Chapter XIII: Part 13

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°-20°, 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°, certain of the cells give a proof of their survival by forming new prolongations, often of a monstrous character. At 39° 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 _opéra-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 _régime_. 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 _régime_ 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 _régime_ 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 _opéra 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 Lüle 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 Lüle 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 Lüle 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 Lüle 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 shall not fall into the possession of another possibly stronger power.

As early as December 20, 1912, the ambassadors had recommended to their governments, and the latter had accepted, the principle of Albanian autonomy, together with a provision guaranteeing to Servia commercial access to the Adriatic. This had aroused the intense indignation of the Serbs, whose armies, contrary to the express prohibitions of Austria-Hungary, had already occupied Durazzo on the Adriatic and overrun northern Albania. The Serbs denied the right of any State to forbid them to occupy the territory of the enemy whom they had conquered, and Servia sent a detachment of her best troops and some of her largest siege guns to help the Montenegrins take Scutari. Moreover, numerous reports of outrages committed upon Albanians by the "Liberators" in their attempts to convert both Moslem and Catholic Albanians to the orthodox faith reached central Europe and caused great danger in Vienna. Count Berchtold's statement to the Delegations that Austria-Hungary would insist upon territory enough to enable independent Albania to be a stable State with Scutari as the capital, aroused in turn much excitement in Russia. Scutari was the chief goal of Montenegrin ambition. To possess it had been the hope of King Nicholas and his people during his long reign of half a century. To forbid him to possess it would be to deprive him of the fruits of the really heroic sacrifices his people had made during this war. Hence the excitement in all Slavdom. On February 7th Francis Joseph sent Prince Hohenlohe to St. Petersburg with an autograph letter to the Czar which had the good effect of reducing the tension between the two countries.

The ambassadorial conference at London then directed its attention exclusively to settling the status of Albania. After more than a month of acrimonious discussion a settlement was reached on March 26th in which the principle of nationality which had been invoked to justify the creation of an independent Albania was quietly ignored. The conference agreed upon the northern and northeastern boundaries of Albania. In order to carry her point that Scutari must be Albanian, Austria-Hungary agreed that the almost exclusively Albanian towns of Ipek, Djakova, Prizrend, and Dibra should go to the Serbs. On April 1st King Nicholas was notified that the powers had unanimously agreed to blockade his coast if he did not raise the siege of Scutari. His answer was that the proposed action of the powers was a breach of neutrality and that Montenegro would not alter her attitude until she had signed a treaty of peace. At once the warships of all the powers save Russia (which had none in the Mediterranean) engaged in the blockade. On April 15th, owing to the pressure of the powers and to the strained relations that had arisen between Servia and Bulgaria, the Servian troops were recalled from Scutari. Nevertheless the Montenegrins persisted alone and Scutari fell April 22, 1913. Two days later the Austro-Hungarian government demanded that vigorous action be undertaken by the powers to put independent Albania in possession of Scutari according to the agreement of March 26th. At once the greatest excitement prevailed throughout Russia. Street demonstrations against the Austro-Hungarian policy were held in many of the large cities. In Austria-Hungary military preparations became active on a large scale, and on May 1st the Dual Monarchy gave notice that it would undertake individual action should Montenegro not agree to the ultimatum. Italy, which is determined never to permit the Dual Monarchy individual action in Albania, announced that she would support her ally. As the result of all the pressure brought to bear upon him, on May 5th, King Nicholas yielded and placed Scutari in the hands of the powers, just in time, as Sir Edward Grey informed the English House of Commons, to prevent an outbreak of hostilities between Austria-Hungary and Russia.

While the chancelleries of the great powers were thus straining every nerve to agree upon the status of Albania and thereby to prevent a conflict between the two powers most vitally interested, the war between the allies and Turkey was prosecuted during March with greater vigor and with more definite results. On March 5th, Janina surrendered to the Greeks and on March 26th Adrianople fell. The powers had already offered to mediate between the belligerents, and their good offices had been accepted by both sides. The allies at first insisted upon the Rodosto-Malatra line as the western boundary of Turkey, but were informed that the powers would not consent to giving Bulgaria a foothold on the Dardanelles.

