Panic Behind Turkish Lines.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 2, 1912:
Soldiers Threw Down Their Arms and Tried to Escape.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    LONDON, Saturday, Nov. 2.— The Times's correspondent with the Turkish army at Tchorlu, behind the battle-line, describes the wild scenes of panic which occurred on the receipt of the news of the Bulgarian advance to Lule Burgas. The untrustworthy Redifs threw down their arms and mingled with the mass of old men and women and tender children who fought for accommodation on the southbound trains. The railway guards were powerless to deal with the terror that prompted the onrush.
    The trains that reached us were just masses of panic-stricken humanity. The footplates, and even the cowcatchers of the engines were thronged with craven soldiers, who preferred the perilous haven of the locomotive to the rumored terrors of the vindictive enemy behind them.
    A staff officer at our station luckily had a battalion of veterans on hand, and the fugitive soldiers were herded into the station and pent in houses while the civilian fugitives were allowed to proceed.
    It would have been a hard heart that would not have been moved by the scenes of frenzied endeavor to quit the vicinity, scenes which only closed at nightfall. Hundreds of families with their scanty lares and penates piled on bullock carts toiled down the roads. The recent rains had rendered these roads mere morasses.
    It was sheer panic. Terror had seized these unfortunate people, such as might have occurred had the pursuit been one of relentless sabre work.
    A mischance on the railroad line had caused a block, and it seemed hours before the breakdown gangs could pass the trains with their freight of wild-eyed men and weeping women. The state of the cars was beyond description. Even though they were packed so that no one could move when the trains at last got under way, men cast their distracted wives and children onto the heads of the living mass within the cars and tossed babies up after them.
    Panics are inexplicable most times, and so far as I could see there was nothing to justify this wave of terror. The Turkish officers who had perforce to witness these wild scenes were at a loss to understand it. I believe, however, that the news of King Ferdinand's call to his troops to consider the war as a crusade was spread broadcast in Thrace, and that the people, always jealous for the honor of their women, believed that the Turkish retreat exposed them to wanton brutality, which would be carried out under the cloak of religion.
    To most of us it was an awful revelation to see such scenes so far from the actual theatre of operations, and to see stalwart soldiers unblushingly com-promised in the same pitiful panic with weak women and little children.