THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WAR.
DURING the past fortnight the Times has published a series of articles which are immeasurably the most informing that have appeared about the Bulgarian campaign in Thrace. No campaign in modern times has been conducted with so much secrecy, and the Times, by sending out an experienced officer to study the battlefields and acquire information from the Bulgarian staff during the armistice, has been enabled partially to lift the veil behind which the war has been fought. The new details are of extraordinary interest and value, although their general tendency had been already guessed by astute critics in Britain. The officer became the guest of the Bulgarian s taff, who were as communicative as they had been previously reticent. They were careful to point out that they could not guarantee " absolute accuracy," as they had not themselves yet got all the reports of divisional and sub- unit commanders ; but that want does not affect the general importance of the articles, which are justly said to be " the first considered contribution to the military history of the war." The narrative illustrates a remark- able example of a wholesale change of plan designed to blind the enemy ; it affords a correction, too, of current ideas as to the nature of the fighting at particular places. There were severe " encounter battles " along a wide front when the invasion of Thrace began, but new names of places come to the surface and names already famous sink into less significance. At Kirk Kilisse, for instance, there Iris no serious fighting. Mobilization of all the Balkan armies began about the same day—September 30th. The formation of the war units at the Bulgarian depots was extremely rapid ; the infantry were ready in four days and the artillery in six. The cavalry did not need to mobilize, as their peace and war establishments are practically the same. Within a week the frontier was adequately protected against any risk of the Turkish raids which had been feared ; and behind the screen the concentration of the main Bulgarian armies could proceed safely. It was generally understood —of course, the Bulgarian staff had encouraged the popular but misleading belief—that the three divisions which are known as "inspections" in peace time would take the field in war as three armies under their respective inspectors- general. On mobilization, however, the peace grouping was completely altered and two new divisions were raised. This was the first act of mystification arranged to upset the calculations of the Turkish staff. The writer says : " Until their journeys by road or by rail from peace stations to the respective areas of concentration were actually concluded not even the divisional commanders themselves knew to which army they had been allotted ; nor during their journeys did. units of the divisions ever know their destinations for more than one day ahead."
The Turkish idea. of resisting invasion was founded on manoeuvres held two years ago—the first manoeuvres ever undertaken by the Turkish army. The Turkish staff, advised by Marshal von der Goltz and other German officers, came to the conclusion that an invasion for all practical purposes could be effected by only one route. As a result of the manoeuvres certain changes were made in the frontier defences and a new railway was constructed. We ought to say here that we can hardly reconcile the whole of this statement with an article recently written, or said to have been written, by Marshal von der Goltz himself. In that article he stated that be was always in favour of a plan of deliberately falling back to the Tchorlu lines and allowing the Bulgarians to spend their strength in vain attacks there till the Turkish army had completed its preparations. According to his article the Turks foolishly changed their plans and took up a line of defence close to the frontier in opposition to his instructions. Can Marshal von der Goltz really have written the article we have mentioned ? Another incident which we shall come to presently makes us still more puzzled on this point.
The Bulgarians decided to do the exact opposite of what the Turks expected, though we ought to add that at the last moment the Turkish authorities, according to the accounts of Major Lionel James, were by no means deceived. A concentration at Haskovo—to take a charac- teristic move in a complicated series of misleading measures —was a bogus one "arranged for the special benefit of the Turkish intelligence service, the war correspondents, and the foreign military attaches." The army—the First Army—gathered there first played the part of the western invading body, as expected by the Turks, and then became in reality an eastern invading force. But the great secret was the employment of the Third Army. " So well was the secret kept that when, if ever, a history of the campaign is written from the Turkish point of view it will probably be found that the Turks at the outset were surprised— surprised at the rapidity with which the Bulgarian mobilization and concentration were completed, and sur- prised by the sudden appearance of a whole army of close upon 100,000 men from a direction totally unexpected." The sixth division, which formed part of this Third Army, for example, was sent by a roundabout route by Sofia to take up its position, and during the greater part of the journey the unit commanders firmly believed that they were on their way to join the First Army. By October 17th (apart from the columns devoted to operations in Macedonia) there were three Bulgarian armies ready to cross the frontier, amounting, roughly, to 230,000 rifles, 5,000 cavalry, and 600 guns. As to the principal figures in the Bulgarian army the writer says "The Commander-in-Chief was nominally the ring,but executive command, with a very free hand, was delegated to the Assistant Commander-in-Chief, Lieutenant-General Michael Savoff. The chief of the staff was Major-General Fitcheff, who already held that post in peace. For about five years previous to the war General Savoff had, for political reasons, been living in retirement, but he and his chief staff officer are old friends, for when the former used to command the Military School the latter was his assistant commandant. The combination is said to be an admirable one—Savoff a man of great personality and determination, enjoying the full confidence of all ranks, ready always to accept responsi- bility, to take rapid decisions, and run necessary risks; Fitcheff deep student, a master of detail, and blessed with a placid tempera.. ment enabling him to restrain on occasion the sbmewhat more impetuous disposition of his chief."
