Why Bulgaria Won.

New York Times 100 years ago today, March 9, 1913:
In His History of the Balkan War Lieut-Wagner Analyzes the Causes Which Led to Turkey's Defeat
WITH THE VICTORIOUS BULGARIANS, Bt Lieut. Hermenegild Wagner. Houghton Mifflin Company. $3.    DURING the first stage of the Turco-Bulgarian war only one of the many newspaper correspondents with the Bulgarian troops achieved any distinction or supplied his editors with much news, Lieut. Hermenegild Wagner, special correspondent for The Vienna Reichspost and The London Daily Mail and The New York Times, managed to bring off "beat" after "beat," and was so successful that his jealous rivals accused him of being the press agent for the Bulgarian General Staff.
    His dispatches were published by The Times simultaneously with their appearance in Europe, and all who read them will expect great things from his book on the war. In one way they will not be disappointed, for assuredly Lieut. Wagner has performed almost, as remarkable a feat from the point of view of the historian in preparing at such short notice as complete a survey of the course and cause of the fighting as he did as a newspaper correspondent. But in another way his work is less satisfactory, for there are in it very few of those personal touches which we are accustomed to expect from writers who accompany troops in the field.
    Lieut. Wagner, in fact, has written rather a short history of the war than a narrative of his own experiences. He has spoken of the Balkan League and the events that led up to the conflict; he has grasped and described the strategy which turned the tides of war and has discussed the tactics of the rival armies, but he has little to tell us of his own direct observation of the fighting and has few adventures on which to dilate. So he puts himself out of the class of the average war correspondent and has lined himself up rather with the military and political historian.
    Thus he has made the strategy of the war very clear. The Turks planned to concentrate on Chorlu-Chereskoi, well within their own territory and easily supported by the railroad from Constantinople. There they would wait while the invaders broke their strength on Adrianople, which, it is interesting to note, Lieut. Wagner always terms an "armed camp" rather than a city, and destroy them at their leisure. The Bulgarians, however, realized that their chief hope lay in rapid action, and had no intention of delaying for any place of arms.
    So they dashed at Kirk Kilissé, which the Turks with their usual inefficiency had left only partially protected, crumpled up the right of their opponents, and forced their enemy either to risk a battle to reach his chosen position or change his whole plan. The Turks tried an advance to recapture Kirk Kilissé, but were soon driven back, and the Bulgarians never stayed their answering attack till they had driven their foe in utter rout at Lule Burgas. This brought them face to face with the lines of Chatalja, only a few miles from the capital city; but their bolt was shot and they were no more exempt from the difficulties of transport than any other invading army, and so they failed to conquer the works which still hold Constantinople safe.
    The military operations are clearly described by Lieut. Wagner and illustrated with excellent maps; but perhaps of even more interest are his comments on the characteristics of the opposing armies. Beaten as were the Turks, Lieut. Wagner by no means despises them as fighting men. He declares that even in this disastrous campaign they proved they possessed all that power of resistance from regular positions which made Plevna so terrible a name in Russian ears. Even the Bulgarians, full of elan and reckless of life, found the Redif sitting in his blockhouse with a modern rifle a foeman deserving of the greatest respect.
    Perhaps their lamentable failure is partly due to the fact that they were trained in a style of fighting that was unfamiliar to them. For a few years German officers had tried to turn the Turkish levies into a modern scientific army, but they had had no time to complete the process. So the first Bulgarian success at Kirk Kilissé was assisted by the attempt of the Turkish Generals to follow tactics to which their troops were still ill adapted. If they had kept their men behind trenches they would have been hard to dislodge, but they tried an offensive movement sound enough in theory, and dire was the result.
    Of course, Lieut. Wagner agrees with all other observers of the war that the secret of the Bulgarian success is summed up in the one word, preparation; and he has much to say of the marvelous spirit of the entire Nation and the way in which it submitted to the terrific strain of the conflict. But still more interesting is his account of the love of the peasant levies for cold steel and the way in which the Bulgurian Generals adapted their tactics to their troops' somewhat disconcerting insistence on the use of the bayonet.
    With his own eyes he saw before Adrianople whole regiments rise 400 paces from the position of the enemy and in total disregard of the orders of their officers hurl themselves upon it. They carried all before them but at fearful loss to themselves, and after a time their commanding officers saw that they must be content to use the enthusiasm which they could not restrain. Already, says Lieut. Wagner, have there been many complaints of the tremendous cost at which the battles were won, but he believes that it was practically impossible for the Bulgarian leaders in the field to do anything but accept their men's sacrifice.
    In conclusion, Lieut. Wagner enters on a defense of himself against the charge made by his rivals that he obtained his news by special favor of the General Staff rather than by the ordinary process of gathering it for himself. His account of how he outwitted even the alert Bulgarian officers is amusing, and he makes out a good case for the entire change that has come over the art of war correspondence under modern conditions and with wars on the modern scale. However, whatever those whom he beat may say, Lieut. Wagner stood out facile princeps among the newspaper men on the Bulgarian side, and his present work will take an equally high rank for its clear description of the developments of a campaign the results of which are still In the future.