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GOING TO 
 WAR IN GREECE 
 
 By 
 
 Frederick Palmer 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
 TAKEN BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 NEW YORK: R. H. RUSSELL 
 
 1897 
 
-5^^"-^ 
 
 <:?*Sj 
 
 Copyright 1897 
 BY ROBERT HOWARD RUSSELL 
 
 
 I 
 
 
TO 
 
 ERVIN WARDMAN 
 
 420239 
 
Going to War in Greece 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON my way to the front, and then during the 
 month that I waited with the army of 
 Greece for war, and during the month's 
 campaign that followed, I drifted in a world of 
 uncertainty more or less droll or delightful even 
 when the unexpected, which I grew to expect 
 as a matter of course, meant the loss of my 
 dinner or a night retreat. The editor's cable- 
 gram of instruction itself, which I received in 
 Paris, shared a coat pocket with an evening edi- 
 tion of "Le Jour" announcing, as usual, the 
 blockade of Greece within twenty-four hours, 
 bloodshed on the Greco-Turkish frontier, and the 
 likelihood of the withdrawal of the Sultan's am- 
 bassador from Athens at any minute. Italian 
 dailies purchased through a car window the next 
 afternoon said the same except that the blockade 
 had been postponed for another day. 
 
^%l]<'iyiK^'omgiiy'W'^T in Greece 
 
 At Brindisi I sought the font of official in- 
 formation in the person of the Greek consul, 
 who told me what he had read in the newspapers. 
 Then I went on board the steamer for Patras to 
 find the captain fearful lest he should be turned 
 back by a European man-of-war. The passen- 
 gers, made up of European volunteers in the 
 cause of Phil-Hellenism, Greeks returning home in 
 a sanguinary mood and newspaper correspondents 
 sceptical lest war should be so unaccommodating 
 as not to await their arrival, discussed such a 
 probability far into the night in the saloon. 
 
 At Corfu the next morning the boatmen who 
 clambered up the sides of the steamer in an 
 odorous, gesticulating swarm, said that war had 
 been already declared. '* When ? " we asked. 
 " Oh," they replied nonchalantly, " two or three 
 weeks ago." Then seeing that we were down- 
 cast and might not go ashore in their boats, 
 they said that war would be declared after we 
 arrived. 
 
 Would the American consul know the latest 
 news from Athens ? I asked of a grinning loafer 
 who held me fast against the rail by the menace 
 of his gestures. Oh, yes, he would know. His 
 Excellency received a thousand slips of blue 
 
Going to War in Greece 3 
 
 paper telegrams every day, and was a very 
 great man, indeed, if he were my friend. 
 
 The consul said he received no official news at 
 all from Athens, but he knew to a certainty that 
 war had not been declared ; the blockade was not 
 yet in force ; and all reports of bloody engage- 
 ments on the frontier were false. When I taxed 
 my boatman with his thousand blue telegrams he 
 seemed quite surprised that I should have mis- 
 understood him. He referred to another consul 
 who went away a year ago. 
 
 " What do you and all of your friends who 
 hang about the quay do for a living ? " I asked, 
 as he lazily dipped his oars in the blue sea on our 
 way back to the steamer. 
 
 "Wait for the boat to come in." 
 
 " How often does it come ? " 
 
 "Twice a week. We are very busy in war 
 time." 
 
 That a battle could scarcely be fought until 
 our arrival was so much of a relief that we 
 dropped prophecy after the steamer was under 
 way again for a showing of private arms in the 
 smoking-room. This consider the patents! 
 required time for comparison and argument, the 
 merits of two different revolvers being so hotly 
 
4 Going to War in Greece 
 
 contested at one moment as to promise a test of 
 them on the spot. 
 
 The Custom House officer at Patras told us 
 that the newspapers said that there had been a 
 battle in which a hundred Greeks had slaughtered 
 a thousand Turks, though war had not been 
 formally declared. He refused to examine the 
 baggage of patriots who had come to fight for 
 his country, as he knew we had, and then bought 
 the latest newspaper for half a cent. Everybody 
 in the little town seemed to be idle and reading 
 newspapers, except one sober being who was 
 milking a goat on the main street. 
 
 At each station on the way to Athens by rail 
 we looked out of the windows upon a sea of 
 newspapers, upon knots and groups of peasants 
 and villagers who, believing with all their heart 
 that yesterday a hundred Greeks had slaughtered 
 a thousand Turks, were now in quest of a later 
 rumor. Thus by canard upon canard, during 
 four weeks more of absolute quiet on the fron- 
 tier, the war was always about to begin just as 
 the next day was always to see, but never did 
 see the, blockade by the Powers. 
 
 As we passed brown Salamis set in the blue 
 gulf with Homer's mountains beyond it and 
 
^w 
 
 i^^^^^im 
 
 are very busy in war time,' he said.' 
 
 
 "Reserves marched to the Piraeus. 
 
Going to War in Greece 5 
 
 Homer's sky beyond them, and as the Parthenon 
 appeared through a car window, they blotted out 
 scare headlines in the tongue of Thucydides, they 
 muffled the noise of a train rounding a curve, 
 and for the passing moment they made heroes of 
 our fellow-passengers, the soft-voiced Scotch Pro- 
 fessor of Philosophy and the dapper students of 
 the Sorbonne, who had come to enlist as privates 
 in the army of the Greece that still possesses the 
 Parthenon and Homer's sky. 
 
 But you sought in vain in the faces thrust out 
 of the windows of the forward cars in which Re- 
 serves were crowded like cattle, and in the face 
 of the captain of infantry who entered our com- 
 partment four miles out of Athens, for the nose 
 and chin of the marbles in the Greek National 
 Museum at Athens. We saw instead the faces of 
 Slav children, who were a subject people not long 
 ago, and our sentiment fluttered down from the 
 Acropolis to the dusty streets of Modern Athens. 
 
 But the captain, with whom we spoke, said 
 grandiloquently in excellent French that the 
 soldiers of Greece, fighting in a manner worthy 
 of their ancestors, would not stop in their career 
 of conquest until they took Constantinople. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 AS a matter of course there is a Place de la 
 Concorde and a Place de la Constitution 
 in Athens, which imitates Paris in such 
 preeminently Gallic habits as the guillotine, street 
 cafes, the Legion of Honor, and mobs made to 
 order, and in all small things whatsoever that 
 constitute the Paris of the boulevards and the 
 sign-boards, not great Paris ; and it also follows 
 that these Athenian squares are on a small scale, 
 while a barnlike king's palace overlooks one 
 of them, the Place de la Constitution. Here 
 are the hotels which shelter in ordinary times 
 such English and American travelers as do not 
 consider Italy the end of the world, their 
 places being taken by war correspondents when 
 the prospective discomforts of extraordinary 
 times kept the travelers away. Here, too, is the 
 foremost caf6 whence the King receives his or- 
 ders, evolved from the chatter and the gesticula- 
 
Going to War in Greece 7 
 
 tions of the idle, who form a conspicuous majority 
 in Athens. 
 
 The King's popularity was waning again when 
 I arrived in Athens. He was too conservative 
 to please the cafe, which is nothing if not radical 
 and sentimental. He had annexed Crete, it is true. 
 He had assumed dominion over a portion of an 
 empire that empire having more than fifteen 
 times the population of his own kingdom with- 
 out the empire's consent, while the world, with 
 the Cross and the Parthenon before its eyes, 
 cheered him for his pluck. A thousand Greek 
 soldiers under Colonel Vassos were encamped in 
 the mountains of Crete, drinking wine, eating 
 biscuits and cheese, and day-dreaming sent 
 there to assist their Cretan brothers to put 
 down the Turk. A cordon of war-ships, repre- 
 senting the concert of Europe, had surrounded 
 Crete. The concert said that Colonel Vassos 
 must leave the island. Europe itself was to give 
 to Crete autonomy and consequently peace, 
 which was the very thing not wanted by the 
 Cretan child, of from fifteen to eighty years, who 
 likes a revolution as well as a European diplomat 
 likes a good dinner. Colonel Vassos refused to 
 heed any orders except those of the King of 
 
8 Going to War in Greece 
 
 Greece, who bade him to sit and wait, a policy 
 to the liking of this easy-going officer. The 
 Powers could manage to agree only to the point 
 of a blockade ; not to the point of sending a 
 force to discipline the recalcitrant Greeks. Thus, 
 Colonel Vassos became the greatest man in the 
 world of daily news and paradox, and the Cafe 
 de la Constitution the power behind his throne. 
 
