It is strange to come into the martial display of Athens and find the old war still going on, see the numbers of worn soldiers weighed down with all the impedimenta of "fighting order" coming home on leave or returning to the front, to see the Turkish prisoners of war jobbing at the station and on the streets, to see the handsome Evzones, the soldiers of the King's bodyguard, strutting together in fine style along the cobbled roadway. It is impressive, and shows Greece in a new light. Then the Constituent Assembly with its new Turkish members in their fezes rather takes the eye as a novel synthesis of political interest in the Near East. Athens is a great capital where much that is vital in the future of Europe is at stake. It stands somewhat aside from the general misery of Europe, and for that reason more perhaps can be seen.
Not that Greece has not its poor—its appalling beggars, its miserable war-cripples, its refugees. An extensive strike was in progress in February; it had to be settled by a threat of mobilization. "Any workman not in his place on Monday morning will be called up for the next draft to Asia Minor" proved an effectual way of meeting demands for higher pay. Of the refugees, pity is first awakened for the Russians. Just outside the city of Athens, in old barracks, lie the survivors of the tuberculosis hospitals evacuated from the Crimea—pale and haggard as death—strange wisps of humanity, attended by devoted Russian doctors and nurses; but fed on the scantiest of dry army rations, short of medicine and comfort of all kinds. One ward of dying women with staring eyes, an unforgettable impression!
Whilst in Greece, every Englishman should visit our cemeteries in Macedonia, and realize that we planted many thousands of our people like seeds of a kind in this Grecian soil—that a flower of freedom might grow. On a wind-blown moor, in sight of Mt. Olympus and the sea, ranges one regular array of British crosses—now of wood, but presently to be of marble, with a stone of remembrance in their midst. It will be done well, in the British way. Even the dead might be pleased by what is being done. But here is a strange phenomenon which seems to make a mockery of our sacrifice. Around this wonderful burying ground are growing up a miscellany of alien crosses, of all shapes and sizes, stuck in ugly heaps of upturned earth. Every day a pit is dug and the dead-cart arrives. There is no service, no ceremony. But forty or fifty nearly naked bodies of women and children are shot into the pit and covered over hastily and a cross put over them. They are Russians, the so-called Russian Greeks evacuated from the Caucasus last year, now stricken with typhus and almost famished to death, some 12,000 of them in old army huts, living promiscuously together and attended by one desperate doctor and a few devoted sisters. Europe is heaping her dead around us.
This truly is not near Athens, but above the ruined ramshackle port of Salonica, once a fair city, but now facing the sea with almost a mile of fire-devastated streets. The refugees are confined to their huts, and are under a sort of military control. All the people are proletariat, and ought never to have been taken on board ships and brought to Greece. A few would have been killed by Bolsheviks, but not so many as will die here by disease. They cannot help Russia outside of Russia, and it is beyond belief that little countries can look after them indefinitely. It is pathetic to look into their huts, strung from wall to wall with crusts of bread, the floors multitudinous with people and especially with children; every serious person engaged in the hopeless task of destroying the lice. Even if these people were at once put on transports and taken to Russia half of their number would be destined to death.
The Russian scenes and episodes in Greece foreshadow the immense tragedy to be witnessed in Constantinople and on Gallipoli and at Lemnos. What touches the heart at Athens will ravage the whole being at Constantinople. But of that anon. An episode at Athens on the day of arrival had a spice of novelty in it which soon dulled on the palate in a rapidity of repetition:
It is Sunday afternoon, and on the pavement of a quiet street stands a mute and gloomy man with an armful of what appears to be paper-money. He is holding it out in his two hands.
Impossible that it should be money!
But it is. He is holding about half a million roubles in his hands.
Yes, they are for sale. This for so much, this other for so much.
"I am sorry I have no Greek money, but please take five liras Italian and give it to your comrades. You must be very poor."