The Balkan Peninsula Part 4

In 1914 no more was heard of "Lord Salisbury's principle," and in public repute the Balkan States were in a position worse than any they had occupied for half a century. Coming after a successful war such a result condemns most strongly Balkan statesmen and diplomats.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Exclusive News Agency_

GENERAL VIEW OF STARA ZAGORA, BULGARIA]

Roumanian diplomacy during 1912-13 was subtle, wily, and unscrupulous, enough to delight a Machiavelli. With all its ethical wickedness it was the most stable element in the wild disorders of 1913; was efficacious in insisting upon peace: and imposed a sort of rough justice on all parties. Grecian diplomacy was of the same character as the Roumanian, but not so supremely able. The difference, it appeared to me, was that the Roumanian sought a grand advantage with a humble air: the Greek would seek an advantage, even a humble one, with a grand air. A lofty dignity sits well on the diplomacy which is backed by great force: there should be something more humble in the bearing of the diplomat relying upon subtle wiles. The Greek is a little too conscious of his heroic past not to spoil a little the working of his otherwise very pliant diplomacy. The Serbian in diplomacy was not so childish as the Bulgarian and a great deal more amiable and modest. Europe has long given the Serbian a bad reputation for bounce and bl.u.s.ter. In the events of 1912-13 he did nothing to earn such ill-repute. His work in the field was done excellently and with little _reclame_. In Conference he was not aggressive, but moderate, and, in my experience, more truthful than other Balkan types.

CHAPTER VI

THE TROUBLES OF A WAR CORRESPONDENT IN THE BALKANS

Being a war correspondent with the Bulgarian army gave one far better opportunities of studying Balkan scenery and natural characteristics than war operations. After getting through to Staff headquarters at Stara Zagora and to Mustapha Pasha, which was about twelve miles from the operations against Adrianople, I found myself a kind of prisoner of the censor, and recall putting my complaint into writing on November 7:

It is the dullest of posts, this, at the tail of an army which is moving forward and doing brave deeds whilst we are cooped up by the censor, thirsting for news, and given an occasional bulletin which tells us just what it is thought that we should be told. True, we are not prisoners exactly. We may go out within a mile radius. That is the rule which must be faithfully kept under pain of being sent back to headquarters. Perhaps, now and again, a desperate correspondent, thinking that it would not be such a sad thing after all to be sent back to headquarters, takes a generous view of what a mile is. (Perhaps he has been used to Irish miles, which are of the elastic kind; short when you pay a car fare, long, very long, at other times.) But, supposing, with great energy and at dread risk of being sent back to headquarters a correspondent _has_ walked one mile and one yard; or his horse, which cannot read notices, has unwittingly carried him on; and supposing that he has made all kinds of brilliant observations, a.n.a.lysing a speck of s.h.i.+ning metal showing there, a puff of smoke elsewhere, a flash, or a scar on the earth, still there remains the censor. A courteous gentleman is the censor, with a manner even deferential. He cuts off the head of your news with the most malignant courtesy. "I am sorry, my dear sir, but that refers to movements of troops; it is forbidden. And that might be useful to the enemy. Ah, that observation is excellent; but it cannot go."

Afterwards, there remains in your mind an impression of your wickedness in having troubled so amiable a gentleman, and on your telegraph form nothing, just nothing. Of course, if you like, you can pa.s.s along the camp chatter, the stories brought in by Greeks anxious to curry favour, the descriptions of the capture of Constantinople by peasants whose first cousins were staying at the Pera Hotel the day it happened. The censor is too wise a gentleman to interfere with the harmless amus.e.m.e.nt of sending that on. It does not harm; it may entertain somebody.

So at the rear of the army, which is making the Christian arm more respected than it has been for some time in this Balkan Peninsula, we sit and growl. Those of us who are convinced that we possess that supreme capacity of a general "to see what is going on behind the next hill" are particularly sad. There are so many precious observations being wasted, theories which cannot be expressed, sagacious "I told you so's" which are smothered. We are at the rear of an army, and endless trains of transport move on; and if we can by chance catch the sound of a distant gun we are happy for a day, since it suggests the real thing. Some of us are optimists, and feel sure that we shall go forward in a day or two; that we shall be allowed to see the bombardment of Adrianople; if not that, then its capture; if not that, then something. Others are pessimists, and have gone home.

