UNDER THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT
Salonika is superbly situated. To gain it from the seaward side you sail
through a portal formed by the majestic peaks of Athos and Olympus. It
reclines on the bronze-brown Macedonian hills, white-clad, like a young
Greek goddess, with its feet laved by the blue waters of the Ægean. (I
have used this simile elsewhere in the book, but it does not matter.)
The scores of slender minarets which rise above the housetops belie the
crosses on the Greek flags which flaunt everywhere, hinting that the
city, though it has passed under Christian rule, is at heart still
Moslem. Indeed, barely a tenth of the 200,000 inhabitants are of the
ruling race, for Salonika is that rare thing in modern Europe, a city
whose population is by majority Jewish. There were hook-nosed,
dark-skinned traders from Judea here, no doubt, as far back as the days
when Salonika was but a way-station on the great highroad which linked
the East with Rome, but it was the Jews expelled from Spain by Ferdinand
and Isabella who transformed the straggling Turkish town into one of the
most prosperous cities of the Levant by making it their home. And to-day
the Jewish women of Salonika, the older ones at least, wear precisely
the same costume that their great-grandmother wore in Spain before the
persecution--a symbol and a reminder of how the Israelites were hunted
by the Christians before they found refuge in a Moslem land.
There are no less than eight distinct ways of spelling and pronouncing
the city's name. To the Greeks, who are its present owners, it is
Saloniki or Saloneke, according to the method of transliterating the
_epsilon_; it is known to the Turks, who misruled it for five hundred
years, as Selanik; the British call it Salonica, with the accent on the
second syllable; the French Salonique; the Italians Salonnico, while the
Serbs refer to it as Solun. The best authorities seem to have agreed,
however, on Salonika, with the accent on the "i," which is pronounced
like "e," so that it rhymes with "paprika." But these are all
corruptions and abbreviations, for the city was originally named
Thessalonica, after the sister of Alexander of Macedon, and thus
referred to in the two epistles which St. Paul addressed to the church
he founded there. Owing to the variety of its religious sects, Salonika
has a superfluity of Sabbaths as well as of names, Friday being observed
by the Moslems, Saturday by the Jews, and Sunday by the Christians.
Perhaps it would be putting it more accurately to say that there is no
Sabbath at all, for the inhabitants are so eager to make money that
business is transacted on every day of the seven.
Besides the great colony of Orthodox Jews in Salonika, there is a sect
of renegades known as Dounmé, or Deunmeh, who number perhaps 20,000 in
all. These had their beginnings in the _Annus Mirabilis_, when a Jewish
Messiah, Sabatai Sevi of Smyrna, arose in the Levant. He preached a
creed which was a first cousin of those believed in by our own
Anabaptists and Seventh Day Adventists. The name and the fame of him
spread across the Near East like fire in dry grass. Every ghetto in
Turkey had accepted him; his ritual was adopted by every synagogue; the
Jews gave themselves over to penance and preparation. For a year honesty
reigned in the Levant. Then the prophet set out for Constantinople to
beard the Sultan in his palace and, so he announced, to lead him in
chains to Zion. That was where Sabatai Sevi made his big mistake. For
the Commander of the Faithful was from Missouri, so far as Sabatai
Sevi's claims to divinity were concerned.
"Messiahs can perform miracles," the Sultan said. "Let me see you
perform one. My Janissaries shall make a target of you. If you are of
divine origin, as you claim, the arrows will not harm you. And, in any
event, it will be an interesting experiment."