After much outcry and violent denunciation by the allies, an armistice was signed at Bulair on April 19th by representatives of all the belligerents except Montenegro, which was thereby only incited to more heroic efforts to capture Scutari. Nevertheless the allies had profited so much by delay in their relations with the powers since the very outbreak of the war that they now hoped to secure advantages by a similar policy, and it was not until May 21st that their representatives reassembled at London. Even then there appeared to be no sincere desire to come to terms, and on May 27th Sir Edward Grey informed the delegates that they would soon lose the confidence of Europe, and that for all that was being accomplished they might as well not be in London. The delegates were very indignant at this strong language, but it had the desired effect, for on May 30, 1913, the Treaty of London was signed by the representatives of all the belligerents. Its principal provisions were those already suggested by the powers, _viz_.:

(1) The boundary between Turkey and the allies to be a line drawn from Midia to Enos, to be delimited by an international commission:

(2) The boundaries of Albania to be determined by the powers.

(3) Turkey to cede Crete to Greece.

(4) The powers to decide the status of the Aegean islands.

(5) The settlement of all the financial questions arising out of the war to be left to an international commission to meet at Paris.

It was time for a settlement, since the problem was no longer to secure peace between Turkey and the allies, but rather to maintain peace among the allies. The solution of the great problem of the war, the division of the spoils, could no longer be deferred. From the moment that Adrianople had fallen, the troops of Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece maneuvered for position, each state determined to secure possession of as much territory as possible, in the hope that at the final settlement it might retain what it had seized.

MEXICO PLUNGED INTO ANARCHY

HUERTA SEIZES A DICTATORSHIP A.D. 1913

EDWIN EMERSON WILLIAM CAROL

Mexico has loomed large in the affairs of the world during recent years. The overthrow of Diaz in 1911 did not, as the world had hoped, bring into power an earnest and energetic middle class capable of guiding the downtrodden peons into the blessings of civilization. On the contrary, the land passed from the grip of a cruel oligarchy into that of a far more cruel anarchy. Hordes of bandits sprang up everywhere. The new president, Madero, was a philosopher and a patriot. But he failed wholly to get any real grasp of the situation. He was betrayed on every side; rebellion rose all around him; and in his extremity he entrusted his army and his personal safety to the most savage of his secret enemies, General Huerta. Madero died because he was too far in advance of his countrymen to be able to understand them. After that, Huerta sought to reestablish the old Diaz regime of wealth and terrorism; but he only succeeded in plunging the land back into utter barbarism.

The Mexicans are the last large section of the earth's population thus left to rule themselves in savagery. Hence the rest of the world has watched them with eagerness. Europe repeatedly reminded the United States that by her Monroe Doctrine she had assumed the duty of keeping order in America. At last she felt compelled to interfere. The picture of those days of anarchy is here sketched by two eye-witnesses, an Englishman and an American, both fresh from the scene of action.

EDWIN EMERSON

There is a saying in Mexico that it is much easier to be a successful general than a successful president. Inasmuch as almost all Mexican presidents during the hundred years since Mexico became a Republic, owed their presidency to successful generalship, this saying is significant. At all events, no Mexican general who won his way into the National Palace by his military prowess ever won his way out with credit to himself or to his country.

General Victoriano Huerta, Mexico's latest Interim-President, during the first few months that followed his overthrow of the Madero Government found out to his own cost how much harder it is to rule a people than an army.

