Part 4 (1/2)
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.