CONDITIONS IN SERVIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 March 1920, Page 9

CONDITIONS IN SERVIA.

(By Duncan M. Stewart). We reached Salonika at 8 p.m. We anchored, well out in the harbor, as we could get no reply to either rocket or whistle signals for a pilot. It was a glorious night, the myriads of stars shining with exaggerated brilliancy against, the clear dark blue peculiar to the skies of the Near East. The beauty of the scene was heightened by the scintillations of innumerable shore lights extending from the French docks at the extreme western end of the city, In a semi-circle along the unbroken waterfront far out to the huge encampment of the. British army, known as Base Hospital No. 43, on the tip of the eastern pointNext morning we went ashore, matte the usual declarations, and in the afternoon the Speedina backed in among the miscellany of craft that lined the long stone quays, until her stern stood about one hundred feet from the street. Before the war Salonika was a city of half a million hustling, bustling traders and merchants of every conceivable nationality—the majority Turks, Greeks, and Jews. Only ships with special permission from "the French Government can get alongside a dock and discharge in the manner familiar to New Yorkers. In Salonika you arrange with a contractor to discharge your cargo into lighters. When one is loaded to capacity it Is propelled by bare-legged oarsmen, and in course of time reaches its destination. Thefi is second nature with the myriads of watermen, carriers and loafers that infest the quays and warehouse section of Salonika. These rascals break open packages of shoes, dry-goods, foodstuffs, or any sort of case that is too big to carry away bodily, help themselves, and patch up the package, often with little effort to make it resume its original appearance. The American exporter should study carefully the question of packing and the nature of containers in shinning goods to any of the ports, and under the best conditions should allow an average of 10 per cent. for loss by theft. As the shipment I was interested in was billed through to Servia, the Servian authorities furnishpd an armed guard for these goods. Nothing in the world inspired a Salonika, longshoreman with greater respect for a case of goods than a Servian soldier with a rifle an(! fixed bayonet on guard over it. He is worth more than a. policy in Lloyds. Fearlessness and punctilious honesty are two well-known characteristics of the Servian soldier wherever he 4 is. Our cargo was put into the Servian ftovernmenl, warehouse at Salonika and distributed from there by rail to different parts of Servia under supervision of the Government From the timi the goods were lowered from the steamship into the lighters not a package was hnndlcd by machinery. Every case was unloaded from the lighters by hand, .from the dock of tlie warehouse by mule waggons and into the different, floors of the warehouses by man power- The loads these human heoits of burden can carry are unbelievably heavy. T saw cases weighing 4fio pounds carried* up a cleated plank to the second story on a man's back, and I saw a case weighing fiOO pounds ci.rried from the street into the ground floor of the warehouse—a distance of fifty or sixty feet—in the same manner. These |"ahmel«," lis they are called, carry a. padded canvas rest slung from the forehead over the back, the lower end gradually becoming thicker until it ends in a pad against which the load rests without danger of slipping downwards. Shoes were selling at 40 dollars a. pair, but it was not part of our plan to make a "elean-up" on this shipment. The country was in dire need of everything we took over there and the people had Jhe money to pay for it without regard of price. We wished to utilise this shipment to determine whether America could produce certain goods, for which there would be a permanent market, that is, regular, dependable market in normal times. It was, and is, no trick to sell goods anywhere in Europe at present. However, in order that this statement may not lead any person astray, I want to say that it is "some" trick to get paid for them. It can be done, however, if you know how, but for many Americans, and particularly those who have jumped into foreign trade with an airy lightness that amazes those experienced in the business and its perils, it is fraught, with danger. The technical experience of buyinjj and selling is not as valuable to the foreign traxle merchants in these uncertain times as is a thorough knowledge of international money and exchange and the financial itsaecs of foreign countries. The train for Nish was scheduled to leave Salonika at 6 a.m., 7 a.m-, or 8 a.m., according to the time one went by —that is, British, Greek or French time respectively. The British still had a respectably sized army in Salonika in April, and believing in saving daylight, had put their clocks an hour ahead of local'or Greek time. The French, who were also