It is easy to understand the anxiety of the Bulgarians. They are engaged in a big war. They know that some of the Great Powers are watching its progress with something more than interest and something less than sympathy. It is their impression that they can beat the Turks; but that afterwards they may have to meet an attempt to neutralise their victory. So they are anxious to mask every detail of their organisation. Secrecy applies to the past as well as to the present and the future. But it is very irritating; and one goes home, or holds on in the hope that something better will come after a time.

Meanwhile one may learn a little of the country and its people--this country which has been riven by many wars. The map--with its names in several languages--gives indications of the wounds they inflicted. In Bulgaria, too, it shows how determined is the nationality of the people who have within a generation rea.s.serted their right to be a nation. They permit no Turkish names to remain on their maps. Not only do the Arabic characters go, but also the Turkish names. Eski Sagrah, for example, gives place to the t.i.tle it has on the best English maps. "Sagrah" means in Turkish a "dell," a place sheltered by a wood. "Eski" means "old."

The Bulgarian has changed that to Stara Zagora, Bulgarian words with exactly the same significance. He wishes to wipe away all traces of the defiling hand of the Turk from his country, though tolerant of his Turkish fellow-subjects.

Almost completely he succeeds, but not quite completely. The Turkish sweetmeats, the Turkish coffee keep their hold on the taste of the people, and away from the towns, among the peasants who till rich fields with wooden ploughs, there remain traces of the Eastern disregard for time. But even in the country the people are waking up to modern ideas, aroused in part by the American "drummer"

selling agricultural machinery. But in his city of Sofia, "the little Paris," as he likes to hear it called, and in his towns the Bulgarian has become keen and bustling. He rather aspires to be thought Parisian in manner. A "middle cla.s.s" begins to grow up. The Bulgarian prospers mightily as a trader, and when he makes money he devotes his son to a profession, to the staff of the army, the law, to public life. Also the Bulgarian is keen to add manufacturing industries to his agricultural resources, and there are cotton mills and other factories springing up in different places. The Bulgarian has a great faith in himself. Thinking over what he has done within forty years, it is easy to share that belief and to think of him one day with a great seaport on the Mediterranean aspiring to a place in the family council of Europe.

Afterwards, when by dint of hard begging, hard travelling, hard living, and some hard swearing, I had forced my way through to the front, I concluded that with the exception of Mustapha Pasha--where the Second Army had failed at its task and was set to work on a dull siege, and was consequently very bad-tempered--the famous censors.h.i.+p of the Bulgarian Army was not so vexatious to the correspondents as to their editors. The censors were usually polite, and tried to make a difficult position agreeable.

When the correspondents were despatched it was thought that the Balkan States, needing a "good Press," would be fairly kind. The expectation was realised in the case of the Montenegrins and the Greeks. The Serbians allowed the correspondents to see nothing. The Bulgarian idea was to allow nothing to be seen and nothing to be despatched except the "Te Deums." It was an aggravation of the j.a.panese censors.h.i.+p, and if it is accepted as a model for future combatant States the "war correspondent" will become extinct. I am not disposed to claim that an army in the field should carry on its operations under the eyes of newspaper correspondents; and there were special circ.u.mstances in regard to the campaign of the Bulgarian army (which was a desperate rush against a big people of a little people operating with the slenderest of resources) that made a severe censors.h.i.+p absolutely necessary. But, that allowed, there are still some points of criticism justified.