[Illustration: THE ANCIENT WALLS OF SALONIKA
Before us we saw the yellow walls and crenellated towers of that city
where Paul preached to the Thessalonians]
Now Sabatai evidently had grave doubts about his self-assumed divinity
being arrow-proof, for he protested vigorously against the proposal to
make a human pin-cushion of him, whereupon the Sultan, his suspicions
now confirmed, gave him his choice between being impaled upon a stake, a
popular Turkish pastime of the period, or of renouncing Judaism and
accepting the faith of Islam. Preferring to be a live coward to an
impaled martyr, he chose the latter, yet such was his influence with
the Jews that thousands of his adherents voluntarily embraced the
religion of Mohammed. The Dounmé of Salonika are the descendants of
these renegades. Two centuries of waiting have not dimmed their faith in
the eventual coming of their Messiah. So there they wait, equally
distrusted by Jews and Moslems, though they form the wealthiest portion
of the city's population. But they live apart and so dread any mixing of
their blood with that of the infidel Turk or the unbelieving Jew that,
in order to avoid the risk of an unwelcome proposal, they make a
practise of betrothing their children before they are born. It strikes
me, however, that there must on occasion be a certain amount of
embarrasment connected with these early matches, as, for example, when
the prenatally engaged ones prove to be of the same sex.
I used to be of the opinion that Tiflis, in the Caucasus, was the most
cosmopolitan city that I had ever seen, but since the war I think that
the greatest variety of races could probably be found in Salonika. Sit
at a marble-topped table on the pavement in front of Floca's café at
the tea-hour and you can see representatives of half the races in the
world pass by--British officers in beautifully polished boots and
beautifully cut breeches, astride of beautifully groomed ponies;
Highlanders with their kilts covered by khaki aprons; raw-boned,
red-faced Australians in sun helmets and shorts; swaggering _chausseurs
d'Afrique_ in wonderful uniforms of sky-blue and scarlet which you will
find nowhere else outside a musical comedy; soldiers of the Foreign
Legion with the skirts of their long blue overcoats pinned back and with
mushroom-shaped helmets which are much too large for them; soldierly,
well set-up little Ghurkas in broad-brimmed hats and uniforms of olive
green, reminding one for all the world of fighting cocks; Sikhs in
yellow khaki (did you know, by the way, that _khaki_ is the Hindustani
word for dust?) with their long black beards neatly plaited and rolled
up under their chins; Epirotes wearing the starched and plaited skirts
called _fustanellas_, each of which requires from twenty to forty yards
of linen; Albanian tribal chiefs in jackets stiff with gold embroidery,
with enough weapons thrust in their gaudy sashes to decorate a
club-room; Cretan gendarmes wearing breeches which are so tight below
the knee and so enormously baggy in the seat that they can, and when
they are in Crete frequently do, use them in place of a basket for
carrying their poultry, eggs or other farm produce to market; coal-black
Senegalese, coffee-colored Moroccans and tan-colored Algerians, all
wearing the broad red cummerbunds and the high red tarbooshes which
distinguish France's African soldiery; Italian _bersaglieri_ with great
bunches of cocks' feathers hiding their steel helmets; Serbs in
ununiform uniforms of every conceivable color, material and pattern,
their only uniform article of equipment being their characteristic
high-crowned _képis_; Russians in flat caps and belted blouses, their
baggy trousers tucked into boots with ankles like accordions; officers
of Cossack cavalry, their tall and slender figures accentuated by their
long, tight-fitting coats and their high caps of lambskin; Bulgar
prisoners wearing the red-banked caps which they have borrowed from
their German allies and Austrian prisoners in worn and shabby uniforms
of grayish-blue; Greek soldiers bedecked like Christmas trees with
medals, badges, fourragéres and chevrons, in the hope, I suppose, that
their gaudiness would make up for their lack of prowess; Orthodox
priests with their long hair (for they never cut their hair or beards)
done up in Psyche knots; Hebrew rabbis wearing caps of velvet shaped
like those worn by bakers; Moslem muftis with their snowy turbans
encircled by green scarves as a sign that they had made the pilgrimage
to the Holy Places; Jewish merchants and money-changers in the same
black caps and greasy gabardines which their ancestors wore in the
Middle Ages; British, French, Italian and American bluejackets with
their caps cocked jauntily and the roll of the sea in their gait;
A.R.A., A.R.C., Y.M.C.A., K. of C. and A.C.R.N.E. workers in fancy
uniforms of every cut and color; Turkish sherbet-sellers with huge brass
urns, hung with tinkling bells to give notice of their approach, slung
upon their backs; ragged Macedonian bootblacks (bootblacking appeared to
be the national industry of Macedonia), and hordes of gipsy beggars, the
filthiest and most importunate I have ever seen. All day long this
motley, colorful crowd surges through the narrow streets, their voices,
speaking in a score of tongues, raising a din like that of Bedlam; the
smells of unwashed bodies, human perspiration, strong tobacco, rum,
hashish, whiskey, arrack, goat's cheese, garlic, cheap perfumery and
sweat-soaked leather combining in a stench which rises to high Heaven.
