detached from the organism to which they belonged; and some of them,
exaggerating the results already obtained, have stated that it is now
possible to make living tissues grow and increase when so detached.

Having given these subjects much study I wish to state here what has
already been done and what we may hope to accomplish. As a matter of
fact we do not yet know how to construct living cells; the forms
obtained with mineral substances by Errera, Stephane Leduc, and others,
have only a remote resemblance to those of life; neither do we know how
to prevent death; but yet it is interesting to know that it is possible
to prolong for some time the life of organs, tissues, and cells after
they have been removed from the organism.

The idea of preserving the life of greater or lesser parts of an
organism occurred at about the same time to a number of persons, and
though the ends in view have been quite different, the investigations
have led to essentially similar results. The surgeons who for a long
time have transplanted various organs and grafted different tissues,
bits of skin among others, have sought to prolong the period during
which the grafts may be preserved alive from the time they are taken
from the parent individual until they are implanted either upon the
same subject or upon another. The physiologists have attempted to
isolate certain organs and preserve them alive for some time in order
to simplify their experiments by suppressing the complex action of the
nervous system and of glands which often render difficult a proper
interpretation of the experiments. The cytologists have tried to
preserve cells alive outside the organism in more simple and
well-defined conditions. These various efforts have already given, as
we shall see, very excellent results both as regards the theoretical
knowledge of vital phenomena and for the practise of surgery.

It has been possible to preserve for more or less time many organs in a
living condition when detached from the organism. The organ first tried
and which has been most frequently and completely investigated is the
heart. This is because of its resistance to any arrest of the
circulation and also because its survival is easily shown by its
contractility. In man the heart has been seen to beat spontaneously and
completely 25 minutes after a legal decapitation (Renard and Loye,
1887), and by massage of the organ its beating may be restored after it
has been arrested for 40 minutes (Rehn, 1909). By irrigation of the
heart and especially of its coronary vessels the period of revival may
be much prolonged.

The first experiments with artificial circulation in the isolated heart
were made in Ludwig's laboratory, but they were limited to the frog and
the inferior vertebrates. Since then experiments on the survival of the
heart have multiplied and become classic. Artificial circulation has
kept the heart of man contracting normally for 20 hours (Kuliabko,
1902), that of the monkey for 54 hours (Hering, 1903), that of the
rabbit for 5 days (Kuliabko, 1902), etc. It has also enabled us to
study the influence upon the heart of physical factors, such as
temperature, isotonia; chemical factors, such as various salts and the
different ions; and even complex pharmaceutical products. Kuliabko
(1902) was even able to note contractions in the heart of a rabbit that
had been kept in cold storage for 18 hours, and in the heart of a cat
similarly kept after 24 hours. The other muscular organs have naturally
been investigated in a manner analogous to that which has been used for
the heart; and for the same reason, because it can be readily seen
whether or not they are alive. The striated muscles survive for quite a
long time after removal, especially if they are preserved at the
temperature of the body and care is taken to prevent their drying. By
this method many investigations have been made of muscular contractions
in isolated muscles. Landois has noted that the muscles of a man may be
made to contract two hours and a half after removal, those of the frog
and the tortoise 10 days after. Recently Burrows (1911) has noted a
slight increase in the myotomes of the embryo chick after they have
been kept for 2 to 6 days in coagulated plasma.

Non-muscular organs may also survive a removal from the parent
organism, but the proofs of their survival are more difficult to
establish because of the absence of movements. Carrel (1906) grafted
fragments of vessels that had been in cold storage for several days
upon the course of a vessel of a living animal of the same species; in
1907 he grafted upon the abdominal aorta of a cat a segment of the
jugular vein of a dog removed 7 days previously, also a segment of the
carotid of a dog removed 20 days before; the circulation was
reestablished normally; these experiments have, however, been
criticized by Fleig, who thinks that the grafted fragments were dead
and served merely as supports and directors for the regeneration of the
vessels upon which they were set. In 1909 Carrel removed the left
kidney from a bitch, kept it out of the body for 50 minutes, and then
replaced it; the extirpation of the other kidney did not cause the
death of the animal, which remained for more than a year normal and in
good health, thus proving the success of the graft. In 1910 Carrel
succeeded with similar experiments on the spleen.

Taken altogether, these experiments show that the greater part, if not
all, of the bodily organs are able to survive for more or less time
after removal from the organism when favorable conditions are
furnished. There is no doubt but what the observed times of survival
may be considerably prolonged when we have a better knowledge of the
serums that are most favorable and the physical and chemical conditions
that are most advantageous.

