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Ko-Ko’s account of the execution of Nankipoo is, in short, the
model for the future war correspondent. The other sort of war
correspondent, who patiently studied and recorded operations,
seems to be doomed. In the nature of things it must be so. The more
competent and the more accurate he is, the greater the danger he
is to the army which he accompanies. His despatches, published in
his newspaper and telegraphed promptly to the other side, give to
them at a cheap cost that information of what is going on behind their
enemy’s screen of scouts which is so vital to tactical, and sometimes
to strategical, dispositions. To try to obtain that information an
army pours out much blood and treasure; to guard that information
an army will consume a full third of its energies in an elaborate
system of mystification. A modern army must either banish the
war correspondent altogether or subject him to such restrictions
of Censorship as to veto honest, accurate, and prompt criticism or
record of operations.
The Bulgarian army had not the courage to refuse authorisation
to the swarm of journalists which descended upon its headquarters.
Editors had argued it out that the small Balkan States, anxious
to have a “good press” in Europe, would give correspondents a
good show. But the Bulgarian authorities, anxious as they were
to conciliate foreign public opinion, dared not allow a free run
to the newspaper representatives. Apart from the considerations
I have mentioned, which must govern any modern war, there
were special reasons why the Bulgarians 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 vexedly about one message he had
stopped. “It is true.”
“Yes, that is the trouble,” he said—the nearest approach to a joke
I ever got out of a Bulgarian, for they are a sober, God-fearing, and
humour-fearing race.
The idea of the Bulgarian Censorship in regard to the privileges
and duties of the war correspondent was further illustrated to me
on another occasion, when a harmless map of a past phase of the
campaign was stopped.
“Then what am I to send?” I asked.
“There are the bulletins,” he said.
“Yes, the bulletins which are just your bald official account of
week-old happenings which are sent to every news-agency in Europe
before we see them!”
“But you are a war correspondent. You can add to them in your
own language.” Remembering that conversation, I suspect that at
first the Bulgarian Censorship did not object to fairy tales passing