V

Salonika makes her own beer, but it is not of uniform quality. Sometimes the litre will be very palatable. Often the best thing to do is to leave it. Dutch beer is drunk, and is very good. I am afraid saccharine takes the place of malt in the local product. At the worst, one can get passable coffee and good brandy. Seated among the uniforms at the little tables, you may regard Salonika in a characteristic mood.

The sun shines strongly now through immense piled-up masses of white clouds, and there is sufficient wind to sail a boat across the Gulf. The Greek standard waves gently from the top of the White Tower. The White Tower, let it be said, is a perfectly round cylinder of whitewashed stone, surmounted by a smaller turret and a flag-staff. There is one small door over which is an inscription in Turkish, very beautiful to look at, utterly incomprehensible unless you know Turkish. One or two small windows and a small ledge half way up are the only breaks in the vast, smooth surface. The Turks used it for some purpose, I suppose, or they would not have built it. The legend has it that it was called at one time The Bloody Tower, but that may have been only a manner of speaking. I have been shipmate with a Turk only once or twice in my life, and so far as I know them they are competent, orderly, well-bred people. I very much regret that fate has made us enemies in this war.

As I was saying, the blue-and-white Greek standard floats from the battlements of the White Tower. All around you float officers of the Greek army in blue-and-silver full uniforms. They look slightly theatrical, because all the other armies are in service clothes. The ends of their silver-plated scabbards are muddy. So are their spurs. Many of them are handsome in a fashion-plate way: dead-white skin, dead-black moustaches, long legs, thin noses, dark eyes, empty foreheads. One in particular attracts one’s attention. He is wearing blue-and-white cocks’ feathers in his hat, white kid gloves on his hands, and immense Hessian boots with silver spurs on his feet. His sword is across his knees and he is explaining something with great energy to his companions.

A French air-man, who has skinned his nose (possibly in a sudden descent) and who wears the Military Cross, sits behind a glass of vermouth. Several Russian lieutenants, in their beautiful green tunics and soft leather boots, are conversing with a French major. An Italian captain is reading a book. An English captain is talking to a lady. Some Serbian officers appear to be talking to themselves. Not one of them seems to have anything to do. Perhaps they think the same of me. Let us take the car back. The tall and handsome Greek officers cram into one poor little Ford runabout and rattle off up the road. Let us take the car. A Salonika tram-car is interesting, believe me.

They nearly always haul a second-class trailer behind them. We go second class. It is a very small car, and it is very full. The fare is a penny. A Greek penny is a nickel coin with a hole in the centre, so that it looks like an aluminium washer. The occupants of the car are of all ages. Boys and girls and priests are in the majority. The children are going to school, as may be seen by the books in their hands. The priests are going—wherever priests go in the morning. If they were going to the barber’s it would do them no harm. I admit that their flowing black gowns and extraordinary top hats are picturesque; but why should the picturesque persist in being insanitary?

I like the children better. They are clean and wholesome. Most of them, I observe, have ticket-books, from which the conductor removes a coupon. This arrangement, I suspect, is favoured by the parents, because the children might save the fare and go to the pictures instead. The car passes the doors of several cinema theatres, and the youngsters babble excitedly as they discuss the vivid posters that are stuck up outside.

One lad of twelve is deep in a penny dreadful. I look over his shoulder and wish I could decipher the story. He wears a low-necked suit with sailor collar and French tie, blue corduroy shorts, patent-leather button boots, and silk socks. His brown legs are bare. The whole look of him is Byronic, save that instead of a slouch hat he wears a peaked naval cap on one side of a dark head. Byronic, too, are the illustrations to his dreadful. A girl is tied to a railway line and two desperadoes struggle with daggers. I peep farther over his shoulder. He is so absorbed in the story that he notices nothing. I muse upon his future. What will he be, when he grows up? Is his father a Venizelist? Of what race is he? How does this Grecian sprig, who reads penny dreadfuls in an electric tram-car, regard us Britishers who have come over the sea, like the Romans and Normans and Franks of old, to leave our bones on the Balkan ranges? Out in the Gulf ride his country’s warships with a foreign flag on their gaffs. Does he care? I doubt it. He turns over the page without looking up.

But of a sudden there is a blare of martial music. The car has stopped. We are in the midst of a procession. Let us get out. We reach the sidewalk with a run and find the procession is wheeling round the corner, just beyond, into the Place, and up Venizelos Street. It is the new Greek Nationalist Army—new uniforms, new rifles, new mountain batteries, new officers—all very new. They march in fifties, and cries of “Venizelos!” “Viva!” and other less articulate noises mingle with much clapping of hands and clinking of scabbards. Our glorious friend with the cocks’ feathers and white kid gloves is in all his glory now, directing the procession. He salutes continually. After the soldiers come motor-cars with generals and admirals. Some of the generals are, in the words of the penny novelette, a blaze of decorations. No mortal man could live long enough or have valour enough to earn all the medals these gentlemen wear in tiers on their padded bosoms. However, everybody claps, so I clap, too. They are all going to the front to-morrow, they say, so let us bury criticism. So they pass. I stand near a large-sized sergeant-major of the R. F. A. and I observe a peculiar expression of astonishment on his bronzed face as he salutes. If I read it aright he is thinking, “Well, I’m blowed! What a circus!”

