[3]. A secret Greek political organization with Pan-Hellenistic aims to the activity of which the disturbances in Crete and the outbreak of the Græco-Turkish war were partly due.
At Salonica I had a dull time, living in a state of suspense, with nothing to do but read the newspapers at the Club on the quay, or gaze at the snow-capped crest of Mount Olympus across the bay. A few warships appeared now and then in the offing. The largest ironclad of the Italian navy, the Duilio, anchored in front of the city, and it was a treat to visit it and to note the spick-and-span efficiency of the ship.
Rumours of the wildest kind from all manner of unreliable sources—mostly of Greek origin—reached us daily. They tended to show that whatever might be the forces at the disposal of the Turks, Ananias with his hosts was on the side of the Greeks. His artillery was firing its missiles, and these travelled with incredible velocity to the ends of the earth. We learnt from more reliable sources, however, of raids over the frontier undertaken by the Greek Ethnike Hetairia, with whom were the Greek regulars, and who were reported to have committed various acts of pillage and murder, even in the neighbourhood of Salonica, whose Greek population made no secret of its sympathies with the Greek cause. It was not safe to go about after dark, although one felt inclined to risk much to partake of the decently cooked food and that collective social and convivial life which the Germans—here, as elsewhere in Turkey—maintained in the Kegel Club at the Hôtel Colombo.
The Jewish element of Salonica accounts for nearly half the total population, and affords interest to the student of race and character. These Hebrews are in strong contrast with their co-religionists elsewhere, especially in Russia; not only as regards status, but also in appearance. They are fine, strong, handsome men and women. Jews are met with in almost every sphere of life—more particularly among the artisans and the working classes; nearly all the Salonica boatmen are Jews. Some of the Salonica Jews rise to high positions in different branches of the Turkish Administration and invariably give satisfaction. They are “très bien vus par les Turcs,” as a high Turkish official told me; for the Turks, in spite of their supposed fanaticism, have always treated the Jews with kindness, and this at a period when Christian Spain burned them at the stake. I was told that the Jews of Salonica had only recently celebrated the four-hundredth anniversary of their arrival in Turkey from Spain, from which country they were banished in 1490. On this occasion they had sent an address to the Sultan expressing their grateful attachment to Turkey and her Sovereign. Prayers were offered up in every synagogue of the Turkish Empire, and £T50,000 was collected for benevolent purposes under the auspices of a Committee presided over by the Grand Rabbi.
It was at Salonica that I first came into contact with that survival of the fierce spirit of proselytism of former ages, the Anglo-Saxon missionary element. Never do I remember to have met such implacable hatred for the Mohammedans as that which seemed to animate the wife of the Anglo-Saxon missionary, bent on converting them, together with the Jews, to the religion of Love. She set me thinking whether she and her husband might not have been more profitably engaged in the slums of the great cities at home than among the industrious and sober population of Salonica. An honest, hard-working Christian missionary who is kind-hearted and humane in a Mohammedan sense may still do good work in that part of the world, let alone in Asiatic Turkey, as I subsequently convinced myself, particularly in the application of hygiene, since this and medical science particularly are lamentably backward. But only harm can come from the spirit of hatred which I now saw manifested for the first time.
An English working-man of an ill-conditioned type was staying at my hotel. I used to meet him in the café sipping his tea, with an unsightly mongrel dog as his companion. He told me he had come from Lancashire, and was engaged as foreman at some textile works situated on the quay. He had also been in the United States. I asked him how he liked America. He flared up and, pointing to his dog, replied: “You see that ere little dorg! Well, I’d rather see ’im dead than in America,” bringing his clenched fist down on the marble table with savage emphasis. This was significant, but not the only testimony since vouchsafed to me of the antagonism between the British trade-union spirit and the conditions of labour in the United States.
There was an English public-house in Salonica, on the quay, facing the harbour. It was kept by an English widow, but only opened its shutters on the rare occasions when the English squadrons put into the bay, when it did a brisk business.
One continuous stream of Turkish troops from Albania and Asia Minor passed through Salonica, arriving by sea, and, for the most part, disembarking in the dead of the night. I was often awakened by the dull, plaintive chant of these wild children of Asia, or of the untamed sons of the Albanian hills in their white skull-caps, whose voices mingled with the sounds of the waves beating against the stone quay, along which they marched on their way to the railway station.
I had been in Salonica about ten days when I received a telegram from Mr. Bennett asking me to proceed to the Turkish headquarters at Elassona, not as War Correspondent, for which vocation at my time of life I scarcely felt fitted, but to report on the real state of affairs, concerning which so many rumours were afloat.
I called on the Vali, who gave me the necessary permit and deputed a Circassian officer named Mehmet to be my escort. I engaged a Roumanian, one Hermann Chary, who had formerly been in the service of General Gordon in Egypt, and, I believe, in India as well. He had since drifted to Salonica, and was commissionaire at the Hôtel Impérial on the quay, where I was staying. Even now I often call this man to mind when I read in our newspapers of the extraordinary linguistic accomplishments of some of our leading statesmen who speak French with a Parisian accent or are wonderful German “scholars.” Here was a man who spoke some nine or ten languages fluently, but had to be content to earn five francs a day as interpreter in a third-rate hotel, and was delighted with the chance I offered him of better employment. He accompanied me later in the same capacity on my journey through Armenia.