dly about one message he had stopped.
"It is true."

"Yes, that is the trouble," he said--the nearest approach to a joke I
ever got out of a Bulgarian, for they are a sober, God-fearing, and
humour-fearing race.

The idea of the Bulgarian Censorship in regard to the privileges and
duties of the war correspondent was further illustrated to me on another
occasion, when a harmless map of a past phase of the campaign was
stopped.

"Then what am I to send?" I asked.

"There are the bulletins," he said.

"Yes, the bulletins which are just your bald official account of
week-old happenings which are sent to every news-agency in Europe before
we see them!"

"But you are a war correspondent. You can add to them in your own
language."

Remembering that conversation, I suspect that at first the Bulgarian
Censorship did not object to fairy tales passing over the wires, though
the way was blocked for exact observation. An enterprising story-maker
had not very serious difficulties at the outset. Afterwards there was a
change, and even the writer of fairy stories had to work outside the
range of the Censor.

We were all allowed down to Mustapha Pasha, and considered that that was
a big step to the front. "For two days or so," we were told, it would be
our duty to wait patiently within the town (the battle-ground around
Adrianople was about twelve miles distant). Some waited there two months
and saw no real operations. The Censorship at Mustapha Pasha was so
strict that all private letters had to be submitted, and if they were
in English the English Censor insisted that they should be read to him
aloud; and he re-read them, again aloud, to see if he had fully grasped
their significance. Then they could go if they contained no military
information and did not mention guns, oxen, soldiers, roads, mud, dirt,
or other tabooed subjects. An amusing "rag" was tried on the Censor
there. A sorely tried correspondent wrote a letter of extreme warmth to
an imaginary sweetheart. This began "Ducksie Darling," and continued in
the same strain for two pages. He waited until there was a full
house--the Censors had no private office, but did their censoring in a
large room which was open to all the correspondents--and then submitted
his ardent outburst. Other press-men did not see the joke at first, and
began to sidle out of the room as, like a stream of warm treacle, the
love-letter flowed on. But they came back.

"'Ducksie Darling,'" bega