tell, were as eager as he.  It is impossible to describe or even conceive the purposeful and aching desire to get to close quarters regardless of all losses and of all consequences.  The Bulgarians, in committing those obscene atrocities, not only damned themselves forever in the eyes of humanity, but they doubled, nay, quadrupled, the strength of the Greek army.  Nothing short of extermination could have prevented the Greek army from victory; there was not a man who would not have a million times rather died than have hesitated for a moment to go forward.

The days of those first battles were steaming hot with a pitiless Macedonian sun.  The Greek troops were in far too high a state of spiritual excitation to require food, even if food had been able to keep pace with their lightning advance.  All that the men wanted, all they ever asked for, was water and ammunition; and here the greatest self-sacrifice of all to the cause was frequently seen; for a wounded man, unable to struggle forward another yard, would, as he fell to the ground, hastily unbuckle water-bottle and cartridge-cases and hand them to an advancing comrade with a cheery word, “Go on and good luck, my lad,” and then as often as not he would lay him down to die with parched lips and cleaving tongue.

I was myself, at the pressing and personal invitation of King Constantine, the first to visit Nigrita, where the Bulgarian General, before leaving, had the inhabitants locked into their houses, and then with guncotton and petroleum burned the place to the ground.  Here 470 victims were burned alive, mostly old folk, women, and children.  Serres, Drama, Kilkis, and Demir Hissar (all important towns) have similar tales to tell, only the death-roll is longer.  Small wonder that these stories of ferocity are not given credence, for they are incredible, and it is only when one studies the Bulgarian character that one can understand how such orgies of carnage were possible.

The scope of this article does not permit me to describe in detail the minor battles and operations between the 6th of July and the 25th of July; suffice it to say that the rapidity of the Greek advance upon Strumnitza and up the valley of the Struma forced the Bulgarians to beat in full retreat toward their frontier, leaving behind them all that impeded their flight.  Military stores, guns, carts, and even uniforms strewed the line of their march, and they were only saved from annihilation because the mountains which guarded their flanks were impassable for the Greek artillery.  By blowing up the bridges over the Struma the impetuosity of the Greek pursuit was delayed, and it was in the Kresna Pass that the Bulgarian rear-guard first turned at bay.  The pass is a twenty-mile gorge cut through mountains 7,000 feet high, but the Greeks turned the Bulgarian positions by marching across the mountains, and it was near Semitli, five miles north of the pass, that the Bulgarians offered their last serious resistance.