Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1913-01-08


key to take an inch of Bulgarian soil.
1t was a case of Heads / win, tails
l don't lose"
Turks Awake to Crisis
The Turks knew this, too. 1t was
an old situation to them. Successful
war meant no ACKNOWLEDGMENT 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 well.
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 to the Greeks at JANA. 1t al
so happened in a way at Adrianople.
Victory is to the heaviest battal-
IONS" Bonaparte said this, but after
Caesar said it, and Caesar said it aft
er some generala of Egypt. Babylon
or Nineveh
The allies knew that their success
depended 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 favorable
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-Adrianop
The main railroad line and the great
Constantinople highway ran by Adri-
80
communication from the center of the
B&garian base to the center of its OBJ
j2Gtive.
In the center of Thrace, it was the
only real fortress on the way to Con-
stantinople. Kirk-Kilisseh, or Losen-
grade, as the Bulgarians call it, de-
spite their willingness to allow an i'm
preston of it's formidability to be
spread abroad, was not in any sense
well 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 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 staff map that any battle
line of defense with Adrianople as a
part of it was impossible for 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 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
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 DemetrieR
to gain at Kirk-Kilisseh and Lule Bur
gas in 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
oIo,d into shrapnel and automatic