largely in evidence, believed in Paris, which is an hour later, and they regulated everything they couM accordingly. It was a motley crowd I saw assembling to board the train for the north on the morning of April 10. There were American Red Cross officers, Greek soldiers in white kilts and tasselled shoes, trim British Tommies, tin-hatted Frencft poilus and their officers in their immaculate blue, handsome Serbian officers and men, veiled and unveiled Turkish women, fezzed Macedonians of the Ottoman faith, peasants and priests and several hundred lean but healthy-look-ing refugees returning to their country after an exile of nearly five years. The refugees were mostly Serbian peasants who had left house and home and followed their invincible army over the hills of Albania and down to the sea rather than fall into the hands of the enemy. They had spent the wcaTy period of exile in various hospitable Mediterranean towns and were now returning in great numbers. Their clothes 'were literally and actually rags and tatters. A few had sacking tied about their feet, but for the most part men, women, and children were bare-foot. Withal they were cheerful, smiling ana full of courage. One unique scene may be mentioned as an evidence of«thc fierce joy they seemed to take in destroying things- At one place where a steel bridge, 400 feet long, spanned the Vardar. they started two trains of empty freight cars at. full speed towards each other, and as they met in collision at the centre of the bridge a supporting pier was blown up, and the resulting wreck was indescribable. As the train crossed slowly—over so slowly—over the (hastily repaired bridge I' could see the wrecks of the two locomotives, one at each side, stemming the rushing waters of the yellow river. On ft siding near this bridge and in the yards the burnt skeletons of cars and rolling stock of every description stood, charred, gaunt and silent wit°4bms«s of fk* Teuton fury,

One of the most patlietic sights I saw was uprooted mulberry trees and grapo vines. The mulberry trees were grown to feed silk worms for the large silk Industries at Givgheli, and as these were particularly fine specimens the German was able at one stroke to satisfy his destructive passion and cripple an Industry for years to come. The grape vines were very old, many of them over three hundred years, and produced a. wine of wonderful quality which made the. district famous. It was sad to see those huge, sturdy old stumps that had withstood the ravages of centuries, and up,on which loving hands without number had been laid by generations of wine growers now lying sapless by the wayside. Givgheli is the first town within the new Kingdom of Servia on the Greek frontier. It was the scene of fierce fighting and shows it, as there is not a whole building left in the town. The train pulled out of Givgheli and wended its way northward at a speed of fifteen miles an hour between stops. The temporary structures that were doing duty for' bridges and culverts and the hastily repaired right of way necessitated moving cautiously. We reached Grodska at Sin the afternoon, ana as the engine needed overhauling it was a good hour and a-half before we got started again. The Germans had blown up the water tank and destroyed the station water supply, and the engine had to go off into the country somewhere on a side line for water. The destruction of water tanks had been so complete that experiences of this kind are common all along the line. Grodska was a German military headquarters, and a railhead of importance not many months before. Now it is a mass of charred ruins, burnt cars, twisted Tails and heaps' of ashes. As immense amount of war material lay scattered about almost as it was when abandoned by the Germans in their haste to get away from the pursuing Serbian army. I encountered fifty-two field locomotives in., good condition, two big Skoda guns as good as new, and lying about in piles were immense quantities of horseshoes, wire cable, barbed wire, waggons, wheels, nails; while scores of burned freight cars stood on the sidings just where they had been when the Germans fired them in their hurried retreat. Not far from Grodska. is the Mackensen tunnel. Paralleling the Vardar River and the railway.