If we can preserve the organs, we may expect to also keep alive the
tissues and cells of which they are composed. Biologists have studied
these problems, too, and have also obtained in this department some
very interesting results.

The cells which live naturally isolated in the organism, such as the
corpuscles of the blood and spermatozoa, were the first studied. Since
1910 experiments on the survival of tissues have multiplied and at the
same time more knowledge has been obtained concerning the conditions
most favorable to survival and the microscopical appearances of the
tissues so preserved. In 1910 Harrison, having placed fragments of an
embryo frog in a drop of coagulated lymph taken from an adult, saw them
continue their development for several weeks, the muscles and the
epithelium differentiating, the nervous rudiments sending out into the
lymph filaments similar to nerve fibers. Since 1910 with the aid of Dr.
Minot, I have succeeded in preserving alive the nerve cells of the
spinal ganglia of adult dogs and rabbits by placing them in
defibrinated blood of the same animal, through which there bubbled a
current of oxygen. At zero and perhaps better at 15 deg.-20 deg., the structure
of the cells and their colorable substance is preserved without notable
change for at least four days; moreover, when the temperature is raised
again to 39 deg., certain of the cells give a proof of their survival by
forming new prolongations, often of a monstrous character. At 39 deg. some
of the ganglion cells which have been preserved rapidly lose their
colorability and then their structure breaks up, but a certain number
of the others form numerous outgrowths extremely varied in appearance.
We have, besides, studied the influence of isotony, of agitation, and
of oxygenation, and these experiments have enabled me to ascertain the
best physical conditions required for the survival of nervous tissue.
In 1910, Burrows, employing the technique of Harrison, obtained results
similar to his with fragments of embryonic chickens. Since 1910 Carrel
and Burrows applied the same method to what they call the "culture" of
the tissues of the adult dog and rabbit; they have thus preserved and
even multiplied cells of cartilage, of the thyroid, the kidney, the
bone marrow, the spleen, of cancer, etc. Perhaps Carrel and his
collaborators may be criticized for calling "culture" that which is
merely a survival, but there still remains in their work a great
element of real interest.

Such are, too briefly summarized, the experiments which have been made
up to the present time. We can readily imagine the practical
consequences which we may very shortly hope to derive from them, and
the wonderful applications of them which will follow in the domain of
surgery. Without going so far as the dream of Dr. Moreau depicted by
Wells, since grafts do not succeed between animals of different
species, we may hope that soon, in many cases, the replacing of organs
will be no longer impossible, but even easy, thanks to methods of
conservation and survival which will enable us to have always at hand
material for exchange.

The dream of to-day may be reality to-morrow.

There are also other consequences which will follow from these
researches. I hope that they will permit us to study the physical and
chemical factors of life under much simpler conditions than heretofore,
and it is toward this end that I am directing my researches. They will
enable us to approach much nearer the solution of the old insoluble
problem of life and death. What indeed is the death of an organism all
of whose parts may yet survive for some time?

These, then, are the researches made in this domain, fecund from every
point of view, and the great increase in the number of experts who are
taking them up, while it is a proof of their interest, gives hope for
their rapid progress.




THE OVERTHROW OF TURKEY

THE FIRST BALKAN WAR A.D. 1912

J. ELLIS BARKER FREDERICK PALMER Prof. STEPHEN P. DUGGAN

Turkey's _opera-bouffe_ war with Italy in 1911 plunged her into a far
more terrible and sanguinary struggle. Seeing her weakness, the little
Balkan States seized the opportunity to unite and attack her. Each of
the Balkan allies had once been crushed by Turkey and had fought for
freedom. Each was jealous and suspicious of all the others. Each people
hoped that in the break-up of Turkey their own land would be enlarged.
Each saw members of their own race oppressed in the Macedonian region
still held by Turkey. In face of their great opportunity, however, all
the four States--Bulgaria, Greece, Servia, and Montenegro--hushed their
own quarrels and joined in attacking their common enemy.

Of the causes of the war, Mr. J. Ellis Barker, the noted English
authority on Turkey, here gives a brief account. The tale of the first
glorious campaign, with its big battles of Kirk-Kilesseh and
Lule-Burgas, is then told by Mr. Frederick Palmer, the foremost of
American war correspondents upon the scene. The confused negotiations
for peace are then detailed by Prof. Stephen P. Duggan, our American
authority upon the Balkan States.


