SALONIKA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1499, 20 January 1916, Page 2

SALONIKA.

Writing recently from Salonika, Mr G. Ward Price said :—“ The Town of Salonika, whose experience of the passage of expeditionary forces goes back to the time when Xerxes marched this way from Persia, which was no doubt used as a base by Alexander of Macedon, and as a port of call by the Crusaders, has nevertheless been seldom filled by a more various and mauy tongued population than just now. The men of three armies on a war footing—Greek, British and French —not to mention the sprinkling of Servian details, rub shoulders aud exchange salutes in her streets. The babel that fills the jostling quays aud alleys is a confusion of Spanish, which is the language of Salonika Jews ; Turkish, spoken by the Mahommedan residue that remains from Ottoman days; Greek; English, of assorted dialects; French, Italian with the German of the local Austrian residents who look impotenlly on. It is a town of odd contrasts. The Bulgarian and Turkish Consuls lunch together every day in a restaurant surrounded by scores of British aud French officers. Every Friday the Ottoman Consulate flaunts the standard of the Cresent in the teeth of the guns of the allied battleships, which look on with complete indifference. Restaurants, cafes, hotels are, of course making un-dreamt-of profits. House rents have boomed, till was asked the other day for a furnished villa for six months, and in the gulf within sight ot the quay a heterogeneous fleet of ships of all the allied Powers, with a great throng of transports, hospital ships, supply ships tugs, and lighters, reproduces afloat the medley that prevails ashore,”