One correspondent, and one only, was exempted from censors.h.i.+p, and he was not at the front but at Sofia. His special position as an informal member of the Cabinet led to a concession which, to a man of honour, was more of a responsibility than a privilege. At the outset the Russian and French correspondents were highly favoured, and two English correspondents--who were working jointly--were granted pa.s.ses of credit to all the armies. That privilege was afterwards granted to me towards the end of the war. It should have been granted to all or none. A censors.h.i.+p which is harsh but has no favouritism may be criticised, but it cannot be held suspect. Throughout the campaign there was some favouritism, the Russians having first place, the French next, the English and Americans next, the Italians, Germans, Austrians, and others coming last. The differentiation between nations was comprehensible enough, in view of the political situation in Europe, but differentiations between different papers of equal standing of the same country cannot be defended. As I ended the campaign one of the three favoured English correspondents, I speak on this point without bitterness. Indeed, I found no valid grounds for abusing the censors.h.i.+p until just as I was leaving Sofia, when I found that some of my messages from Kirk Kilisse to the _Morning Post_ had been seriously (and, it would seem, deliberately) mutilated _after_ they had pa.s.sed the censor.

They were of some importance as sent--one the first account from the Bulgarian side of the battle of Chatalja, the other a frank statement of the position following that battle, which I did not submit to the censor until after close consultation with high authority, and which was pa.s.sed then with some modifications, and, after being pa.s.sed, was mutilated until it had little or no meaning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Exclusive News Agency_

SOFIA

Commercial Road from Commercial Square]

In lighter vein I may record some of the humours of the censors.h.i.+p, mostly from Mustapha Pasha, where the Second Army was held up and everybody was in the worst of tempers. Mustapha Pasha would not allow ox wagons to be mentioned, would not allow photographs of reservists to be sent forward because they were not in full uniform, would not allow the fact that Serbian troops were before Adrianople to be recorded. Indeed, the censors.h.i.+p there was full of strange prohibitions. Going down to Mustapha Pasha I noticed aeroplane equipment. The censor objected to that being recorded then, though two days after the official bulletin trumpeted the fact.

At Mustapha Pasha the custom was after the war correspondent had written a despatch to bring it to the censor, who held his court in a room surrounded by a crowd of correspondents. The censor insisted that the correspondent should read the despatch aloud to him. Then the censor read it over again aloud to him to make sure that all heard. Thus we all learned how the other man's imagination was working, and telegraphing was reduced to a complete farce. Private letters had to pa.s.s through the same ordeal, and one correspondent, with a turn of humour, wrote an imaginary private letter full of the most fervent love messages, which was read out to a furiously blus.h.i.+ng censor and to a batch of journalists, who at first did not see the joke and tried to look as if they were not listening. I have described the early days of Mustapha Pasha. Later, when most of the men had gone away, conditions improved.

The "second censors.h.i.+p"--the most disingenuous and condemnable part of the Bulgarian system--was applied with full force to Mustapha Pasha.

After correspondents, who were forbidden to go a mile out of the town and forbidden to talk with soldiers, had pa.s.sed their pitiful little messages through the censor, those messages were not telegraphed, but posted on to the Staff headquarters and then censored again, sometimes stopped. Certes, the treasures of strategical observation and vivid description thus lost were not very great, but the whole proceeding was unfair and underhand. The censor's seal once affixed a message should go unchanged. Otherwise it might be twisted into actual false information.

In almost all cases the individual censors were gentlemen, and personally I never had trouble with any of them; but the system was faulty at the outset, inasmuch as it was not frank, and was made worse when it became necessary to change the plan of campaign and abandon the idea of capturing Adrianople. Then the Press correspondents who had been allowed down to Mustapha Pasha in the expectation that after two days they would be permitted to follow the victorious army into Adrianople, had to be kept in that town, and had to be prevented from knowing anything of what was going on. The courageous course would have been to have put them under a definite embargo for a period. That was not followed, and the same end was sought by a series of irritating tricks and evasions. The facts argue against the continuance of the war correspondent. An army really can never be sure of its victory until the battle is over. If it allows the journalists to come forward to see an expected victory and the victory does not come, then awkward facts are necessarily disclosed, and the moving back of those correspondents is tantamount to a confession of a movement of retreat. If I were a general in the field I should allow no war correspondents with the troops except reliable men, who would agree to see the war out, to send no despatches until the conclusion of an operation, and to observe any interdiction which might be necessary then. Under these circ.u.mstances there would be very few correspondents, but there would be no deceit and no ill-feeling.

