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Updated: June 15, 2025
One day we write it out on our sheet 'The Grand Turk maketh disastrous war on the Bulgars of the North and hath burnt divers of their villages. And that hath no sooner gone forth than we print another sheet saying, 'It would seem that the villages be not burnt but only scorched, nor doth it appear that the Turk burnt them but that the Bulgars burnt divers villages of the Turk and are sitting now in his mosque in the city of Hadrian. Then shall all men run to and fro and read the sheet and question and ask, 'Is it thus? And, 'Is it thus? and by very uncertainty of circumstances, they shall demand the more curiously to see the news sheet and read it."
The part assigned to the British contingents under General Milne, which had taken over the front from the Vardar eastwards past Doiran and down the Struma to the sea, was the somewhat thankless one of pinning the Bulgars to that sector and preventing them from reinforcing the threatened line in the west.
There were other Americans; Red Cross doctors and nurses just escaped through the snow from the Bulgars, and hyphenated Americans who said they had taken out their first papers. They thought hyphenated citizens were so popular with us, that we would pay their passage to New York. In Salonika they were transients. They had no local standing.
Those are the six main racial elements. But there are other scraps of peoples the Albanians, for example, and the Macedonians, and tribes of Moslem Bulgars, and some Asiatic elements brought in by the Turks. So far, then, the answer to the question, "Why are the Balkans so often at war?" is easy of answer.
Every Potsdammer, a little while ago, was counting on Roumania!... The breaking up of the confederation of the Balkan States under Russian influence was what the Central Powers required; while the Allies desired a broken Turkey and a strong Balkan federation under Russian sway able to throw a million men into the field against Turkey's northwestern frontier so as to keep Austria in check and allow an easy glide of forces toward the Dardanelles.... Then Roumania was with the Wilhelmstrasse, and Bulgaria was an ally of the Quay d'Orsay and the Neva, but now the Osmanlian and the Bulgar and his cousin Fritz are in the same bed snoring at the Romans who look greedily toward Transylvania!... From what I can see I'm sure these Bulgars will be first to give up the ghost, although when I talk to Kovalsky and hear the whine of these Wienfloss Kwabins I feel sure that they will be first to snap for peace!... I am writing this in a elaborately furnished dugout that has been abandoned by some German officers I KNOW this because I found several tubes of Erbswurst tucked in one of the berths.
The Serbs were victorious, defeating the Bulgars in Macedonia, the Turks, seeing Thrace empty of Bulgarian troops, re-occupied Adrianople, and the Rumanian army, determined to see fair play before it was too late, invaded Bulgaria from the north and marched on Sofia. By the end of July the campaign was over and Bulgaria had to submit to fate.
It is known that this tribe came from the Volga and, crossing Russia, proceeded towards ancient Moesia, where it took possession of the whole north-east territory of the Balkans between the Danube and the Black Sea. These were the Bulgars, or Bolgars. The Slavs had already imposed on the races they had found in the Peninsula their language and customs.
The Greeks did all they could to obliterate the last traces of Bulgarian nationality which had survived in the Church, and this explains a fact which must never be forgotten, which had its origin in the remote past, but grew more pronounced at this period, that the individual hatred of Greeks and Bulgars of each other has always been far more intense than their collective hatred of the Turks.
For several days the two fighting lines of men swayed back and forth. Here artillery played not so important a part. Both Bulgars and Serbs, primitive, rugged fighters, threw military science to the winds and plunged into the battle face to face and breast to breast, thrusting each other with cold steel.
Some Bulgars among the refugees told that life under the Serbs was impossible. The only time they had been free from persecution was when the Serb army was busy fighting the Bulgar army. It was feared the Serbs would descend on Elbasan, and I carried away a whole mule-load of valuables to save them from being pillaged, and rode with it across country without an escort or weapon.
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