Cover of the 1967 Signet edition of Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed

The War in Eastern Europe Described by John Reed, Pictured by Boardman Robinson from the series the War on All Fronts.

John Reed, author of Ten Days that Shook the World, toured the Balkans and Russia in 1915. Serbia, having survived three Austro-Hungarian invasions the year before, was suffering a typhus epidemic. He crossed Bucovina to observe the Great Russian Retreat, and to visit Moscow and Petrograd. He returned to Turkey to visit Constantinople. He visited Romania, still a year before it cast off neutrality. He left Bulgaria days before it mobilized and declared war on Serbia.

The book closes the last day of Reed's stay in Greece, in Salonica, the day General Sir Ian Hamilton arrived from Gallipoli. As Reed lunches with a British envoy at the restaurant of the Hotel de Rome, Hamilton dined across the room. The next morning, Reed's ship passes twelve transport ships of British troops bound for Salonica. In early October, 1915, the Allies were withdrawing from a disastrous front, and opening one that would be fruitful three years hence.

Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918

Copyright: 1916, by Charles Scribner's Sons