Those who have their being in the observation posts are particularly shy of visitors and—No Admittance—placards of all descriptions greet one at their entrances. In this the observers show their wisdom, for the inexperienced may unwittingly give away the position to the enemy.
It is not always necessary to show oneself to do this. A few puffs of smoke from a pipe, or the use of a telescope without a protecting cowl to keep the sun from reflecting in it, may bring about destruction. I remember a careless Hun drawing attention to an otherwise well concealed post by flourishing an unshaded telescope in the sunlight!
A comic relief to a scene of havoc and destruction in an observation post was once presented to me by a portion of a printed notice giving instructions as to what observers were to look out for and report. The post had been spotted, and after the expenditure of many rounds, the enemy had at last obtained a direct hit. Crawling in through the débris to report the damage, I was confronted by a broken beam to which item 2 of the notice was still adhering—What Are The German Guns Firing At? Would that the answer had been less easy to guess!
IN SALONICA: KING CONSTANTINE’S FÊTE.
The last day but one! It was my first waking thought. The hot June sun, streaming in from the windows facing the beech-crowned summit of Mount Kotos, which rose above the bare lower downs, warned me it was time to be gone. The wise storks and swallows had already started on their long summer flight; it was time to be following the birds North, as the Thraki was to sail next day.
It was a fascinating place I was leaving, this city on the outer wave of the whirlpool. Salonica had proved unexpectedly interesting, with its little known treasures of art and archæology, and its strange old medley of East and West now further complicated by a new Frankish crusade.
Here were the same mixed feelings of admiration and contempt as at Byzantium, when the kings and knights of Western Chivalry camped for the first time without the walls. Here, too, surprised and equally unwilling hosts watched the foreign soldiery ride clattering through their streets. Here were the same alarums and excursions, the same continual vague, political intrigues, and at the back of it all the same real indifference as to whether French, German, or Russian finally won the Holy Shrine,—or what would seem more likely now, Franco-Spanish Jews.
Each day brought some novel turn of the wheel of Greco-German affairs or some fresh discovery in my exploration of the old Byzantine city on the hill. The summer sun, which woke me up betimes, left me lazily counting one by one, through the mist of my mosquito net, the tall white minarets of the town. Delicate, slender shafts holding the Muezzin’s gallery high in the air, they rose on terrace above terrace to the last broken spire, near where the brown brick towers of the Heptapyrgeion stood out clear-cut against the sky.
These minarets, with their finely-contrasting cypress trees, are numerous at Salonica, for the Turks invariably added one when they altered a church into a mosque. The Greek king did well to leave them standing when he took back the town from the Moslems. Apart from their picturesque beauty, the minarets still serve a useful purpose; for guide books leave one in Old Greece, they are not to be had at Salonica. Should your way lie down the tram-ridden Boulevard Reine Olga, where the roses in the villa gardens are powdered thick with dust, the public will direct you proudly. Or they will cheerfully point out the Rue Venizelos, and even follow you up the dim Turkish Bazaar at its end, urging you to buy from their various eager friends as you pass. Beyond that, across the Roman Via Egnatia, which cuts the town in half, nobody seems to know what happens, nor should a well-brought-up Salonican wish to go.