The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1912. WARS HORRORS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 71, 16 November 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1912. WARS HORRORS.

A special cable to the Sydney “Sun,” received last week, tells some of the horrors of war and under what fearful disabilities the Turks fought, at Lule Burgas. The message states that.there is little wonder the Turcomans were defeated as for three days prior to the battle they had received nothing to eat and very little to drink except filthy water from muddy pools through which oxen and horses had trampled. They had also for three days and nights lain on the bare hills without covering or shelter except their coats. Thousands were in a famished condition when captured. They had received only half a loaf of bread each during the four days’ lighting. The majority of the men who were wounded in the battle lay just where they had fallen, and died there from the cold. Men who had been only slightly wounded dragged themselves fifty miles to Chorlu to get succour. The Turks began the fight without food, without ammunition for their artillery, and without supports for their firing line. Thus they were defeated and undone before the actual conflict which ended so disastrously began. Writing at the end of September, a correspondent of the London “Telegraph” remarked that should the Balkan Sates prove unrcstrainable, the campaign would open at the worst possible season for the unfortunate soldiers of the rival armies. It was suggested that the troops of Bulgaria and Sei’via, being largely composed of mountaineer peasants and conscripts accustomed all their lives to the rough weather of middle Europe, were likely to fare better under the rigours of such i campaign than Moslem soldiers drawn largely from wjarmer (dimaf.es, ami used to the comparatively easy living of the lowlands, though the endurance and hardihood of the Turk was amply proved when he was last seriously engaged in contest in the same regions. The great struggle of 1877 was chiefly waged in the Danubian provinces of Bulgaria or in the mountain passes dividing Eastern Boumelia from her neighbours to the north and south. How the Sultan’s forces suffered during the winter of 1877, and how gallantly they bore themselves under all sorts of privations the records of that bitter campa’gu fully show. But though the rigorous climatic conditions might have been overcome, hunger and the want of proper clothing broke down even such hardy warriors as the Turks have always proved themselves to be.