delivered the following ultimatum : — " We are tired of the war and of the perpetual disturbances in our country. We do not wish anyone to fight over our lands, and unless we are guaranteed peace and liberty we will call upon Austria to come to our assistance." I received confirmation of these reports in a most dramatic and unexpected manner. I have already mentioned that my brother had left for the front with the other correspondents two days before, on Wednesday, October 23rd, and that I had been detained at the Pera Palace Hotel owing to an attack of influenza. 1 was upstairs in my room making preparations to leave for the front on the following day, when there came a knock at the door and a very much travel-stained individual entered the room, and handed me a dirty envelope. I tore this open and found three messages, one from my brother, addressed to myself; one in code from Lionel James, addressed to Mr. Graves, The Times correspondent in Constantinople ; and the third addressed by Donohoe to Dr. Sadler, the correspondent of the Daily Chrojiicle. 86 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE My brother's message was as follows : " We arrived at Seidler on Thursday morning, after spending all night in the train. Owing to a railway accident, a train having gone off the line, it was necessary to wait until the evening. It appears that the Turkish population are in a state of panic, owing to King Ferdinand's proclamation declaring a war of the Cross against the Crescent. The trains returning from the neighbourhood of Burgas are filled with women and children who have lost everything. There are large numbers of them, and even the roofs of the railway carriages are crowded. During the night we were ordered to retire on Chorion. It is rumoured the Bulgarians have crossed the frontier, have defeated the Turks, and have taken Kirk Kilisse. I am sending this down by the engine driver, who has promised to deliver it to you." I sent for my interpreter and talked to the engine driver, who had no very clear idea as to what had happened, except that the Turks had undoubtedly suffered defeat. These were the first messages sent by correspondents from the front in the course of the campaign. That evening Colonel Izzet came in to see me, in order to make some final preparations, as I was to leave for the front by motor car on the following morning. 1 was anxious to see how he took the news of the disasters and how he reconciled them with all the reports he had been persistently circulating of Turkish successes everywhere. The gallant Colonel, who suffered, up to the time of the debacle of Lule Burgas, from a persistent optimism, which nothing could check, addressed me in the following strain : — "Naturally, we are disappointed at the news from the front, and of our retirement from Kirk Kilisse, but in reality, what is our position ? We are now concentrated on the very ground previously decided for the concentration of the Army of Thrace, as laid down by Field-Marshal von der Goltz and COLONEL IZZET'S VIEWS 87 our own strategists. Even if Adrianople were to fall into the enemy's hands, it would make not the smallest difference to our originally-formed plan of campaign, which is to con- centrate all our forces, and then gradually force the Bulgarians back across the Balkans. Had our precautions on the frontier met with success, it would have been gratifying, but, contrary to our expectations, as it is, they have had the effect of delaying the enemy's advance, and of giving time to our troops to concentrate. " It must be remembered under what difficulties the Turks commenced this campaign. In their earnest desire to preserve peace, they delayed their concentration until the very last minute compatible with their national safety, although they knew Bulgaria was fully prepared for war. The men, munitions, and provisions had to be brought long distances from widely-scattered districts of the Empire, and the Balkan Coalition, therefore, possessed every strategical advantage at the start of the campaign. The delay in the Bulgarian offensive caused a sudden change from pessimism to optimism, which has led to temporary discomfiture, because the sound plans of the recognised masters of strategy were temporarily abandoned. But the check will have a wholesome effect, because it will at once cause the spirit of contempt for our little neighbours to give way to a truer appreciation of their fighting capacities." Before I relate in detail the strange adventures which befel me on my journey to the front and during the battle of Lule Burgas, I will give a 7^esume of the opening opera- tions of the campaign which led to the capture of Kirk Kilisse and to the failure of the Turkish plan of campaign, which was to concentrate the whole of the Grand Army of Thrace along the line Adrianople-Kirk Kilisse. The battle must be considered as a whole with the operations which commenced with the capture of Kirk Kilisse 88 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE on the night of October 22nd and morning of October 23rd. Kirk Kihsse was held by a portion of the garrison of Adrianople, in no great force, although it was the right of the base of