thousands ready to follow. Turkey must maintain her
"integrity." Pashas must wallow in wealth. Millions of peasants must
toil to accomplish these ends; if need be, they must die. The need at
present is--to die. "Push on more battalions to reinforce them" is the
order. No doubt the hundreds who have fallen, and the thousands who
must yet fall, will leave hundreds of wives and thousands of children to
hopeless mourning; but what of that? they are only _canaille_, cared for
by nobody in particular, but God. No doubt the country must suffer for
it. We must pay for war. We shall have an enormous national debt--that
can't be helped, and other countries have the same,--besides, we can
borrow from rich trusting nations, and repudiate our debts; our land
shall feel the drain of its best young blood for generations yet to
come, but time heals most sores; people will multiply as heretofore;
fate is unavoidable, and Allah is great! Moreover, what does it all
matter to us so long as our integrity is maintained, our seraglios
remain intact, and our coffers are filled? That hillock _must_ be
taken. It is a priceless hillock. Like other hillocks, no doubt, and
not very promising in an agricultural point of view, but still a
priceless hillock, which must be carried at any cost, for on our
obtaining it depends somehow (we can't say exactly how) the honour of
our name, the success of our arms, the weal of the Turkish empire.

And so another order is given; fresh troops are hurled into the
trenches, already filled with dead and dying; and the hillock is carried
by storm, swept over with fierce cries of "Allah! Allah!" which mingle
strangely with Russian curses, and is then left behind and regarded with
as much indifference as if it were the most insignificant mass of earth
and stone in all Bulgaria!

Flying backwards, the beaten Russians come panting towards the hill on
which we stand, and rally, while our men advance, meet and stop the
enemy, charge and overthrow them, turn the tide of battle, retake the
hillock which has cost so much, and ultimately things remain _in statu
quo_ when the blessed shades of evening put an end to the frightful
scene--leaving nothing whatever accomplished on either side, except the
legitimate and ordinary end of most wars, namely--death and destruction!

I had just finished dressing the wounds of a soldier, at the end of this
terrible episode, when a touch on my shoulder caused me to look up.