Chapter IX: Salonica and the Way Thither

Salonica was undoubtedly the most curious of all the “war capitals,” and no other was such a centre of contending claims and political intrigues. Its population is unlike that of any other city, and although most of the inhabitants took no active part in the war, all were deeply interested in its eventual results. The majority are Jews of Spanish origin, who had settled there after their expulsion from Spain in the fifteenth century, and they still speak a bastard Spanish dialect. The next element in importance are the Greeks, who have largely increased by immigration since the annexation of Southern Macedonia to Greece. There is also a considerable number of Turks and other Moslems, and smaller communities of Bulgars, Serbs, Albanians, Kutzo-Vlachs, Europeans of various nationalities, and even a few Americans.

The city is in a certain sense an island, for it is surrounded on three sides by an almost uninhabited country, and on the fourth by the sea. It cannot be said to belong naturally to any State or race in particular, and no population looks to it as a centre of intellectual development and culture. But it is extremely important for the trade of many lands, and has consequently been fiercely contested by many peoples throughout the ages. It is this fatal attraction that has made its history such a tragedy. P. Risal, the author of the only modern work on Salonica, has rightly called it “_La ville convoitée_.” It is indeed better situated than any other in the Ægean; along the European shores of that sea it is half-way between the two extremities, at the head of the most sheltered gulf, at the outlet of the Vardar valley and consequently of the easiest road of access to the fertile lands of the interior. As Professor Hogarth has stated,[32] the other ports which might compete with it are either blocked by mountain barriers or surrounded by unstable populations. Were it not for malaria, the backward civilization and the lack of safety of its immediate hinterland, Salonica might have become an important agricultural and perhaps even industrial centre, but the farming methods of the neighbouring territories are extremely primitive and industry is non-existent. Its radius of commercial action is considerable. It is easier to send goods from any part of Macedonia and even from parts of Albania and Epirus to Salonica than to the ports of Albania; even the upper reaches of the valleys of some of the tributaries of the Danube are reached more easily from Salonica than from the Black Sea ports. Salonica is the junction of the railways from Constantinople, Uskub and Belgrade, and Monastir and Athens.

M. Venizelos leaving the Church of S. Sophia, Salonica.]

To face p. 158.
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Under the Turks, Salonica was the outlet for the trade of half the Balkan Peninsula, as it ought to be to-day. But the wars of 1912–13 drove the Turks from Macedonia and partitioned the hinterland among several States, so that Greek Salonica is but a short distance from the frontiers of Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania, and the customs barriers have placed artificial obstacles in the way of traffic. The Greek, the Serb, and the Bulgarian each aspired to the possession of Salonica, hoping, in their narrow Balkan mentality, to capture its trade and enjoy its advantages entirely for himself to the exclusion of his neighbours. None of them understood that the prosperity of Salonica was bound up with that of the interior as a whole and of all the peoples of the Peninsula, and that commercial restrictions to the advantage of one nation alone were bound to prove detrimental to all, the _non beati possidentes_ included. The port cannot prosper unless trade comes to it unhampered from Monastir and Uskub, from Nish and Belgrade, from Kustendil, Sofia and Ochrida, and not merely from Verria, Florina and Serres. As a Greek port it will always be a poor thing, and the Piræus will never allow an appreciable portion, even of Greek trade, to be diverted to Salonica, so that in present circumstances it is destined to fall into decay. The same would happen if it were to become exclusively a Serb or Bulgarian port. By its nature it is essentially an international port, and it should be subjected to a special régime, such as will probably be applied to many other ports in the near future. It would in this way not only prosper, but also become a bond of union to conciliate, through commercial interest, States and peoples who now hate each other. Apart from political and administrative difficulties, a great deal of capital will have to be invested in the port to carry out important works to prevent it from being silted up by the Vardar, but the capital will not be available unless investors are first assured that trade will be attracted to the port and not driven away from it by political quarrels.

