SALONICA FIRE.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 January 1918, Page 8

SALONICA FIRE.

CARNIVAL OF FLAMS CHILDISH ATTEMPTS £0 STEM IT. When the lire that destroyed Saloniea broke out I was staying at a rest camp five miles from the town, having been sent down from the line a month previously with malaria. The event, in its initial stages, excited little interest in our minds, but when the sun had set and we saw that; the whole southern skywas aglow with 1 bright fire, and when news renched us that the entire heart of the city was ablaze, we realised that we were witnessing a tragedy that would disturb and alter the lives of thousands ot human beings. The glow increased; it spread and whitened, occasionally it seemed to sulk behind a heavy "and drowsy bank of smoke. All mghi we sit up watching it, falling to sleep only when the white sun destroyed the Ore and left us nothing but smoke to gtze upon. After two hours' sleep I .rose, obtained special leave (after very special pleading before the O.C. the rest camp), and bumped heavily in the motor lorry down the Lembet road to Salonica. The road was already full of refugees flying before tlie face of the fire, just as in those early Salonica days in October-November. 191;), they fled in the opposite direction from the encroaching Bulgar. Near the city (wrote Gerald Cumberland in. the Manchester Guardian) the sides of the ™d were strewn with furniture, bedding, babes, kitchen utensils, and all the paraphernalia of very homely homes. Many thousands of men, women, and children had already accepted their fate and were busy preparing a place on the ground whereon to lay their heads. Some found room in the jolly and ingeniously built little dwellings of the Servian refugees; others had received the freely offered hospitality of the French, British. Ttalinn. and Greek components of the Salonica army; the less fortunate hud made bivouacs of blankets stretched from gravestone to gravestone in the cemeteries, or had crept into sheltered holes in the rocks m the hills. Most of them had food: most of the women had men to help them; all were gtiotaal.

AMOVO TTTE TiWUfITCES. At the entrance to the city the emerg. ing crowd of refugees was thick and clotted. I saw many old women currying babies, jnany young women boar ing on their backs the most valuod of their possessions, bare-footed children, hoys pushing handcarts, boys hentin£ mules, boys smoking cigarettes and say- j 'Huekshee, Johnny!" to every British soldier they met, motor lorries (nil of old and weak people, gharries overladen and very staggering. military policemen most marvellously keeping their temper, priests succouring, officers superintending and horses—many horse?—dragging be liind them groat trees and branches of trees that stirred the dust into a trailins cloud. These trees and branches nf tree* puzzled me a little until T rejiehed (.be city, when T discovered, what should already have been snffieientlv obvious, that trees in a town are the devil's own for conducting Are From «#,e «H#

of the street to the other. And then my motor lorry clattered into and stopped in the middle of the peculiar place which, with fantastic irony, we call Piccadilly Circus. There 1 alighted. In a couple of minutes J wns on the outskirts of the furnace. The heart of the city was already burned away; there vvas nothing left but the skeletons of buildings, heaps of bricks and dust, smouldering walls. But all around the city's heart was busy, estatic fires that defied their own *moke I .could not but stop aim gaze long at some of these great, heedles fires. Not satisfied with destroying one building, they stretched out long arms and clung to and destroyed another And occasionally I would hear the dull sound of walls falling outwards—always outwards —into the streot.,

HOPELESS COMBAT WITH PUNY MEANS. Fortunately I was allowed entrance everywhere, and two hours' walk reveal-! Ed the fact that about a square mile of warehouses, hotels, shops, business offices, restaurants, and so on, were completely destroyed. There was no confuyon, little excitement, and the organisation, in view of the enormous difficulties that were encountered, was very 'good. Nevertheless, the means individually employed to extinguish the fire were almost childish. I saw a chain of more than a hundred men passing cans of water to each other with lazy indifference; when the tans reached their destination the contents were poured into a tank, and a relatively tiny stream of water was spasmodically jerked on to a very carnival of flame. The flame seemed to hiss in derlMon. Salonic# is t basin of water, yet water could not be procured to destroy water's enemy. I saw two men with squirts—the sort of squirt that is need in hothouses—trying to put out a five upon which thousands of gallons o; water should have been poured. I saw a gam;' trying to destroy a liowc so that the tire on the opposite side of the street should not reach it. Most deliberate!;/ and with elaborate care they undermined the house so that the big beaina fell tovrajJs the Are-, and met it. Salvage work was equally I saw one barrel of Samoa wine after another thrown into the street, where all of them, bursting, poured their contents into the gutter. One little street was an inch deep in cognac Rolls of cloth wore pitched on to burning embers. Furniture was thrown from the socnod stories of houses on to the roadways, which promptly anil inevitably made xitcuwood of them. The worst of it was that these things wore done, not in moments of excitement, but With stupid tion. I expostulated, is French, with some Grc«ks; they responded by smiling kindly but pityingly upon the "nod Englishman." British men. I am convinced, could have saved at least a portion of this most fascinating and historic city, but the mixed horde of willing b?,t ineradfcftlly stupid man I saw helped col* to destroy it looting AND immx. Of petty looting I saw a good daai. Looting, on an occasion of this kind. U inevitable; the temptations are so enormous, the riek is so small. But the looting temperament runs to the loot of drink, and au ignorant hrain aire with alcohol, and for the moment outside th« restraint of all discipline, « apt to davisa ugly deed*. I saw no soldier of any nationality lay their hands on, and c*rry away, bottles and cognac and wine, rolls of cloth, and so on. When th«y observed me staring at them they looked half-shy. but my disapproval did not interrupt their depredations. I saw one man knock olt the top of a bottle against a wall, put the JagfTNl gtawi against his lips, and drink greedily. It must not he imagined that all ponsilife »&» not done to stop looting, but SaJuniai Is (or ■■vas) .1 city of narrow, unexpected str»*t* and hv-waya, and an u.nttre amy rurpx would have beiMl ne.epMia.ry adequately to police every partially bajai in 4