Bulgar And Serb Atrocities Alleged.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 15, 1912:
German Correspondents Say the Campaign Is More Like Slaughter Than Warfare.
TO EXTERMINATE ALBANIANS
Servian Officers Said to Have Admitted That Orders Were Given to Kill All Men Over 18 Years Old.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    BERLIN, Nov. 14.— The sympathy won in Germany by the Balkan allies owing to their martial achievements has been largely alienated by repeated reports of ferocious cruelties practiced by them. Such charges are made against the Servians from many different quarters.
    A correspondent of the Vossische Zeitung who reached Semlin, Hungary, from the Bulgarian headquarters, declares that the restrictions, almost amounting to arrest, imposed on himself and his colleagues, "were demonstrably inspired from high places, or the highest place," with the object of preventing the grim facts as to the campaign from coming to the cognizance of Europe.
    In his opinion. "the manner of fighting on both sides has unhappily been more like slaughter than warfare." He remarks that in the long trains full of wounded he has not seen a single Turk, and significantly inquires what can be the cause of this.
    The correspondent says a friend who was at Kirk-Kilisseh during the buttle there saw Bulgarian soldiers walking about with heads of Turks spitted on their bayonets. He concludes:
    "A conflagration of barbarity has started of which Europe has no suspicion."
    Capt. Persius relates in the Berliner Tageblatt how a Servian who had returned from the front comforted him over his retention at the rear with the words:
    "You will soon get to Uskub, for soon there will not be a single Arnaut left alive, but you must see that you could not be allowed there yet. If you, a newspaper man, were to be a witness of the massacres, you would publish something about them." Capt. Persius continues:
    "I admit that I agreed with high Servian officers and officials, when they told me of the slaughter of Servian women and children by Arnauts, that the utmost severity was necessary, but I asked them whether the plan of shortening every Albanian by a head could be justified from the viewpoint of humanity. There was no other way, they said. The entire people must be swept off the face of the earth."
    This correspondent, who has the reputation of being very fair-minded, says he was told everywhere that, "by orders from above, the Servians murdered, often in a most horrible manner, all men above 18 years of age, and in many cases women and children as well."