J. ELLIS BARKER

A short time ago I read an interesting account of Sir Max Waechter's
recent journey to the capitals of Turkey and all the other Balkan
States. He had visited these towns wit the object of laying before the
Sovereigns of the Balkan States and their Ministers proposals for
abolishing war by the creation of a European Federation of States. All
the Balkan Sovereigns and Ministers whom he had seen had expressed
themselves sympathetically and favorably and had agreed to accept the
_status quo_. A month later all the Balkan States were at war; Russia,
Austria-Hungary, and Italy were arming, and people were anxiously
discussing the possibility of a world war. The sudden transition from
peace to war appears inexplicable to those unacquainted with the
realities of foreign policy.

In July, 1908, the Turkish Revolution broke out. It was a great and
immediate success. Never in the world's history had there been so
successful a revolution or one so bloodless. As by magic, Turkey was
changed from a medieval State into a modern democracy. The Turkish
masses were rejoicing. Old feuds were forgotten. Mohammedans and
Christians fraternized. The words Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,
Parliamentarism, and Democracy were on all lips. Over night a new
Turkey had arisen. Soon the leaders of Young Turkey began to assert the
right and claims of the new-born State. We were told that European
intervention in the affairs of Turkey would no longer be tolerated, and
that those parts of the Turkish Empire which, though nominally subject
to the Sultan, were no longer under Turkish control, would have to be
handed back. Great Britain was to restore Egypt and Austria-Hungary
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many Englishmen indorsed these claims, and told
us that a new era had opened in the East. At that time only a few
people ventured to doubt whether the Turkish Revolution would be a
lasting success. I think I was the only British publicist who
immediately and unhesitatingly foretold that Parliamentary Government
in Turkey was bound to be a failure, and that it would inevitably lead
to the formation of a Balkan Confederation which would attack Turkey. I
said then:

"European Turkey has about 6,000,000 inhabitants, of whom only about
one-third are Turks.

"The Young Turks have the choice of two evils. They must either follow
a Liberal or a Conservative policy. If they follow a Liberal policy, if
they introduce Parliamentary representation, self-government, and
majority rule in Turkey in general, and in Macedonia in particular, the
Christians will be the majority, and it seems likely that they will
then oust the Turkish minority and convert the ruling race into a ruled
race. A Liberal policy will, therefore, bring about the rapid
disintegration of the Turkish Empire.

"Foreseeing the danger of allowing the alien elements to be further
strengthened, many patriotic Turks have demanded that a vigorous
Conservative policy should be pursued which will abolish the national
differences among the alien races and between the alien races and the
Turks. They demand that a Turkish national policy should be initiated,
that the aliens should be nationalized in Turkish national schools,
that Turkish shall be the language of Turkey, that the Greek,
Bulgarian, and other schools shall be closed. Will Bulgaria, Greece,
and Servia quietly look on while the work of a generation is being
undone? Will the Greeks, Serbs, and Bulgarians residing in Turkey allow
themselves to be denationalized more or less forcibly? Besides, can
they be denationalized against their will except by destroying the
Parliamentary and democratic Government, the Constitution of yesterday,
and by reintroducing the ancient absolutism in an aggravated form? Two
hundred years ago the Turks could easily have nationalized the alien
races by means of the church and the school, but it seems that it is
now too late to make an attempt at turning the subject races into
Turks.

"In endeavoring to settle the conflicts among the alien nationalities
and between the aliens and the Turks, the path of the new Turkish
Government will scarcely be smooth. _The Balkan States_ are watching
events with attention. Although they congratulated the new Turkish
Government, they have no interest in Turkey's regeneration, and they
are bound to oppose the Ottomanization of their compatriots in Turkey.
Therefore, they _may be expected to draw the sword and to face Turkey
unitedly if they see their plans of expansion threatened by the
nationalization of the alien elements in Turkey_."

Unfortunately, my forecast has come true in every particular. The
failure of New Turkey was natural. It was unavoidable. Ancient States
are ponderous and slow-moving bodies. Their course can be deflected and
their character be altered only by gradual evolution, by slow and
almost imperceptible changes spread over a long space of time.
Democracy, like a tree, is a thing of slow growth, and it requires a
congenial soil. It can not be created over night in Turkey, Persia, or
China. The attempt to convert an ancient Eastern despotism, firmly
established on a theocratic basis, a country in which the Koran and the
Multeka are the law of the land, into a Western democracy based on the
secular speculations of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Bentham, Mill, and
Spencer was ridiculous. The revolution effected only an outward change.
It introduced some Western innovations, but altered neither the
character of the Government nor that of the people. Turkish
Parliamentarism became a sham and a make-believe. The cruel absolutism
of Abdul Hamid was speedily followed by the scarcely less cruel
absolutism of a secret committee.

