SCENES IN SALONIKA.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 January 1916, Page 6

SCENES IN SALONIKA.

NEW CITY OP REFUGE. Scenes in Salonika, the principal centre of interest in the war at the present moment, are described by Mr George Renwick, special correspondent of the London Daily Chronicle. Writing in November, bis despatch being without date, he says:— My travels since the beginning of the war have led me into no fewer than ten countries, and, indeed, into some strange and eerie corners of this wild and warring Europe. But I doubt if, among all the places I have seen during the past sixteen months, between Calais and Cairo, any place is quite so curious and, in many ways, so extraordinary as thi3 city from which I write, now one of the most important gateways to the vast theatre of war. From the sea the city looks like many another of the Turkish Empire. It has climbed some distance up the slopes of the blue mountains which guard it on the north; climbed in narrow, badlypaved streets which are certainly no improvement on the trying thoroughfares of old Staniboul. Still, the old wooden houses predominate throughout the greater part of the town, and. there is little or no architectural beauty about the place, though a gorgeous Aegean sunrise or sunset gives it, when seen from the sea, that unreal and elusive charm which all travellers who have approached Constantinople hy water know so well. But Turkish to outward seeming still, Salonika is not Turkish in spirit; it is no more Turkish than the Piraeus. What is it then? To-day that is the question. It is Greek by nine points of the law; yet, in reality, it is no more Greek than Marseilles is Italian^ Before the war the population was about 160,000, and it was mixed enough then in all conscience. Jews numbered about 80,000, Greeks 40,000, and Turki about the same. The Jews are undoubtedly the most curious feature of the population of this mixed city. They came here - from Spain, expelled at the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. This is their main habitation, though they are to be found as far north as Belgrade. Curiously enough, they still speak the Spanish whi?h- Columbus spoke, and in their newspapers it is spelled out in Hebrew characters.

'RAPID CHAXG.E IN SCENE. • j The war lias brouglit curious changes I to many places on the map, but I doubt if any place has been treated so strangely by the events of this struggle as lias the city of Salonika. First of all, it was invaded by an army of something like 200,000 refugees from Thrace and Macedonia. These people live to-day in a suburb, built for them, on the northern outskirts of the town. The bouses of this new town are one-storey brick buildings, walls with a roof, simply. There squalor reigns supreme, and as one passes along the plaintive cry for alms is heard on all hands. Then Greece mobilised, her new territories giving her an increased number of men which, I think, even she herself did not altogether expect. Into Salonika poured the greater part of the Hellenic army, just about the time when many refugees, of the better class, were arriving from Scrvia. Salonika's population jumped at a bound to the neighborhood of 700.000. It became difficult to get a room; food generally became scarce; bread for days was not to be bad at any price, A new j city of tents sprang up in a night a ! little beyond the city and the roads and streets became blocked with the slow- | paced bullock Waggon and the well-laden donkey which make up the supply trains of the Greek arm. But that was not all. UNEXPECTED ARRIVALS. Suddenly, almost before anyone realused what was happening, two additional armies began to puor into the already greatly overcrowded city. There cams the French in their new sky-blue unifoms and the British in their khaki. Into the city they poured in their ten? of thousands, and beyond the '■" •""<•"■■ suburb yet another new tow sprang up on both sides of ~rtnw-ard-leading road. With li c r'reneh tame Senegalese. And what a medley

of uniforms one sees in the streets— French in several varieties, British, Zouaves, Senegalese, Greek and Servian! It all makes a strange pictures. And how the French feel at, home here! For Turk and Greek and Jew may speak their languages, but Salonika uses French as its Esperanto. In the restaurants the menus are written in French as wdrt as in Greek; even the ''lustre'' and the newsboy will address you in French—of a kind—and in a very large number of cases French is the language of the family circle, this being due to the work of the excellent French educational missions. The main drawback to Salonika as a base is the terrible condition of the roads. The mud, or the dust, on them is inches deep. They are full of holes, so that every step is something of a gamble. , And along those few roads the armies of three countries are busy concentrating. Long lines of horses move along each side, and down the middle come ponderous motor-waggons. Heavy guns—the "Boehe Chaser" and the 'Death Spitter," for they all have their names—send the animal trains scampering into a Turkish burial ground, where the tombstones lie scattered and broken: then a camion will slither athwart the route, and for a while everything comes to a standstill

ALLIES AND FRIENDS. As -French and English soldiers get on well together, so do the two military Authorities work well side by side. Here is an example—one of many. A French officer was ordered to throw a pontoon bridge over a river near the city. "Sacre blue!" he. muttered to himself, "nothing easier, provided the materials are on hand. But how to make a pontoon bridge out of fresh air, I ask my self!" A moment's thought. * , ■. "But perhaps, if I consult the British. . . .-■' "The British" were duly consulted. Yes, they had the wherewithal to make a pontoon bridge. Could it be sent off to-night? Of course. At what time? Eight o'clock? Right. , And at eight o'clock the Frenchman was leaving Salonika station with bis pontoons_ "I am infinitely obliged to you fot your help," cried the French officer to one of the British. "That's all right! That's what we're here for," was the allied reply. And a word, too, must be said for tho Greeks. Never has a single obstacle been put in the way of the Allies by the Greeks, who. in a delicate situation, have behaved with the highest degree of tact, consideration and kindness. And one cannot help finding out that at the depths of the Hellenic heart there is just a little tug of disappointment that the Allies' cannon do "not boom in fraternity with those of Greece. . .