IN CONSTANTINOPLE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1641, 7 January 1913, Page 9

IN CONSTANTINOPLE.

,'.' WAR-TIME SNAPSHOTS,

A VIVID MONTH.

(By G. .Ward Price, in the "Daily Mail.") Constantinople, November. , It is a v month to-morrow since the cor r respondents train left Constantinople for tho front—a month crowded with amazing and uneotpeoted happenings and ending with tho Bulgar army thirty miles, from the capital—where the simplest description of the situation is a chaos of terrible possibilities. The strain Cflnnot go on like this. : Even in Turkey there is a limit to human endurance. War, disease, and the add.ed chances of riot and revolution are I mora tffan Constantinople, despite its 1 many centuries of tumultuous history, can bear muoh longer. ' To look back on this last month, in which fighting and politics have been in <ru.rn of higher importance, is to see a long chain of vignettes of scenes and .situations entirely r separate from each other; I Pera by Night., i If rumour has a home, it is here. There is a. big cafe in the Grando Rue, with broad, plate-glass windows. Look through them at the scene within and you grasp some small idea of the human. pa,tj;b.worfc I that makes up this city of no nation and all nationalities.' Greek and Jew, Austrian and German, Turk and Armenian, Frenchman and Italian, Englishman and. Levatine, which is a mingling of all tho rest, there they sit in hundreds, and do nothing but spread rumour from table to table. . "Gibfs was neuesP" "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a do neuf ?" "What's the news?" . Everyone puts the same question as soon as he comes in. . Everyone obtains the same abundant reply. ' They pass from table to'table, to drink another absinthe with a friend, or a tenth cup of thick Tnrkish coffee, and as they go they spread their evergrowing stories. Start, a rumour at pne table and you oan the cafe and wait for it to catch you up again developed almost beyond knowledge. Tokatlian's, is more of a club than a cafe, . and more still of a telepathic receiving station, for every fantastic report that is ; floating.round the city./ Journalists call it' the '"rnarche aux canards," and ; you ' must not believe one single word you hear there. At the Front. , i ! 'The front is only nine hours'.,/ hilly riding ffom Tokatlian's now, and it would be only three hours'motoring if the roads marked as such on the maps did not suddenly perish in 'a wilderness of ■ ditches and rocks. :At the very front the scene is much the same, I suppose, as in every jng:shrapnel, tiny : dots ,in,the distance, which are men's, heads, appearing above the trenches, long, wide-spaced lines of ■men on one's own side moving slowly forward, and leaving now and then a grey ' figure.to lie still behind. But it is just back of. the front that'the Turkish army i makes a curious impression. r There are so many men,wandering apparently purposelessly about. Trains of wiimunition and i supply one sees.occasionally, and the men- ! who are filling ■ waterbottles , and buckets fttsprings and trudging slowly backiowar'da the firing-line; have an intelligible : occupation too, but there aro hundreds of individual soldiers in addition tramping rearwards alowy'or 'sleeping .by the wayside,-or'living .in little bivouacs of their own,-two or.three together, without "seemingly any connection with a definite unit or corps. Thoy : are .neither in the firing line nor with, the reserves, nor at work on the lino of communications. They are. just private soldiers in the fullest sense Qf the term. ■'•■■"■■/■ .... ■ '~ Donot look at the horses as you go up to the front. They raroly unsaddle even ! ,a, oavairy horse, but if y°u do see one with baro/liack; it is invariably covered with festering . eorcs six inches square.' The, Turk 9 have no notion of horsemostership. I watohed only.yesterday,a pair. of horsea, trying to drag heavily.loaded with" ammunition up a steep, deep-rutted road. There were; twenty dismounted men and a mounted officer with , them. 'A little shoving behind, would havo helped the cart; up easily'enough. Instead, the driver lashed his pair up the slope until one, slipped, and foil, - half in a rut.'; It was obvious■ that-he bould not get up being unharnessed; but the whole detachment was content to stand round while one. of them beat the fallen,horse for several minues with a rope. . The poor brute could do simply nothing as he.lay. "Pig of, a horse, was the most helpful remark that the officer oould find to.'make, '..'•■ '.-:' -.-.'.'. '■:' /■" -.- '■' -.' :The v Ch6lera,. ;',-;' i : Fresh. heaps of earth by the wayside aro some of the first signs of it las you, get up'to the Bvrt you will not go long before you oomo upon the dead, Ono herei two a hundred yards off; three' another—the tally mounts,''as you Tide, to scores. They'lie, some.of them as if asleep; others contorted,: or squatting with head between knees. Over ther? i? a; tent blown down, leaving three more, .stiffened in ~the - midst of their, last ' writhe. -' S'Hademkeni,; lately th? Turkish •quarters, is crowded; with them.. They ha": undisturbed -'-.in the narrow etreete, and the living step over;them. Just outside the. village tnere are, horrible heaps of them; waiting to be shuffled into a long,.shallow grave, l . ,',; You pass the dying, too,'sitting on the ■■ ground, -with TJurple-coloured faces, or staggering as they try to -walk. Their comrades seem to pay no attention to them, nor. indeed could they do anything to help. y ;i: ■-.',- Quarters, for the Night. -. It is twilight as one. rides into the desolute little village of soattercd low, untidy houses, clustered round a muddy fountain. A few soldiers have mado their ' bivouai) there for the • night, .but the peasants who own the .houses aro, gone and-the doors stand open. ■■'-.- Greater confusion could not be • oontrived. Litter of all sorts fills.the streets —a smashed pack-saddle, an odd slipper, scraps of olothing of, aIL sorts, an ugly dead horse with' big pieces of the hide stripped off to be made into shoes—and there, among the rubbish, an old, jagged marble block catches your -eye, for on it is plainly carved a cross. Doubtless, it is part of Ihci capital of a pillar from 1 a Christian chapel-of-ease that 6rood here six centuries ago-'.For all that time it, must .havo lain among the boulders cf the village stre3t. Never waa it nearer 'restoration to its former place than now. ; You tie your i horse in the enipty stall and choose a room in the cottage next door for yourself. Then by tho'llight of a candle comes a supper of tin;ted meat from the saddle-bags, apd so.to sleep.on the bare boards, with saddle' for a pillow, tiU daybreak 6«es another dny'a ' ride begin, ■ ' : ,' The English Sailors. ... My bedroom window in Constantinople ; looks on to the British Embassy garden, through tho trees of which you see the scattered lights of Stamboul set in the soft blackness of the long hill across the Golden Horn.' There is a crunch of feet on the gravel, and thon—it startled mo •when I came back last night after dark from the bnttle—a sudden, "'Alt! Who goes there? "Rounds/' comes ■ tho answer, -and' thon more words indistinguishable, with the clear voice of an officer saying: "If anyone approaches, remain at tho charge till they ve gone by. You don't know who it might be," and the rounds go on their way with crisp, firm tread, nnd more challenges ring out down the long wall of the Embassy Harden, sharp and clenr, How different from the slouching, careiess sentries of the Turkish lines out there! How comfortably and unmistakably English! On* i sleeps quietly with those familiar voices below the window. '' " ' . ■