On the streets one sees almost as many colored soldiers as white ones:
French native troops from Algeria, Morocco, Madagascar, Senegal and
China; British Indian soldiery from Bengal, the Northwest Provinces and
Nepaul. The Indian troops were superbly drilled and under the most iron
discipline, but the French native troops appeared to be getting out of
hand and were not to be depended upon. To a man they had announced that
they wanted to go home. They had been through four and a half years of
war, they are tired and homesick, and they are more than willing to let
the Balkan peoples settle their own quarrels. They were weary of
fighting in a quarrel of which they knew little and about which they
cared less; they longed for a sight of the wives and the children they
had left behind them in Fez or Touggourt or Timbuktu. Because they had
been kept on duty in Europe, while the French white troops were being
rapidly demobilized and returned to their homes, the Africans were
sullen and resentful. This smoldering resentment suddenly burst into
flame, a day or so before we reached Salonika, when a Senegalese
sergeant, whose request to be sent home had been refused, ran amuck,
barricaded himself in a stone outhouse with a plentiful supply of rifles
and ammunition, and succeeded in killing four officers and half-a-dozen
soldiers before his career was ended by a well-aimed hand grenade. A few
days later a British officer was shot and killed in the camp outside the
city by a Ghurka sentinel. This was not due to mutiny, however, but, on
the contrary, to over-strict obedience to orders, the sentry having been
instructed that he was to permit no one to cross his post without
challenging. The officer, who was fresh from England and had had no
experience with the discipline of Indian troops, ignored the order to
halt--and the next day there was a military funeral.
Salonika is theoretically under Greek rule and there are pompous,
self-important little Greek policemen, perfect replicas of the British
M.P.'s in everything save physique and discipline, on duty at the street
crossings, but instead of regulating the enormous flow of traffic they
seem only to obstruct it. When the congestion becomes so great that it
threatens to hold up the unending stream of motor-lorries which rolls
through the city, day and night, between the great cantonments in the
outskirts and the port, a tall British military policeman suddenly
appears from nowhere, shoulders the Greek gendarme aside, and with a few
curt orders untangles the snarl into which the traffic has gotten itself
and sets it going again.
Picturesque though Salonika undeniably is, with its splendid mosques,
its beautiful Byzantine churches, its Roman triumphal arches, and the
brooding bulk of Mount Olympus, which overshadows and makes trivial
everything else, yet the strongest impressions one carries away are
filth, corruption and misgovernment. These conditions are due in some
measure, no doubt, to the refusal of the European troops, with whom the
city is filled, to take orders from any save their own officers, but the
underlying reason is to be found in the indifference and gross
incompetence of the Greek authorities. The Greeks answer this by saying
that they have not had time to clean the city up and give it a decent
administration because they have owned it only eight years. All of the
European business quarter, including a mile of handsome buildings along
the waterfront, lies in ruins as a result of the great fire of 1917.
Though a system of new streets has been tentatively laid out across this
fire-swept area, no attempt has been made to rebuild the city, hundreds
of shopkeepers carrying on their businesses in shacks and booths erected
amid the blackened and tottering walls. All of the hotels worthy of the
name were destroyed in the fire, the two or three which escaped being
quite uninhabitable, at least for Europeans, because of the armies of
insects with which they are infested. I do not recall hearing any one
say a good word for Salonika. The pleasantest recollection which I
retain of the place is that of the steamer which took us away from
there.