As a matter of fact, General Huerta was pushed into his interim-presidency before he really had a fair opportunity to learn how to command an army. At the time he was so suddenly made Chief Magistrate of Mexico he was not commanding the Mexican army, but was merely a recently appointed major-general who happened to command that small fraction of the regular army at the capital which was supposed to have remained loyal to President Madero and his constitutional government. Huerta had been appointed by President Madero to the supreme command of the loyal forces at the capital, numbering barely three thousand soldiers, only a few days before Madero's fall. Even if he had not turned traitor to his commander-in-chief, as he did in the end, Huerta's command of the loyal troops during the ten days' struggle at the capital preceding the fall of the constitutional government could not be described as anything but a dismal failure.

Before considering General Huerta's qualifications as a President, one should know something of his career as a soldier. During the last few years it has repeatedly fallen to my lot to follow General Huerta in the field, so that I have had a fair chance to view some of his soldierly qualities at close hand. I accompanied General Huerta during his campaign through Chihuahua, in 1912, and was present at his famous Battle of Bachimba, near Chihuahua City, on July 3, 1912--the one decisive victory won by General Huerta against the rebel forces of Pascual Orozco. Before this campaign I was in Cuernavaca, in the State of Morelos, during the time when General Huerta had his headquarters there in his campaign against Zapata's bandit hordes in that State after the fall of General Diaz's government.

General Huerta then took charge of the last military escort which accompanied General Porfirio Diaz on his midnight flight from Mexico City to the port of Vera Cruz. During the ten hours' run down to the coast, it may be recalled, the train on which President Diaz and his family rode was held up by rebels in the gray of dawn, and the soldiers of the military escort had to deploy in skirmish order, led by Generals Diaz and Huerta in person; but the affair was over after a few minutes' firing, with no casualties on either side.

Before this eventful year General Huerta had but few opportunities of winning laurels on the field of battle. Having entered the Military Academy of Chapultepec in the early 'seventies under Lerdo de Tejada's presidency, Victoriano Huerta was graduated in 1875, at the age of twenty-one, and was commissioned a second lieutenant of engineers. While still a cadet at Chapultepec he distinguished himself by his predilection for scientific subjects, particularly mathematics and astronomy. During the military rebellion of Oaxaca, when General Diaz rose against President Lerdo, Lieutenant Huerta was engaged in garrison duty, and got no opportunity to enter this campaign.

After General Diaz had come into power and had begun his reorganization of the Mexican army, young Huerta, lately promoted to a captaincy of engineers, came forward with a plan for organizing a General Staff. General Diaz approved of his plans, and Captain Huerta, accordingly, in 1879, became the founder of Mexico's present General Staff Corps. The first work of the new General Staff was to undertake the drawing up of a military map of Mexico on a large scale. The earliest sections of this immense map, on which the Mexican General Staff is still hard at work, were surveyed and drawn up in the State of Vera Cruz, where the Mexican Military Map Commission still has its headquarters. Captain Huerta accompanied the Commission to Jalapa, the capital of the State of Vera Cruz, and served there through a period of eight years, receiving his promotion to major in 1880 and to lieutenant-colonel in 1884. During this time he had charge of all the astronomical work of the Commission, and he also led surveying and exploring parties over the rough mountainous region that extends between the cities of Jalapa and Orizaba. While at Jalapa he married Emilia Aguila, of Mexico City, who bore him three sons and a daughter.

In 1890 Huerta was promoted to a colonelcy and was recalled to Mexico City. As a reward for Indian campaign services Huerta was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. In Mexico's centennial year of 1910, when Francisco Madero rose in the north, and other parts of the Republic gave signs of disaffection, General Huerta was ordered south to take charge of all the detached Government force in the mountainous State of Guerrero. Almost simultaneously with his arrival in Chilpancingo, the capital of the State of Guerrero, almost the whole south of Mexico rose in rebellion. The military situation there was soon found to be so hopeless that Huerta was recalled to Mexico City.

After General Huerta saw General Porfirio Diaz off to Europe at Vera Cruz, he returned to the capital and placed himself at the disposition of Don Francisco L. de la Barra, Mexico's new President _ad interim_. President de la Barra dispatched him with a column of soldiers to Cuernavaca to restore peace.