The climate of Salonica is not an ideal one. In summer the heat is intolerable, and the summer lasts from May to the end of September. For weeks on end the thermometer marks 40 degrees Centigrade in the shade. There is the sea, it is true, but the sea at Salonica does not contribute to render the heat more tolerable, and sea bathing is an arduous enterprise.

Distractions were neither very numerous nor particularly edifying. The hotels were bad and dear; before the fire there were some good but expensive restaurants, and after the fire a few of them were resuscitated. The local Cercle de Thessalonique was quite attractive before the fire, but afterwards it was transferred to smaller and more modest quarters. Naturally, during the war, the military element was absolutely predominant. Six armies were represented in the town, of whom three--the French, the British and the Serb--by very large contingents. The Italians were less numerous, and the Russians still fewer at first, ended by disappearing altogether, save for some derelict officers, whose behaviour was not exactly exemplary. The masters of the house--the Greeks--in the early days of the war, kept very much to themselves, being suspected by the Allies; then, after the arrival of Venizelos, they made themselves more conspicuous, and finally, when Greece was again united and the army reconstituted, they spread all over the place. Never in any other city did one see such a collection of different uniforms as at Salonica during the war years. British khaki, Highland kilts, French _bleu horizon_, Italian _grigio-verde_, the Serbs in grey, the Greeks in uniforms combining features of all the others, Russians who invented their own, Colonials of various kinds--coal-black Sudanese, swarthy Algerians, yellow Tonkinese and Annamites, dignified Indians in imposing turbans. Of these various armies the French, the British, the Serbs, and afterwards the Greeks, had their respective G.H.Q.’s at Salonica, which to the outside observer meant chiefly innumerable officers and swift Staff cars. The French occupied a large, ugly, inconvenient building near the port; afterwards, while retaining that one for their Q services, they removed the _Etat Major de l’Avant_ to a row of villas in the residential quarter, one of them the ex-Bulgarian Consulate. The British were scattered all over the town, but most of the offices of the General Staff, which had at first been spread over three or four villas, were concentrated in a huge building, formerly a hospital and orphanage, popularly known as the “War Office,” far more commodious than the French quarters. The Serbs were modestly housed in the ex-Austrian Consulate and one or two other buildings, and the Greeks mostly in the large ex-Turkish barracks in the Place d’Armes. We were close to the Greeks in a group of small buildings, some of them constructed for the purpose by Italian soldiers. The Russians were in the Russian Consulate.

Military messes were of course a great feature of Salonica life. British messes were all small, and consequently numerous; they were usually installed in private houses where the members of the mess also resided, and they were more characteristically bits of England than the French or Italian messes were bits of Italy or France. The French and Italian messes were much larger--our Base mess comprised some forty or fifty officers. Our M.T. mess, to which I was attached, became essentially the reception mess, as it was here that most foreign officers were invited; indeed in few places was the inter-Allied spirit more sedulously and agreeably cultivated.

The French created a military institution for which they deserve great credit--the Cercle Militaire. It was not, as its named implied, a real club, but a large military restaurant, intended primarily for French officers, but to which all Allied officers were admitted. Meals were good and cheap, while if one ordered a special dinner one could obtain all possible delicacies. Later, the British also instituted an Officers’ Rest House, with a large but not very good restaurant, and many comfortable bedrooms reserved for officers who had come down from the front for a few days. Foreign officers were not admitted, except the liaison officers and guests.

Of the resorts open to the public there was one deserving special mention, though not quite in a eulogistic sense--the famous Tour Blanche, near the historic monument of that name. It was a large café and restaurant, with a theatre and concert hall, surrounded by a garden. At all times of the year it was much frequented, but particularly in summer. The meals were fair, the drinks bad, but sold at exorbitant prices, the performances less than mediocre, but the spectators themselves were the most interesting part of the show. The place was usually crammed, mostly with officers and soldiers. Even if the artistes had been Carusos or Tetrazzinis, not a note of their songs would have been heard on account of the uproarious shouting of the audience--a large part of which was obviously “the worse.” The Russians excelled in these Bacchanals, but the British were good seconds. A little trick of the Russians, which the French sometimes imitated, was to demolish the partitions between the boxes and to jump down from the upper circle into the pit. It was by no means unusual to see officers and soldiers dancing wildly on the stage. Sometimes the pandemonium got to such a pitch that serious rioting took place, and then the C.A.A. would have it closed or declared out of bounds for Allied troops for several evenings.

