THE GREAT FIRE AT SALONICA.

, traos: or& si-eclvi cosnEsMnKDF.Nr* SALONICA. November 20, 1917. The old city of Salonica ha's witnessed many fires since its foundal:-'" 2200 years ago. Since the sixteenth century alone there have been fourteen comparatively disastrous conflagrations. all of which have destroyed a considerable portion of the town. Even within the last twenty years two new residential quarters have been built up by the Jewish community out of the ashes of older district.-, and almost every street bears In bare spaces the outward visible sign of a burnt area. This liability to fire is due to two causes. Nearly all the destruction has been caused during the summer months, which are subject to a furious wind blowing from the north-north-east-. This is approximately also ihe lie of Salonica. so that the gale sweeps along parallel streets to the sea. very much as a blast comes down a funnel. As the Vardar river also runs in much the same direction, this wind is popularly known as a Vardar wind. In addition to this natural aid to progress, any fire is also materially assisted by the construction of the local house. Macedonian beech is beginning to find its way as a saleable article of considerable durability into the London market. This timber is drawn mainly from Northern Thessaly. some fifty miles distant, where there is a flourishing milling company run by Scotchmen. But before the Balkan wars the forest belt apparently covered a much greater area, and one of the most interesting sights in the smallest dwellings in the most remote villages is the splendid size of frequent wooden joists and beams. This is, of course, especially true in Salonica. A very rough, th'U coating of plaster conceals in most cases what is entirely a wooden build-

The reccnt fire broke out sometime j during tlio afternoon of Saturday, August IStli, and lasted at its height until well into the morning of the following Monday. By that time it had partly burnt itself out—to tho extent that 'it had reached the sea, though small, intermittent fires continued to break out in odd corners for several days afterwards, and tho smouldering lasted until well three weeks later. Tho natural belief rt first was that incendiarism was at the bottom of the trouble. Owing to the curious mclango of races that crowds into the city, it has always been impossible to entirely eradicate tho alien enemy element. One of the most striking photographs in the "French in France and Salonica," by the lato Rioliard Harding Davis, doyen of American war correspondents, icpresents a crowd of curious watchers sitting on the quay-side, with tho title. "Spies of every nationality greet the landing ol : the Allied troops" : the destruction, only a month previous, of one of the buildings occupied by the French Secret Service was regarded by some ns a foreshadowing of futuredevelopments in the way of incendiarism; the wearing of "fezzes" to the unknowing, who havo never been j to Egypt, always smacks of the Turk;! and when, on tho Monday, a Boche aeroplane came over —presumably to see what damage was done, though it dropped no bombs and was speedily driven off by our air barrage—enemy ; planes ; on observation are no uncommon sight over the city on a clear morning—fresh fuel was added to a suspicion already rife. j The truth is: the origin was .purely accidental. A boy went down into a dark, straw-covered cellar to look for eggs As he could not see properly, lie lighted a match. The match caught the dry straw, the jflame ignited the wopden underpinning of the house, the house lav in an angle at the intersection of three streets, there was a furious, warm Vardar wind, which had been blowing for two days, and the mischief once thus simply begun could not be checked. As the fire swept down the three streets at practically tho same time, it was surmised that it started at several places at once, but the facts are as now stated.

It was easy to see from the very first that it was a serious matter, but the general opinion was that it would be confined to a definite neighbourbourhood, and except in that vicinity no ono was very disturbed or in any way ceased their normal occupation. Indeed, a most remarkable feature was the quiet nonchalance with which., two hours before the commercial section of the city was a blazing, roaring furnace, and whole streets were, literally, being eaten up with incredible rapacity, there wa3 not the slightest idea that such a denouement —as did eventuate —was in any way likely. The inhabitants of sections as yet untouched looked on imperturbably at the conflagration, entirely convinced that tliey at least were safe until almost the very moment that they were forced to flee for their lives, snatching up any absurd fragmeut of household goods that might be ready to their hands. Even up to eleven o'clock —seven hours after the outbreak —tho restaurants, cafes, and places of popular amusement remained open, and the habitues looked with mingled feelings of curiosity and surprise on the refugees, hardly realising that in a short time they, too, would be homeless.

The first real sign of an all-threaten-ing danger was the noise of a superabundance of epringless carts—creaking, bumping, rattling over the huge irregular cobbles that are so typical of Salonica. As yet nothing but native transport had been requisitioned, but every wheel of that wag in use to carry ' furniture away from the upper town to any bare spot beyond the wails. Between the upper and the lower town runs the old Roman way from Rome to Constantinople, the road along which St. Paul walked on his preaching tour through Macedonia. It is now known as the Hue Egnatia, and though at the cast end it is inconceivably winding and narrow for a main artery, at the west it is appreciably broad, and it was expected that, liko a similar, avenue m San Francisco, it would be wide enough to arrest the stay of the flames and keep them away from the chief commercial centre. In actual fact, nothing of tho kind happened. -The leap was made almost in an instant. The chief street running north by south, originally named after Sabri Pasha, a Turkish governor who planned it so that standing at the north end and looking downwards towards the sea front, 300 Yards away, one may just see the distant peak of Olympus silhouetted in the background —later called after Venizelos —was lioneJ-combed with tiny shops and cafes and eating-houses, making a miniature Mouski. The whole bazaar wag covered with a wooden arch extending along a frontage of nearly fifty yards, and forming an ideal blast-pipe. Not only did house, catch fire from tho approaching flames, tho forced draught played on dwellings half-wav down the street and dried tiiem so effectually that when the first spark struck them they were ready to burst at once into a terrific blaze. The people most affected in this region were the Jews. They still keep their ancient habits and costumes, imported from Spain and Italy in the fifteenth century, and they are not yet Orientalised. To the Turk tho fire came as a

