SCENES IN GREECE

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 2, 4 January 1916, Page 2

SCENES IN GREECE

MOBILISATION DETAILS

LINING THE FRONTIER.

All Greece is in arms (wrote the Salonika correspondent of tho Melbourne Argus). Every village is crowded with soldiers, and khaki uniforms give to the streets in the cities /a colour sameness that becomes monotonous. The civilian is conspicuous enough in this military dress parade to attract staring eyes. Unless he is old or very young, he is an odd figure in the picture, .and his one occupation is explaining how it -happens that he has not joined the colours. The Greeks are intensely patriotic, and every'soldier feels that the welfare of the nation depends on his own personal eSorts. Compulsory service is the rule, and no one seems to regard the duty as irksome. Even those who. have been called up three times within four years make no complaint. 0-1 tiie other hand, they declare their readiness to respond ' whenever the safety of their beloved country requires it. There is no financial attractiveness about soldiering in Greece, as the private receives only 10 pepta (a halfpenny) per day. Yet professional men, workers, and shopkeepers rub shoulders in the ranks, all imbued with the same military fervour. Reservists are arriving in their thousands from all parts of the world. A steamer from the East carried comrades in arms from every centre of population in India, China, • and the Straits Settlements, and Egypt has contributed its quota of over 3000. I asked a- soldier a few days ago in bad French if it always rained in Salonika, and he answered in perfect English, telling me that he. had just come over from JMatooreko's oyster saloon in Swanston-street, Melbourne, and that he knew a number of employees ■of the Argus. He was leading a rat of a. pony, with three trusses of pressed hay on its back. Others have decided American accent, while still more punctuate their remarks with London slang. There is no room for doubt that the sympathies of the people aro entirely with the Entente. Those who speak English declare their sentiments openly in the cafes, while those who can frame their thoughts neither in French nor English indicate what they think of the Central Powers and the Turks and the Bulgarians in pantoimime that- is almost as convincing. The Greeks who have been expelled from Turkish territory since the beginning of the war. draw their fingers across their throats and clench their teeth when Constantinople is mentioned. ATHENS FULL OP TROOPS. Athens has become a great military centre. The blare of bugles is heard constantly, bands march through the streets, and battalions carrying active-service kits tramp by with haughty bearing. Nearly every sioldier has upon his breast . the whit* and^ blue ribbon that stamps him as a war veteran. There is scarcely an officer who has not already had his baptism of fire, and many of them wear the same lucky charms they carried through the last two Balkan campaigns. In the Oiympios troops are camped in the shadow of the fifteen huge columns, which date from 550 B.C. The station is a depot for the Army Service Department, and the Acropolis has become a corps headquarters. Horses have, been gathered from everywhere, and only the most hopelessly decrepit have been left for the public and private conveyances. Tho Arch of Hadrian is the centre of a remount base, r.nd the animals are all around it. This blending of the romantic and the stern reality of life is accentuated on all sides in Greece to-day, but the people manage to keep in good spirits. Everyone talks of war—the possibilities of the future, tho campaign in Servia, the position of the Hellenic forces, the terrible cost. The railways are crowded with soldiers on. their way to join their units, and special electric cars run on the tramlines for the accomodation of the troops. Though shorter and slimmer than Australians, the Greeks are not unlike them when equipped for the field. The uniforms are much the same, except that the Hellenic, infantry do not wear putties, their trousers being the same cut as those of civilians. Each man has a peaked cap with a touch of gold braid, and there is a number on his shoulder. Tho equipment is of leather, and its newness indicates very recent issue. The bayonets are at least 4in shorter than our own, and resemble those used by the Turks at Gallipoli. The mounted troops are dashing fellows, with all the swaggo." of the typical cavalryman. They are beautifully mounted, .and handle their horses with great skill. The artillery is well organised, most of the guns being 18-pounders on lighter carriages than those to which v,o are accustomed, and the whole of it is painted a dull khaki. The ammunition columns are fully equipped, and carry spare artillery parts and wheels in case of emergency, relief horses, fully harnessed, following close behind. I saw a brigade of field-pieces move down to the waterside a few days ago, as il the operation was part of » regular routine. The horses were slung on hoard tho transports fully harnessed as they stood, then the guns,, the ammunition wagons, and the train, without the slightest fuss. Although there was a drizzle of rain at- the time, lines of volunteers, boys, old men, girls, and women, held on to the ropes and steadied the animals and gear from bumping against the steamer's sides, and when tho last bale of fodder and the last box of., food had been hoisted on hoard there was a' great outburst of hand-clapping .and shouts of ''Bravo!" PICTURESQUE FRONTIER GUARDS. One of- the most useful and picturesque branches of the Greek fighting service is the Evzoni. These are the riflemen whose duty it is to guard the frontier.- They wear a kind of tasselled Tarn o' Shanter, a loose ruffled shirt, a thick short coat, and a hat, with white stockings gartered below the knee, and turned-up shoes, decorated with huge black pompons. Merchants who have come from overseas drop their modest clothes to appear one morning in this theatrical attire, of which all the Greeks are very proud. The Evzoni are the envy of their comrades in arras. They are held in much the same esteem as the Black Watch or the Gordon Highlanders in the Imperial Army. All j Grecian officers ca,rry swords, mid their j uniforms are ornamented with gold lace, particularly about the epaulettes and collar. Sub-lieutenants (aiinthipolokha- I gos), lieutenants (ipolokhaghoss), and captains (lemkahaghoss) ai-e. distinguished respectively by one, two, and three stars in silver on the shoulder, while majors, lieutenant-colonels, and colonels wear the same distinctive marks in gold, generals having a sqnare in gold on the collar. Every cafe swarms with officers and men, who meet in happy uncouventionality, hut there ia no heavy drinking. I have not seen a Grecian soldier intoxicated yet- in the streets. Subordinates salute only superiors of their own service, and the clanking of swords chimes with the rattle of' spurred heels. When Greece pushed her armieß to the fortified line of Tcliatalja. only, h little over 150,000 men could be mustered, but if she took lib?- ftaM tn-ritfti'i-oKf over «f!Q,QOfI .(ffsulned stroopa would be wide* eras, The only ,

