entery passed from the Turkish trenches to
theirs. There are 30,000 cases of illness and the healthy for
the first time feel fear as they see the torments of the sick.
The Bulgarians recognise that there must be a pause in the
fighting whilst the hospital and sanitary service is
reorganised.

There was this check, mainly because, in an otherwise perfect system of
training, sanitation had been overlooked. From a military point of view,
of course, it was almost impossible in any case that the Bulgarian army
should have forced the Chatalja lines without a railway line to bring up
ammunition from their base. It was, however, an army which had been
accustomed to do the impossible. But for the cholera I believe it might
have got through to the walls of Constantinople.

During the latter part of 1913 there was a chorus of unstinted praise in
Europe of Bulgarian strategy. Candidly I cannot agree entirely with some
of the views then expressed, which, to me, seem to have been inspired
not so much by a study of the Bulgarian strategy, as by admiration of
the wonderful heroism and courage of the soldiers. At the outset
Bulgarian generalship was exceedingly good; the reconnaissance phase of
the campaign was carried through perfectly. In that the soldier was
assisted by the perfect discipline of the nation, which allowed a
cheerful obedience to the most exacting demands and absolute secrecy.
But it seemed to me that at the stage when the battle of Lule Burgas had
been fought and won, there was a very serious mistake. (I am not writing
now in the light of the ultimate result, for I expressed this view to
Mr. Prior, of the London _Times_, in voyaging with him from Mustapha
Pasha to Stara Zagora in November 1913.) There was a very serious
mistake in the policy of "masking" Adrianople. I have reasons for
thinking that that was not the original plan of the soldiers. Their
strategy was, in the first instance, to deceive the Turks as to where
the blow was to come from. And in that they succeeded admirably. No one
knew where the main attack on the frontier would be made. It was made
unexpectedly at Kirk Kilisse, when all expectation was that it would be
made through Mustapha Pasha and towards Adrianople. But after that
period of secrecy, when the main attack developed, and the Turks knew
where the Bulgarian forces were, it seemed to me it was a great mistake
for the Bulgarian army to push on as they did, leaving Adrianop