HORRORS OF HADENKENI.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 195, 7 January 1913, Page 5

HORRORS OF HADENKENI.

| LIVING FLY PAPER. ! now WAR MAKES MEN" FIENDS. (Sydney Sun's special representative). London, November 22. Ghastly, grizzly, ghostly, the Balkans war will be numbered amongst the horrors of history. Ghastly because of the frightful suffering inflicted upon tens of thousands of human beings; grizzly be cause of the horrible scenes that were created by the carnage; and ghostly, because men were slain in thousands without warning. An armistice has been proclaimed. For a moment there is a pause in the slaughter. The machinations of the diplomats have taken the, place of deadly strife. Everything now depends upon the terms of peace which are outlined by the Allies, and the spirit in which necessary humiliation is accepted by the Turks. In international conflict there has. never been more appalling sacrifice of life. The pen pictures of what has happened are sufficient to convert the most militant into strenuous advocates of the Hague Tribunal, and if war, a war of extermination, were not in itself sufficient, cholera came in at the deathkniek to sweep off thousands upon thousands of Turks whose systems had been impoverished by starvation and strain. Here is a scene from the pen of a Continental war correspondent translated literally into English, which gives some idea of tho holocaust:

"Ten o'clock; the sharp staccato rattle of machine guns. The village on the bluff where the Bulgarians have lodged is struck by shrapnel. It flares up, though the rain falls incessantly. Through my glasses I can distinctly see the Balkan detachment of a thousand men advance to the attack. For the moment our guns are silent, then their fire is concentrated on a spot where the Bulgarians march. I look at my watch. Exactly two minutes have elapsed; not a man is left standing." Again we have death coming suddenly out of space:—■

"Twelve o'clock: A battery which the Turks captured from the Servians is brought up. It fires five test shots at a strapping Bulgarian detachment. It is sharp and crashing. An officer fixes range—three miles. The projectiles whistle off and explode above the column with a noise which irresistibly suggests catewauling. Again a vast number of dark points fall, others run off in panic to the woods, where they find cover."

A FEARFUL SPECTACLE. But even this pales beside the dreadful account which Mr. Ashmead Bartlett gives of cholera-stricken Hademkeui:— "In the centre of Hademkeui lay a large square, formed on one side' by some barracks, on two others by lines of white hospital tents, and on the fourth bv the .high road. This square resembled a successful fly-paper in midsummer. It was covered with corpses of the .dead and the writhing bodies of the living in all attitudes, some prone, some sitting, some kneeling, some constantly shifting, some with hands clasped as if in supplications. In some parts of the area the dead were piled in heaps; in others those still living were almost as closely packed. This shocking lake of ■misery was being constantly fed by rivulets of stretcher-bearers, bringing in fresh victims from the camps and forts, and by others who crawled in of their own accord, seeming to prefer to end their days in the company of their fellow men, or else expecting to find succor or a release from their immediate torments. All the tracks leading to this impromptu morgue were dotted with the bodies of those who had died on the road. From time to time empty bullock waggons would pass through, and the bodies of those in whom life was extinct would be dumped into them, carted out of the village, and thrown into great pits where sleep thousands of poor Asiatic peasants." Add to these multiplied horrors of the terrible atrocities perpetrated by all the parties to the war, and it will be readily conceded that a war correspondent hardly over-stated the correspondent hardly over-stated the case when he said that hell itself would be pleasant in comparison.

DEMORALISED BY WAR. The war correspondents are gradually returning to London. Their mission —never very successful—is over. If they were to print all that they saw and all that t'hey heard, the Turk would not be the only person whom civilisation would wish to be driven out of Europe. The Ave nations have established a record of butchery, bloodshed and brutality unequalled even by the atrocities of the Indian Mutiny. It is curious ihow these pressmen who have 'been to the front each attribute the fiendish disfigurements of the war to the armies with which they were not associated. The man who was with the Bulgarians states that they were blameless. The man who was with the Servians, or with the Greeks, or with the Montenegrins, or with the Turks, is equally emphatic that the blame must be laid at the door of the others. Each man with each army identified himself with that army. Facing a hail of shrapnel in company appears to weld men together, so that the tie which subsequently binds them is almost as thick as that, of kinship. But even so, there are dark stories of horrible excesses which are so dreadful that they cannot even be put on paper. Indeed, witnesses hesitate to mention them even in the smoking-room of a club, for human r.ature shrinks from recording the depth to which it can fall in time of war. PAKE STORIES OF BATTLES.