-thorc was a waggon road —a road that had served many armies for centuries, as the Vardar valley was the means of ingress for all who would penetrate Central Europe from the sea via Salonika. The armies of ancient Greece and Rome marched that way; the Turks from Asia, Minor invading Europe used this road, as did the Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land. _ > No one was ever sufficiently inter- < ested in it to straighten the curves or reduce the grades until the Germans marched down that waf for the first and last time. They made a first-class'il; modern road out, of it which, while serving primarily to convey their heavy artillery, was meant to be a great highway between Nish and Salonika, connecting the interior of Serbia with the Mediterranean Sea. At a point where the river sqnecezs itself into a narrow gorge with barely enough room for the railway the Germans built a tunnel to carry through the highway. It is about six hundred feet long and like the road a very fine piece of work. Immediately over the portals at each end is carved the name "Mackensen tunnel." Above, the name on the southern portal is also carved an iron cross of large proportions. But it is the inscription over the north portal that arrests attention and will do so for all time. High up on the bold front the rock has been faced and there, cut deep and painted in black letters, the Germans perpetuated the conquest of Serbia and their triumphal inarch towards the sea in the following words:— .Wilhclm ll—Deutehcr Kaiser Koenig Von Pruessen Befahl Seinen Soldaten Dicse Strassc Zu Gauen, 1916: A free translation of this text would be: Wilhelm ll.—German Kaiser, King of Prussia, ordered his soldiers to build this road—l9lo. Between this inscription and the top of the portal the Germans left an inviting space. Later other soldiers came that way; they came up from the sea; they entered the Mackensen Tunnel from the south just as the mighty army of Germany was scampering like whipped curs through the other end, and in liumble commemoration of the event the leader of this army, emulating the Imperial example, cut into the imperishable rock in the space so unthinkingly and_ so appropriately provided by the Kaiser the following:— Le General Franchet Desperey, Commandant en Chef les Armees Allies d'Orient, ordonna a ses troupes de cuaaser les Bodies.— 1918. Translation: —' General Franchet Desperey, Command-er-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in the Orient, ordered his troops to chase the Bodies.—l9lß. At 10 p.m. we reached Vellcs, a very ancient city, cut in two by the rushing waters of the Vardar. It has a typical Oriental look about it—the mosques, minarets and latticed windows testifying plainly to its long occupation by the Turks, from whom it was wrested by the Serbians in the Balkan war of 1012.' It was 12.30 a.m. when the train reached the end of its journey and stopped at Skoplje—Usktib as I knew it at school—in inky darkness and a drizzling rain. A tired, dishevelled mob, laden with every conceivable .kind of baggage, crowded into the station to be checked up by Custims and military officers. Serbia was not yet permitting unauthorised or unwelcome visitors. I was impressed with the efficient manner in which the Serbians: handle suspicious looking people from Russia. They put them in »aol on arrival, pending deportation or voluntary departure to any country to which they may be en routeDuring their stay in Serbia they have not a'chance to disseminate any Bolshevik notions and to contaminate the Serbian proletariat. It is a very simple, quiet method, and it works. We reached Nish at 2 o'clock in the morning or about eight hours behind scheduled time. This ended the train trip, as. repairs to the line were only completed as far north as Nish in April, and it was July before the railway was open all tho way to Belgrade. From Nish to Belgrade we made the trip by automobile over very bad roads. Tho weather had been wet and scores of shell holes were so filled with water and mud that one could never tell how deep they were until the. ear bodily plumped down into them. At Cypria, on tTie Moravia River, the Germans had blown up the bridge and high water had just carried away the temporary pontoonstructure, winch obliged us to malm lone detour via Salinatz. This was a ,i ,! villase" of 6000 before the war and

one of the wealthiest places in the Balkans. The Bulgarians despoiled the in-, habit-ants to the uttermost farthing. Worse than that though was their brutal treatment of the women, not one of whom over 14 escaped assault, and every man in the town was put to death or deported. The cattle, sheep, horses, and hogs were driven into Bulgaria. In both Cypria and Salinatz the Austrian* and Bulgarians exhibited unheardof cruelty and committed atrocities so unspeakable that the lowest minds of the most imaginative of people brought up in Christian communities could not even conjure up such things as actually happened. I have photographs of innocent peasants, men and women, being hanzed by dozens in the presence of their friends, relatives, and neighbors. I have photographs showing groups of smiling officers posing with dead or dying victims and showing every evidence of pride in their butcheries, these pictures were found on enemy prisoners captured by the Serbian and Allied armies. The Serbs have a great deal to learn about sanitation, and their business and public men still suffer to some extent from dilatoriness and other baleful influences of Orientalism, perhaps a relic of long Turkish occupation or association. The war has done much to overcome this latter tendency by bringing them into contact with British and American men and women.