Nazim's Men Starve Amid Food Plenty.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 18, 1912:
Tchatalja's Defenders, Weakened by Lack of Food, Fall Easy Victims to Cholera.
ASIATICS LOTH TO FIGHT
Show Concern Over the Loss of Tripoli, But Are Indifferent to the Fate of European Turkey.
By ELLIS ASHMEAD BARTLETT.
By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to The New York Times.
Dispatch to The London Daily Telegraph.
    HADEMKEUI, Friday, via Constanza, Sunday.— I have established headquarters in a village a few miles from Hademkeui, in a central position, which gives me easy access to any point along the line which may be attacked.
    I found it impossible to remain actually in Hademkeui on account of the cholera, which is raging with fearful effect among the Turkish troops, together with dysentery and enteric fever. The men fall easy victims to all these dread scourges on account of their weakened condition, following the terrible hardships endured during the battle of Lule-Burgas and the subsequent retreat.
    Even now, as close as the army is to Constantinople, the men are only receiving a bare ration of bread, and occasionally rice. This is all the more extraordinary, considering that the whole country between the Tchatalja lines and Constantinople is crowded with live stock — bullocks, sheep, and calves — which have been driven in by refugees.
    For some inexplicable reason, although the Turks commandeer everything else they require without the slightest hesitation or regard to present or subsequent payment, they make no effort to make use of the immense quantity of fresh meat available right in their midst.
    Thus, during the battle of Lule-Burgas, while the Commander in Chief and his army were starving, whole herds of cattle and flocks of sheep were actually grazing under the fire of the enemy's shrapnel, and when the retreat began these were driven off with the routed army. We saw hundreds of men dying of starvation within a few yards of food, which any other army would have regarded as a godsend.
    The Turk is not a meat eater. The soldiers live in times of peace on bread and occasional pilaf. They seem quite unable to change the habits of a lifetime even to meet the exigencies of actual starvation.
    Then, again, the Turkish soldier is quite incapable of looking after himself in the field. He is dependent on his officer for everything, and if he were ordered to kill a sheep and eat it would probably do so, but he would rather starve than take such responsibility on himself.
    The men here openly declare that they do not want to fight and are disgusted with the war, although they have not yet been in action. It is impossible to arouse the Turkish soldiers from Asia into any enthusiasm over a war in European Turkey. They hardly seem to regard the country as forming a part of the empire, and are far more exercised in their minds over the loss of Tripoli and the abandonment of their co-religionists there than over the disasters which have overwhelmed the army in Thrace, Macedonia, and on the Greek frontier.
    The weather here has been abnormal during the past week, almost as hot as in midsummer, with the result that cholera has spread with frightful rapidity. We need a spell of cold badly to stamp it out