operations against Bulgaria, and contained large accumulations of food, ammunition, and supplies. The garrison were totally inadequate to withstand the shock of the Bulgarian troops, and the mobilisation of the Army of Thrace was so behindhand that no force was ready to be pushed forward to its support. The original Turkish plan of campaign was to concentrate the whole of the Army of Tlirace, under the command of Abdullah Pasha, along the lineAdrianople-Kirk Kilisse, where its left flank would be protected by the fortress of Adria- nople — from which it could draw its supplies — and at the same time the right of the army would rest on Kirk Kihsse, and would be covered by the Istrandza mountains, behind which it was proposed to form an army under Mahmoud Mukhtar, landed at Midia, on the Black Sea, and having that port as its base. This was doubtless a sound plan of campaign, and the natural one in the circumstances, always supposing that the mobilisation of the Army of Thrace could be completed either before or at approximately the same date as that of the Bulgarians. If the mobilisation were delayed even for a few days, it would at once become the most dangerous plan of campaign that could possibly be chosen, because the various corps arriving one after another on the line Adrianople- Kirk Kilisse would render themselves liable to be attacked and destroyed in detail, should the enemy take the offensive in force. This is exactly what happened, and the failure of the Turkish General Staff to gi*asp the time-honoured axiom of war — that an army must be concentrated before battle — is responsible for the crushing disaster which has over- FAULTY STRATEGY 89 whelmed Turkey. At the outbreak of war the Turkish troops were hopelessly scattered throughout Macedonia, Albania, on the Greek frontier, in the Yemen, in Asia Minor, and Tripoli, and from the very commencement it became obvious that, as the conditions on which the plan of campaign were originally based were no longer normal, it would be quite impossible to mobilise the Army of Thrace within the period calculated for that purpose by Von der Goltz and his German advisers. It is extremely doubtful, even if the conditions had been normal, whether the Army of Thrace could have been mobilised and concentrated in time to meet the first shock of the Bulgarian advance. Everything essential to a rapid mobilisation was lacking. There was no efficient railway organisation for transporting troops ; no commissariat for the Army Corps once they left the line of the railway; no adequate supplies of food and ammunition ; no hospital arrangements of any sort ; and, even if the material had been at hand, there was no trained staff capable of handling an army of more than 100,000 men. Therefore, it may well be asked. Why did the Turkish General Staff proceed with a plan of campaign which, according to the generally accepted maxims of war, seemed to play right into the enemy's hands and to invite certain disaster ? I think the answer is to be found in the utter lack of all knowledge of strategy in Turkish military circles ; their entire failure to grasp the true significance of Bulgaria's twenty-five years of steady preparation for war ; and, above all, in the overwhelming self-confidence and conceit of the Turkish character which caused them to despise all infidels, and more especially the Balkan States, until the debacle of Lule Burgas finally opened their eyes to their own inefficiencies. The Turks never believed that the Bulgarians 90 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE could, or would, dare to take the offensive against the Ottoman Empire, and they seemed to think that the Czar Ferdinand's legions would quietly sit still behind the Balkans, scared to death, until the Turkish concentration was completed, and an offensive campaign begun. This, then, was their state of mind when the startling intelligence became known in Constantinople, on October 23rd, that Kirk Kilisse had been captured, its garrison routed and put to hopeless flight. But even then the true signifi- cance of the disaster does not seem to have dawned on them, and no steps were taken to avoid a still greater one. It is obvious that, the moment the General Staff became aware of the Bulgarian forward movement on a vast scale, it was hopeless for them to attempt to concentrate so close to the hostile frontier as the line Adrianople-Kirk Kilisse, and, therefore, the only sound course would have been to order the immediate retirement of the advanced corps to some strong central position, where they could have entrenched themselves and waited, until the rest of the army had come into line. The most natural position would seem to be that between Baba Eski and Lule Burgas, where the army could protect the line of the railway, and at the same time draw its food and supplies. In view of the utter disorganisation which, it has since been proved, prevailed everywhere, the still sounder course would have been immediately to order the retirement of the whole army behind the lines of Chataldja, where it finds itself at this hour. But I suppose the military authorities did not dare make this confession of failure, and preferred