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178 QUARRELS BETWEEN THE ALLIES [ch. xi.
the work of the "Great Bulgaria"; the creed of this
religion was "the Bulgaria of San-Stefano."
The roughness of the Bulgarian manners and the
absence of all humanitarian feeling among them became
strikingly apparent during the Balkan War. I do not
mean the cruelties inflicted on the Mussulman
population wherever the Bulgarian armies penetrated. These
cruelties, practised in cold blood and as "lawful
vengeance," were fortunately tempered by a certain fear
of the public opinion of Europe. But even for their
own people the Bulgarians demanded no mercy, no
pity. In no other army in the world is the work of
tending the wounded so neglected as it is in the
Bulgarian Army. Thousands of soldiers fell wounded
on the battlefield and lay there, without any one paying
any attention to them ; to pick them up during the fight
was considered a crime; but even when the battle was
over there was not much time to devote to them. The
wounded dragged themselves as best they could to the
ambulances near the front, where the Bulgarian military
surgeons hacked at them with the coolness of a butcher
or hurriedly bound up their wounds with dirty cloths,
and then sent them in buffalo waggons to the hospitals
in the rear. And these poor wretches never thought of
complaining of such treatment; according to their own
ideas a soldier, wounded and unfit to fight, is only a
burden to the Army and to his country; so that
nothing-more need be done for him ; much has already been
done when his wound has been bound up, and he has
been put on a wraggon !
It was only when a Bulgarian wounded soldier had
the luck to get to a foreign hospital, especially a Russian
one, where he became the object of the refined and
tender care of the sisters and doctors, that the poor
wretch began to discover and understand a new world
of human solidarity and of Christian love, hitherto
completely sealed to him. " Yes, now we
understand what pity is, what charity is!" These were
the touching words that I often heard from the
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