GLORY OF SALONOTA

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 30 July 1927, Page 9

GLORY OF SALONOTA

GLORY OF SALONCIA yyjHIEE Constantinople's former glow and commercial supremacy are fading, Salonica, on the shores of the Aegean Sea, lias become the Levant’s greatest market and social centre, states a correspondent of the “San Francisco Chronicle.” The creation of Salonica as a free port has given impetus to the city’s growth and has made it one of the most important sea ports in . South-western Europe. From a war-ridden, faminine Tswept town in 1917, it has grown into a modern city of the first rank. Within the last two years a building boom of American proportions has converted the former backward Oriental city, where the Apostle Paul preached, into a city, of big commercial enterprises, fine homes, theatres, libraries and recreation centres.

Recognising the economic advantage of Salonica as a means of feeding not only Greece, but Jugo-Slavia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Albania, with the products of the world, the Greek Government set up a zone commission to administer the port, which is now open to the commerce of all nations. Jugoslavia, which heretofore has been shut off from all access to the Aegean and

A GROWING EUROPEAN CITY

Mediterranean seas, will benefit most by the change. But countries as far away as Poland, Austraia, and OzechoSlovakia, that have no outlet on the sea. will jjlso derive advantages.

Salomon, which was founded 310 years before Christ, has one of the finest harbours in the world. The city is the terminus of five railways, which traverse the greater part of Europe. Within the last five years the population has grown from iIO.OOO to 260,000 a large percentage being descendants of Spanish Jews who fled from Spain and Portugal in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella to escape persecution. The ruins of the great fire in 1917, entailing £.>0,000,000 damage, have been replaced with hundreds of modern buildings.

Every race of the world is represented. Every tongue is spoken. Every costume is seen. There are Jewish, Greek, German, Spanish, British, and American schools. Each religious community has its own educational institutions and places of-“worship. The American Agricultural School has for years supplied Greece and Macedonia with thousands of farmers trained in American methods of agriculture.