to run still greater risks than admit defeat. At any rate, the original plan of a concentration between Adrianople and Kirk Kilisse was proceeded with, and I will now relate the sequence of events which brought THE FIRST DEFEAT 91 about its failure and which led to the utter disruption of the Army of Thrace. At the time of the defeat of the garrison of Kirk Kilisse three Turkish Army Corps, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, were being mobilised and gradually pushed to the front. The 1st Army, under Yavir Pasha, was the most forward, and its three divisions, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, were echeloned between Kavakli, south-west of Kirk Kilisse, and Jenidze, about six kilometres further north-west. On October 24th and 25th the three divisions of the 1st Corps — the Constan- tinople troops, and considered one of the crack corps — were attacked and beaten in detail by the Bulgarians who had been victorious at Kirk Kilisse. The 1st Corps was completely broken up, practically all its artillery being captured, and the remnants fled in confusion to Baba Eski. While this disaster was taking place the 3rd Corps, under Mahmoud Mukhtar, was at Bunar Hissar, where it was also attacked by a portion of the Bulgarian army. There was some fighting, but the utter rout of the 1st Army Corps, which exposed his left flank, forced Mahmoud Mukhtar to retire on Viza, which he reached safely. Even this second crushing disaster failed to bring wisdom to the Turkish General Staff", and, instead of a general concentration being ordered of all the corps farther south, troops were pushed to the front, and an effort was made to concentrate the army between Lule Burgas and Karagac. Thus, when the battle of Lule Burgas opened on Monday, October 28th, the position was this : — The 4th Corps, under Abouk Pasha, but not up to its full strength, was in and around Lule Burgas. The remnants of the 1st Corps, which had been routed on the 24th and 25th, had been hastily collected and brought into line, but without guns, as practi- cally all had been lost ; the 2nd Corps, under Shefket Torgut, had come up on the right, and was between Turk- 92 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE Bey and Karagac ; whilst the 3rd Corps, under Mahmoud Mukhtar, was still a long way to the rear at Viza. It will thus be seen that Abdullah's army was in a hope- less state of confusion and demoralisation before the battle began, whilst, on the other hand, the Bulgarians were flushed with two great successes. In addition, the Turkish Commander-in-Chief was taken completely by surprise, which is proved by the fact that, when I saw him at dawn on Monday, October 28th, he told me he had no immediate intention of proceeding to the front, and yet later in the day he hastily departed for Sakiskeuy with his staff, without even having time to forward his personal baggage, and was thus left for two days without food or spare clothes. I have since learnt that such was the confusion amongst the corps, that many of the men never reached their proper divisions, but were hastily snatched up by other commanders and hurried to the fighting-line. As soon as the men were brought up by rail they were dumped down, given vague instructions, and expected to find their proper commands ; and when the battle opened many regiments were wandering about hopelessly lost. Thus some of the 4th Corps fought with the 2nd, and some of the 1st with the 4th, which naturally added to the general demoralisation. CHAPTER VIII DEPARTURE OF THE CORRESPONDENTS FOR THE FRONT We left Constantinople at seven o'clock on the evening of Wednesday, October 23rd, for Kirk Kilisse, the headquarters of the right wing of the Turkish Army of Thrace commanded by Abdullah Pasha. The train was due to start at 4 o'clock, and by 2 p.m. a small army of fifty dragomen and servants, eighty horses, and as much baggage as would have sufficed for a Turkish army corps, had arrived at the station. It was raining hard, and when I went down to see the horses entrained I found the utmost confusion prevailing. The station yard was blocked by a medley of carts and horses, the latter kicking and plunging about in the mud, refusing to be led into the open cattle trucks which were provided for their accommodation. The voluble Greek dragomen added to the confusion by shouting and abusing each other and everyone in general, as is their wont, but finally, by some miracle, horses, baggage, and servants were bundled into the trucks. Meanwhile some thirty-two correspondents, photographers, and cinematograph operators, representing almost every European nationality, had assembled on the station platform. Their costumes were varied, some of them grotesque. One cadaverous Frenchman, who arrived mounted on an 94 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE emaciated cab horse, decked out with an abnormal quantity of obsolete saddle-bags, revolvers, waterbottles, filters, etc., was at once christened Don Quixote, and an obese German, who followed him, was nick-named Sancho Panza. The correspondent of the Kreuz-Zeitung wore the largest sombrero that it has ever been my lot to see, with one side looped up