BULGARIA TO-DAY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1626, 18 December 1912, Page 8

BULGARIA TO-DAY.

EFFECTS OF A MODERN WAR. INDUSTRIES AT A STANDSTILL. (By Charles E. Hands in tho "Daily Mail.") Wo English know well tho cost and eacrifira of war—or ought to know. For we havo memories. A dozen years ago and the thronged activities of daily life wero overspread by the knowledge of it. Wo arc a commercial people, and tho sti'nin and expense of it had their effect on commerce.

And yet what do wo know of tho meaning of war, real War, spelt with a capital W, the kind of war with everything at stake that we may one day have to face? Hero in Sofia this war has been going on only for a week, so that tho full effects of it have not yet developed. But it is possiblo to get an idea. This morning 1 went to a bank. It was closed. All the young employees had gone to their regiments, and for the older ones beyond tho ago of military service thero was nothing to do. There was no business doing, so the bank was closed. I went to see an important-merchant at his place of business. Being a man of. middle age ho was exempt from service, and was in his eounling-linuso alone. Tho desk which bis partner usually occupies was empty. Tho partner was away, sub-lieutenant in a regiment in front of Adrianoplo. The desks at which his clerks work wero empty also. Ho took mo into his warehouse. It was bare of goods and of activity. No one was thero but an office boy. Tho place was a model of neatness and order. The reason was that the head of tho firm, with the nssistanco of tho office boy, was npplying himself personally to tho work at hooping it clean and tidy, ilo had nothing else to do. Thero was no business, thero wero no commodities to trade in. The railways would transport no goods either inward or outward. The war had obliterated trade. It had buried all the commercial activity of Sofia just as Vesuvius shut down Pompeii. Under tho moratorium he could neither collect the sums duo to him nor be forced to pay tho debts he owed. But for tho moratorium he said every merchant in Bulgaria must inevitably have been bankrupt. Ho had five thousand bags of coffee in shipment to him from England, but where they now wero or when ho would receive them he had no idea. They were buried snmewhero under tho lava of war. Most of his goods came by water to Varna or to Burgas, tho Bulgarian ports in tho Black Sea, and thence to Sofia by railway. But for a week the BJnck Sea had been blotted out of commercial geography," and even if his shipments were landed at tho port the railways could not carry them. Ho traded, too, in other merchandise- from England—iron sheeting, copper tubings, cotton piece goods, caustic soda and bicarbonate, building iron, alum in largo quantities. But of these things there was no more.

A Loss of Thousands of Pounds. Siißar was another important commodity to him. This came from Austria by tht; Danube, but although he had lodged money in a bank as against a sMpment of twenty tons he had contracted to purchase before the war the Austrian refiners had declined to complete the contract, hoping to enforce higher prices. And of the goods in his stores a week ago the Government had made their selection for army purposes., The requisition committee, a body, of business men nominated by the .Government—he was himself a member of it—had demanded from him and had carted away five hundred bags of rice, 10,000 kilos of sugar, • 5000 kilos of tea, 2000 kilos of powdered alum—it is used for precipitating impurities in water which the soldiers have to make the best of—and a heap of other miscellaneous commodities. It was a good big wholesale order, but as- a stroke of business its usefulness was impaired by the fact that it had. been paid for by a certificate which will only become collectable when the Government finds it convenient to pay. Twenty per cent gross profit is allowed upon the prime cost, but that is in- the ■indefinite future. He knew that he would be thousands. of pounds poorer for the war, besides having to furnish his share ot the expenditure. .£IOO,OOO a day tho army was costing, and .£BO,OOO a-day in addition was the estimated loss to the country in'trade— £240,000 a day in all. But he was wholly with the Government and for tho war. If there had been an election in tho direct issue of war or.no war he would unhesitatingly have voted for. war, ho told me; and ho was not in the least down-hearted about his business or anxious as to .tho •issue of the great enterprise. The grand optimism of a national endeavour marks all theso Bulgarians as it marked the Japanese. Business at a Standstill. I went to a school a fine new building, to hear how the children wero getting on now that the breadwinners were away at the war. There was a sentry on the door. The school was: closed, for all t'he men teachers were fighting and the premises wero being utilised for a .military depot. I looked in at tho old mosque that serves as a museum of Soman antiquities. There was a sentry on the door. Archaeology was temporarily suspended. I went to tho little exhibition of Bulgarian agricultural products,. the place where little tubes of the genuine attar of roses and specimens of embroidery are to be'purchnsecl. That was in the hands of the military, too. ■ I went to a small silk factory on the outskirts of the city. It was established only two years ago by an enterprising young Bulgarian, and is reputed to be progressing. The owner's wife answered the ring at tho closed door/ 'Her husband had gone to the front, and of the sixty men employed only five were working .and these were all Frenchmen. There was the littlo factory equipped with modern looms and machinery and lighted by oloetrieity. One or two girls only were working.

The Homes of the Poor. I went to a workman's cottage. The man was away at tho front. His wife and children were living on a subsistence allowance of forty centimes each a day. She did not know where her husband had been- sent to, whether he had been fighting or whether he was still alive. The Government publishes no casualty lists. But she was quite cheerful. I looked in at a little huckster's shop in a poor quarter on the outskirts, where the roads were of mud and tho scattered houses with their bits of gardens looked like tho roughly .made sheds that English workmen construct in allotment gardens. Choose, paraffin, onions, and such liko commodities wero the chief stock-in-trade. A little boy of ten or twelvo was looking after the business. His father had been called out with the Reserve. Tho boy's mother—an old woman she looked to hovo a soldier husband—came out from the room behind the shop. Yes, she said, tho poor people wero very poor, and there was no business. Where in ordinary times they would buy twopence worth or more of goods l.hey would only lay out a halfpenny now. But, then, they did not need so much since the man was away in tho army. And they did not want for bread. Tho Government would not allow tho price of bread to be raised, so that the children, had food. Tho Lava of War. As in all progressive towns, the outskirts of Sofia aro devastated by. building operations. But tho moratorium had included the building trade. The new houses in course of construction and the fine buildings in tho centre of the town had been left when tho order for, general mobilisation was given, and so will remain until the war is finished. Tho lava of ■ war has engulfed tho whole community. As I write the silence of the streets is suddenly broken by shouts, and a Bulgarian friend rushes in with the great news, Lo7.ongrad (Kirk Kilissu) has fallen, and with all its garrison and stores is in tho hands of tho army. So somo business has been doing, ■ and tho men who left their work as it stood have not teen idle. Out in the streets there was what would have been a great demonstration but for the fact that the men were all away. The aged and the young marched with Balkan flags and cheered in front of the War Office and the allied Legations and sang songs of victory, and, recognising their friend, "The Times" correspondent, gave him a great ovation and boro him shoulder high to his hotel. But about the cheers there was an unfamiliar ring. Tliey were shrill and lacked volume. For tho lusty men were all away demonstrating in front of Adrianoplo. And I noticed that the women wore not wildly jubilant. They wero proud and glad, but they did not give way to transports of delight. For their men were away, and tho War Offico doos not publish casualty liatai..