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.