The Salonica Press was of some interest. Before the fire there were no less than eighteen daily papers, for a city of barely 200,000 inhabitants. Even after that catastrophe their numbers were only reduced to ten. Of these four were printed in French; one of them, _L’Indépendant_, was the organ of a group of local Jews and was, on the whole, the best written, while _La Tribune_ was a Greek paper published in French, opposed to the more extreme Chauvinism of the Greek people and anxious to bring about a good understanding with Italy. The other two, _L’Opinion_ and the _Echo de France_ were more or less organs of the French G.H.Q. and represented the political attitude of the Commander-in-Chief towards the different Allies. From a journalistic point of view, none of them ranked very high, while the two latter belonged to the class which Bismarck defined as the “reptile press.” The British had only one paper, _The Balkan News_, edited by Mr. Collinson Owen. It was purely a paper for the army, containing the news of the day and a few special articles, and was well written, bright, full of wholesome cheerfulness and wit, and wholly free from local political tendencies--unlike the French papers, it never tried to create bad feeling between the Allies. We also had only one paper, _La Voce d’Italia_; it was not badly edited, but was sometimes too violent and inclined to enter into polemics with other local papers, until the Italian Command undertook to censor it (a function which, for his sins, was entrusted to the present writer). There were five papers printed in Greek, all equally violent, tendentious and wholly free from scruples or respect for accuracy. The Serbs published three papers, and the Russians, until their collapse, two. One of the Serb papers printed long poems in the style of the Kossovo cycle almost daily; they were eagerly read by the Serb soldiers, and a Serb officer told me that his batman always cut them out and kept them when the paper was thrown into the waste paper basket. There were two papers in Hebrew-Spanish, of no particular character, and several small weeklies in different languages. There were always plenty of foreign papers, although they naturally arrived many days or even weeks late. The _Journal de Genève_, which, like all neutral papers, was banned in most other war zones, was obtainable in Salonica and much sought after, as it contained the enemy communiqués. The British G.H.Q. issued a daily bulletin of war news from all sources, including those of the enemy, which was distributed to Allied Commands and Staffs.

A curious figure of Salonica life was Essad Pasha, the Albanian. An ex-General in the Turkish Army, he had fought against the Balkan Allies in the war of 1912–13, and when Prince William of Wied’s Government was set up in Albania, he organized a rebellion against it. He exercised a certain amount of influence in Central Albania, where he had large landed estates, and was thus able to raise some armed bands. After the departure of Wied he tried to set up a government of his own; at one time he professed friendship for Italy, but he ended by turning against us when he found that Italian policy was not in conformity with his own personal ambitions. After the Allied Armies came to Salonica he also repaired thither, having had to leave Albania in September, 1916, as he was causing trouble to the Italian military authorities. General Sarrail received him officially and recognized his self-styled title of “President of the Albanian Government.” Protected more or less by various Powers, and subsidized simultaneously by at least four, he does not appear to have rendered useful services to anyone. He had set up a miniature _opéra-bouffe_ court at Salonica, with a Government and Ministries of War, Foreign Affairs, Agriculture, etc., although he had neither a State nor an Army. He lived in a handsome villa, with his harem, and he disported himself about the town in the uniform of an Albanian General, invented by himself, and every now and then he promoted himself to a higher rank by adding a fresh star. His suite comprised a very small number of officers and soldiers, the latter mostly employed in cultivating a diminutive kitchen garden. In spite of all this, some of the Allies appeared or professed to take him seriously: the French, the Greeks and the Serbs had appointed diplomatic agents to his “Court,” and did not fail to show him a certain deference. Among the Italian element the _mauvaises langues_ said that he was thus supported in order to oppose Italian interests in Albania. As his own influence was limited to Central Albania, he had no hope of dominating the northern and southern territories, and was therefore disposed to give away the former to the Serbs and the latter to the Greeks. I do not profess to know what motive inspired the attitude of the French Government towards this disreputable and ridiculous adventurer, but I believe that the C.A.A. treated him with consideration for the following reason. He claimed to be in a position to raise a rebellion in the part of Albania occupied by Austria, and although the _Deuxième Bureau_ was somewhat sceptical as to his professions, it was thought worth while not to cast him off altogether, on the chance that something might come of it. As a matter of fact, he never did anything useful for the Allies, and was indeed hated by the enormous majority of the Albanians. According to Miss Durham,[33] who knows more about Albania than almost any other writer, if he had been thrown over at the beginning of the war a large Albanian force might have been raised to fight against the Austrians, and the Serbian _débâcle_ prevented. His only merit was that he contributed something to the gaiety of nations during the duller periods of the campaign.

