OUR WATCHFUL FLEET.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 November 1915, Page 8

OUR WATCHFUL FLEET.

THE TURK AND THE CREEK, HKI'ITiKKS i-'UOM ASIA. (Rom Malcolm Ross, Official War Correspondent with the X.Z. Forces). East Mediterranean, Sept. 20. At a time when rival armies are engaged in what is described in military language as "consolidating the position," the fringes of the invaded country may prove even more interesting than the battleground itself. Certain it is that along the islands of the Aegean and along the coast of Asia, almost but not quite within sound of our guns, events of historic interest that go unrecorded are daily happening. The work of our Navy alone—if the story can ever be told—will make a splendid page in Anglo-Saxon history. It cannot be told at present. For a time the presence o! enemy submarines seemed to send the ships of the Allied fleets scurrying for security into boomed harbors, but it was soon evident that the German submarines could no more chase the British flag from the Turkish seas than they could clear the Atlantic or the Channel. In an unsuspected harbor or in the lee of some island you may come suddenly upon battleship, cruiser, monitor or destroyer —or perhaps all four—held in leash against the opportune moment, whenever it should arrive. Other ships by day and by night plough the placid seas, keeping watch and ward—for the Navy never sleeps. On "their lawful occasions," too, other ships, at anchor or slowly steaming up and down the coast, wake flic echoes with the leisurely thunder of their great guns or the more insistent banging of their secondary armament. Their shells still explode on Acni Baba; in the Anzac zone yo,u may still see bits of the Turkish trenches disappearing in clouds of high explosive; and from 'Suvla Bay you may note the shrapnel bursting over the reinforcements coming up to join the hard-pressed but stubborn Turkish army in front of the village of Biyuik Anafarta. Anon there rises the deeper diapason of the bigger shells, ponderously tearing a pathway through the air over the Peninsula hills and dales and across the Dardanelles, to land with a dull boom on the Asiatic coast.

And then there is the work of our own submarines—daring, brilliant, effective—a story half untold, but already sufficient to thrill the pulses of the most phlegmatic. Some ships and submarines, it is true, have disappeared for ever beneath the waters of the Gulf of Saros and the Dardanelles, but there are always others to take their place, and so it will be to the end. Meantime, in a small yacht or a North Sea trawler, yon can steam unmolested under the British flag along the coast of Asia, south past Tenedos and other islands on to Mytilene. At the former a shell from a monitor may go rumbling overhead in search of some Turkish battery on the continent, or you may note a Turkish shell sending up a spout of water off the rocky island whence it is suspected our shells arrive. In parts where the waters narrow you can go very near the Turkish coast—near enough to see two women walking on the beach below a deserted village with an old rectangular fort, built by the Venetians or Genoese. But you must not go too close, because at any point you may be within reach of the bullets of the Turkish coast patrols, who keep watch as far south as and even beyond Smyrna.

The rugged hills of Asia rise deeply or in gentle slopes from the water's edge, and in places great, dykes of volcanic rock cut across their shoulders jr crowa their crests. The soil is poor, and, for the most part, too steep and rocky for successful cultivation. Here and there a grove of olives and a few slender poplars relieve the monotony of sombre scrub, and the yellow pasture of a dry, spent summer.

On the other side historic Mytilene. where ''burning Sappho loved and sang," lifts its high, rocky hills above slopes and bays, where nestle pretty Greek villages. The whole island seems fringes with olive groves. Fronting the beautiful bay, its shops and cafes and villas reflecting in the waters of the curving harbor, and backed by rocky hills, up which the olive groves climb, lies the capital—the old castle and fort crowning a promontory on the left, a still older crumbling ruin on the beach below.

