for peasant virtues and peasant abilities the _savoir faire_
of the cultivated European. They show a tendency to lose the one before
they gain the other.

My life with Peter was brief. He was such a good fellow that I was quite
willing to retain him, even though I had to be the servant really, and
his services were only useful as interpreter. But his health improved.
Possibly the better food and the open-air regime that I insisted upon
were responsible. Peter became healthy enough to do something for the
army and, of course, he went away to do that something. Though he had
become a good deal devoted to me his chief devotion was to his country.
I honoured him for deserting me.

Incidents of the mobilisation of the troops showed this strong and
general patriotic ardour. At the call this trained nation was in arms in
a day. The citizen soldiers hurried to the depots for their arms and
uniforms. In one district the rumour that mobilisation had been
authorised was bruited abroad a day before the actual issue of the
orders, and the depot was besieged by the peasants who had rushed in
from their farms. The officer in charge could not give out the rifles,
so the men lit fires, got food from the neighbours, and camped around
the depot until they were armed. Some navvies received their
mobilisation orders on returning to their camp after ten hours' work at
railway-building. They had supper and marched through the night to their
respective headquarters. For one soldier, the march was twenty-four
miles. The railway carriages were not adequate to bring all the men to
their assigned centres. Some rode on the steps, on the roofs of
carriages, on the buffers even.

At Stara Zagora I noted a mother of the people who had come to see some
Turkish prisoners just brought in from Mustapha Pasha. To one she gave
a cake. "They are hungry," she said. This woman had five men at the war,
her four sons in the fighting-line, her husband under arms guarding a
line of communication. She had sent them proudly. It was the boast of
the Bulgarian women that not a tear was shed at the going away of the
soldiers.

At a little village outside Kirk Kilisse a young civil servant, an
official of the Foreign Office, spoke of the war whilst we ate a dish of
cheese and eggs. "It is a war," he said, "of the peasants and the
intellectuals. It is not a war made by the politicians or the soldiers
of the staff. That would be impossible. In our nation every soldier