Before we could leave Salonika for Constantinople our passports had to
be viséd by the representatives of five nations. In fact, travel in the
Balkans since the war is just one damn visé after another. The Italians
stamped them because we had come from Albania, which is under Italian
protection. The Serbs put on their imprint because we had stopped for a
few days in Monastir. The Greeks affixed their stamp--and collected
handsomely for doing so--because, theoretically at least, Salonika,
whose dust we were shaking from our feet, belongs to them. The French
insisted on viséing our papers in order to show their authority and
because they needed the ten francs. The British control officer told me
that I really didn't need his visé, but that he would put it on anyway
because it would make the passports look more imposing. Because we were
going to Constantinople and Bucharest, whereas our passports were made
out for "the Balkan States," the American Consul would not visé them at
all, on the ground that neither Turkey nor Roumania is in the Balkans.
About Roumania he was technically correct, but I think most geographers
place European Turkey in the Balkans. As things turned out, however, it
was all labor lost and time thrown away, for we landed in Constantinople
as untroubled by officials and inspectors as though we were stepping
ashore at Twenty-third Street from a Jersey City ferry.
There were no regular sailings from Salonika for Constantinople, but,
by paying a hundred dollars for a ticket which in pre-war days cost
twenty, we succeeded in obtaining passage on an Italian tramp steamer.
The _Padova_ was just such a cargo tub as one might expect to find
plying between Levantine ports. Though we occupied an officer's cabin,
for which we were charged _Mauretania_ rates, it was very far from being
as luxurious as it sounds, for I slept upon a mattress laid upon three
chairs and the mattress was soiled and inhabited. Still, it was very
diverting, after an itching night, to watch the cockroaches, which were
almost as large as mice, hurrying about their duties on the floor and
ceiling. Huddled under the forward awnings were two-score deck
passengers--Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Roumanians. Sprawled on their
straw-filled mattresses, they loafed the hot and lazy days away in
playing cards, eating the black bread, olives and garlic which they had
brought with them, smoking a peculiarly strong and villainous tobacco,
and torturing native musical instruments of various kinds. At night a
young Turk sang plaintive, quavering laments to the accompaniment of a
sort of guitar, some of the others occasionally joining in the mournful
chorus. I found my chief recreation, when it grew too dark to read, in
watching an Orthodox priest, who was one of the deck-passengers, prepare
for the night by combing and putting up his long and greasy hair.
Another of the deck-passengers was a rather prosperous-looking,
middle-aged Levantine who had been in America making his fortune, he
told me, and was now returning to his wife, who lived in a little
village on the Dardanelles, after an absence of sixteen years. She had
no idea that he was coming, he said, as he had planned to surprise her.
Perhaps he was the one to be surprised. Sixteen years is a long time for
a woman to wait for a man, even in a country as conservative as Turkey.
The officers of the _Padova_ talked a good deal about the mine-fields
that still guarded the approaches to the Dardanelles and the possibility
that some of the deadly contrivances might have broken loose and drifted
across our course. In order to cheer us up the captain showed us the
charts, on which the mined areas were indicated by diagonal shadings,
little red arrows pointing the way between them along channels as
narrow and devious as a forest trail. To add to our sense of security he
told us that he had never been through the Dardanelles before, adding
that he did not intend to pick up a pilot, as he considered their
charges exorbitant. At the base of the great mine-field which lies
across the mouth of the Straits we were hailed by a British patrol boat,
whose choleric commander bellowed instructions at us, interlarded with
much profanity, through a megaphone. The captain of the _Padova_ could
understand a few simple English phrases, if slowly spoken, but the
broadside of Billingsgate only confused and puzzled him, so, despite the
fact that he had no pilot and that darkness was rapidly descending, he
kept serenely on his course. This seemed to enrage the British skipper,
who threw over his wheel and ran directly across our bows, very much as
one polo player tries to ride off another.
"You ---- fool!" he bellowed, fairly dancing about his quarter-deck with
rage. "Why in hell don't you stop when I tell you to? Don't you know
that you're running straight into a mine-field? Drop anchor alongside me
and do it ---- quick or I'll take your ---- license away from you. And
I don't want any of your ---- excuses, either. I won't listen to 'em."
"What he say?" the captain asked me. "I not onderstan' hees Engleesh
ver' good."
"No, you wouldn't," I told him. "He's speaking a sort of patois, you
see. He wants to know if you will have the great kindness to drop anchor
alongside him until morning, for it is forbidden to pass through the
mine-fields in the dark, and he hopes that you will have a very pleasant
night."
