Bulgarian Troops In Splendid Shape.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 26, 1912:
Mr. Palmer, Allowed to Inspect Lines Outside Adrianople, Denies Recent Reports.
MEN ARE INDEFATIGABLE
Commanders Not Disappointed, Having Made No Prediction of Taking Such a Fortress Quickly.
By FREDERICK PALMER,
Special Correspondent of The New York Times.
By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to The New York Times.
    MUSTAPHA PASHA, Nov. 25, 10:30 P.M.— I took a twenty-hour ride yesterday over some of the positions and viewed others where fighting has recently occurred, and watched the continuance of the operations.
    It is a rare sensation thus far for a correspondent in this war to be in a battery with shells from a battery of long range passing overhead.
    Actual observation of the situation, which the Bulgarians had kept secret as with a police net, is sufficient answer to the assertions of correspondents who went beyond the Bulgarian frontier to send telegrams free of censorship, which stated that the Bulgarian troops were exhausted and unable to advance the lines of investment around Adrianople.
    It was easy for correspondents marooned in Mustapha Pasha, listening to the distant cannonade, watching the transport in the muddy streets, and getting liverish and imaginative, to conclude that the concealment meant something surprising.
    At no time has the Bulgarian Staff made predictions either about Tchatalja, or that one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, Adrianople, would fall immediately. It is true that there were wild, optimistic rumors, principally in Sofia, which led me to think on my arrival that the forts of Adrianople were actually under bombardment. The laying of a siege, when heavy guns must be brought into position and emplaced after driving in the outposts of a garrison of 60,000 men, is not a task of a few days, unless the garrison is utterly engaged in introspective philosophy. As for the so-called "exhausted Bulgarian troops," I found their spirits about as depressed as those of the Japanese at Liao-Yang. They have confidence, good health, and ample rations.
    "While the flood of the Maritza makes the Turkish position at Karagasch and the surrounding lowlands a morass, the Bulgarians lie very comfortably in their dugouts and straw thatches and tents on the hills, the hills being sheep pasture land without fences, traversible in all directions, the wagons going badly only in the valleys.
    The railroad, which the Turks kindly left intact, has had its capacity increased by new sidings, and brings supplies in easy reach. Even the older reservists who are handling the reserve artillery have become veteran experts quickly by actual war practice.
    Contrary to reports which had been credited about the absence of hospital tents and medical supplies at the front, I can vouch for at least one well-equipped station in easy reach for serious cases.
    I am impressed with the indefatigability of the Bulgarian infantry, which always does everything in military work, including prodigal drudgery with the spade, as well as it accomplishes a courageous night bayonet charge.
    I could see on every hand how cleverly the advancing skirmishers had thrown up hasty cover. At our feet Papastepe, or Pope's Hill, was seamed with infantry trenches and pockmarked with great holes dug by exploding shells, and I looked across the River Arda toward the commanding heights of Cartaltepe.
    These two keynote positions of the triangle, its apex at Karagasch, have been scenes of some of the most stubborn fighting of the war. Against them were thrown desperate sorties whose ferocity was no less in keeping with the Turkish character than the lack of skill in rearguard actions before falling back on the fortress defenses.
    The village of Dudzaras, on the east bank of the Arlo, occupied by Turkish military, was burning in the midst of continual rifle fire, while Bulgarian shrapnel was bursting over it.
    Nearer to us, on the west bank of the Arda, we could see the embers of the village of Epchili, mostly inhabited by Greeks, which the Turks, on evacuating, had burned after a reported massacre of every resident of either sex in sight.
    The minarets and roof of the famous Mosque of Adrianople showed clear over the haze of the town in the misty day, also the houses of the Karagasch suburb and the Turkish camps in the neighborhood.
    One rode back in the darkness toward Mustapha Pasha still wondering why the Bulgarian commanders, while safeguarding their military secrets, should not permit more glimpses of troops in excellent condition, working so efficiently.