The new rulers of the country were mostly very young men, who were
conspicuous for their enthusiasm and their daring but not for their
judgment and experience. They had picked upon the boulevards and in the
Quartier Latin of Paris and in Geneva the sonorous phrases of Western
democracy and demagogy, and with these they impressed, not only their
fellow citizens, but also the onlookers in Europe. Having obtained
power, they embarked upon a campaign of nationalization. However,
instead of trying to nationalize the non-Turkish millions slowly and
gradually by kind and just treatment coupled with a moderate amount of
nationalizing pressure, they began ruthlessly to make war upon the
language, and to suppress the churches, schools, and other institutions
of the non-Turkish citizens, whom they disarmed and deprived of their
ancient rights. The complaints and remonstrances of the persecuted were
answered with redoubled persecution, with violence, and with massacre,
and soon serious revolts broke out in all parts of the Empire. The
Young Turks followed faithfully in Abdul Hamid's footsteps. However,
Abdul Hamid was clever enough always to play off one nationality or
race against the other. In his Balkan policy, for instance, he
encouraged Greek Christians to slay Christian Bulgarians and Servians,
and allowed Bulgarian bands to make war upon Servians and Greeks,
supporting, on principle, one nationality against the other. But the
Young Turks persecuted indiscriminately and simultaneously all
non-Turkish races, Albanians, Bulgarians, Servians, and Greeks, and
thus they brought about the union of the Balkan States against
themselves.

The outbreak of the war could scarcely have been prevented by the
European Powers. It was bound to come. It was as inevitable as was the
breakdown of the Young Turkish _regime_. Since the earliest times the
Turks have been a race of nomadic warriors. Their policy has always
been to conquer nations, to settle among the conquered, and to rule
them, keeping them in strict and humiliating subjection. They have
always treated the subject peoples harshly and contemptuously. Unlike
other conquerors, they have never tried to create among the conquered a
great and homogeneous State which would have promised permanence, but,
nomad-like, have merely created military settlement among aliens.
Therefore, the alien subjects of the Turks have remained aliens in
Turkey. They have not become citizens of the Empire. As the Turks did
not try to convert the conquered to Islam--the Koran forbids
proselytism by force--and to nationalize them, the subjected and
ill-treated alien masses never amalgamated with the ruling Turks, but
always strove to regain their liberty by rebellion. Owing to the
mistakes made in its creation, the Turkish Empire has been for a long
time an Empire in the process of disintegration. Its later history
consists of a long series of revolts, of which the present outbreak is
the latest, but scarcely the last, instance.

The failure of the new Turkish _regime_ has increased to the utmost the
century-old antagonism between the ruling Turks and their Christian
subjects. The accounts of the sufferings of their brothers across the
borderline, inflicted upon them by Constitutional Turkey, which had
promised such great things, had raised the indignation of the Balkan
peoples to fever heat and had made an explosion of popular fury
inevitable. The war fever increased when it was discovered that
Servians, Bulgarians, and Greeks were at last of one mind, and that
Turkey's strength had been undermined by revolts in all parts of the
Empire and by the Turkish-Italian war. The Turks, on the other hand,
were not unnaturally indignant with the perfidy of the Christian
Powers, which, instead of supporting Turkey in her attempts at reform,
had snatched valuable territories from her immediately after her
revolution. Not unnaturally, they attributed the failure of the new
_regime_ and the revolts of their subjects to the machinations of the
Christian States, and the Balkan troubles to the hostile policy of the
Balkan States. The tension on both sides became intolerable. If the
Balkan States had not mobilized, a revolution would have broken out in
Sofia and Belgrade, for the people demanded war. If the Turkish
Government had given way to the Balkan States, a revolution would have
broken out in Constantinople. The instinct of self-preservation forced
the Balkan Governments and Turkey into war. The passions of race-hatred
had become uncontrollable.


FREDERICK PALMER[1]

[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission from an article in _Everybody's
Magazine_.]

Against any one of his little Christian neighbors the Turk had superior
numbers, and had only to concentrate on a single section of his
many-sided frontier line. It had never entered his mind that the little
neighbors would form an alliance. He had trusted to their jealousies to
keep them apart. United, they could strike him on the front and both
sides simultaneously. He was due for an attack coming down the main
street and from alleys to the right and left.