After the Armistice, he redoubled his intrigues with Belgrade and Athens in the hope of carrying off his little plan for a Central Albania ruled by himself and the rest of the country sold to Serbia and Greece. But the trick did not come off, and while he was in Paris he was murdered by an Albanian student on June 13, 1920. If the deed must be deplored as an act of violence, it cannot be said this his death was a loss to humanity in general nor to the Albanian people in particular. His assassin was acquitted by a Parisian jury.

The great problem of the Macedonian expedition was that of communication and transport. Whereas the enemy could send reinforcements and supplies from Central Europe to the Macedonian front by rail, every man and every ton of goods which the Allies sent out had to be conveyed across submarine-infested seas. This was one of the chief arguments of those who were opposed to the undertaking altogether, as tonnage was so precious and so inadequate even for supplying Britain, France and Italy.

In the early days of the campaign, the Allied bases were Marseilles, Toulon and certain English ports. Even from Marseilles the voyage to Salonica required about a week, and when submarines were sighted immense detours were made, involving a journey of two or three weeks, or more. The voyage from England was, of course, longer, but even the British generally made use of Marseilles. When Italy decided to take part in the Macedonian campaign the Italian contingent was embarked at Naples, but soon afterwards the port of Taranto became the Italian base, and was eventually used by the British and French as well, all troops and part of the supplies being transported by rail through France and Italy. Taranto offered many advantages; the port is admirably sheltered, and the Mare Piccolo is an immense land-locked bay with unlimited space. Large British French and Italian camps were established near the town, and in due course the convoy system was adopted for greater safety. Besides the important Italian naval base, both the other Allies instituted naval bases there, and the British drifters and other anti-submarine craft became regular visitors to the Apulian port.

The voyage from Taranto to Salonica, via the Ionian Sea round Cape Matapan, took about three days, which was a great improvement on the Marseilles route, although it was by no means free from danger, and at times ships only travelled at night and had to take shelter in various intermediate ports, which, of course, increased the time. The usual precautions against submarines were taken, and the ships were painted all sorts of colours in curious geometrical designs, and the systems of intelligence and signalling were perfected. But in spite of all these efforts, many ships were lost on the Taranto-Salonica route, and still more among those which continued to cross from Marseilles or Southampton. Not infrequently, when a ship was expected carrying precious reinforcements or long-desired supplies, the ugly news would be flashed across the seas that she had been lost. Italian losses were not very numerous on this route, but among them was the large steamer _Minas_ which sank with many hundreds of soldiers.

