Bulgar Troops Ate Raw Corn.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 17, 1912:
Correspondent Says They Attribute Victory to University Training.
    ST. PETERSBURG, Nov. 16.— The correspondent of the Novoe Vremya, who has seen much fighting around Adrianople, quotes a remark, made to him by a Bulgarian soldier:
    "We are fewer in numbers than the Turks, but have thirty thousand university graduates among the privates. Therein lies our strength."
    As revealing the basis of the superb confluence in their ability to defeat the Turks, shown by the Bulgarians from the beginning of the war, the correspondent says that when nearing . Lule-Burgras in plowing through the miry roads, a Bulgarian officer pointed to these and said: "Those who carry the most bread and cartridges will be the masters of this land."
    But for two days previously the army had been subsisting on raw corn. Between Adrianople and Demotika the correspondent found the whole region swarming with Bashi Bazouks, who, he said, "follow upon the heels of the Bulgarian outposts, leaving a track of burning villages."
    Describing the once flourishing country for seventy miles around Adrianople, he says:
    "It is a wilderness. Not even a single tree is left standing. The villages are empty, the Turks having fled, fearing vengeance for the atrocities committed by them against the Christians and Jews. How the Bulgarian Army advances, lives, and fights in such a land is a mystery to any one, who does not know the Bulgaria soldier."