After the uniforms come the civilian members of the new Greek Government. There is a good deal of the theatrical star about their appearance, due, I suppose, to the silk hats and opera cloaks and lavender gloves they affect. They wear their hair rather longer than our politicians, too. My sergeant-major salutes, but I catch his eye. He throws up his chin and grins, as though to say, “I’m doin’ this by orders, so don’t blame me.”

Presently the motor-cars change to pair-horse carriages. Some are clapped, some are hissed by the crowd on sidewalk and balcony. The pair-horse carriages change to one-horse and the sergeant-major ceases to salute. Several political gentlemen in one-horse vehicles lift their silk hats. As no one claps they put them on again, and sit back with expressions of rigid ill temper on their faces.

One does not believe in this sort of thing for a moment. It is all too unreal. The superficial reason for this doubt in a spectator’s mind is that the public never knows what is actually going on. One of the great advantages of war, they tell us, is that it clears the air. We learn who are our real enemies and who are our real friends. War is that something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. War abolishes sham and pretense.

But there is another reason. You cannot impose liberty upon a people any more than you can make them good by legislation. Rousseau, whose prescience in this matter is almost uncanny, asserts this. “Every people,” he says, “to which its situation gives no choice save that between commerce and war, is weak in itself: it depends on its neighbours, and on circumstances; its existence can never be more than short and uncertain.” And he quotes with approval this maxim: “Liberty may be gained, but it can never be recovered.”

Well, they are gone, and General Sarrail, who has been standing on Venizelos Steps with Colonel Christodoulos, shakes hands with that gentleman and hurries back to his office. I remark as he passes that he carries no sword and wears no decorations whatever.

It is now eleven o’clock and I decide on a walk up Venizelos Street before going aboard.

Venizelos Street is the Bond Street and Fifth Avenue of Salonika. All the great stores of the city are here. I don’t suppose an American or a Londoner would call them great stores. They are no counterparts of Wanamaker’s or Harrods’, of Greenhut Cooper’s or Whiteley’s. But they are great in comparison with the aboriginal hole in the wall which the oriental calls a shop. Here in Venizelos Street, you can buy everything you want and many hundreds of things you don’t. There is a good bookshop, if you read French. Dutch and American goods predominate at present. There is a bank with formidable sentries marching to and fro, possibly to intimidate withdrawals. There is a tailor who will undertake every conceivable uniform, and make them all utterly wrong.

We pass all these and come to smaller establishments—the inevitable postcard and cigarette shops, shops with figs hung in festoons and vegetable marrows blocking the tiny entrance. At length we cross Jean Tsimiski Street, which is the Fleet Street of Salonika. Here are forged the thunderbolts of the press. Here, high up in a yellow barrack, is conceived and executed the daily issue of the Balkan News, the only paper of its kind. If you are a poet, go upstairs and see the editor. So long as you do not mention Mount Olympos or the Red Light District, he will be glad to publish your works in daily instalments.

I am no poet, so Jean Tsimiski Street is passed and we enter the covered bazaar. Here we are in the Orient. Here are no fixed prices, but a battle royal over every deal. Here the merchant stands outside and uses all the eloquence of which he is capable to lure you into his tiny fastness. If he happens to be inside and he sees your eye flicker ever so slightly toward his wares, he is out in a flash and implores you to inspect his stock. Sooner or later you will fall. You see some gimcrack or other which takes your fancy. You are dragged within. You ask the price. Having appraised your position in life, he names a figure, about two hundred per cent. above what he expects. You laugh in his face and walk out. He pursues you, abating a hundred per cent. You walk on, and he offers it on your own terms. You return and agree to take it. Then, instead of concluding the deal, this exasperating person will probably show you something else and offer to throw it in for another ten francs!

And it is all rubbish. Turkish slippers and fezzes made in Austria, daggers made in Germany, Japanese silks and fans, black amber ornaments advertised as from Erzerum, but probably from Germany, ancient coins and vases, ikons, and charms—all the junk of the foolish traveller, is here. I observe smart British nurses buying souvenirs for friends in Balham and Birmingham, smart subalterns purchasing cigarette-cases and walking-stick handles, daggers, and silly old Turkish pistols. But after all, they are young, and quite probably they do not know the East. I recall my first trip to the Orient in a tramp steamer, when I, too, bought:

After all, this is the time of their lives, these foolish young people with their curios and their wrist-watches and the stars on their shoulders and in their eyes.

So, walking through the bazaar, one sees another phase of the only thing worth looking at—humanity. One sees the little Turkish boy being fitted with a suit in an outfitter’s, or the little Turkish maiden buying a comb. One meets the Jewishy tout, who speaks all languages—“Oh, yes. Engleesh, all right, Johnny”; the fatuous humbug! One sees French soldiers buying buttons and needles and thread; the canny creatures! One sees solemn bearded Israelites, in flowing gabardines, stalking to and fro, conversing, strangely enough, in Spanish. One sees these things or one does not, according to one’s temperament and training. Personally, I would like to see more of them. I feel there is something in this Babel for me, if I could but stay and catch the subtle cosmopolitan spirit of it. But that may not be. It is time to return. I go on at two!