The biggest, bubble of the whole campaign burst with 'the detection of the inaccuracy of Lieutenant Wagner, the special correspondent of the Reichspost. whose vivid reports were the sensation of all Europe. Hardly was the ink dry on my last letter, in which I suggested that he was drawing upon his imagination, than the Times correspondent once and for all destroyed his reputation as a reliable chronicler. Figures, by common report, do not lie. but liars figure. It is not necessary to call Lieut. Wagner by such hard yet it is unquestionable that neither his facts nor his figures can after a certain date be substantiated. lie is not the first correspondent who has been carried away by the exuberance of his own imagination, but 110 other special writer has ever had such a vogue, won in such a dramatic way, and addressed each morning to the whole of the reading public of the world. You will search in vain for his despatches in any relia-ble British paper today. They say the way of the transgressor is hard. At any rate it is not lonely. Lieutenant Wagner has companions in disgrace. CROOKED EUROPEAN PRES*.'

The European papers are in no whit disturbed by recent. disclosures. The press of Europe is the prey of politicians or the mouthpiece of great speculators. It is practically impossible to find a paper which is not. subsidised by a Government or -by a party or by a group, of financiers. Some of them are openly recognised as official,, others as semiofficial, and still others are yearning for the good things which accompany the latter designation. They all make no secret of their subserviency or of their venality; in every capital they are up for sale, and every day they are bought. In Paris they are, if anything, rather

/proud of their extraordinary standing, | whether iu high polities, grciit finance, I in the field of literature, or in stageland. There is a regular market rate for support or for suppression of what 'might be injurious. A distinguished Australian told me recently that upon her first appearance in Paris the most flagrant blackmail was attempted. If she paid she was assured that she would be a success; if she did not pay, she was told that she would be numbered amongst the failures. 'Luckily for her, although, she did not pay, she hit the public taste, and the critics were dragged at the heel* of public opinion. In the pourparlers and the twists and turns of the next few weeks the condition of the Continental press must bt 'borne in mind, otherwise tie sinuou» progress of the negotiations will not b« clearly understood. The diplomatists are quarrelling with the generals, the generals are quarrelling with the diplomatists. The politicians are striving to please the people, and at the same time attempting to stand well with tiie ecurts. The concert of Europe is lesa musical than a worn-out hurdy-gurdy. What makes negotiations harder is that the principals are continually stumbling upon somo unknown trophy to underhand intrigue. Arrangements, understandings, .and even written treaties • which were never suspected are being discovered in confusing profusion. They cannot all be torn up; they cannot all be carried out. Super-added to the bitterness, the racial hatred and the religious animosity which divides conquerors and conquered, there are all uiese secret documents and dossiers in the charnel vaults and the chancelleries, plus the" jealousy and the distrust which the Allies feel for one another, and for Europe as a whole.

AVhat the upshot will be taffies prediction. The aims of the Allies, the aspirations of -the Triple Alliance, and tho negative ambitions of the Triple Entent# will take some reconciling. The task that they have in hand will not be settled in a week, nor, for that matter, in a month. But- when it is settled everything will probably still be unsettled. Paradox runs riqt in international affairs. All that is certain is that come weal or woe, peace or war, nations will continue to ibowl up the ninepins of Time on the green of Fate.

WOMEN NURSES AT THE WAR. A war correspondent in the Balkans writes of the work of women nurses in the war as follow:—In the field hospitals and in the base hospitals the work of devoted women is always appreciated. Between the field hospital and the base wounded men often have to be transported under grave difficulties; and it is hardly too .much to say that it is nobody's duty to give them skilled attention and to lessen their -sufferings during the transport. Such work often calls for more courage and endurance than does ordinary hospital service. Fortunately there was in England (and nowhere else) a body that had been trained to devote itself entirely to work of this kind, and it has been found ready to justify its existence now that its first opportunity of doing real service in a real war has presented itself. A week ago I saw here Mrs. St. Clair Stobart, a lady who 'had come out with Mr. Noel Buxton, M.P., and a few of his fellowmembers of the Balkan Committee. Since Mrs. Stobart has been as near as she could get to the front—as far as Jam'boli—and has been interviewiag military and medical authorities to obtain permission to place this body at the disposal of the Bulgarian army; and she is now back at Sofia, with her aim achieved, awaiting the arrival of the i corps of which slxe is commandant-in- | chief, the 'Women's Convoy Corps." The corps is not a wealthy one, and it had imany difficulties to overcome before .it gained this opportunity of putting its usefulness to the test. No official organisation was prepared to adopt it — principally on the humane but otherwise untenable ground that "the theatre of war is no place for women"—but the Balkan Committee came to the rescue and supplied the funds necessary for travelling and equipment expenses. No other nursing body was willing to accept its assistance, so that Mrs. Stobart had to come herself to headquarters to attain her object. Now all difficulties have been removed. :She has obtained permission to occupy, as the headquarters of the corps, some of the deserted buildings that are to be found in or about Kirk Kilisse, and to render such service as she and (her assistants can td the multitude of patients who are in urgent need of attention there. In the, course of a few days fifteen members of the corps, in addition to the commandant, will be in the field. Two of them will be lady surgeons, five trained nurses, and the rest skilled cooks and assistants, ready to turn their hands to anything.