The Loftcha affair, much discussed this week, was of importance
only as showing that Osman Pasha was on the alert. The post, which commands the Osma, was attacked by about 6,000 men, of whom 1,000 were cavalry ; but the assault was repulsed, with a loss to the Russians of six hundred men. This is Osman Pasha's own statement, and of course he has no interest in depreciating his own success. The sensation caused in London by the news of _ the affair was due to a telegram in the Telegraph, in which the skir- mish was represented as a "supreme effort" made by the Russians, who "advanced to the assault in vast numbers," and suffered a repulse of vast importance. It is probable that the tone of
exaggeration visible in many telegrams recently is due to reliance on the statements of subordinate Turks, who know no more about numbers than our forefathers did when they called the visible stars "innumerable," but this particular telegram is professedly that of an eye-witness, for it is dated Loftcha. There is no need to accuse the correspondent's good-faith, as he must have known that other accounts would simultaneously reach London, but the habit which grew up in the Franco-German war of relying on tele- grams from the field seems likely in this war to deceive the public.
