Officers' Eyes Gouged Out.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 18, 1913:
English and French Correspondents Confirm Greeks' Stories.

King Constantine of Greece, from his headquarters at Hadji-Beilik, near Seres, has sent to the Associated Press a detailed account of the atrocities of the Bulgarians in Macedonia. He declares that only the precipitate flight of the inhabitants of the villages and towns prevented still greater slaughter. The following is the King's message, through Col. Dousmani, Chief of General Staff of His Majesty:
Associated Press, New York:

    HADJI-BEILIK, July 17.— In reply to your dispatch of the sixteenth instant I have the honor to communicate to you the following information on the Bulgarian atrocities, committed at the outset of hostilities against the Greek and Mussulman inhabitants of Macedonia.
    The first city to be scourged was Nigrita. A large number of its people who had remained at their homes after the events occurring in the Pangheon district were massacred by the retreating enemy, who did not fail to light the path of their flight by the flames of the city, to which they had applied the torch.
    The correspondents of Le Temps and The Daily Telegraph, who visited the locality the day after the massacres, merely confirmed in greater detail the dispatches of the commanders of our troops.
    The precipitate flight of the peasants in the surrounding villages is the only reason why we have not a greater number of victims to deplore. On our left wing 700 Mussulmans of the environs of Kilkish, a nest of Bulgarian comitadjis (irregular troops,) shared the same fate. Two of our officers who, in a bayonet assault, had been left lying wounded on the field a few steps from the enemy's trenches were found, when the attack was renewed, to have had their eyes gouged out.
    At Doiran before their flight the enemy dragged the Metropolitan and 50 of the leading citizens from their homes. They have never been seen since.
    The religious leader of the Mussulmans, with tears in his eyes, told us of the spoliations and pillage of the Bulgarian officers and soldiers.
    At Strumitza. fortunately, the enemy had time to kill only two of the persons imprisoned.
    But all these things are as nothing compared with what happened at Demir-Hissar, Seres, and Doxato, where everything was sacked by fire and sword.
    The City of Seres is nothing more than a mass of smoking rains, filled with mutilated corpses of old men and women and children.
    The Consuls-General of Italy and Austria at Salonika, who visited Seres for the purpose of establishing to what extent their nationals had suffered, have told us that the accounts published in the newspapers gave but a faint idea of the terrible reality.
    At Demir-Hissar the exhumation of the mutilated bodies of the Metropolitan and the leading citizens has convinced us that our enemy is not satisfied to pillage, burn, despoil, and murder, but he rejoices in torturing his victims.
    Doxato is no longer anything but a pool of blood. Of its 3,500 inhabitants only 150 remain. A great number of the little villages along the route taken by the fleeing army were the scenes of like atrocities.