Five minutes later our anchor had rumbled down off Sed-ul-Bahr, under
the shadow of Cape Helles, the tip of that rock, sun-scorched,
blood-soaked peninsula which was the scene of that most heroic of
military failures--the Gallipoli campaign. Above us, on the bare brown
hillside, was what looked, in the rapidly deepening twilight, like a
patch of driven snow, but upon examining it through my glasses I saw
that it was a field enclosed by a rude wall and planted thickly with
small white wooden crosses, standing row on row. Then I remembered. It
was at the foot of these steep and steel-swept bluffs that the Anzacs
made their immortal landing; it is here, in earth soaked with their own
blood, that they lie sleeping. The crowded dugouts in which they dwelt
have already fallen in; the trenches which they dug and which they held
to the death have crumbled into furrows; their bones lie among the rocks
and bushes at the foot of that dark and ominous hill on whose slopes
they made their supreme sacrifice. Leaning on the rail of the deserted
bridge in the darkness and the silence it seemed as though I could see
their ghosts standing amid the crosses on the hillside staring longingly
across the world toward that sun-baked Karroo of Australia and to the
blue New Zealand mountains which they called "Home." It was a night
never to be forgotten, for the glassy surface of the Ægean glowed with
phosphorescence, the sky was like a hanging of purple velvet, and the
peak of our foremast seemed almost to graze the stars. Across the
Hellespont, to the southward, the sky was illumined by a ruddy glow--a
village burning, so a sailor told me, on the site of ancient Troy. And
then there came back to me those lines from Agamemnon which I had
learned as a boy:
_"Beside the ruins of Troy they lie buried, those men so beautiful;
there they have their burial-place, hidden in an enemy's land!"_
We got under way at daybreak and, picking our way as cautiously as a
small boy who is trying to get out of the house at night without
awakening his family, we crept warily through the vast mine-field which
was laid across the entrance to the Dardanelles, past Sed-ul-Bahr, whose
sandy beach is littered with the rusting skeletons of both Allied and
Turkish warships and transports; past Kalid Bahr, where the high bluffs
are dotted with the ruins of Turkish forts destroyed by the shell-fire
of the British dreadnaughts on the other side of the peninsula and with
the remains of other forts which were destroyed in the Crusaders' times;
past Chanak, where the steep hill-slopes behind the town were white with
British tents, and so into the safe waters of the Marmora Sea. Though I
was perfectly familiar with the topography of the Gallipoli Peninsula,
as well as with the possibilities of modern naval guns, I was astonished
at the evidences, which we saw along the shore for miles, of the
extraordinary accuracy of the fire of the British fleet. Virtually all
the forts defending the Dardanelles were bombarded by indirect fire,
remember, the whole width of the peninsula separating them from the
fleet. To get a mental picture of the situation you must imagine
warships lying in the East River firing over Manhattan Island in an
attempt to reduce fortifications on the Hudson. Men who were in the
Gallipoli forts during the bombardment told me that, though they were
prevented by the rocky ridge which forms the spine of the peninsula from
seeing the British warships, and though, for the same reason, the
gunners on the ships could not see the forts, the great steel
calling-cards of the British Empire came falling out of nowhere as
regularly and with as deadly precision as though they were being fired
at point-blank range.
The successful defense of the Dardanelles, one of the most brilliantly
conducted defensive operations of the entire war, was primarily due to
the courage and stubborn endurance of Turkey's Anatolian soldiery,
ignorant, stolid, hardy, fearless peasants, who were taken straight from
their farms in Asia Minor, put into wretchedly made, ill-fitting
uniforms, hastily trained by German drillmasters, set down in the
trenches on the Gallipoli ridge and told to hold them. No one who is
familiar with the conditions under which these Turkish soldiers fought,
who knows how wretched were the conditions under which they lived, who
has seen those waterless, sun-seared ridges which they held against the
might of Britain's navy and the best troops which the Allies could bring
against them, can withhold from them his admiration. Their valor was
deserving of a better cause.