The holding up of practically all private telegraphic messages by the authorities at the front was a real grievance. It was impossible to communicate with one's office to get instructions. One correspondent, arriving at Sofia at the end of the campaign, found that he had been recalled a full month before. The unnecessary mystery about the locality of Staff headquarters added to the difficulty of keeping in touch with one's office.

The Bulgarian people made some "bad friends" on the Press because of the censors.h.i.+p; but the sore feeling was not always justifiable. The worst that can be said is that the military authorities did in rather a weak and disingenuous way what they should have had the moral courage to do in a firm way at the outset. The Bulgarian enterprise against the Turks was so audacious, the need of secrecy in regard to equipment was so pressing, that there was no place for the journalist. Under the circ.u.mstances a nation with more experience of affairs and more confidence in herself would have accredited no correspondents. Bulgaria sought the same end as that which would have served secrecy by an evasive way. Englishmen, with centuries of greatness to give moral courage, may not complain too harshly when the circ.u.mstances of this new-come nation are considered.

When the army of Press correspondents were gathered, it was seen that there were several Austrians and Roumanians, and these countries were at the time threatening mobilisation against the Balkan States. It was impossible to expect that the Bulgarian forces should allow Roumanian journalists and Austrian journalists to see anything of their operations which might be useful to Austria or Roumania in a future campaign. Yet it would not have been proper to have allowed correspondents other than the Austrians and Roumanians to go to the front, because that would perhaps have created a diplomatic question, which would have increased the tension. It certainly would have given offence to Austria and to Roumania. It would have been said that there was an idea that war was intended against those nations; and diplomacy was anxious to avoid giving expression to any such idea. The military attaches were in exactly the same position.

There were the Austrian attache and the Roumanian attache, and their duty was to report to their Governments all they could find out that would be to the advantage of the military forces of their Governments.

The Bulgarians naturally would not allow the Roumanian nor the Austrian attache to see anything of what went on. The attaches were even worse treated than the correspondents, because, as the campaign developed, the Bulgarians got to understand that some of us were trustworthy, and we were given certain facilities for seeing. But we were still without facilities for the despatch of what we had seen. But the military attaches were kept right in the rear all the time. They were taken over the battle-fields after the battles had been fought, so that they might see what victories had been gained by the Bulgarians.

The Bulgarians were much strengthened in their att.i.tude towards the war correspondents by the fact that they admitted receiving much help in their operations from the news published in London and in French newspapers from the Turkish side. The Turkish army, when the period of rout began, was in the position that it was able to exercise little check on its war correspondents; and the Bulgarians had everything which was recorded as being done in the Turkish army sent on to them. They said it was a great help to them. I think the outlook for war correspondents in the future is a gloomy one, and the outlook for the military attache also. In the future, no army carrying on anything except minor operations with savage nations, no army whose interests might be vitally affected by information leaking out, is likely to allow military attaches or war correspondents to see anything at all.

The Balkan War probably will close the book of the war correspondent. It was in the wars of the "Near East" that that book was first opened in the modern sense. Some of the greatest achievements of the craft were in the Crimean War, the various Turco-Russian wars, and the Greco-Turkish struggle. It is an incidental proof of the popularity of the Balkan Peninsula as a war theatre that the history of the profession of the war correspondent would be a record almost wholly of wars in the Near East.

Certainly if the "war correspondent" is to survive he will need to be of a new type. I came to that conclusion when I returned to Kirk Kilisse from the Bulgarian lines at Chatalja, and had amused myself in an odd hour with burrowing among a great pile of newspapers in the censor's office, and reading here and there the war news from English, French, and Belgian papers.