The possibility of shortening the dangerous passage was carefully studied. The first idea had been to land the troops somewhere in Greece and forward them by the Greek railways. But at that time the Greek Government, although nominally neutral, was really assisting the Central Empires and refused to grant permission for Allied troops to traverse Greek territory, and even if it had been forced to do so it would certainly have placed every conceivable obstacle in the way. This plan having been dropped, the Italians began to study the Santi Quaranta route. There was an elementary Turkish road or rather track across Albania, but it was absolutely impassable for lorries, and even light carts could not always use it. As soon as the Italian occupation in South Albania began to extend inland, work was commenced on the road between Santi Quaranta and Ersek, while the French started on the section between Florina and Ersek over the Pisoderi pass. By the spring of 1917 a few motor cars had succeeded in going over the whole route, although not without serious difficulty. In the summer the immense work was accomplished, and by the end of July the first columns of lorries began to circulate regularly between Santi Quaranta and Florina. But the carrying capacity of the road was limited, as was the capacity of the depots and magazines at Santi Quaranta, so that the route could not serve all the Allied armies and was not even sufficient for all the supplies of the Italian contingent, the more so as part of it was also used by the Albanian force. It was therefore decided to use it only for the mails land the transport of Italian troops; supplies, save in quite exceptional cases, continued to be sent by sea to Salonica. Allied officers, however, especially Serbs going to and from Corfu, made great use of it. Its main advantage lay in the fact that the passage from Taranto or Brindisi to Santi Quaranta was only one night’s crossing, so that the danger of submarine attacks was reduced approximately to one-sixth. Another advantage was that by establishing an uninterrupted line of posts right across from the Adriatic to the Ægean the passage of messengers between King Constantine’s Government and the Central Empires was practically precluded, and even after the fall of Constantine it was just as well to keep watch over the activities of Royalist sympathizers who might have continued to carry on their master’s policy. A part of the route, not far from Santi Quaranta, passed through Greek territory, and permission to use it had to be negotiated while Constantine was still on the throne.

About half-way between Salonica and Santi Quaranta is Koritza, a pleasant spot and the centre of many intrigues. The town, which is situated in a fertile plain at the junction of several important roads, had been assigned to Albania by the Ambassadors’ Conference in London (1913) and the Protocol of Florence (1914), the enormous majority of the population being Albanian. But as there was an active and intelligent minority professing Greek sentiments, Greece laid claim to the town and district. In 1914, Greek bands occupied it, numbers of Greek schools were opened by the Greek authorities which had installed themselves there, and the presence of a large Albanian population was explained away by being called “Albanophone Greeks.” When the Italian troops began to advance from the coast towards the interior, General Sarrail sent a detachment of cavalry under Colonel Descoins to occupy Koritza (November 1916). There remained the problem of administering the district; it could not be given to Greece, because the Treaty of London had assigned it to Albania, but Sarrail did not wish to hand it over to the latter as there was no regularly constituted Albanian Government, and he intended to make use of the district for eventual military operations. He solved the difficulty by making of the Kaza of Koritza an autonomous “Republic.” He created a local council composed of natives, with a certain Themistocles, a noted band-leader, as President, but under French military control. The Republic had its stamps, its paper money, its budget. Later the French authorities believed that they had evidence that Themistocles was dealing with the Austrians; he was court-martialled, condemned to death and shot. It afterwards appeared that the sentence was due to a judicial error, and that the members of the court martial had been deceived by agents of the local Greek party who wished to get rid of Themistocles because he was an influential Albanian leader. The local council was then dissolved and the territory administered very efficiently by the French military authorities. The Greeks, however, continued their attempts to get Koritza assigned to them, claiming that both that town and Moschopolje had been centres of Greek culture since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They conducted a vigorous propaganda to induce the inhabitants to send their children to the Greek schools, but the latter remained deserted, save by the children of the few Greek subjects and some Albanians of Greek sentiments. The question was not finally settled until October, 1921, when the Conference of Ambassadors definitely assigned Koritza to Albania and the Albanian State was recognized by the Powers. The French raised a small local force, known as the Koritza Gendarmerie and afterwards as the Koritza Tirailleurs. But they did not prove of much use during the war, any more than did the so-called Tabur of Essad Pasha; between these two forces there was bitter hostility, and they could not be brought within sight of each other.