In this situation he must temporarily accept the defensive. Meanwhile,
he foresaw the battalions of "chocolate soldiers" beating themselves to
pieces against the breastworks of his garrisons, and Greek turning on
Serb and Serb on Bulgar after a taste of real war. Against divided
counsels would be one mind, which, with reenforcements of the faithful
from Asia Minor, would send the remnants of the _opera bouffe_ invasion
flying back over their passes.

But the allies fully realized the danger of quarreling among
themselves, which would have been much harder to avert if their armies
had been acting together as a unit under a single command. Happily,
each army was to make a separate campaign under its own generals; each
had its own separate task; each was to strike at the force in front of
its own borders. Prompt, staggering blows before the Turkish reserves
could arrive were essential.

The Montenegrins in the northwest, who had the side-show (while
Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece had the three rings under the main tent),
did their part when they invested the garrison of Scutari.

Advancing northward, the Greeks, with strong odds in their favor,
easily took care of the Turkish force at Elassona and continued their
advance toward Salonika.

Advancing southward, the Serbs, one hundred thousand strong (that is,
the army of their first line), moved on Kumanova among the hills, where
the forty thousand Turks defending the city of Uskub would make their
stand as inevitably as a board of army engineers would select Sandy
Hook as a site for some of the defenses of New York harbor.
Confidently, the Turkish commander staked all on the issue.

The Serbs did not depend alone on mass or envelopment by flank. They
murderously and swiftly pressed the attack in the front as well as on
the sides; and the cost of victory was seven or eight thousand
casualties. Two or three fragments of the Turkish army escaped along
the road; otherwise, there was complete disintegration.

Uskub was now undefended. It was the ancient capital of Servia; and the
feelings of the Serbs, as they marched in, approximated what ours would
be if our battalions were swinging down Pennsylvania Avenue after a
Mexican proconsul had occupied the White House for five hundred years.
Meanwhile, at Monastir were forty thousand more Turks. So far as
helping their comrades at Kumanova was concerned, they might as well
have been in jail in Kamchatka. You can imagine them sitting
cross-legged, Turkish fashion, waiting their turn. They broke the
precedent of Plevna, which the garrisons of Adrianople and Scutari
gloriously kept, by yielding rather easily. There must have been a
smile on the golden dome of the tomb of Napoleon, who thrashed the
armies of Europe in detail.

A Servian division, immediately after Kumanova, started southwest over
the mountain passes in the snow and through the valleys in the mud to
clinch the great Servian object of the war with the nine points of
possession. To young Servia, Durazzo, the port of old Servia, is as
water to the gasping fish. It stands for unhampered trade relations
with the world; for economic freedom. When that division, ragged and
footsore, came at last in sight of the blue Adriatic--well, it may
safely be called a historic moment for one little nation.

Now we turn from the side lines, where the Serbs and the Greeks were
occupied, to the neck of the funnel through which the Turkish
reenforcements from Asia Minor were coming. There the Bulgars had
undertaken the great, vital task of the war against the main Turkish
army.

The Bulgarian army was little given to gaiety and laughter, but sang
the "Shuma Maritza" on the march. This is the song of big men in
boots--big white men with set faces--making the thunder of a torrent as
they charge. "Roaring Maritza" is the nearest that you can come to
putting it into English. The Maritza is the national river, and the
song pictures it swollen and rushing in the winter rains or when the
snows on the Balkans melt, on its way past the Bulgarian border into
Turkey; and the gray army was now to follow it to the Aegean, in the
spirit of its flood, and make the harbor at its mouth Bulgarian.

Yes, a gray army, bent on a grim business in a hurry, in gray winter
weather and chill mountain mists, with the sun showing through overcast
skies--something of the kind of weather that bred the Scotch. Cromwell
or Stonewall Jackson would have felt at home, saying his prayers at the
double-quick, in such company. As mementos from home, the soldiers wore
in their caps and buttonholes withered flowers and sprigs of green
which their womenfolk had given in farewell. The women were just as
Spartan as the Spartans; perhaps more so. If any soldier lacked innate
courage, the spur of public opinion drove him forward in step with his
comrades.

