VANISHING HISTORY.

Hokitika Guardian, 15 July 1922, Page 4

VANISHING HISTORY.

MACEDONIA AFTER FOUR YK.cRS OF WAIL

.Macedonia absorbs history rapidly (writes the. Athens c-orerspondeiit of the “.Manchester. Guardian.”). The country shows little trace of Phillip. Alexander, J.ysimacliu.s, Caesar, and tho rest. Only the canal dug by Xerxes behind A thus defiies the encroachments of the soil. So, too. the traces of the four years war that French and British waged here against Bulgaria, are fast vanishing. 1 am camped in the long desolate valley between the Vardar and Doing behind wluU used to he our most important sector. Now it is silent and empty, and the wild things have come down again from their hiding-places. Otters iighL on Lake Ardjnni, stray wolves keep the shepherds alert (two passed in daylight last week), and hawks wheel silently over the marshes. Here and there sears and patches on the hillside show where British regi-

incuts lived for tile long weary years ol the campaign. The famous theatre that was the one solace of this lonely region is now vanished as completely as if it had never been. In its place a village of nomad Ylacks is installed:

the sheep are driven every evening t<f their pen, where four years ago a crowded auditorium crashed with applause at the feeblest of jests and any tune was hailed rapturously as music.

THE ARMY ROADS

Away iilion the hills the old front line is still clear-cut and manifest. Rut the wire entanglements are rolled up in vast coils, pushed aside out of reach. Among them flocks of black sheep are taken from pasture to pasture, and you will not meet a single stranger in a whole week of wandering. Away to the east there rises, that gaunt’and dreadful ridge known to us as the “Duh,” in lighting for which we lostso many thousands of British lives. There no one has touched the barbed wire, which runs transversely across

the ridge in long black ribbons. There no sheep pasture. Farther east still lives “Grande Cotironnc”—the Evil Eye of our front which overlooked our every movement, ami which was never stormed, though British (lead lay on it s summit after our final failure. Heroes, these, to have reached the top of what was as steep as a Dartmoor Tor! Behind file old line run our roads, the only memorials of our residence hero that stu,iid for all men to see. Here and there a, patch has been washed away h,v flood, or a culvert has broken, hut they still run white, hut llio grass that grows up rapidly in cracks and crevices and in ten years will have hidden them from sight. Then they will ho like the Roman roads of England. Keystones of bridges hear the makers’ names or units, like the legionary and cohort stones of the Roman wall in Northumberland that still record the makers. The only signs of revival are in a few of the villages. Places that, were during the war mere place-names to I our troops, names given to brown pati ches of ruins that had once been vilI lages, have now sprung up into a slow hut persistent life. During the last two years 80,000 Greek refugees from the Black Sea coasts, from the Crimea, and from (the Caucasus have come here and have been settled on the sites of these ruined villages. The object of this settlement is at once sound politics and practical common sense. The villages of Smal, Maeukovo, Cugnnei, and a score of others are now filled f with queer burly Greeks from Russia. 1 Some are from Kars, Ei'zerum and 1

Trebizond; others* from Tiflis, Batum and Sukhum at the roots of the Caucasus range. All wear Russian costume. smocks and astrakan caps, and are big .good-natured men, speaking a (|iieer and harsh Greek that is diilicult to understand. Their villages are largely rebuilt with old material left behind by our army. Corrugated iron sheets form one of the largest ingredients. They are all desperately poor, and have no capital to start with

—for capital is needed at Athens for , tho politicians to pay their supporters I and provide an adequate income tor the - verv large Royal Court! | . AVAR ONLY A AIKAfORY. I

Btil those stolid, honest refugees scrape a living fn some mysterious way from the soil, and are content enough to be in their own country. I heir plantation in these frontier villages is no small gain to Greece for it gives her a true ethnological frontier and will in time help to develop this richest ol all Greek provinces. Hut apart from these few villages this part of .Macedonia is bleak’ and empty. Four years ago it echoed to the guns, and "ns never silent. But the British army and its works are now almost less than a memory. People and country alike have changed Only our white, smooth roads remain lint the peasants who goads his mules and buffalo waggons over them takes them as they are and does not ask who made them. .