 But the caf^ growing great, grew more ambi- 
 tious, and wanted to increase the triumph it 
 enjoyed. The King had shown pluck enough to 
 last only three or four weeks. He must begin 
 an aggressive war on the northern frontier, which 
 would end as the caf^ knew perfectly well in 
 the taking of Constantinople. Already the caf^ 
 was resorting to its old mob methods which had 
 usually brought the / King to terms. For the 
 caf6, with its motto that no cabinet ought to re- 
 main in office longer than a month, was even 
 mightier in war than in peace. At its bidding, 
 the peasants who tended sheep on the mountain 
 sides went merrily off to the battle-field with as 
 little idea of the cost of war as had the caf^ 
 itself. 
 
 When I first saw a mob start for the palace I 
 fully expected to see the two lone Evzoni, guard- 
 
Going to War in Greece 9 
 
 ing the front door, borne down and the King 
 brought out by force to face his enraged subjects. 
 The mob was started every evening by some un- 
 kempt being who, jumping up from a table, 
 would wave his hands and cry : " To the palace ! " 
 " A lamp-post for the tyrant ! " He then walked 
 up and down until he had gathered a crowd of 
 followers, who, firing pistols into the air, advanced 
 up the hillside. They went as far as the steps of 
 the palace. The Evzoni regarded them with a 
 grin. A flunky perhaps stood lowering in the 
 doorway. If so, he refused to ask the King to 
 come out. After calling the King all the names 
 they knew, the rioters returned chattering to the 
 cafe, well pleased with themselves. 
 
 Unlike the Parisian mob, ever wantonly de- 
 structive, the Athenian mob destroys nothing. 
 It has more fun at less expense than any other 
 mob in the world. Being too democratic to have 
 a regular head, leadership is passed around like 
 the turn to deal at cards. Almost every profes- 
 sional idler can boast of having led a movement 
 which all but dethroned the King. His mob 
 and himself without breaking a single pane of 
 glass enjoyed their spree as fully as if they had 
 razed half of Athens to the ground economy 
 
lo Going to War in Greece 
 
 suggesting an innovation in the school for gamins 
 in Paris. It is to the cafe that the Athenian 
 Chamber of Deputies turns for instructions and 
 the King obeys the mandates of the Deputies. 
 
 As comprehensible as were the gestures of the 
 caf^, its chatter was Greek, modern Greek, to 
 me. A dragoman must be an adjunct of any 
 conversations I might hold with the caf^ or the 
 army. I did not have to search for Castopis, or 
 his like. Castopis manoeuvred softly up to me 
 in the hotel corridor, his pocket full of recom- 
 mendations from travelers, and counted off the 
 languages at his command on one hand and his 
 accomplishments on the other with the voice and 
 demeanor of oriental majesty. He was a cele- 
 brated dragoman, the superior of all other drago- 
 men, he said. Could I doubt his courage when 
 his clothes had been matted with blood and 
 brains in the Soudan under General Wolseley? 
 Then he drew near and spoke frankly of his one 
 disqualification : " The singing of bullets is sweet 
 music, sir," he said. " If I forget myself and 
 want to rush into the thick of the fight, you 
 must hold me back. My duty is to you. I will 
 try hard to control myself for your sake, sir." 
 
 So it was arranged that Castopis and I should 
 
Going to War in Greece 1 1 
 
 go to war together. We started by asking for 
 military passports. I noticed that he took an un- 
 necessarily long time to translate what I had to 
 say. After leaving the war office I asked him 
 about it. 
 
 "You leave it to me, sir," he replied, "and I'll 
 make you the greatest war correspondent the 
 world has ever known. I told the minister of 
 war that you were a mighty man in your own 
 land. You were going to send over the Ameri- 
 can fleet to help Greece if the Greeks treated you 
 properly. And I told him not to allow any other 
 American correspondents to go to the front, as 
 they were Turkish spies. Sir, I am entirely 
 devoted to your interests." 
 
 When I said that we must return to the minis- 
 ter of war to explain, I saw his mood change to 
 that of a man with an elephant on his hands. 
 Henceforth, I felt that Castopis had me in his 
 power. My wilfulness was not to be allowed to 
 work against my future greatness. He became 
 my mentor and guardian, and soon I found myself 
 deep in plots to keep him from sending cable- 
 grams to my paper or to the State Department 
 at Washington in my name. I spoke to the 
 American minister about him and the American 
 
12 Going to War in Greece 
 
 minister said he had the reputation of being a 
 wonderful dragoman. It was best to be satisfied 
 with my lot, he thought. 
 
 Having secured the necessary equipment, Cas- 
 topis said that we were to go to Volo, on our way 
 to the front, by a transport that carried Reserves. 
 Nobody knew the hour of the transport's sailing. 
 We must sit on its deck until it started, and it 
 would start as soon as all of the Reserves that 
 it could carry had marched from the barracks 
 through the Place de la Constitution down to the 
 Piraeus. Captains apparently started out with 
 their companies whenever the inspiration seized 
 them at the cafe. 
 
 By chance we reached the transport in the 
 evening just as it was full and about to weigh 
 anchor. The little saloon was crowded with 
 officers, many of whom, like the soldiers on deck, 
 had to sleep on the floor for want of bunks. Elo- 
 quent representations were made to the com- 
 manding officer, and I blushed for the lies Cas- 
 topis had told when the commanding officer 
 offered to share his stateroom with me. 
 
 The commanding officer did not seem in a 
 hurry despite government complaint of a lack of 
 transports at a moment when rapid mobilization 
 
Going to War in Greece 1 3 
 
 on the frontier was of vital importance. In the 
 morning we stopped at Chalcis for an hour so 
 that some of our ofificers might chat with rela- 
 tives who were with the Greek fleet then at 
 anchor there. Late in the afternoon we arrived 
 at Volo. Our battalion remained on board all 
 night and the transport did not start back for 
 more troops until the next day. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 VOLO, on the landlocked Gulf of Volo, a vast 
 metropolis to the dozen white specks of 
 villages hanging on the mountain sides 
 above it, under Greek rule had awakened from 
 Turkish sloth to an increasing population and a 
 brisk trade with the neighboring islands of the 
 ^gean Sea. Soldiers brought as far as Volo by 
 the transports started for Larissa, the headquar- 
 ters of mobilization, when some one thought of 
 making ready the trains and when the officers had 
 told all the news from Athens to their friends in 
 Volo. The distance from Volo to Larissa is thirty 
 miles, which requires three hours' travel by rail 
 owing to a rather stiff grade up the mountain pass 
 from Volo to Velestino and to the existence of 
 cafes at several of the way stations. We left Volo 
 fully twenty-four hours after our arrival, with a 
 cry of " Long live the war ! " which was repeated 
 to every distant figure in the fields and at every 
 
Going to War in Greece 15 
 
 stopping-place. The peasants gazed at us silent 
 and unmoved, for their land was a little nearer to 
 the boundary-line than that of the bellicose peas- 
 ants of the Peloponnesus. Sophisticated idlers 
 at the stations exhibited all the might of their 
 lungs. Priesthood in long black hair and ragged, 
 long black raiment came down from the moun- 
 tains donkeyback to indulge in grandiose proph- 
 ecy. 
 
 ** Long live the war ! " cried the heads stuck 
 out of the car windows as the train drew in at the 
 Larissa station. " Long live the war ! " was the 
 reply of the crowd. The minarets and Turkish 
 architecture of Larissa were dimly visible in the 
 dusk, calling to mind how recent was the occu- 
 pation of Thessaly by Greece. As I wished to 
 cross the frontier and see the Turkish army be- 
 fore war was declared, it was not wise in this land 
 of uncertainty to wait until after dinner before 
 making arrangements. General Macris, in com- 
 mand at Larissa, said he could assure me of pro- 
 tection for the fifteen miles to the Greek watch- 
 house in Meluna Pass. As for the rest, he 
 shrugged his shoulders. Though the Turkish 
 consul might back my passport, he said, when 
 our secretary of state came to investigate the 
 
1 6 Going to War in Greece 
 
 affair the Sultan would greatly regret the un- 
 fortunate accident which was due to the igno- 
 rance of a private soldier. 
 
 That brown little man, the Turkish consul at 
 Larissa, said he would be delighted to give me 
 safe conduct to and from Meluna Pass and Elas- 
 sona, the headquarters of the Turkish army, but 
 lifting his shoulders quite on a level with his 
 ears it was not for him to guarantee that I 
 should pass through Greek territory alive. When 
 I handed him my passport he asked for my 
 dragoman's also. But Castopis said that he had 
 none. 
 
 ** Then I cannot allow him to accompany you," 
 said the consul. 
 
 Here was a difificulty. I could not speak Turk- 
 ish, and it was quite unfeasible that I should go 
 alone. I turned to Castopis, who promptly as- 
 sumed the air of an injured satrap. 
 