Naturally, Bulgarian generalship had to adapt its plan of campaign to
the obstacles between it and its adversary. For armies are cumbrous
affairs. In all times they have been tied down to roads and bridges.
The main highway and the main railway line from Sofia, the capital of
Bulgaria, to Constantinople both ran through Adrianople. Nature meant
this city, set in a basin among hills, for defense, and for the center
of any army defending Thrace. On the near-by hills is a circle of
permanent forts that commands all approaches for guns or infantry. In
front of it is the turbulent Maritza, and to the northeast lies the
town of Kirk-Kilesseh, partly fortified and naturally strong, which
formed the Turkish right. The left rested at Demotika, to the south of
Adrianople, in a rough country inaccessible to prompt action by a large
force.

The Bulgars must turn one wing or the other. Foreign military experts
thought that Kirk-Kilesseh could be taken only after a long operation,
and then only by a force much larger than the Bulgars could spare for
concentration at any one point of the line. Let two weeks pass without
a definite victory, and the Turks would have numbers equal to the
Bulgars; a month, superior numbers. As it was, the Turks had
altogether, including the Adrianople garrison, a hundred and
seventy-five thousand men in strong position against the Bulgars' first
line of two hundred and eighty thousand.

A branch of the Sofia-Constantinople railway line runs northeast to
Yamboli, on the Bulgarian frontier. Between Yamboli and Kirk-Kilesseh
is a highway--the Turkish kind of highway--and no unfordable streams or
other natural obstacles to an army's progress. At Yamboli the Bulgars
concentrated their third army corps, under General Demetrief, and a
portion of their second. The rest of the second faced Adrianople, while
the first corps operated to the south and east.

Swinging around on Kirk-Kilesseh, the third army would not take "No!"
for an answer. The Bulgarian infantry stormed the redoubts in the
moonlight. They knew how to use the bayonet and the Turks did not.
Skilfully driven steel slaughtered Mohammedan fanaticism that fought
with clubbed guns, hands, and teeth, asking no quarter this side of
Paradise. Kirk-Kilesseh fell. The Turkish army, flanked, had to go;
Adrianople was isolated. The Bulgarian dead on the field could not
complain; the wounded were in the rear; the living had burning eyes on
the next goal.

"_Na noj!"_ ("Fix bayonets!") had won. "_Na noj!_ Give them the steel!"
was the cry of a nation. Soldiers sang it out to one another on the
march. Children prattled it at home as if it were a new kind of game:

"Give them the steel and they will go! Nothing can stop Bulgaria!"

Not more than two Bulgarian soldiers out of twenty ever reached the
Turk with a bayonet. The Turk did not wait for them. So the bayonet
counted no less in the morale of the eighteen than of the two.
Frequently they fixed it at a distance of five or six hundred yards.
Their desire to use it made them press close at all points with the
grim initiative that will not be gainsaid. When they charged, the
spirit of cold steel was in their rush.

There was a splendid audacity in General Demetrief's next move after
Kirk-Kilesseh. He did not pause to surround Adrianople. To the east was
a wide gap in the investing lines. Through this the garrison might have
made a sortie with telling effect. But Demetrief knew his enemy. He
took it for granted that the garrison was settling itself for a siege.
With twelve thousand Turkish reenforcements a day arriving from Asia,
even hours counted.

As yet, the Turks were not decisively beaten; only the right that
fought at Kirk-Kilesseh had been really demoralized. On the line of
Bunar Hissar to Luele Burgas they formed to receive the second shock.
They were given scant time to prepare for it. "_Na noj!_" For three
days this battle, the Waterloo of the war, raged. The advancing
Bulgarian infantry went down like ninepins; but it did not give up, for
it knew that "they would go when they saw the steel." Again the turning
movement in flank crushed in the end. This time the Turkish main army
was shattered. It hardly had the cohesiveness of a large mob. It was
many little mobs, hungry, staggering on to the rear, where the ravages
of cholera awaited.

In two weeks the Bulgars had made their dispositions and fought two
battles, each lasting three days. They had advanced seventy-five miles
over a rough country where the roads were sloughs. The loss in killed
and wounded was sixty thousand; one man out of five was down.

When officers and men had snatched any sleep it was on the rain-soaked
earth. The bread in their haversacks was wet and moldy. When they lay
in the fire zones they were lucky if they had this to eat. By day they
had dug their way, trench by trench, up to the enemy's position,
crouching in the mud to keep clear of bullets. By night they had
charged. They were an army in a state of auto-intoxication, bent on the
one object of driving the Turkish army back to the narrow line of the
peninsula. This accomplished, all the isolated forces in European
Turkey, whether at distant Scutari or near-by Adrianople, were without
hope of relief. The neck of the funnel was closed; the war practically
won.