The officer cannot understand Why the Turks declared war on October 17th, since delay was wholly in their favour. The Turkish troops already concentrated were not ready to take the offensive, and the cavalry had no intention of raiding. For four days after declaring war the Turks did not move, and the writer supposes a failure in co- operation between the Ministry for War and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The Bulgarians put their plan into operation at once. The plan was to advance through the country which the Turks had ruled out of the question. It is described as follows :—
" First, as quickly as possible to surround and mask the fortress of Adrianople, devoting to this purpose not more than the minimum necessary number of troops ; secondly, to attack and take Kirk Kilisse at all costs—and for this enterprise the Bulgarians were prepared to suffer, if necessary, very heavy losses ; thirdly, with the troops who had stormed Kirk Kilisse and with every possible man who could be spared from the blockade of Adrianople to meet the main Turkish mass, wherever that might be, by the time these preliminary measures were completed. Such was the general idea, the series of objectives up to tho first encounter between the two main bodies, and to try to look beyond that point is seldom wise in war. Although it was hoped that the Turks would be puzzled by the elaborately complicated concentration measures of tho three Bulgarian armies, that their attention would be drawn rather towards Adrianople than towards Kirk Kilisse, and that consequently their preparations to defend the latter might be found to be behindhand, yet full credit was given to the enemy and every allowance made for his taking advantage of the strength of his position. And strategically the situation was much in favour of the Turks. For with a first-class fortress at Adrianople and a strongly entrenched camp at Kirk Kilisse, with a space of only thirty miles between these two and with almost impassable country beyond their outer flanks, the Bulgarian field armies could not advance without first taking one or the other ; and whichever was attacked the other must be masked."
We are told that the stories of tremendous battles in the course of the advance of the Second Bulgarian Army
to Adrianople were fiction. There was little serious fighting. The Bulgarians bad expected difficulties at the crossing of the Maritza, but even these were absent, for the Turks had failed in their attempt to blow up the one bridge across the river. If the bridge had been destroyed there would unquestionably have been a great delay in getting the siege guns across, as such things are too heavy for ordinary pontoon bridges. The Third Bulgarian Army, whose objective was Kirk Kilisse, had, of course, the most difficult country to traverse, and it moved slower than the others, as Adrianople had first to be masked by the Second Army. Till that object was accomplished the First Army, which was iu the middle, could not lend its support with confidence to either army on its flank.
How did the Turks meet the movements of the Bulgarians ? The writer says :—
"What Abdulls.tt Pasha's plan was, heaven only knows. It is certainly difficult to trace one in the record of the Turkish moves or from a perusal of the army operation orders, which were ".,aptured a, few days later at Kirk Kilisse. But Abdullah Pasha was a protegé of von der Goltz, and had himself spent several years in Prussia. His corps-commanders, too, were German-trained, and a German officer—a certain Colonel von Voight (or Weiss ?)—was chief of his staff. In the German regulations, translated into Turkish almost word for word, great stress is laid throughout on the value of the offensive—attack, attack, attack, no matter what the situation or the odds. A blind adherence to the spirit of these regulations seems, more than anything else, to have con- tributed to the series of disasters which befell the Turkish troops during the next three days."
The discovery of these operation orders is the incident we referred to above as puzzling us still further as to the strategy of Marshal von der Goltz. It is impossible to reconcile an unqualified plan of offence with the article said to have been written by Marshal von der Goltz
self.
By October 23rd a large part of the Turkish army was retreating and was soon to be in a state of rout. This was the result of numerous " encounter battles," which were scattered and obscure in detail. Although the losses on both sides were very great it is impossible to say that there was on any day a grand pitched battle. The most severe of the " encounter battles" was at Seliolu, a name quite unfamiliar to the British public. The Turkish cavalry, estimated at twice the strength of the Bulgarian cavalry, appears to have vanished altogether. The much- talked-of assault on the fortified position of Kirk Kilisse turned out to be unnecessary. The writer says :— " A great deal was published at the time—and is, indeed, being published still—of heavy fighting at Kirk Kilisse, of attacks upon the forts, of bayonet charges in the vineyards and the streets, and bombardment of the town. Actually the Bulgarian advanced guards entered on the morning of October 24th practically unopposed ; for during the night the Turks had all stampeded. Why, remains more or less a mystery. There are several theories. Ono, for instance, that the arrival of the Bulgarian company on the outskirts of the town the evening before had started the rumour of a night attack and that this rumour caused the panic. Another that consternation was spread by the arrival of refugees from Seliolu with news of the disaster there, of the vigorous pursuit by the Bulgarian cavalry and their arrival already at Yenidje—thus threatening the line of retreat."
At Kirk Kilisse the Bulgarians found about fifty guns, vast stores of small arms, ammunition, provisions, and two aeroplanes, and they took nearly 2,000 prisoners. It may be remembered that telegrams from Bulgaria at the time said that 50,000 prisoners had been taken. The only other prominent incident that need be mentioned was the sortie from Adrianople on October 23rd. A force of two or three divisions marched out and were met at Kaipa by a Bulgarian division. They were driven back, and the net result was a further step in the investment of the fortress.
At the time we write the officer has not reached in his narrative the battle of Lute Burgas, but already he has enabled us to see the campaign much more clearly than before. Of course his facts are avowedly presented from the Bulgarian point of view ; we have yet to hear the Turkish account of the same incidents. But although we may have to modify his statements in some respects it is to be remembered that the Bulgarian staff has now not the same reasons for mystification that existed before the lines of Tchatalja were reached and the armistice was agreed upon.
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