Dazed, dismayed, I recognised that I had altogether mistaken the duties of a war correspondent. For some six weeks I had been following an army in breathless anxious chase of facts: wheedling censors to get some few of those facts into a telegraph office; learning then, perhaps, that the custom at that particular telegraph office was to forward telegrams to Sofia, a ten days' journey, by bullock wagon and railway, to give them time to mature. Now here, piping hot, were the stories of the war. There was the touching prose poem about King Ferdinand following his troops to the front in a military train, which was his temporary palace. One part of the carriage, serving as his bed-chamber, was taken up with a portrait of his mother, and to that picture he looked ever for encouragement, for advice, for praise. Had there been that day a "Te Deum" for a great victory? He looked at the picture and added, "Te Matrem."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Exclusive News Agency_

BUCHAREST

The Roumanian House of Representatives]

It was a beautiful story, and why should any one let loose a brutal bulldog of a fact and point out that King Ferdinand during the campaign lived in temporary palaces at Stara Zagora and Kirk Kilisse, and when he travelled on a visit to some point near the front it was usually by motor-car?

In a paper of another nationality there was a vivid story of the battle of Chatalja. This story started the battle seven days too soon; had the positions and the armies all wrong; the result all wrong; and the picturesque details were in harmony. But for the purposes of the public it was a very good story of a battle. Those men who, after great hards.h.i.+ps, were enabled to see the actual battle found that the poor messages which the censor permitted them to send took ten days or more in transmission to London. Why have taken all the trouble and expense of going to the front? Buda-Pest, on the way there, is a lovely city; Bucharest also; and charming Vienna was not at all too far away if you had a good staff map and a lively military imagination.

In yet another paper there was a vivid picture--scenery, date, Greenwich time, and all to give an air of artistic verisimilitude--of the signing of the Peace armistice. The armistice had not been signed at the time, was not signed for some days after. But it would have been absurd to have waited, since "our special correspondent" had seen it all in advance, right down to the embrace of the Turkish delegate and the Bulgarian delegate, and knew that some of the conditions were that the Turkish commissariat was to feed the Bulgarian troops at Chatalja and the Bulgarian commissariat the Turkish troops in Adrianople. If his paper had waited for the truth that most charming story would never have seen the light.

So, in a little book I shall one day bring out in the "Attractive Occupations" series on "How to be a War Correspondent," I shall give this general advice:

1. Before operations begin, visit the army to which you are accredited, and take notes of the general appearance of officers and men. Also learn a few military phrases of their language. Ascertain all possible particulars of a personal character concerning the generals and chief officers.

2. Return then to a base outside the country. It must have good telegraph communication with your newspaper. For the rest you may decide its locality by the quality of the wine, or the beer, or the cooking.

3. Secure a set of good maps of the scene of operations. It will be handy also to have any books which have been published describing campaigns over the same _terrain_.

4. Keep in touch with the official bulletins issued by the military authorities from the scene of operations. But be on guard not to become enslaved by them. If, for instance, you wait for official notices of battles, you will be much hampered in your picturesque work. Fight battles when they ought to be fought and how they ought to be fought.

The story's the thing.

5. A little sprinkling of personal experience is wise: for example, a bivouac on the battle-field, toasting your bacon at a fire made of a broken-down gun carriage with a bayonet taken from a dead soldier.

Mention the nationality of the bacon. You cannot be too precise in details.

Ko-Ko's account of the execution of Nankipoo is, in short, the model for the future war correspondent. The other sort of war correspondent, who patiently studied and recorded operations, seems to be doomed. In the nature of things it must be so. The more competent and the more accurate he is, the greater the danger he is to the army which he accompanies. His despatches, published in his newspaper and telegraphed promptly to the other side, give to them at a cheap cost that information of what is going on _behind_ their enemy's screen of scouts which is so vital to tactical, and sometimes to strategical, dispositions. To try to obtain that information an army pours out much blood and treasure; to guard that information an army will consume a full third of its energies in an elaborate system of mystification. A modern army must either banish the war correspondent altogether or subject him to such restrictions of censors.h.i.+p as to veto honest, accurate, and prompt criticism or record of operations.