All the world knows now, and the Bulgarian staff must have known at the
time, that for a week after Luele Burgas the utter demoralization of the
Turkish retreat left the way open to Constantinople. Why did not
General Demetrief go on? Why did that army which had proceeded thus far
with such impetuous and irresistible momentum suddenly turn snail?

For the reason that the Marathon winner when he drops across the tape
is not good for another mile. The Bulgar was on his stomach in the mud,
though he was facing toward the heels of the Turk. Food and ammunition
were not up. A fresh force of fifty thousand men following up the
victory might easily have made its own terms at the door of Yildiz
Palace within three or four days; but there was not even a fresh
regiment.

It was three weeks after Luele Burgas before Demetrief was ready to
attack; three weeks, in which the cholera scare had abated, the panic
in Constantinople had come and gone, reenforcements had arrived and
been organized into a kind of order, while they built fortifications.
The Turkish cruisers supported both of Nazim Pasha's flanks with the
fire of heavier guns than the Bulgars possessed. There was an
approachable Turkish front of only about sixteen miles. Without
silencing the Turkish batteries, Demetrief sent his infantry against
the redoubts. He lost five or six thousand men without gaining a single
fort. Against a stubborn and even semi-intelligent foe there is no
storming a narrow frontal line of fortifications when you may not turn
the ends.

Adrianople lay across the straight line of transportation by railroad
and highway to the peninsula. All munitions for Demetrief's army had to
go around it in the miserable, antiquated ox-carts. It was the rock
splitting the flood of the Bulgarian advance. While the world was
hearing rumors of the city's fall, the truth was that it was not really
invested until a month after Luele Burgas was fought.

For a month the garrison reported to be starving was drawing in
supplies from a big section of farming country. When the armistice was
signed it still had pasturage within the lines of defense for flocks of
sheep and herds of cattle. The problem for the Bulgars first and last
was to keep this fact masked and to check the savage sorties and spare
all the guns and men they could for the main army. Volunteers from
Macedonia still in native dress, clerks still in white collars, old men
who had perjured themselves about their age in order to get a rifle,
and the young conscripts of twenty years came to take the place of the
regular forces on the investing lines, who moved on to re-enforce
Demetrief. Fifty thousand Servians, two divisions, were spared after
Kumanova, and speeded across Bulgaria on the single-line railway with
an amazing rapidity to assist, according to plan, the Bulgars in the
investment operations.

To the Turk, Adrianople is a holy city. Here is the most splendid
mosque in all the empire, that built by the conqueror Sultan Selim.
With the shadow of the minarets over his shoulder, the Turkish private
in a trench was ready to die for Allah. But death must come for him. He
is not going to hustle intelligently after paradise. In short, he is a
sit-and-take-it fighter. While any delay of the Bulgarian advance was
invaluable in gaining time, he made no use of his opportunities in a
country of hills and transverse valleys and ravines, which nature meant
for rear-guard action. A company of infantry posted on a hill could
force a regiment to deploy and attack, and a few miles farther on could
repeat the process. Cavalry could harass the flanks of the attacking
force. Field-guns could get a commanding position above a road, with
safe cover for retreat.

At Mustapha Pasha, twenty miles in front of Adrianople, was a solid old
stone bridge over the Maritza, whose floods in the winter rains would
be a nightmare to engineers who had to maintain a crossing with
pontoons. If ever a corps needed a bridge the second Bulgarian corps
needed this one. They found that a small and badly placed charge of
dynamite had merely knocked out a few stones between two of the
buttresses, leaving the bridge intact enough for all the armies of
Europe to pass over it; and the Turks did not even put a mitrailleuse
behind sandbags in the streets or use field-guns from the adjacent
hills to delay the Bulgars in their crossing.

The soldier who is good only for the defensive can never win. What beat
the Turk was the Turk himself. His army was in the chaos between
old-fashioned organization and an attempt at a modern organization. His
generals were divided in their counsels; his junior officers aped the
modern officer in form, but lacked application. They had ceased to
believe in their religion. Therefore, they did not lead their privates
who did believe. In the midst of the war, captains and lieutenants,
trustworthy observers tell me, would leave their untrained companies of
reservists to march by the road while they themselves rode by train.
They took their soldiers' pay. They neglected all the detail which is
the very essence of that preparation at the bottom without which no
generalship at the top can prevail.