 " I should like to know, Your Excellency, the 
 Honorable Consul," he said, " when it became 
 necessary for a servant of yourself or of any other 
 great gentleman to have a separate passport ? 
 Is it expected that a gentleman shall travel with- 
 out a servant ? Above all, is this expected of a 
 great American gentleman accustomed to go 
 
Going to War in Greece 17 
 
 from town to town with a magnificent train of 
 followers ? " 
 
 The consul bowed very low and agreed to 
 make an exception for once in his official career. 
 
 Then we set out to find quarters for the night. 
 The two hotel keepers wobbled their heads and 
 pounded the air with their hands in dismay. 
 They had long ago ceased to offer so much as a 
 place on the hall floor and so far as they knew 
 the only available sleeping quarters in the town 
 were the streets. The streets were fordable but 
 not practicable as beds. 
 
 " Do not worry," said Castopis, "the mayor is 
 my friend. The hotel keeper is swine. I will 
 teach the hotel keeper civility and the extent of 
 my influence." 
 
 After an hour's search through caf^s, barracks 
 and alleyways, only a mud puddle stood between 
 us and the mayor. Among the hundred other 
 applicants for rooms who surrounded him we 
 recognized soldiers who were on our transport. 
 The mayor was at his wits' end to find them a 
 place for the night. Every room in his new 
 City Hall was taken, as was every empty store- 
 room and warehouse. Castopis leaped over the 
 puddle, grasped the mayor's hand, felicitated 
 
1 8 Going to War in Greece 
 
 him upon his noble career, and returned with a 
 beatific grin. The mayor had referred him to a 
 leading citizen who would rent the finest room 
 in his house for sixty-two and a half cents a 
 day. The leading citizen and all of his family 
 received us at the doorway of his little courtyard 
 and followed me upstairs to my room, where 
 they watched me wash my hands with great in- 
 terest, until Castopis shooed them away. My 
 bed was two boards nailed against the wall. Its 
 mattress I discarded on the advice of Castopis, 
 who looked at it and then at me and said, 
 '* Bugs ! " He slept on his mattress, however, 
 remarking that he was a Greek. 
 
 By day it is broiling hot on the Thessalian 
 plain ; but we found the air uncomfortably chill 
 when we arose at sunrise the next morning. 
 Our escort, a young cavalry ofificer, a cast-off 
 Parisian carriage behind three skinny horses and 
 a driver, met us in front of the caf6. The officer 
 as a proof of his endurance unbuttoned his tunic 
 to show that he wore no undershirt, incidentally 
 pointing to a scar he had received in a duel while 
 at school in Germany. His back was in the 
 form of a bow and the ends of his moustache 
 turned up in a dashing curve. 
 
Going to War in Greece 19 
 
 Our carriage bounced and slewed and rattled 
 over the plain, a four hours' drive to Turnavo, 
 where we spent some few moments with the offi- 
 cers in the tumbledown old barracks ; then along 
 the base of the mountains, halting to ask the best 
 point to ford a stream, or to exchange news with 
 the officers, who lined their men up in front of 
 tents on the hillside or bade them cheer us on 
 principle, the road becoming more and more 
 uneven and inclined until we reached the end of 
 the carriage route, Liguria, a little town which 
 seemed to sit as comfortably in the mouth of the 
 Meluna Pass as a workbasket in a woman's lap. 
 The officer insisted upon riding up the pass a 
 Hungarian horse that had been imported for the 
 cavalry. In a quarter of an hour this fine animal, 
 as uneasy as a fish out of water, was flecked with 
 foam and more beaten than if he had done forty 
 miles in the open. My little mountain pony had 
 scarcely a wet hair. An ally of safety but not of 
 comfort was his native saddle, which was like 
 riding a rail that had taken to dancing. He had 
 no bridle and needed none. He picked his way 
 over the stones with consummate skill and be- 
 coming deliberateness, up and up the narrow, zig- 
 zag path, until the Thessalian plain becoming a 
 
20 Going to War in Greece 
 
 panorama seemed so near that I could reach out 
 and pick a blossom from one of the almond-trees 
 in the village of Dheleria, some seven miles away ; 
 while over my head the ardent sunlight glowed 
 and glistened on the ridges and sparkled in 
 the hollows of snowy Olympus, dimly reveal- 
 ing its dense, white apex through fluffy, white 
 clouds. 
 
 I do not know whether or not the wrinkled 
 sub-lieutenant stationed in the Turkish watch- 
 house had ever looked beyond the fumes of 
 his cigarette at this scene. When we includ- 
 ing three Evzoni and a sub-lieutenant from the 
 Greek watch-house crossed the boundary-line 
 to ask a favor of him, we had other things to 
 talk about. The Greeks, in trying to do their 
 best for me, somewhat prejudiced the sub-lieu- 
 tenant by saying that I was a great friend of 
 theirs. With a flood of expostulations, the sub- 
 lieutenant explained that he could not let me 
 pass. We persisted, and then he invited us into 
 his little sitting-room, while he squatted on a 
 divan and for the first time mumbled through 
 the words of Turkish on my passport. The pass- 
 port was all very well, he said, but it provided 
 for an escort. As he had only two soldiers with 
 
In front of tents on the hillside. 
 
 Bade them cheer on principle," 
 
Going to War in Greece 21 
 
 him he could not afford an escort, and he rea- 
 soned, therefore, that the passport was void. I 
 said I would go without any escort except Cas- 
 topis, assuming all consequent risks ; myself 
 whereupon the sub-lieutenant scratched his head 
 and asked all present to have cigarettes. On the 
 whole, he was a mild and rather gentlemanly 
 Turkish officer, but lacking in some measure ready 
 mental concentration. He mumbled through the 
 passport again and then again, running a stubby 
 forefinger from word to word. At last the fore- 
 finger rose up under Castopis's nose, bearing the 
 great news that our ponies had not been men- 
 tioned by the consul. This omission settled 
 everything against us, he thought. 
 
 " We'll walk ; we'll go without our ponies," I 
 bade Castopis tell him. 
 
 ** Good sir," said the sub-lieutenant, as he 
 folded the passport with the air of a beaten man, 
 " I could not think of allowing that." 
 
 But I was barely on my pony's back when I 
 foresaw more trouble. The sub-lieutenant was 
 scratching his head again. He took hold of the 
 pony's halter, saying that our revolvers were not 
 included in the passport, anyway, and we might 
 not take them with us. 
 
22 Going to War in Greece 
 
 " We will gladly comply," was the answer, ** if 
 you will give us a sufficient escort." 
 
 The sub-lieutenant reluctantly let go of the 
 pony's halter, and I began my career in Mace- 
 donia. 
 
 Soon I noticed that the two rosy-cheeked 
 young Turkish soldiers whom the officer had 
 spared after all to escort us for some distance, 
 carried their rifles well in front, ever ready for 
 instant use, and never took their eyes from 
 the treacherous infidel, that is myself. So I 
 gave them cigarettes and smiled at them. They 
 smiled back and threw their rifles over their 
 shoulders. Thus we became excellent friends 
 for the rest of our journey together. 
 
 It was at Elassona that Edhem Pasha was 
 then hammering the Turkish army into fighting 
 material and Elassona was at the head of a small 
 valley some three or four miles from the foot of 
 Meluna Pass on the Turkish side. I found him 
 to be a pleasant, handsome, full-bearded man in 
 a fez and a beautiful uniform. There was far 
 more of the soldier in his manner than in General 
 Macris's, but he spoke with the same oriental 
 blandness. He had a hundred thousand men, he 
 said, and could go to Athens in two weeks when- 
 
Going to War in Greece 23 
 
 ever the Sultan gave the order. He was chary 
 about giving further information and about ex- 
 tending privileges to a correspondent who had 
 come from the Greek side. 
 
 His hundred thousand men must have been 
 rather crowded for sleeping room in the few 
 clusters of tents on the hillsides and in the three 
 little villages in the valley. I believe that the 
 Greeks had more men mobilized on the frontier 
 at this time than the Turks. Edhem Pasha had 
 had insurrections, difficult transportation, lack of 
 forage, and lack of funds to deal with. By the 
 very virtue of the size of their country, of their 
 transport service, and of the railroad to Larissa, 
 the Greeks could have mobilized their forces 
 much quicker than the Turks. The time required 
 for mobilization in Turkey is a weakness which, 
 I think, has been overlooked. 
 