From Koritza the road ascends the Tchafa Kiarit range, then down into the broad Starja plain to Ersek, keeping at a height varying from 1,000 to 1,200 m. above the sea. The plain is green and fertile, and surrounded by fairly high mountains, the Mavri Petra, on the Graeco-Albanian frontier being 1,960 m. high. Ersek, where one usually spends the night, is the first Italian post.

The next place of some importance is Liaskoviki; this was once a pleasant and prosperous little town, in a very healthy situation amid grand and wild scenery, where many wealthy Albanian landowners had their summer residences in order to escape the malaria of the plains. But during the Greek invasion of 1914 it was almost completely devastated, save for the houses of the few orthodox Albanians who were presumed to be of Greek sentiments. In October, 1916, Italian troops occupied Liaskoviki and the Greeks withdrew. Here I first saw the Albanian bands in Italian service; their appearance was satisfactory, but opinions differed as to their military qualities and reliability. As a rule those who were more directly under Italian control were the best; left to themselves they were less useful.

Before the Italian occupation Santi Quaranta was a wretched village, consisting of large Turkish barracks, a custom-house and a few fishermen’s huts. During the war it became an important military and naval base; many large huts and even some handsome brick buildings were erected. It had been chosen as a base for transport to all parts of South Albania and later for Macedonia on account of its well-sheltered port, easy to defend against submarine attacks, and protected by the island of Corfu just opposite. Steamers cannot be moored up to the pier as the water is too shallow near the shore, and no attempt was made to deepen it or lengthen the jetties, as it was realized that after the war Santi Quaranta would lose much of its importance, Durazzo being a far more suitable starting point for a trans-Albanian commercial road or railway. The curious name of this little town is derived from the legend that forty Christians inhabiting it were massacred at some unspecified date by the Turks. The old town was not on the shore, but on a height dominating the port, and the ruins of two Venetian castles and other buildings are still visible. A third Venetian castle, with fine walls, is in the middle of the modern town. Throughout the latter period of the war Santi Quaranta was a busy place, when large troopships were constantly arriving and landing troops and stores, while torpedo boats and destroyers flitted about the bay, smaller boats plied to and from Corfu, and lorries dashed up and down the one long narrow street. At Corfu itself there were various military forces and more or less vague military missions. The French had a naval base and a military mission, the British a convalescent hospital and a mission, the Serbs a whole Government with the Skuptschina and the Diplomatic Corps, the Italians a military mission, a battalion of territorial militia and a squadron of cavalry. The atmosphere proved as fertile for inter-Allied intrigue as the soil was for olives, vegetables and fruit.

After the abdication of Constantine and the entry of Greece into the ranks of the Allies, a new route to Macedonia was opened up--that via the Gulf of Patras and Itea. It was used only by the French and the British, but officers of other Allied armies travelled by it occasionally. The sea-passage from Taranto to Itea was much longer than that to Santi Quaranta (forty-eight hours instead of fifteen), but the part of it exposed to submarine attack was just the same, as the boats crossed from Taranto in one night to Corfu, lay off the island all day, sailed again at nightfall, along the channel between the mainland and the Ionian Islands, which was practically safe from attack, to the entrance of the Gulf of Patras, and thence up the Gulf to Itea on the northern shore.

At Itea there was a small Franco-British base, whence a good road leads to Vralo on the Athens-Salonica railway.

Altogether the journey from Taranto to Salonica via Santi Quaranta could be covered in three days, if one had a good car, while by lorry it took a little longer; but the front of the A.F.O. could be reached in two and a half days. The route from Itea to Salonica was longer--nearly four days. Detachments of troops, of course, required more time to reach their destination, so that the all-sea route was decidedly shorter, but the latter was infinitely more risky, and the opening up of the two land, or rather, semi-land routes reduced the losses from submarines very considerably, and contributed their share to the defeat of the enemy’s submarine campaign.