The Bulgarian officers, two-thirds of whom were reservists, enjoyed a
comradeship with their men at the same time that discipline was rigid.
They believed in their God; at least, in the god of efficiency. They
worked hard. They belong in the world of to-day and the Turk does not.
Therefore the Turk has to go.

"We will not make peace without Adrianople!" was the cry of every
Bulgar. Its possession became a national fetish, no less than naval
superiority to the British. Adrianople stood for the real territorial
object of the war. It must be the center of any future line of defense
against the Turk. Practically its siege was set, once there was
stalemate at Tchatalja. With no hope of beating the main Bulgarian army
back, there was no hope of relieving the garrison, whose fate was only
a matter of time.

At the London Peace Conference the allies stood firm for the possession
of Adrianople. The Turkish commissioners, after repeating for six weeks
that they would never cede it, had finally agreed to yield on orders
from Constantinople, when the young Turks killed Nazim Pasha, the
Turkish commander-in-chief, and overthrew the old cabinet. "You can
have Adrianople when you take it!" was the defiance of the new cabinet
to the allies.

PROF. STEPHEN P. DUGGAN

The Peace Conference came to naught and hostilities were resumed on
February 14, 1913, because of the impossibility of agreement between
the allies and Turks on three important points: the status of
Adrianople, the disposal of the Aegean islands, and the payment of an
indemnity by Turkey. Bulgaria and Turkey both maintained that
Adrianople was essential to their national safety. Moreover, its
possession by Bulgaria was absolutely necessary were she to secure the
hegemony in the Balkans at which she aimed. On the other hand, to the
Turks, Adrianople is a sacred city around which cluster the most
glorious memories of their race. Thus they would yield it only as a
last necessity. The ambassadorial conference, anxious to bring to an
end a war which was threatening to embroil Austria-Hungary and Russia
and desirous also to make the settlement permanent, had already on
January 17th in its collective note to the Porte unavailingly
recommended to the Porte the cession of Adrianople to the Balkan
States.

The question of the Aegean islands presented similar difficulties. They
are inhabited almost exclusively by Greeks who demand to be united to
the mother country; but Turkey insisted that the possession of some of
them (_e.g._, Imbros, Tenedos, and Lemnos) was necessary to her for the
protection of the Dardanelles, since they command the entrance to the
straits, while others (_e.g._, Chios and Mitylene) are part of Asiatic
Turkey. The Greeks asserted that to leave any of them to Turkey would
cause constant unrest in Greece, and subsequent uprising against
Turkey, thus merely repeating the history of Crete. Moreover, the
Greeks maintained that they must have the disputed islands because they
are the only large and profitable ones; but they expressed a
willingness to neutralize them so that the integrity of the Dardanelles
would not be endangered. The difficulty was complicated by the
retention of a number of the islands by Italy until Turkey should
fulfil all the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne arising from the
Tripolitan war. The Greeks asserted that their fleet would have taken
all the islands except for the Italian occupation. Moreover, they are
suspicious of Italian intentions, especially with regard to Rhodes. The
ambassadorial conference in its collective note to the Porte had
advised the Porte "to leave to the Powers the task of deciding upon the
fate of the islands of the Aegean Sea and the Powers would arrange a
settlement of the question which will exclude all menace to the
security of Turkey."

The third question in dispute concerned a money indemnity. The war had
been a fearful drain upon the resources of the allies. They were
determined not to share any of the Ottoman debt and to compel Turkey,
if possible, to bear the financial burden of the war. But to yield to
this demand would absolutely destroy Turkish credit. This would result
in the financial ruin of many of the subjects of the great Powers.
Hence this demand of the allies met with scant favor in the
ambassadorial conference.

The war dragged on during the entire month of February without changing
the relative positions of the belligerents. In the mean time, the
relations between Austria-Hungary and Russia were daily becoming more
strained. This was due to the determination of Austria-Hungary to
prevent Servia from securing a seaboard upon the Adriatic. In the
slogan of the allies, "the Balkan peninsula for the Balkan peoples,"
Austria-Hungary found a principle which could be utilized against their
demands. She took the stand that the Albanians are a Balkan people
entirely distinct from Slavs and Greeks and particularly unfriendly to
the Slavs. It would be as suicidal to place any of the Albanians under
the Slavs as to put back any of the Slavs under the Turks. Albania must
be an autonomous State; that it may live in peace, it must possess its
seaboard intact. In this position Austria-Hungary was seconded by
Italy, which has interests in Albania as important as those of
Austria-Hungary. Neither State can afford to allow the other to possess
the eastern shore of the Adriatic; and both are determined that it