 If Larissa was only in part Turkish, Elassona 
 was completely Turkish. Seen from a distance, 
 with its white minarets and low, white houses, it 
 was like most Macedonian towns, quaint, pictur- 
 esque, even beautiful. Its streets were beds of 
 filth lying on uneven cobblestones to trip the 
 unwary, and sloth reigned on every doorstep in 
 striking contrast to Volo, which, unlike Larissa, 
 
24 Going to War in Greece 
 
 is a completely modern Greek town, almost 
 French in its aspect. The Greek at home is still 
 an idler, but he sometimes leaves his hubble- 
 bubble to make improvements, while the Turk 
 never does. 
 
 The Turkish cavalry horses and all small arms 
 were in good military condition. Uniforms were 
 well frayed and incomplete. The soldiers usu- 
 ally answered our greetings with a glare ; but we 
 saw few of them away from their tents and dirty 
 barracks, where they lounged and grew strong 
 in keeping with the Turkish constitution. It 
 was noticeable that, despite his deficient uni- 
 form, the orderly who stood in front of an offi- 
 cer's tent had a natural military style lacking 
 in the Greek. This suggested much : a race of 
 traders and peasants and a race of soldiers. 
 
 A mist settled down and darkness came on as 
 we re-entered the pass. Rain fell in torrents a few 
 minutes later and we were wet to the skin and 
 shivering when we saw the light of the Turkish 
 watch-house. The sub-lieutenant came to meet 
 us with a surprisingly warm handshake, his two 
 soldiers smiling just behind him. He insisted 
 that we should have a glass of mastika before 
 going farther. Again we sat down on the divan 
 
Going to War in Greece. 25 
 
 in his little sitting-room. The lines of his face 
 came out strongly in the shadows cast by the 
 lighted wick fastened to a cork which floated in 
 a glass of olive oil. He was a happy sub-lieuten- 
 ant, I am sure, and he lived on fifteen cents a day. 
 
 " You are an American ? You came from far 
 away ? " he suggested curiously. 
 
 Then we talked freely, and I learned that I 
 had little cause to fear him, for it was because he 
 and his soldiers feared me that I had been asked 
 to give up my revolver. They knew of only one 
 American, Buffalo Bill, and were worried lest I, 
 like a treacherous infidel, should suddenly with 
 two dexterous movements kill both of my escorts 
 before they could raise their rifles to their shoul- 
 ders. 
 
 " Shall we have war? " I asked him. 
 
 "I do not know," he said. '* It is as our 
 Padishah says. He is our master." 
 
 " There are many more soldiers in the Greek 
 watch-house than you have." 
 
 *' Yes. I have seen them in their red caps, 
 their shining buttons and fine coats. I have seen 
 them dancing and heard them singing. They 
 laugh at us for being ragged. But I tell you, 
 only swine show their tusks before they bite." 
 
26 Going to War in Greece 
 
 ** Don't you think the Greeks are fine sol- 
 diers ? " 
 
 " They are swine and eaters of swine. We 
 were their masters, and they lived or died as our 
 Padishah chose. When they rose, we put them 
 down as easily as you turn over your hand. 
 They are not the great infidels. The great in- 
 fidels (Christian Europe) in their might came to 
 take the part of the whining little pig, because 
 the little pig, the dishonest little pig, was also an 
 infidel. Step by step, we were driven back, al- 
 ways back, with our hands tied, and the Greek 
 swine, and their women, who go with faces un- 
 covered in the street, cried in our ears, * We 
 have conquered the Turk ! ' " 
 
 " Would you like to have a war ? " 
 
 His black eyes gleamed with joy, and again he 
 replied : ** It is as the Padishah wills." 
 
 "Would I had food worthy to give you," he 
 said as I went out into the mist and the darkness 
 on my way to the Greek watch-house, leaving 
 him and his two little soldiers to guard their 
 lonely outpost up in the clouds, the turning- 
 point of modern Greek history. Five weeks 
 later, when the Turks came up the pass in a flood 
 and took the Greek watch-house, the sub-lieu- 
 
Going to War in Greece 27 
 
 tenant, who was in the front line of the attack, 
 and one of his soldiers were killed while fighting 
 with all courage and all humility for their 
 false Prophet and false Padishah. They had 
 had a cup of coffee for breakfast that morning 
 and their pay was several months in arrears. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ENFORCED absence from the caf^s for 
 three weeks never convinced my com- 
 panionable escort, the lieutenant of 
 cavalry, that an undershirt was superior to a 
 duelling scar as protection, from the damp, chill 
 air of the early morning when we drove back 
 to Larissa. With tea and other luxuries from 
 a correspondent's commissariat we improvised 
 a substitute for a caf^ out of the lieutenant's 
 bedroom, which was in a disconsolate Hebrew 
 money-changer's four room dwelling. There as 
 well as elsewhere his friends might confound 
 the Turkish army and chat pleasantly of bloody 
 battles battles which we were careful to post- 
 pone until such a date as the lieutenant should 
 be able to play his part. It was a plain case 
 of fever with the lieutenant, and his final re- 
 covery was wonderful considering the oriental- 
 flavored odor of sewage which came in at his 
 
Going to War in Greece 29 
 
 window when the breezes did not blow strong 
 from the sweet-scented Thessalian plain. So I, 
 feeling that I shared with the duelling scar the 
 responsibility for his illness, made bold to con- 
 sider myself the happiest of all those who wel- 
 comed him, pale and full bearded, back to the 
 cafes with oozoo and olives, though I was un- 
 equal to either the verbiage or the gesticulations 
 of his fellow officers. 
 
 There were three cafes which the officers pat- 
 ronized. All fronted on the public square, two 
 of them offering the attraction of cast-off Parisian 
 billiard tables with cubical balls that rattled over 
 their slates like stones thrown along a pave- 
 ment. Old colonels sat in a favorite corner 
 smoking their hubble-bubbles and smiling affably 
 on all foreign correspondents. A multitude of 
 doctors thrown up by an ambition born of pop- 
 ular education, played with the tassels on their 
 swords and did not allow lack of bandages, of 
 stretchers and of hospital tents to ruffle their 
 ever buoyant spirits. The mayor buzzed from 
 group to group like a busy bee, feeling all visitors 
 to be his guests and uttering the most optimistic 
 of prophecies about the reestablishment of the 
 Byzantine Empire. 
 
30 Going to War in Greece 
 
 Still, he was a practical executive. In my own 
 time in Larissa I saw five new lamp-posts put up 
 in the square. A sixth lay by its hole ready for 
 erection it may be there now just as the Greeks 
 left it. The mayor always bowed politely to the 
 Turkish consul and his friends, who ate unin- 
 sulted at the officers' restaurant and were neither 
 molested nor taunted by the soldier-children 
 whose elbows they rubbed as they passed through 
 the crowded streets. If, occasionally, a Moham-^ 
 medan woman left the Turkish quarter she at- 
 tracted no attention. Those contrasting insignia 
 of Christianity and Mohammedanism, the mayor's 
 derby hat and the red fezzes of a bey and a 
 wealthy landholder, both Turks and members 
 of the Greek Chamber of Deputies, were often to 
 be seen bobbing over the same table. They 
 shucked their strings of beads and agreed that 
 Macedonia under Greek rule meant more money 
 in their pockets. In Greece, I may mention, 
 officers, soldiers and civilians, whether rich or 
 poor, carry beads. " Our beads are not for re- 
 ligious purposes," you are assured again and 
 again ; *' but one who sits in the cafe for hours 
 must have a diversion that is neither difficult 
 nor tiring." Sometimes the strings break and 
 
:> , J > J 
 
 J 
 
 The Turkish Consul and his friends.' 
 
 If, occasionally, a Mohammedan woman" 
 
Going to War in Greece 31 
 
 the beads scatter, and then an officer so tires 
 himself in recovering them that only an oozoo 
 will revive him. 
 
 In the late afternoon we brought our chairs 
 out of the cafe and under the shadows of the 
 City Hall. Then all of idle Larissa walked up 
 and down in the square, the wives of a few offi- 
 cers who had come down from Athens adding 
 color to the movement of the mayor, the Turk- 
 ish landholders, unsophisticated and ragged old 
 peasants, officers, Evzoni, Reserves, Albanian and 
 Macedonian chieftains in starched fustinella and 
 little silk caps swaggering as if they had the 
 scalps of a hundred Turks at their belts, and for- 
 eign correspondents in white hats, brown boots, 
 jackets and riding-breeches. Though officers 
 read and believed the startling news on little 
 handbills sold for a lepta, they turned a cold 
 shoulder to the host of Greek journalists whom 
 they regarded as social inferiors. 
 