To this place, in their thousands and scores of thousands, have come the refugees from the coast of Asia, only a few miles away, presenting a serious problem for the local authorities and for the Greek Government. The exodus began before the war—in May and June —and continued until the island, which nominally supports a population of about 120,000, has had 80,000 additional people cast upon it. The exodus, says a refugee, is the direct result of the policy and action of "the Committee of Union and Progress," established by the Young Turkish Party. The villages along the coast are essentially Greek villages, but the Young Turk Party was in want of money, so, under the guise of Ottomanising the Greeks, it commenced to levy toll. It began by pretending to make soldiers of them, but, instead of calling upon "three ages," as in the case of their own people, it called up many more. The Greeks soon found that this making of them into soldiers was a mere pretence. The Turkish Government did not, at that time, want more soldiers. What it wanted was money, and ever more money. In accordance with this policy the Greek recruits were not really trained as soldiers, but were given rough work—such as road-making—to do, the alternative being that the Greeks would j either buy their freedom by individual payments of £4O or would leave the country, in which latter case their *property would be confiscated by the Turkish Government. Of the three thingsserving as so-called soldiers, buying their freedom, or leaving the country and their property—the Greeks who came within the scope of the proclamation generally chose the last, and so the migration to Mytilene commenced. From Aivali, with 30,000 inhabitants, and all the villages to Smyrna, and even further south, the exodus commenced, till at one time there must have been 80,000 refugees in Mytilene. Since then some of these have extended their migration to Salonika, Macedonia, Kavalla and •Piraeus; but at the present time there must be still 75.000 refugees on the island of Mytilene.' In the villages in Asia Minor, whence these migrants have come, there arc only old men and women and boys left. What is happening to them no one knows, ft. iV father or the son of Mytilene dare not return to the continent. Communication between the island and the mainland is stopped, unless by some brigand o t some spy, risking a venture under cover of darkness. For it is not only the Greek peasant who has come to the island from the continent. In the capital you may perchance hear the resort

of a revolver, in the night-time, and German gold is at work here as elsewhere. But so long as 'the olives are yet to gather the remaining population of the coastal villages, it may be inferred, will not be maltreated, though they may be half -starved. One does not like to speculate upon what may happen when winter qomes. Even in Mityiene, where the Greek Government makes an allowance of six francs a month per head, you may see whole families sleeping in the streets or camped, with all their little lares and penates done up in a bundle, under some olive tree by the wayside. In Asia Minor the flocks and the herds and the houses, both of Greeks and Armenians, have been taken. After the picking of the olives it may be the turn of the women and children to be taken. Many have already disappeared. A young lace-maker, brought in to the house of a friend, had a sad story to tell. The old serving woman has sadder tales. At the soup-kitchen where an English journalist is providing a dinner for refugee children, there is a pretty darkeyed girl of nine or ten, fending for herself and her baby sister—the sole survivors of a family. What has happened to the others she does not know. Many of these refugees, now in poverty, where a few months ago well-to-do. The young Greek, of quiet and charming manner—married to an Englishwoman of a family that lias been in Turkey for about two hundred years, and through wiiose efforts this soup-kitchen is maintained—has, on the way thither, watched the smoke of his burning estate rising across the Straits. He occupied the position almost of a feudal baron, taking an interest in the welfare of the peasantry, their churches, and their institutions. But he, like the others, had to seek refuge in the neighboring island. One had been told stories of massacre that one did not believe—such as the body of a girl having been hung up in a butcher's shop, and pieces of flesh cut off and thrown at the passing Christians. He says witnesses of the incident can be produced. He brings in one whose friends and relatives saw it. That is the nearest we can get to the truth. But of rapine and murder, done in the broad light of day in the highways and byways, there are tales in plenty, and they are true tales. Actual photographs bear witness of such. It may be that one side is no more blameworthy than the other: that it is six of one anil half-a-dozen of the other—that one day it is the Turk that does the massacring and another day it is the so-called Christian. Even our friend who is succoring these Greeks—who were Turkish subjects—does not blame the Turks altogether. He says they were instigated by others. Amongst the women gathered about the soup-kitchen is one who saw much of the foul deeds done on the opposite coast. By disguising herself as an old woman, she escaped notice, and secured her own safety, while her friends and relations were butchered or carried off to Turkish houses. Many girls were carried off into the interior, and their fate and whereabouts are unknown.