deficiency seems to be in machine-guns. In the spirit of the soldiers there is absolutely nothing lacking. BUSY TRANSPORTS. As fast as units are assembled on the Attic plain they are marched off to Pirams, where steamers with classic names are waiting to carry them off to Salonika and the frontier. Transports announce their nationality in three-feet ■ letters on each side, and the blue and white flag of Greece is painted in every conspicuous position. As the journey is short, no attempt is made to fit up the steamers in. those recognised forms of troopships, but horses and men are do- ! posited anywhere in tho holds, on deck, in the saloons, while fully-laden wagons are lifted on to the boat decks, and made fast. During tho last few days an average of eight steamers have left Piranis every twenty-four hours for the north. In the Talanti channel, between Thrace and the Island of'Euboea, I saw j two lines, each of a dozen troopships, ! steaming steadily towards the border, j and from all of them came the echoes .of singing. At night searchlights lick the waters everywhere, and there are constant exchanges of courtesies between ] British and Greek fighting ships, with the giant beams reflected on to tho' clouds. At Chalkis still more troops j awaited conveyance to the danger zone, and' they speeded their more fortunate comrades with a great display of enthusiasm as they passed. Volos also is crowded with soldiers drawn from the "twenty-four villages" which nestle on Mount Pelion's sides, and all express themselves anxious to reach the frontier at the earliest possible moment. At each of the population, centres en route stores of all kinds are being collected into mountains on the quays, and horses requisitioned from air sides are learning the elements of their ne w,work. Wagons in the streets havo men in tho shafts, While others push behind, except- where hero and there a lucky tradesman has succeeded in obtaining a black ox or a j miniature donkey that could serve no possible military purpose. ! . HARBOUR FULL OF SHIPS, The Gulf of Salonika is always a busy waterway, but r*ver in its history havo so many prows ploughed its waters as now. Steamers of all kinds hurry in and out in quick succession, with much hooting and semaphoring, and nearly every nation on earth is represented except Germany and her dupes. The only apparent- enemy mercantile unit in these waters rolls at anchor in Piraeus, with barnacles on the sides and the obvious signs of neglect everywhere else. There is a boom across the entrance to the main harbour at Salonika, and the hundred white minarets come clearly into view. British cruisers and torpedo-boats, French men-of-war, and white-painted hospital ships catch the eye. The harbour is congested almost to the point of danger, but still every hour brings additional steamers. The quays are a mass of life and materials, and the streets are jammed with pedestrians in the uniforms of Greece, Great Britain, and France, with here and there a battered Servian. Salonika is a city of narrow ways and badly-paved roads, so that any sudden increase in the population must lead to confusion; but a. military crowd is much more easily handled than a, mob of civilians, and the inconvenience is reduced to a minimum, although the possibility of having year overcoat torn off or of receiving a-n elbow in the mouth is not by any means removed. However, good humour prevails all round, and the most embarrassing situations provoke only smiles and apologies in all the languages of Europe. Lines of tiny ponies, carrying incredible loads, weave their ' way continuously through the surging people, automobiles with staff officers of four armies make distressingly slow progress in comparison .with the noise of their horns, and immense wagons that once were motor'buses on the London streets shove their • way through the- tangle, loaded to the brim with stores and warlike impedimenta. The British troops are at a. disadvantage in that the Greek storekeepers for the most part know nothing of their tongue, and no news is circulated in English. But the French find themselves happily situated, and at least half a dozen newspapers, which devote several columns a- day to vitriolic abuse of each other, are published in French. The British camp has been pitched a-bout three miles from the city in a quagmire, beside a fortress that has stood since the beginning of tho Christian era. The French do not suffer these miseries long, as they are hurried away to the Servian frontier almost immediately, or to the advanced base at Krivolak. Most of the blue-coated soldiers wear the new helmets, which have proved an effective protection againot spent bullets and shrapnel pellets. The horses are picketed along the railway fences, and, like their masters, they feel keenly the sudden transition from genial warmth to the . almost Arctic bitterness of Salonika. j