 " Let us see," said an English correspondent 
 as he pored over the Athenian papers which 
 had just arrived. " Yesterday the Greek fleet 
 sunk a Turkish ship with a single shot, ten 
 Greeks scared a thousand Turks out of a watch- 
 house, and oh, if these things were only true 
 
32 Going to War in Greece 
 
 what copy they would make in these piping 
 times of peace ! " 
 
 When we returned to London and New York 
 we marveled even more at the power of the 
 Greek journalist, for there in the back numbers 
 of our respective papers we saw all the canards 
 printed as serious news. "The stuff sent from 
 Athens is much snappier than anything you 
 send," one London editor cabled to a weary 
 correspondent, who answered : " Good Lord ! I 
 don't wonder at it ! " I told little Volkos of 
 "The Acropolis" that the Turkish soldiers, I 
 thought, were ill-fed and badly uniformed. In 
 his paper he quoted me as saying that the Turks 
 were naked and starving. " Why did you put it 
 that way ? " I asked him. " I only made it 
 stronger," he replied quite innocently ; adding, 
 with a swing of his hat, an enthusiastic, " Vive la 
 guerre ! Toujours la conquete I " After fighting 
 had actually begun the Greek journalists disap- 
 peared. With the war itself making news they 
 seemed to think that they were no longer needed 
 at the front. 
 
 The thriving shopkeepers and, above all, the 
 keeper of a wine-shop who had chairs and a 
 greasy pack of cards to offer, were more inter- 
 
"And ragged old peasants." 
 
 " Albanian and Macedonian chieftains. 
 
Going to War in Greece 33 
 
 ested in the privates of the army of Greece than 
 were the officers who clanked their swords in the 
 square. All the bakers and butchers believed in 
 unlimited Hellenic heroism. From the shep- 
 herds* folds on the mountain side came trains of 
 asses with carcasses of mutton, followed by asses 
 laden with sheepskins the wealth of Thessaly 
 and after all a grim shepherd, or his little son. 
 Only the Hebrew money-changers, standing on 
 the street corners, felt the ill wind, commerce 
 across the frontier being at a standstill. Out of 
 my window I could see a company of Reserves 
 boiling their soup every morning, for the army 
 of Greece was well fed. This was all they had 
 to do, and they ate heartily and grew soft and 
 more and more ill fitted for the hardships of an 
 active campaign. 
 
 Almost every day additional Reserves came 
 along the dusty road from the station. Then, to 
 make room for the new arrivals, the company or 
 companies which had been longest in Larissa 
 ** being drilled " were marshaled in heavy march- 
 ing order in front of the City Hall. Their cloth- 
 ing was evidence enough that the needles of 
 Athens could not keep pace with the growth of 
 the army. Only the cheap blue cap with the 
 
34 Going to War in Greece 
 
 embroidered cross seemed indispensable. Most 
 of the men had long military coats or short 
 jackets and a smaller number the regulation 
 trousers. Occasionally a pair of native shoes 
 with their turned-up, tasseled toes, were set off 
 picturesquely by a full European uniform. After 
 a speech from the mayor, the men marched away 
 to different points along the frontier, stopping at 
 intervals of a mile or two to rest. Behind them, 
 perhaps, rattled a wagon loaded with bread and 
 cheese. 
 
 Never was there a gentler and more naive 
 soldiery supplied with modern arms than our 
 Army of the Caf^. With unconscious ingenu- 
 ousness it excused in a measure its lack of force- 
 fulness under fire by lacking force for brawls 
 and wickedness in general. Political discussions 
 in cafes never had bloody consequences. The 
 only drunken man in a uniform I ever saw in 
 Larissa was an Italian volunteer. A battalion 
 of Garibaldians who fought so bravely at 
 Domoko, indulged in more private warfare than 
 our sixty thousand or fifty ? or forty thou- 
 sand ? who knows ? Sixty thousand when we 
 foresaw victory in brilliant hues ! Forty thou- 
 sand as soon as we groped aimlessly in the 
 
''Chairs and a greasy pack of cards." 
 
 The wealth of Thessaly." 
 
Going to War in Greece 35 
 
 chilling fogs of defeat ! Statistics were no 
 hobby of the Army of the Caf^. 
 
 It did not need figures for the faith in victory 
 which was as strong in the soldier-children as in 
 the ofificer-children. Who was so foolish as to 
 doubt when the barracks on the plain were like 
 those in France ; when wheels and pieces of iron 
 strapped on a donkey's back were transformed 
 into a mountain gun ; when there was an en- 
 gineer corps with white gaiters and a Red Cross 
 corps, and the doctors had swords ; when mes- 
 sages were flashed from Larissa to the foot of 
 Olympus by the opticon-telegraph ; when, indeed, 
 all of the set parts of European military organi- 
 zation were imitated in one way or another? 
 The War Department saw no need of trying 
 to find out if the Turks also had such contriv- 
 ances. It was impossible that they should have, 
 for they were savages. They knew not popular 
 education. Their officers had not studied in Paris 
 and Berlin. The Army of the Cafe revelled in 
 the surprises that were in store for the Turks 
 when they faced modern implements of warfare. 
 What else could they do but run away like the 
 Chinese ? Little Greece was to slay her giant as 
 easily as Japan had slain hers. 
 
36 Going to War in Greece 
 
 It was imitation, ever imitation, the fatal gift of 
 the modern Greek who imitates too easily to imi- 
 tate thoroughly. Imitation had carried away our 
 officers' originality. The Army of the Cafe was 
 a European uniform without a body. We had all 
 of the imported properties without a stage man- 
 ager ; we had scenery and unmistakably a festive 
 chorus, but our actors knew only the lines of 
 their climaxes, while all contended for the centre 
 of the stage in every scene, without regard to 
 cues. After twenty years of preparation for the 
 struggle with Turkey, their capacity for superfi- 
 cial imitation left the staff with only a small-scale 
 Austrian map of their own frontier. The en- 
 gineers, with the material for making a pontoon 
 bridge, built one over the Peneios at the wrong 
 place, after waiting many days in vain for the 
 river to fall to a point agreeable to their finicky 
 minds. Up on the Acropolis artillerymen indif- 
 ferently sewed bags to be filled with sand for the 
 fortifications, while others labored indifferently 
 with pick and shovel under the direction of a 
 most sociable officer. Weeks were taken to put 
 in position the six ten-centimetre Krupps which 
 were to sweep the plain and protect Larissa if 
 the Turks should break through the mountain 
 
S > ' > 1 ' 
 
 ''Money changers felt the ill wind. 
 
 " Boiling their soud. 
 
Going to War in Greece 37 
 
 barrier. Every morning Prince Nicolas, third 
 son of King George, led his battery out on the 
 plain and put it through evolutions with a certain 
 degree of snap that ought to have been, but was 
 not, a lesson to the rest of the army. In all, we 
 were supposed to have twelve batteries of field 
 and mountain guns, and a part of these, at least, 
 showed a measure of mechanical expertness 
 which was most reassuring compared to our in- 
 fantry and cavalry. Poor cavalrymen ! One fel- 
 low tumbled off his horse under the royal nose 
 on the very day of the Crown Prince's arrival at 
 Larissa. They had never ridden except on 
 donkeyback, until their Hungarian horses were 
 imported after the Cretan ultimatum. One day 
 they expected to dash over the plain and cut 
 off a multitude of Turkish heads, though they 
 had not been taught the simplest principles of 
 sabre practice; and the further neglect of their 
 officers to teach them how to care for European 
 horses of itself had made a charge impracticable. 
 But when the cavalry made a spectator sad, he 
 could turn to the Evzoni who enlivened his 
 vista with all of the brilliance of the Chinese 
 embassy at a Washington reception. " Petti- 
 coat men " these regulars who guarded the fron- 
 
38 Going to War in Greece 
 
 tier in time of peace were nicknamed on account 
 of their slightly modified native Greek dress. The 
 " petticoat man " had style and pride and much 
 of the discipline which go to make a finished 
 soldier. His red cap with a long black tassel was 
 stuck jauntily on one side of his closely-cropped 
 head. His pleated skirt, or fustinella, was 
 always immaculate and well starched ; the brass 
 buttons on his blue coat glistened in the sun ; 
 his light leggings were pulled well down over his 
 ankles his virility disdained stockings and the 
 tassels were never missing from his red, heelless 
 shoes which scaled the mountainside so softly. 
 
 " We can always depend upon the Evzoni to 
 defend the throne," said the Crown Prince, who 
 received me in the garden of " the palace," which 
 had been a pasha's house in the old days. The 
 Crown Prince's arrival at Larissa was supposed to 
 mean war. He was to succeed General Macris, 
 who had been vested with absolute authority 
 in nothing, such tyranny being inconsistent with 
 the democratic principles of the Cafe de la Con- 
 stitution. To the horror of the French general 
 who originally organized the army on good lines, 
 the government gave equal authority to ten 
 colonels, old colonels being called generals by 
 
" In heavy marching order." 
 
