V. I.

Lenin

The belligerents are doing their utmost to conceal from
“outsiders”, i.e., from the whole world, what is going on in the
Balkans. Correspondents are deceived and held up, and are not allowed on
the battlefield until long after battles have come to an end.

That is why only exceptional circumstances enable one at rare intervals
to learn the truth about the war. Apparently, such exceptional
circumstances helped Mr. Donohoe, a correspondent of the British Daily Chronicle . He succeeded in being with the Turkish Army during the
battle at Lule Burgaz; then he drove by car to Constantinople, and from
there went by sea to Constanta in Rumania. From Constanta he was able to
wire London without hindrance.

The Turks suffered a terrible defeat. Up to 40,000 (!) of them fell in
battle. A catastrophe not less than that at

Mukden, [1] wrote the British correspondent. Three-quarters of the
Turkish artillery passed into Bulgarian hands. The Bulgarians would let the
Turks come up very close and engage in a hand-to-hand combat, and then
would swiftly withdraw while their machine-guns mowed the Turks
down in hundreds and thousands.

The Turks’ retreat became a disorderly flight of stupefied, starving,
exhausted and maddened mobs. The correspondent’s car got stuck in a crowd
of fugitives. The starving Turks begged him for bread. They had to bandage their own wounds. Doctors were few. There were no dressings and no
supplies. I have witnessed many a military campaign, wrote the
correspondent, but I could never have imagined so appalling a disaster,
such a wholesale massacre of starving, exhausted, tormented, helpless
peasants from Anatolia (Asiatic Turkey).

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Notes:
[1]
The reference is to the battle in the Mukden area in February 1905, the
last major land engagement of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05. The
Russians lost about 89,000 men, and the Japanese about 71,000.