SALONIKA—A BABEL OF WAR

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2669, 15 January 1916, Page 2

SALONIKA—A BABEL OF WAR

SOLDIERS OF ALL NATIONS AN INTERESTING PEN SKETCH Salonika, November 17. Wlmt men and things this beautiful : and ancient town has seen—the in- • numerable hosts of Persia in splendid advance and ruinous retreat; Alexander ■' hastening to conquer the -world; the Roman orator yearning for tlio far-oif city; St. Paul, ■who. seemed so insignifi. cant; forgotten emperors jvho looked eo fine ; Crusaders in the Holy Wars; and the Turkish conquerors, Jewish refugees. ' from Spain, Austrian intriguers, the loung Turks issuing for revolution from ' the great White Tower, the Red Sultan imprisoned in his pretty villa, the King of breeco assassinated in his moment of | triumph, the outburst of Bulgarian soldiers which . began the Second, tha' , fateful. Balkan War, whence Europe's r present woe. Without histories or guide-books, one cannot recall.half the astonishing men and events ivhich tirao has granted this one city to beTiold. But ill all her variegated history, I suppose no situation has been quite so astonishing or perhaps so fateful as the present. The Town and Harbour. Climbing up the steep slope of the old town and standing on the summit of the ltoman and Turkish walls, which, with . useless battlements and towers, still divide the swarming streets from the wild and empty country outside, due • looks west over the country outside, one petual snow of Olympus beyond it. Southward to the left 1 stands Pelion, separated from Olympus by the Vale of lempe. Northwards beyond the unwholesome plains and marshes of the Vardar ono looks to mountains which the Serbians,claimed by conquest for their own not much more than two years ago, aiid far away, already gleaming with snow, stand the twin peaks called Poristeri, or "the Doves," rising abovo Monastir, from which tlio whole Serbian immigrant n population is reported yesterday to liave hastened away in panic at the Bulgarian approach. But the famous harbour at one's feet, so deep that • steamers can back their sterns close up against the quay, is crowded with such a collection of shipping as it has never held before. War- ; ships of Great Powers lie there, torpedoboats, destroyers, middle-aged battleships, cruisers, one peculiar craft with iivo thin funnels from Russia, massiva French vessels piled up with armament, and at least one of those strange new British ships which carry a flat projecting platform all round their sides just below the water's level and themselves serve as platforms for two huge 14in. guns projecting from a turret at the foot of the single tripod mast. Great transports bringing men and food for men lie thero, too. And there aro the hospital ships, distinct with white paint, broad green lines, and great red crosses, ■ illuminated at night with red lamps and rows of green liglits, like fairy vessels ready to carry home the victims of the war.

Creek Soldiers in Khaki. The vast town still huddled between the walls, except where villas hava broken out along the seashore southward, is still marked by the multitude of minarets and cypresses that the Turks.have left and by the red tile roofs common to the Balkans. But what an admixture of all tlie nations and races of tho world one-now finds in its streets I I believe tho basis of the original population is.chiefly men in long, "fur-trim'med robes, jemsh women in green and scarlet headdresses and some : arrangement of-gauze or muslin, over their breasts, still looking'very;! nmoh like the ancestors who sought re-' fuge among Turks from the Christianity of Spain, and they -flourish • and abound. : But tho Greeks must rival them now, and a good many Turks are left. On tho toj> of-these natural inhabitants is now imposed a great Greek army—three or four army corps, I be-' lieve, suddenly mobilised—at the British expense, so people say, well equipped, in khaki, their officers very smart and still Wearing the obsolete sword. They, crowd all the main streets, leading their pack-animals out to their camps, discussing tho situation with hereditary eloquence, or just loitering round the cafes.. A Word to Strategists. They are enough to fill the town tci overflowing, but on the top of them again are imposed the French and the British as well—not so many French as British, perhaps, for the French camps and lines are farther away. But for both armies this is the base, and tho impatient . istrategists who command their 'Governments at once to move 250,000 men here and 250,000 there • might learn in Salonika what a base means—what it means to move < 150,000 or' even 60,000 men, with all their arms; guns, horses, ammunition, moat, flour, bakeries, tools, telegraphs, posts, barbed wire, medical stores, staff departments, and- goodness knows what. Lot the impatient strategist remember the last move of his family and furniture to a, new house, and tlion for. a single army corps multiply the time and tho trouble by about 10,000. So hero side by side with the neutral Greek and our French ally we see the British soldier, imperturbable as usual, ih the midst of an unprecedented scene, driving,his motor-lorry through apparently impenetrable crowds, loading up his supplies, carrying messages for tlio Staff, calling one Staff office "King's House" and another "Crystal Palace." saluting Greek officers with some hesitation, and trying to enjoy the grounds at the bottom of tho Turkish • office coffee.