s should be
nervous of observation. They were waging war on "forlorn hope" lines
with the slenderest resources, with the knowledge that officers and
men--especially transport officers--had to do almost the impossible to
win through. Further, they had the knowledge that in some cases the
correspondents were representing the newspapers (and the Governments,
for newspapers and cabinets often work hand in hand on the Continent) of
nations which were at the very moment threatening mobilisation against
the Balkan States. To have specially excepted Roumanian, Austrian, and
German press representatives from permission to see operations would
have been impossible. The method was adopted of authorising as many
press correspondents as cared to apply, then carefully pocketing them
where they could see nothing, and instituting such a rigorous Censorship
as to guard effectively against any important facts, gleaned indirectly,
leaking out. A few managed to earn enough of the Bulgarian confidence to
be allowed to go through to the front and see things. But, even then,
the Censorship and the monopoly of the telegraph line for military
messages prevented them from despatching anything.

Some of the correspondents--one in particular--overcame a secretive
military system and a harsh Censorship by the use of a skilled
imagination and of a friendly telegraph line outside the area of
Censorship. At the staff headquarters at Stara Zagora during the early
days of the campaign, when we were all straining at the leash to get to
the front, waiting and fussing, he was working, reconstructing the
operations with maps and a fine imagination, and never allowing his
paper to want for news. I think that he was quite prepared to have
taken pupils for his new school of war correspondents. Often he would
come to me for a yarn--in halting French on both sides--and would
explain the campaign as it was being carried on. One eloquent gesture he
habitually had--a sweeping motion which brought his arms together as
though they were gathering up a bundle of spears, then the hands would
meet in an expressive squeeze. "It is that," he said, "it is
Napoleonic."

Probably the Censor at this stage did not interfere much with his
activities, content enough to allow fanciful descriptions of Napoleonic
strategy to go to the outer world. But, in my experience, facts, if one
ascertained something independently, were not treated kindly.

"Why not?" I asked the Censor vexe