 Hales was not content to be merely a writer of fiction, he went to Bulgaria and fought in the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising against the Turks in 1903 in the band of general Ivan Tsonchev – the leader of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee.This was followed by experience as a war correspondent in the Russo-Japanese War, and in the following years much lecturing in England, South Africa, Australia and South America.Wherever there was a mining field Hales visited it, and in South America he made a special study of the agricultural and pastoral possibilities of that continent.