 " After a speech from the Mayor.' 
 
Going to War in Greece 39 
 
 courtesy, so that no one of them could be jealous 
 of the other. In the face of hostilities the neces- 
 sity of a leader appeared and the easy-going 
 King made a commander-in-chief out of his inex- 
 perienced son who, nevertheless, was not sup- 
 posed to be the master of any one of the colo- 
 nels. 
 
 As day after day went by bringing no declara- 
 tion of war the Crown Prince grew more and 
 more unpopular. He warned the soldiers against 
 any outbreak on the anniversary of Greek inde- 
 pendence and not a shot was fired. In the 
 church at Larissaon Independence Day the civil- 
 ians and ofificers led by the mayor cried, at the 
 close of a solemn memorial service, " Give us 
 war ! Give us war ! " and he rebuffed them with a 
 scornful toss of the head. Not a single cheer 
 greeted him as he rode back to Headquarters. 
 That evening these same leading citizens and 
 officers talked revolution in the cafes, while a big 
 soldier out in the illuminated square gathered a 
 mob and, with light talk about having war or 
 the Prince's head, led his followers to the palace. 
 The band happened to be at Headquarters. A 
 patriotic tune softened the dissatisfied until they 
 suddenly saw its object, and then they became 
 
40 Going to War in Greece 
 
 positively menacing. One of the Crown Prince's 
 aides-de-camp, with a political future before him, 
 rushed out and hugged the big soldier and told 
 him so many fibs that he led a cheer for the 
 Crown Prince before returning in self-satisfied 
 glory to the square. 
 
 Some of the aides-de-camp talked of improving 
 technical discipline after the Crown Prince had 
 come, but the Crown Prince seemed to find it 
 easier to allow the soldiers and the mass of the 
 officers to have their own way as of old, while 
 his aides-de-camp kept a sharp eye out for 
 delicacies for his table. The Army of the Caf6 
 chattered on and on, becoming less and less 
 reconciled to humdrum peace. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 MY landlady, an enthusiastic politician who 
 hung around my door in lieu of her less 
 energetic husband to ask me if I did 
 not think that the men who ruled Greece were 
 fools, had ceased to be entertaining and in gen- 
 eral I had ceased to entertain her. At last I 
 could have water brought in an odd little wooden 
 tub without commotion, because Castopis had 
 informed the masses that I preferred to take my 
 bath in seclusion. Since the carpenter was 
 called in I no longer had the excitement of see- 
 ing whether or not I could wet my whole body 
 before all the water leaked out on to the floor, 
 
 Castopis was fast becoming arrogant. It was 
 in vain that I warned him not to slander other 
 correspondents norto tell the officers that I had 
 a private regiment and a battery of artillery com- 
 ing from America to aid the good cause. When 
 he was not smoking a hubble-bubble at the caf^ 
 
42 Going to War in Greece 
 
 he was trying to start a revolution. He knew 
 that with dragomen scarce and war likely to be- 
 gin at any moment I could not well discharge 
 him. Occasionally he reassured me by saying, 
 " As the great day approaches I feel the spirit of 
 my noble ancestors growing within me. Only 
 the retention of my admiration for you will keep 
 a rifle out of my hands." 
 
 Past also was the joy of buying a pony. The 
 London Times was the first correspondent to 
 buy one. He paid what its owner asked for it, 
 the outrageous price of seven hundred drachmas. 
 The next day every correspondent was besieged by 
 fellows in fustinella who would lead him into an 
 alleyway, and, pointing to a bag of bones, hold 
 out a piece of paper with the figures " 700 " 
 marked on it. For a week we discussed all of 
 the horseflesh of the surrounding country in 
 front of the caf6, and all Larissa gathered to look 
 on. By means of a determined effort we in part 
 repaired the damage done by the guilelessness of 
 the London Times, but even then we were so 
 easy that I do not think the Greeks enjoyed 
 beating us. When a Greek goes abroad he soon 
 becomes rich. At home where the Greeks argue 
 in a cafe over a cent for many hours, no one of 
 
Loaded with bread and cheese. 
 
 Wheels and pieces of iron. 
 
Going to War in Greece 43 
 
 them can ever beat another by sufficient margin 
 to accumulate any amount. Still, emigration 
 seems to remain an open question with the 
 Greek because he does not consider that a for- 
 eigner is worthy of his talent. 
 
 In two weeks I had my own pony, Kitso by 
 name, in fine flesh and trained to a decent gait. 
 He had learned to mind the rein instead of the 
 Greek substitute, a kick in the side. A few re- 
 volver shots close to his ears had so far redeemed 
 him from skittishness that he would go out on 
 the plain in the evening and listen to the practice 
 of the Citizen Defenders without moving a mus- 
 cle. (The Citizen Defenders, led by a fat mer- 
 chant, were mostly boys and gray-headed men of 
 Larissa, and they went out to shoot at imaginary 
 Turks every day.) 
 
 All this I had accomplished despite Kitso's 
 grooms. Castopis said at the start that I must 
 have a groom, and he hired several. Whenever I 
 went into the street a number of fellows in 
 fustinella met me in our little courtyard and held 
 out their hands for a week's wages. When I sent 
 Castopis for a currycomb, he brought back a na- 
 tive product evidently intended for harrowing 
 ploughed ground. When I ordered Kitso for a 
 
44 Going to War in Greece 
 
 ride all of my grooms gathered in front of the 
 stable door and began session as a deliberative 
 body. Finally, I had to spring through the 
 crowd, groom and saddle Kitso myself, while 
 my following looked on benevolently, saying to 
 one another, " I told you he could do it ! " 
 
 The chatter of the cafes had begun to lose its 
 charm and the odors of the streets continued to 
 increase in virility. Greasy mutton and potatoes 
 boiled in grease all day long pall on the most 
 powerful foreign stomach. You must not eat too 
 far into your stores. At any meal the emer- 
 gency might arrive when you would be depend- 
 ent on them alone with no facilities for laying in 
 further supplies from Athens. Correspondents 
 having tired of going to the one mosque in the 
 town in searching for another diversion, after 
 elaborate pulling of wires gained the privilege of 
 entering one of the two harems in Larissa, and 
 there saw three pairs of crow-marked eyes in a 
 row above three veils. As a body, they were be- 
 ginning to fear that they would have to wait for- 
 ever with nothing to do. That is, the little Eng- 
 lish speaking phalanx of five or six Englishmen 
 and one American were. Other foreign nation- 
 alities had come and had gone, while the Anglo- 
 
3 ' D > 1 5 3 
 
 " Messages flashed to the foot of Olympus. 
 
 Sewed bags to be filled with sand. 
 
Going to War in Greece 45 
 
 Saxon phalanx remained firm not because the 
 editor of the local paper told us we should cer- 
 tainly have war, but rather out of pure bull- 
 headedness. If all the turbulence of the caf^s 
 should end in peace, we must return to Athens 
 with our equipments and uneaten stores, a little 
 crestfallen; a little disappointed. 
 
 The editor of the local paper had the appear- 
 ance of a prophet and perhaps he was one. 
 He wore a white hat, a green vest, and panta- 
 loons with a wide stripe. He preached vigor- 
 ously to us of the stupidity of the Erasmian 
 pronunciation of Greek which foreigners learn at 
 school. But we could not help liking him when 
 he laid his cane on the caf^ table, and, remov- 
 ing his hat and wiping his head with a huge 
 red handkerchief, said : " Gentlemen, the news ! 
 What is the news? Since we have no news, 
 what shall we drink to the conquest of Turkey 
 which is written on the wall? Do not ques- 
 tion me about the information which I publish 
 on handbills for a lepta ! There are secrets 
 in our profession as well as in others, gentle- 
 men." 
 
 Kitso and I had visited every station from the 
 Vale of Tempe to Ravenni. We started on our 
 
46 Going to War in Greece 
 
 journeys early in the morning, and long before 
 the noonday sun was shining down in uncom- 
 fortable splendor he was in some rude enclosure 
 enjoying the sack of barley which he had brought 
 on his back and I was drinking bitter resinato 
 wine and eating mutton with the officers of the 
 post. After luncheon some of the older officers, 
 following an old superstition of Greek brigands, 
 looked through the shoulder-blade of the lamb 
 we had eaten for signs of a fight, and, needless 
 to say, found them as usual. At three or four 
 o'clock, when the heat had somewhat abated, the 
 commander of the post took me out to see his 
 men, the lay of the land, his battery, or what- 
 ever he had to show to visitors; asking with 
 naive interest, " Are you content ? Have we 
 not things like the Europeans? Are we not 
 quite different from the Turk ? " but always 
 speaking of himself as an oriental. It was well 
 to be content, thoroughly content, lest you be 
 misunderstood. Once I said: "Yes, you are. 
 Bravo ! But I wish you had more artillery." 
 " Oh, then," was the quick reply, " you are op- 
 posed to the cause of Greece ! " In vain did I 
 endeavor to explain that my anxiety was only 
 a result of my Phil-Hellenic sympathies. The 
 
"With pick and shovel." 
 
