I do not know what silly things Major Todorovitch told Gen. Vassitch,
but the General, before all his staff, made me an officer of the First
Cavalry, which is the crack Serbian regiment, and a uniform has been
sent to me and is on the way to the United States, although there is
not enough cloth in Serbia to clothe her own troops. Perhaps when I go
back I can use it, for although many an officer offered me a horse,
none proffered me a pair of trousers to ride in.
When I was back in Salonica Prince Alexander sent for me and with his
own hands pinned on my breast the Order of St. Sava, which is the most
coveted of all the Serbian orders.
When I asked him if he really thought I merited it, he said, "I know of
no better friend to Serbia than you." I had already held the Kossova
medal, which is given only for personal attendance to the wounded, and
the Royal Order of the Serbian Red Cross.
Through the kindness of Col. Sondermayer another woman and myself
were smuggled into a dinner given to Venizelos, at which no women were
supposed to be present. During the course of the dinner Venizelos
suddenly turned his head so that he happened to see me and started, as
might be expected at a dinner where women were excluded. I also was
covered with confusion and could not help showing it.
The next day Col. Sondermayer called with an invitation to visit
Venizelos. When we reached his office he was overwhelmed with work,
but he rose from his chair and said kindly, "Have I not seen your face
before?"
"Yes," I replied, "last night at the dinner when you turned your head
and I lost mine."
He laughed, and we were engaged in conversation for an hour. Venizelos
entrusted me with a message for the Greeks in America.
"Tell them," he said, "that we need them. If they cannot come to fight
they can send money, and it will be used to take care of those who are
fighting and those who are left alone after the great battles."
I might refer here to the attitude of the women and even the little
children of Serbia and Greece. It is true that the hardest, most cruel
burdens of war fell upon the women and the children who are left widows
and orphans or who suffer while the men are at the front. It has always
been so, but as in every patriotic nation the women are suffering and
doing their share as bravely as the men. The soldiers are glad and
proud to die for their country, and their women folk and children are
proud to have them, despite the sorrow and privation.
It should be a lesson to us in America. Our men and our women and
children would be as ready and as willing to bear their burdens, but
now in peace and prosperity we should prepare against the time when we
may have to take up our burdens so that they may fall no more heavily
than is necessary.
Venizelos is above all a Greek.
"I do not care for myself or for what may become of me," he said. "I am
working and living and will die for Greece. Greece must live and live
in glory and integrity."
Salonica seemed to me the concentrated essence of life. It is a
kaleidoscopic scene. You come across the uniform of pretty nearly every
nationality, and every known language seems to be spoken. There are
soldiers and refugees, Turks and Christians, Greeks and Jews, and the
town hums like a beehive day and night. Troops are coming and going,
not only white men but negroes, Sudanese, Congoese, Annamese and many
others.
When I was in Serbia I had scooped up a handful of earth and had
treasured it and brought it back with me to Salonica, where I showed it
to some Serbs. Tears came into their eyes and they gazed upon it with
a reverence worthy of a sacred relic.
One man thrust his hand into it and said, "You have had the honor
and the joy, which, alas, I have not had, of setting foot on Serbian
soil freed from the invader. But I swear to you by this sacred earth
that I will not die until I have kissed the soil of my country. After
that----" he shrugged his shoulders.
By now this man, who was a soldier, may have fulfilled his vow, and if
so he is happy, though his kiss may have been a dying breath.
"KAMERADS"!--CAPTURING HUNS IN THE ALPS WITHOUT A FIGHT
_An Extract from the Diary of a Lieutenant of Alpine Chasseurs_
_Set down by Henri Viard_
A racy story told by a young French subaltern, showing how six Alpine
Chasseurs bluffed three hundred Huns, with eight officers, into
surrendering without a fight.--In the _Wide World Magazine_.