after the manner of Roosevelt's Roughriders, or of the C.I.V. As it rains continually at this season, I imagine that he must have intended to use it as an umbrella. We had to wait three hours at the station, but there was so much incident that the wait did not seem dull. A number of Turkish infantry had stacked their rifles and were squatting about on the platforms waiting to entrain. Two of them had pulled out rustic pipes, and were playing a monotonous wailing melody, while a dozen other rough- bearded soldiers danced a slow measure round and round in a circle, waving their arms in rhythm with the music. Later on, a regiment marched into the station with its band playing, while the crowd pressed round clapping and cheering. We were allotted carriages in the same train as this regiment. A number of the correspondents' friends, among whom were several ladies, and a number of Turkish officers had come to bid us farewell. Everyone was in the best of spirits at getting away from Constantinople at last, after the weeks of tedious waiting and uncertainty. The Turkish officers assured us that they would join us in a few days, and invited us to dine with them in Sofia, and other equally unlikely places. I don't think that anyone had an idea of how quickly disaster was destined to overtake the Turkish Army, or of how, within a few weeks, most of these fine soldiers who were being despatched to the front daily would have either been killed on the battle- field, or have perished of disease by the roadside, uncared for and unmourned. OFF TO THE FRONT 95 Hundreds of people had gathered along the railway line to cheer and burn torches and fireworks as the train steamed out through the shadowy suburbs of Stamboul, while a tuneless brass band was playing in an open truck. A few miles outside Constantinople we had a first glimpse of the realities of war when we were halted in a siding, while a train-load of badly- wounded men on its way back from the front crawled slowly by. By the light of the carriage lamps we could see the men lying about on the floors and seats of the carriages in varying attitudes of suffering. One young officer, his clothes soaked in blood, lay pale and rigid on the floor of a first-class carriage. He had died of his wounds during the journey. A little farther on we passed a train-load of refugees flying from Adrianople and the surrounding villages. Women and children were packed in first-class carriages or cattle-trucks, with the wreck of their homes scattered in confusion around them. I shared a second-class carriage with Lionel James of The Tivies, and Martin Donohoe of the Chronicle, both of whom afterwards became my constant companions. Having had some experience of Turkish methods, we had brought provisions for four days in the carriage with us, although we were due at Kirk Kilisse on the following day at noon. We ate an impromptu supper of sardines and tongue and cocoa, which we boiled over a portable spirit lamp, and then, worn out by a fortnight of procrastination and preparations in Constantinople, settled down to sleep as best we could in the railway carriage, which was crowded with our camp equipment. Few things are more ghastly than dawn in a railway carriage. If you have the window open at night the draught becomes intolerable, and if it is shut one awakes in an atmo- sphere sodden and foetid. It is bad enough in a sleeper on 96 WITH THE TURKS IN THRACE the Orient Express, but here, in a second-class Turkish railway carriage en route for the front, it was infinitely worse. A large measure of our first enthusiasm evaporated when we awoke in the morning and found ourselves halted at the little wayside station of Seidler, twenty miles from Lule Burgas, and on the main line to Adrianople. There were no signs of a village, only a few station buildings, while as far as the eye could see stretched a brown and barren plain like the South African veldt. It was raining hard, and in the grey light of dawn the landscape looked indescribably desolate. We were told that we should have to wait two or three hours to allow train-loads of wounded men to pass, so, stiff and tired, we turned out to refresh ourselves by a wash under the station pump. Towards noon we sighted a long line of wagons and people on foot winding across the hills from the direction of liule Burgas. At first we thought that it was an army in retreat, but after a time we could make out that they were women and children, tramping across country with all their worldly goods packed in bullock- wagons. They went bare- footed for the most part, and in places had to wade up to their knees through mud and water. One pretty little dark-eyed girl was riding astride on an ox, and other little children were urging on the patient bullocks with their goads. An old man who was limping down the road, moaning as he went, told me that the Bulgarians had captured Kirk Kilisse, and that the villages were in flames. Then he shook his fist towards the north and swore a vengeance that he could never hope to take. We were told that we should be taken back to Chorion at once, but a train became derailed behind us and we were compelled to wait until the line could be repaired. i^