 " Which had been a Pasha's house. 
 
Going to War in Greece 47 
 
 officer could not see the difference between 
 friendly criticism and condemnation. 
 
 In the cool of the evening Kitso and I jogged 
 back home, he thinking of the barley in his 
 stable and I enjoying the sunset on Olympus. 
 Kitso had never had big rations before, and some- 
 times I thought that I saw a broad grin on his 
 face. When there were no more frontier posts 
 to visit we rode from village to village and from 
 shepherd's fold to shepherd's fold in the late af- 
 ternoon, like the lords of olden times inspecting 
 their property. We saw women sitting in the 
 doorways of squat little houses, plodding shep- 
 herds crook in hand, shepherds' sons gazing awe- 
 struck at the movement of a battery, and ugly 
 shepherds' dogs which gave chase whenever their 
 masters were out of sight, nipping at the heels 
 of my boots and making Kitso dash across the 
 fields like mad. The peasants sometimes stopped 
 us at the folds and offered us sheep's milk to 
 drink, which is much better than the strong-tast- 
 ing milk of the occasional cow that leads a 
 dreary, hampered existence in Greece. 
 
 Mornings were the dreamiest part of the whole 
 day. You might try to write, you might sprinkle 
 your couch with Keating's powder and lie down 
 
48 Going to War in Greece 
 
 to read ; whatever you did you eventually drifted 
 out to the cafes. 
 
 It was while lounging thus that Dumlos came 
 my way. He was a tall, lean Macedonian, with 
 deviltry written on his ragged outfit, in his coun- 
 tenance and in his manner of rolling a cigarette. 
 At the moment that Castopis introduced him to 
 me as a miracle-worker who had killed a hundred 
 Turks, Dumlos was gesticulating over a cafe 
 table to the mayor and a fat Greek merchant 
 from Constantinople. 
 
 "Thou art witness, O worthy Mayor, that I 
 am no lamb to wear tinkle bells and eat grass," 
 Dumlos said. " Did I learn all the paths of the 
 mountains to wear trousers, to put my gun up 
 and put it down again at the word of some city 
 officer ? My band is waiting. It is hungry and 
 it needs clothes and arms. Should I go to the 
 Pasha for these or to you, O worthy Mayor? 
 Thou knowest that every man of my men will 
 kill his hundred Turks and I will kill my thou- 
 sand, or else Dumlos is dirt under your feet. 
 He will turn brigand on Olympus, and that 
 would be worse for Dumlos than going to hell. 
 
 ** My blood leapt in my veins when I heard 
 that thou wert to make war, O worthy Mayor. 
 
The Citizen Defenders. 
 
 " Gazing, awe-struck." 
 
Going to War in Greece 49 
 
 Straightway, I got all the good men and true to- 
 gether under the Pasha's nose. Be thou my wit- 
 ness that I had just won the last brave man in 
 the region to my band, and he had run away 
 with the others to the mountains to come to thy 
 aid, when I turned around in the village street to 
 look into ten rifle barrels. It is plain, O worthy 
 Mayor, that mine enemies feared me too much 
 to try to take me face to face. 
 
 " ' Thou art wanted by the Pasha,' said their 
 leader, trembling at the sight of me. 
 
 " My words were like honey, worthy Mayor. 
 ' Let us hasten,' I said. ' I die waiting to be of 
 service to my worthy master.' 
 
 ''Alas! The Pasha saw in me one to whom 
 he had unexpectedly loaned a little money on a 
 dark night. For what can an honest Greek under 
 a Pasha do except to live the life of a free man in 
 the mountains ? 
 
 " * I recognize thee ! Thou art a villain ! ' 
 cried the Pasha. 
 
 " ' Nay, thou art mistaken, my lord. It tvas 
 my brother, who resembles me much, that robbed 
 you,' I replied. 
 
 " ' Then I have taken only one of two villains ! ' 
 he said. 
 
50 Going to War in Greece 
 
 *' ' Nay, nay, worthy ruler,' I replied, ' kill thy 
 slave if thou wilt, but I have not two brothers/ 
 
 **The squatting infidel smiled and sent five 
 infidel hirelings away with me to the mountain 
 side, where they need not bend their backs to 
 make a hole for my carcass. 
 
 " * Thy will is my pleasure, O master ! * I said. 
 
 "And I thought: * Dumlos, thou art a wise 
 man, and a wise man is worth more than five 
 fools ! ' 
 
 '* So, as we were going to the mountains, I 
 stumbled on a stone and fell. 
 
 " * I have broken my limb and cannot rise ! ' I 
 said. 
 
 " ' Up, you infidel ! ' cried the hirelings, and 
 seized hold of me. 
 
 " A good Mohammedan must obey his masters, 
 must he not, O worthy Mayor? 
 
 " * Poor, wounded Dumlos, you must rise 
 though it kills thee,' I thought. 
 
 *' I sprang up with all my might, so obedient 
 wa's I. So suddenly did I rise that his rifle flew 
 out of one of the infidel's hands into mine. I 
 sent a bayonet through the throat of the one on 
 the right and a bayonet through the heart of the 
 one on the left. The others fired at me. But, 
 
Going to War in Greece 51 
 
 O worthy Mayor, Dumlos did not drink his 
 mother's milk for nothing! I lifted up their 
 rifle barrels, thus, and their bullets passed over 
 my head, while I bayoneted both of them. 
 
 " ' Ah, Dumlos,' I thought, * the Pasha is un- 
 kind. He gives thee too small a guard. Thou 
 hast no chance to show thy talents.' 
 
 *'The infidel whose gun I had taken ran away, 
 wailing in fright like a lamb strayed from the 
 fold. 
 
 " 'Tis well ! ' I thought. ' I will not kill him, 
 but make him prisoner, and take him as a gift to 
 the worthy mayor.' 
 
 " I ran after him, gaining on him. Bullets be- 
 gan to whistle about my ears, and I saw that five 
 more of the infidels were following me. 
 
 " ' It is too bad, too bad ! ' I thought. * I can 
 take no gift to the worthy mayor.* 
 
 " Then with six bullets I killed the remaining 
 six of mine enemies. Only ten altogether, I 
 know, worthy Mayor ; but there were no more. 
 And then I came to thee who art brave and 
 great-minded, O worthy Mayor, to ask thee and 
 thy great friend, the mighty merchant of Con- 
 stantinople, not to let my loyal band go hungry 
 and die of sorrow for the want of cartridges." 
 
52 Going to War in Greece 
 
 So moved was the Greek merchant that he 
 gave Dumlos a huge package of Greek paper 
 money on the spot. 
 
 ** You will not know me in an hour," said 
 Dumlos. 
 
 He hurried away to the shops and returned 
 most unconventionally swagger in a silk cap, 
 new tasseled shoes, milk-white fustinella, em- 
 broidered jacket, and wearing an old-fashioned 
 Greek sword in a battered, brass scabbard. 
 
 The Greek merchant was one of the repre- 
 sentatives of the Greek Ethnike Haeteria Society 
 at the front. Like the National Society, the 
 Ethnike Haeteria labored for the extension of 
 the Hellenic Kingdom, but by more radical 
 methods. The National Society footed most of 
 the bills for the regulation preparations for war. 
 It was composed of well-to-do Greek merchants 
 in all parts of the world who were willing to 
 spend their money on the homeland with a rash- 
 ness that was in striking contrast to their busi- 
 ness habits. 
 
 Many of these merchants were members of 
 both societies. The Ethniki Haeteria was a 
 secret organization, supposed to be an adjunct 
 of the National Society, whose cardinal faith 
 
You will not know me in an hour,' Dumlos said." 
 
 The big, bearded child who acted as his lieutenant.' 
 
Going to War in Greece 53 
 
 was an offensive war at all hazards. The di- 
 rectors, shrewd, self-made traders of the most 
 cosmopolitan kind who had haggled over prices 
 in all parts of the world, with pathetic guileless- 
 ness accepted the word of the untrained Dum- 
 loses that they could cut an orange off a tree 
 with a rifle shot at a distance of a thousand 
 yards and vanquish ten times their number of 
 Turks. 
 