disaster, but. ruined and houseless, he could yet accent it with equanimity as part o't Allah's will for mortal worms. And to a great extent tho Greeks faced their trouble with the same fatalism. An old Greek wiio lives opposite tho writer's house took his lami) outside tho shop, laid in a plentiful supply of native spirit, and muttered incessantly. '"Saloniquo no finish"; "No finish Salonique." Others were found sitting comfortably on. tics of petrol, risking but unasnamed. Their sole counter to a warning was "JJcnzino good, Johnny." But tho Jews were tho Jews of the Dispersal. By tho fires of Salonica they ran in tneir parti-coloured garb here, there, and everywhere, shouting, sobbing, screaming, imploring, lamenting, and wringing their hands. From every door, from odd, tucked away, unexpected holes and corncrs they crept,, carrying every kind of useless household goods. X remember hearing .a tragic tale of tho San Francisco firo regarding a. woman who, in her distraught ""agony of mind, brought out from her home under each arm a puppy, leaving her babies to burn. It was much so with these folk. Marblo table-tops, mirrored doors of wardrobes, carved bed-legs —anything that was especially large and bulky, and seemingly quite useless, was salved with astonishing care. All this treasured rubbish was piled in heaps, and guarded with unceasing vigilance; drivers were mobilised at random, and promptly dragged their carts across tho narrow ways, while hundreds of native porters or" hamels struggled eternally round and through and over the muddled medley, carrying incredible loads on their backs. To fight tho fire in this quarter, amid this erratic jumble of humans and things and animals, thero wore a few antique boxes, misnamed fire-engines, one of which bearing tho mark of tho Sun Fire Office, and tho date .1710, must, surely, have been tho original model. But even these miserable contraptions could not get the necessary supplv of water. The months of Juno and July, and the first half of August had been unusually dry even for a dry country, and the demands of the Allied Forces had necessarily lessened the amount at call. Indeed, everything was against any definito scheme of official salvage. There was no doubt about the fire-resisting capacity of the appliances of San Francisco, and vet ti«y failed. And here in addition* was the tearing; wind, the lack of water, tho narrow, jammed Gtreets, to set against the underground Chinese warrens. Yet on the whole, the people behaved'well. They wailed, they sobbed, they screamed, they committed follies inexplicable except at such a crisis, but there was no real panic,-at night a dull, hopeless apathy seemed to set in. By the time the se a front was reached, which was about midnight a some sort of method had developed. Hoses were run out from Navy lighters, two modern fire-engines belonging to the ' British Army were at work, and email groups of experts were blowing up buildings containing especially inflammable materials. As, however, the "Balkan News" remarked at the time, "It was merely like shaking one's fist at the fire, and the bulk of the effort was directed to save the refugees by every available form of allied transport Lorries arrived, literally, in thousands. The British "Tommy" or "Johnny," as he is locally called, has, by his invariable courtesy and good, behaviour, been rising to popularity sin. oo the first moment of his arrival. The fire gave this-popularity the final touch. Without a break, with unfailing good humour, he worked through the long night, gathering ut> scores of men, women and children, and carrying them to a place of refuge. This ac^JS u ■was repeated again and again. The Navy also—old favourites in Salonica —took off family after family in lighters, and kept and fed them until the way was clear again for them to return ashore. (It is a tragic commentary on their manful aid that the "Cercle des Etrangers," or "Greek Club," the one real club in the town, originally founded by a British . Consul, and" which conferred the privilege of 'honorary membership on all our naval officers, was completely gutted and destroyed.) TJie wonderful thing was that with all the inevitable scrambling and anxietv to get away so few were lost. It was a sad sight to see the disappearance of so many landmarks that have become familiar friends in the last two years. Venizelos street was one long arcade of flame. The "Hotel Splendide," but recently rebuilt with a new restaurant and attractive tea-room, vanished into smouldering ashes. The "Place de la Liberte," centre of tho boulevard life of the city, in which the Allied military bands played three times a week, the Cafe Floca, famed for so many pleasant meetings, fo much rumour, such endless gossip, became a mass of crumbling tiles and brickwork. Practically onlv four buildings remained intact within the fire area of houses occupied by British. The Army Post Office, the Red Cross Stores. Base Headquarters and Medical Stores, the Soda Water Factory, were burnt out. Onlv the Bank of Athens, one shop of a Jewish retailer. CrosdiBack (fdmiliarly styled Crosdi-Mo!), Stein's Oriental Stores, curiously enouirh. black-listed and out of bounds to Allied trooos, and "amid a world of complete ruin with buildings of fantastic shaues all around it," the office of the "Balkan News." a newspaper published for the British Army, which continued to print papers until the motor-power was cut off. escaped <'estruction. To many now the fire is but a tragic memory. The refugees are safely housed in camps outside the a town-planning commission, headed by Professor T. H. Mawson, of the University of Liverpool, is. already ct work. Insurance commissioners are lnisilv assessing losses, some even of tho Jews have gone back to their old haunts and started tiny stalls for the snle of ancient oddments, but the city of our old love is gone, and even iron oue of the most splendid «iie3 in the world—a "Pearl of the JEgeaJi"' rises Sphiux-like o'lt rf the aslios. it will never have the charm, or the glamour, of the dirty, crinkled, fascinating Salonica that we knew before the fire.