THE WAR IN THE EAST

West Coast Times, Issue 10536, 21 July 1897, Page 4

THE WAR IN THE EAST

THE END OF THE FIGHTING The London correspondent of the Sydney Daily Telegraph wrote on the 14th ' May— The degenerate descendants of the heroes ot Marathon and Thermopylae have abandoned what the Daily Chronicle — with a fine disregard for veracity — calls their " heroic struggle" and thrown up the sponge. Asa matter of fact, anything less heroic than the conduct of the Hellenes has proved during these last few weeks one has seldom read of. Whilst fighting the "unspeakable Turk!" was confined to bragging and demonstrating and letting off fireworks at Athens, they were prodigies of pluck. But directly business commenced their valour oozed out at their finger tips. The shameful story has been told by a dozen correspondents, whose accumulated mass of evidence cannot be resisted. The St. James's Gazette is quite dispassionate on this question; and, summing the various accounts, declares : — "So far as the Greeks were concerned, it was a campaign of opera bouffe. The officers could not lead, the men would not fight. The failure in Epirus is more astonishing and more discreditable than in Thessaly ; for in that quarter the Greeks were in stronger force than fcheir oppo- \ nents, and they had everything in their favor. But nothing could be done with troops who stampeded in panic at the sight of the enemy, even if they had officers who were able to command them. Mr Allen Upward, the Philhellenist correspondent of the Philhellenist Manchester Guardian, has given a vivid account of the retreat of Colonel Mano's force from ! Phillippiada. The picture is very like that of the well-known rout from Larigsa. Mr Upward closes his acsount by saying, " When we evaluated Phillippiada on Thursday flight the order was given to burn all that remained of it, and the stately mansion of the Turkish commander, in which I spent my second night on Turkish soil, is now a heap of runs." Some vague but very grave charges have been made in recent telegrams from Athens respecting the cruelties and barbarities of the Turks in Epirus. We quote the following from this same Mr Upward, of what happened whtn the victorious Greek entered Philippiada in the early days of the invasion. Be says : "We marched into the place in triumph and took up our quarters in the mosque. This I repeat, is not meiely a war, but a crusade ; and the departure of the Turks from any place is the signal for the Ohrisi tians to rise and violate their holy places." It is an odd l t crusade," in which the crusaders bolt fco the rear as soon as the enemy gets within short range distance. Fortunately this remarkable method of carrying on the Holy War against the infidel has prevented any excessive " effusion of blood," on one side at least. Mr i

Steevens, the correspondent of the Daily Mail, says the Turks themselves hardly claim to have killed a thousand Greeks in the campaign ; and, indeed, there cannot be much slaughter of an army which is always, in a safely inaccessible position or else rnnning away. It was all of a piece with their general conduct that the Greek military authorities evacuated Volo in such baste that it was left for the English war correspondents to arrange for the protection of civilian life and property -with Jhe Turkish commanders. The campaign has produced two great disillusions. It has shown that the Turks can make war like civilised people, and it has shown that the Greeks cannot make war at all." 51 The Daily News correspondent, writing from Arta, says:— "Not a single Greek is on the Turkish side of the river Arachtos. Ido not pretend to understand the lamentable inaction on this frontier since 10 days ago. Had we played our cards properly we might have -been in Janiua a wesk ago. As it is, we are back ab Arta, demoralised and dishearteneJ. Moreover, not merely is great damage done to our own cause, but infinite wrong has been inflicted on the villages throughout the Turkish countries, and all the woe-begone peasantry, who are now refugees, having been forced to accompany us back across the Arachthos, losing all their belongings, are now starving by the roadside. The sufferings of these people, coupled with the dense packing of troops here, and the abseuceof all sanitary precautions, will inevitably produce severe illness here in the near future. Already some eases of typhoid have occurred. Of course, there may be imperative reasons for our inaction, which no one here understands, but in the meantime the utmost surprise, indignation and despondency prevails among all sections of the troops at our terrible and most unaccountable failure on this frontier, after the excellent beginning made. Prevesa was actually given into our hands. The roid to Janina was opened to us, and the people there ready to receive the Greek forces. Yet without a defeat we have abandoned all the posts we had gained, and. retired, behind the. walls we

held before war was declared. The officers of the Greek navy are literally weeping with rage at the constant refusal to send land f orces to co-operate with them against Prevesa, which, thanks to our withdrawal, has now been reinforced and re- victualled. No attention is paid to their demands and protests. So far as the Greek army is concerned, this is not serious campaigning, but contemptible and trivial badinage."

A letter from one war correspondent with the Greek western army, dated Arta, April 25, shows how the weakness of the Greek commissariat and transport service caused the complete failure of the campaign in Epirus.

"On Friday last," he writes" the Sixth Regiment was at Philippiade, and early in the morning the men had a meal of bread and water. They then left Philippiade, and marched by easy stages to a spot near Pentepigadia, which was reached about 6in the ezening. No provisions of any kind were brought up for the men that night. The next morning there was still nothing for them to eat, and they were ordered to march back to Philippiade. Tired out, and in a famished condition, the poor fellows commenced to retreat. Many of them were unable to keep their places in the ranks, and the sides of the road wore lined with hundreds of men who had fallen out from hunger and fatigue. If the division of the Turkish army which was a few miles behind had advanced it could simply have annihilated the Greek force as it crawled back to (Philippiade. Arrived there, the soldiers still had no provisions serred out, and when I left them on Saturday afternoon they were still waiting to be fed. They had been 30 hours without food."

"It may be urged that the difficulties of conveying provisions forward along a bad road in a mountainous district are very great, but the same state ot affairs actually exists in Arta itself, the basft of military operations at this end of the frontier. This afternoon, in the main streets of Arta, I found a crowd of soldiers who wore almost mad with hunger. They had assembled before a provision store, and were battering the door with the butt ends of their rifles. When 'it was broken open a wild rush was made to secure the spoil,- when a colonel rode up and endeavoured to disperse -them. In a moment he was surrounded by a mob of starving men, who, utterly regardless of discipline, crowded round his horse, seized the reins and stirrups, and loudly clamoured for bread. Later sin the day. l witnessed a similar scene in the open space immediately opposite the Comman-der-in-Chief's headquarters. A small sack of tobacco was lying in the middle of the square, and 200 or 300 men were fighting to obtain a portion wherewith to appease the pangs of hunger. Finally the Commander-in-Chief came down and made a speech, in which he appealed to the men to maintain order. The speech he repeated in another part of the town, where a mob of soldiers had assumed a threatening attitude. An army is in a bad way when its general has to resort to street corner oratory' to maintain discipline, and when hunger has driven its members to desperation. When, on the fourth day of the war, the Turkish army retreated helter-skelter towards Janina> the Greeks had a grand opportunity, but bad leadership and worse organisation seem to have thrown thai opportunity away again."