Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1913-08-15

don't lose
Turks Awake TO Crisis.
The Turks knew this, TOO. 1t was
an old situation to them. Successful
war meant no ACKNOWLEDGEMENT only
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'd.
His attitude Is that Of the mad bull
against the t~oreador, and a very mac
bull, we know. sometimes gets a horn
into the toreador's anatomy and toss
es him over the palings. This hap
pened to the Greeks at Jania. II al
so happened in a way at Adrlanople.
Victory is to the heaviest battal-
ions,' Bonaparte said this, but after
Caesar said 1t, and Caesar said 1t aft
er some ~generala of Egypt, Babylon
or Nineveh.
The allies knew that their success
depended on speed in a 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 favorable
odds, usually much higher.
As for the Montenegrins, who had
a small show, what they did in n
way or another did not matter. They
had work to keep them fully occu-
pied, as 1t developed In the siege of
Scutari.
The only bne Of the allies who dis
dained modern organization, their fall
ure to make any Roadway again en-
phasizes the wide difference between
a body of men with rifles and an &C
tual army.
Bulgars 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 a hundred-yard dash
with OK cart transportation, and made
N around On nhut ola n ri nnn1n
The main railroad line and the great
Constantinople highway ran by Adri-
anople. 1t was on the direct line OF
communication from the center of the
Bulgarian base to the center of it's OBJ
j~ective.
In the center Of Thrace, 1t was the
only real fortress on the way to Con-
stantinople, Kirk-Kilisseh, or Losen-
grade, as the Bulgarians call 1t, de-
spite their willingness to allow an i'm
preston of It's formidability to be
spread abroad, was not In any n
well fortified.
Now, the first thing was to surround
A%drianople; that is. to strike at 1t
from all sides, as the key to the po-
sition. A branch OF the main Sofia
Constantinople railroad line runs to
Yamboll. With this Is 1t base. Deme-
trieff's, or the First, army swung.
around Kirk-Kilisseh, which was TAX
en- In the first splendid ardor Of the
campaign. With its fall anyone can
see from a staff map that any battle
line of defense with Adrianople as a
part of 1t was impossible for a force
Of the numbers of the Turkish main
army.
Two or three hundred thousand
men who were homogeneous might
have held on, but not half that num-
Der when badly organized. Therefore,
Nazim Pasha had to fall back to a
new line and leave Adrianople to care
for itself.
Reveals Bulgar Courage.
The next step was the decisive bat
tie on the line from Lule Burgas to
Bunnarhissar,
There, again. superiority Of num-
bers, as well 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 a suffi C 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
situation 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-Bulga-
rian courage. That enabled Demetrief
to gain at Kirk Kilisseh and Lule Bur
gas in a hurry what with most 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 ~Adrlanople.
And oftar ula purOas tho nav cton