River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1913-01-02

that no more territory would be taken
from them This is enough, after
some generations, to breed the defen-
sive instinct in any soldier.
The Turk must have his back
against the wall in order to fight we'll
His attitude is that OF the mad bull
against the toreador; and very mad
bull, we know, sometimes gets horn
into the toreador's anatomy and toss
es him over the palings. This hap
pened in a way at Adrianople.
Victory is to the heaviest bat
talions,' Bonaparte said this. but aft
er Caesar said it after some general
of Egypt, Babylon or Nineveh.
The allies knew that their success
depende-4 on speed in fall campaign
speed and the shock of masses pour
ing over the frontier. Theirs was a
hundred-yard-dash chance.
The Serbs at Kumanova, their crit
ical battle, had odds of at least four to
one.
The Greeks never had less favor
able odds, usually much higher.
AS for the Montenegrins, who had
a small show, what they did in one
way or another did not matter. They
had work to keep them fully occu-
pied, as it developed in the siege of
Scutari.
The only one of the allies who dis
dained modern organization, their fail
ure to make any Roadway again en-
phasizes the wide difference between
a body of men with rifles and an &C.
tual army.
BuIgars Bear Wars Brunt.
So the Bulgarians took the great
and telling work of the war on their
shoulders. You have only to know
the Bulgarians to understand that this
was inevitable.
There is stubborn and aggressive
character enough in Bulgaria to spare
for all southwestern Europe.
Bulgaria made hundred-yard dash
with OK cart transportation, and made
it around an obstacle-Adrianopl
The main railroad line and the great
Constantinople highway ran by Adri-
anople. 1t was on the direct line of
Bulgarian base to the center of it's
objective.
In the center of Thrace, it was the
only real fortress on the way to Con-
stantinople. Kirk-Killisseh, or Losen-
grade, as the Bulgarians call it, de-
spite their willingness to allow an i'm
preston of it's formidalility to be
spread abroad, was not in any sense
we'll fortified.
Now, the first thing was to surround
Adrianople; that is, to strike at it
from all sides, as the key to the po-
sition A branch of the main Sofia
Constantinople railroad line runs to
Yamboli. With this as it's base, Deme-
trieff's, or the First, army swung
around -Kilisseh, which was TAX
en- in the first splendid ardor of the
campaign. With it's fall anyone can
see from a staff map that any battle
line of defense with Adrianople as a
part of it was impossible for a force
of the numbers of the Turkish main
army.
Two or three hundred thousand
men who we're homogeneous might
have held on, but not half that mum
Der when badly organized. There
fore, Nazim Pasha had to fall back
to a new line and leave Adrianople
to care for itself.
Reveals BuIgar Courage.
The next step was the decisive bat
tie on the line from Lule BurgaS to
Bunnarhissar.
There, again, superiority of num-
bers, as we'll as organization, count
ed: that superiority, which makes a
heavy turning movement possible
while the enemy's front is engaged.
In short, the Bulgarians had the
Turks going. They gave the Turks
no rest, and they had sufficient nu-
merical preponderance, in addition to
the dependable courage of their in,
fantry to guarantee success.
So there was nothing wonderful
about the strategy of the campaign,
nothing new, nothing startling. The
old principle of the swift turning
movement had been applied to the sit
uation in hand.
BY the flank the Japanese kept put
ting the Russians back from the Yalu
to Mukden. BY the flank Grant put
Lee back to Richmond.
There was just one, and only one,
startling feature in this war-Bulgari-
an courage. That enabled Demetrieff
to gain at Kirk-Killisseh and Lule
hot WI nCf
armies would have required much
more time.
Demetrieff had willing flesh for a
necessary sacrifice. He threw his In
fantry against frontal positions in a
cloud. into shrapnel and automatic
gun fire. without waiting to silence
the enemy's batteries.
Expected to Take Adrianople.
And after LuIe Burgas the next step
would have seemed the storming OF
Adrianople. When peace negotiations
should begin, it was vital point in
their favor in the negotiations to have
Adrianople in their possession.
The Bulgarian treatment of the cor
respondents is one of the many in
dications that the Bulgarian staff did
at one time expect to take Adrianople
by storm.
It was argued by serious CORE
spondents who did not feel that they
ought to waste their time or the
money of their papers in idleness,
that the Bulgarian government ought
not to have received any correspond
ents at ALL But this was not logic to