 " When the Greek sets out to become a 
 trader," said one of the merchants, '' he becomes 
 the greatest of traders ; and when he sets out to 
 become a fighter he becomes the greatest of 
 fighters." It did not occur to him that the 
 Greek gift for talk so needful in the mart was 
 quite useless on the battlefield. If you suggested 
 to him that Greece had prejudiced herself in the 
 eyes of Europe by defaulting the interest on her 
 national debt, he would reply in a burst of anger : 
 " What matters a country's debts when a coun- 
 try's honor is at stake?" 
 
 The plans of the Ethnike Haeteria were mag- 
 nificent. Two or three hundred Dumloses were 
 to arm ten thousand of the Greek population 
 over the frontier in Macedonia and Epirus. 
 Other Dumloses were to organize five thousand 
 
54 Going to War in Greece 
 
 Irregulars in Greek territory and when these 
 crossed the frontier the ten thousand were to 
 rise and join them in excursions from mountain 
 fastnesses to harass the flank and the rear of the 
 Turkish army. Kalabaka in the mountains at 
 the terminus of a branch of the Thessalian railway 
 was the rendezvous of the Irregulars and at 
 Kalabaka Dumlos's band of braves awaited him. 
 At the time of my meeting with Dumlos I had 
 just heard the news that the first division of Ir- 
 regulars had crossed the frontier at an unguarded 
 point in the early morning, had taken two 
 Turkish stations, and was still moving on victo- 
 riously. Here, at least, was an opportunity to 
 see some action, and I concluded to accept 
 Dumlos's invitation to go to Kalabaka and then, 
 perhaps, across the frontier with the second di- 
 vision of Irregulars. Kalabaka was a short two 
 days* journey distant on horseback. At Trik- 
 kala, where we halted over night, we heard an 
 indefinite rumor that the Irregulars had encoun- 
 tered opposition. On our way from Trikkala to 
 Kalabaka the next morning we met straggling 
 figures with rifles. From them we learned that a 
 thousand Irregulars in fine new petticoats and 
 carrying the outrageous weight of two hundred 
 
Going to War in Greece 55 
 
 and fifty cartridges each had, indeed, taken two 
 Turkish stations garrisoned with perhaps a dozen 
 soldiers, and then, after going without food for 
 thirty-six hours, had met a Turkish company and 
 had scattered, each Hmp petticoat returning to 
 Greek soil as best it might. 
 
 Either the Greeks over the frontier were satis- 
 fied with Turkish rule or else they considered 
 rebellion impracticable. Not one of the Dum- 
 loses who had gone to Macedonia and Epirus 
 with the Haeteria's money in their pockets 
 materialized at the critical moment, and the 
 Greek peasants even refused to give the invaders 
 bread. 
 
 Dumlos was waiting for us under the shade of 
 a mulberry grove just out of Kalabaka. With 
 him were his men, some forty in number, looking 
 as swagger as himself. 
 
 " I made them out of nothing," Dumlos ex- 
 plained. " They came to me hungry and were fed. 
 They came to me ragged and were clothed. Then 
 I gave them fine rifles and wrapped a bandolier of 
 cartridges around their loins and threw one over 
 each shoulder and they were men ! You shall 
 see how bravely we can march up to the caf^." 
 
 Saying, " Come on, my heroes! " he started off 
 
56 Going to War in Greece 
 
 with his breast puffed out like a pouter pigeon's, 
 but not one of his followers stirred. The big, 
 bearded child who acted as his lieutenant said 
 that they had concluded not to march unless they 
 received three leptas apiece. 
 
 " True Greeks ! " observed Castopis. 
 
 The bribe being produced from under Dumlos's 
 jacket, Dumlos and his men went up the path 
 out of step with the pomposity of comic opera 
 villains. 
 
 Kalabaka proved to be quite the filthiest of all 
 the Greek towns I had yet visited. Castopis 
 found an odorous little room for me over the 
 restaurant and a stable for Kitso near the public 
 well where the whole town drew its drinking 
 water. As Dumlos's guest, I ate with him in the 
 restaurant. The Greeks consider the head the 
 choicest part of a lamb and the eye the choicest 
 morsel of the head. Having good reason to be- 
 lieve that Dumlos shunned the wash-basin day 
 after day, I never had the courage to look at his 
 hands as he tore a lamb's head to pieces or 
 gouged out an eye with his forefinger and offered 
 it to me with a smile of satisfied self-sacrifice. 
 
 Dumlos was expecting orders to start with his 
 band for the frontier at any hour and I had 
 
' ) 5 
 
 "I made them out of nothing. 
 
 A stable for Kitso near the public well." 
 
Going to War in Greece 57 
 
 already partly promised to go with him. Four 
 days passed and still he and his men were loung- 
 ing about Kalabaka. His money was fast going. 
 Only by bribes was he able to keep his band 
 together. They were wasting their cartridges 
 shooting at rocks and the insulators on Govern- 
 ment telegraph wires, and their general conduct 
 was becoming worse and worse. 
 
 The captain of the unsuccessful band which 
 took two Turkish stations and then remembered 
 that he had no commissariat, came down the 
 mountain side one afternoon with three fol- 
 lowers, his fustinella brown with dirt, and all 
 Kalabaka gathered around him in the caf^ to 
 hear his explanation. He drank a coffee and 
 rolled a cigarette and said he came back not on 
 account of Turkish opposition, but because he 
 found that there were several cowards in his 
 band. He had concluded to weed out these 
 and then start afresh for Constantinople. The 
 merchants believed him and continued their prep- 
 arations for another raid. The police officer in 
 charge at Kalabaka told me that the government 
 was not cognizant of the raid. In the next breath 
 he said he was going to requisition the rifles 
 of all the Irregulars who had shown the white 
 
58 Going to War in Greece 
 
 feather across the frontier, inasmuch as they 
 were enemies of order. There were sage dis- 
 cussions of strategy out on the slope beyond 
 the cafe, in which the merchants, the petticoat 
 chieftains, and sometimes the police officer him- 
 self took part. Dumlos always returned from 
 these discussions saying, " We shall go to-mor- 
 row! " 
 
 A visit to the monks who dwell on the sum- 
 mits of the sugar-loaf rocks which overhang the 
 town of Kalabaka was a pleasant diversion while 
 awaiting a turn of events. It was a long trudge 
 up the mountain path before we reached the 
 grateful shade of a little chasm at the doorstep 
 of the largest monastery. Our eyes followed a 
 heavy, dangling rope up a hundred and fifty feet 
 to an opening in a ramshackle, old stone build- 
 ing which seemed to have grown upon the rock 
 like a toadstool out of a fallen tree. In answer 
 to our calls a little white head with a little white 
 beard was thrust out of the window of its house 
 up in the clouds. 
 
 " What do you want ? " cried a distant, 
 squeaky little voice. 
 
 " We want to come up and pay our respects," 
 we cried back. 
 
Going to War in Greece 59 
 
 '* The walking is not good," said the squeaky- 
 little voice. " We'll have to pull you up." 
 
 A net was lowered and a young monk came 
 down a hanging ladder to gather strands of the 
 net about us and fasten them to the rope. A 
 windlass creaked up in the clouds, the meshes of 
 the net began to draw tightly on our flesh, and 
 we were lifted from the great rock on which we 
 had been sitting. At a height of fifty feet the 
 windlass gave an unusually loud creak and we 
 shot down but only for a foot. Then we 
 stopped with an uncomfortable, but a grateful, \ 
 
 chug. I was so fast bound that I could not look 
 up, but I imagined the white-bearded little man 
 was grinning over his favorite joke. 
 
 When we were swung in at the door by half a 
 dozen strong hands, landing in an undignified 
 sprawl on the floor, I looked up to see that the 
 white-bearded little man was the tall Father 
 Superior. He took us at once to the contribu- 
 tion box, inside of the church which had been 
 crudely Italian three hundred years ago. In the 
 Middle Ages, years of labor and infinite patience 
 built the monasteries of Meteora to be secure 
 from assault. To this day the ladder is always 
 pulled up when a monk ascends or descends. 
 
6o Going to War in Greece 
 
 Now only three of the monasteries are occupied 
 and nothing is done to keep even these from 
 going to ruin. The largest one has pasturage 
 for a few sheep. From eight to a dozen monks 
 live there, enjoying the laziest of existences in 
 buildings with room for a hundred. That good 
 churchman, the Father Superior, said that he 
 preferred Turkish to Grecian rule ; for the 
 Turks allowed them all the income from the 
 monastic estates, whereas the Greek government 
 took a portion of it. The Father Superior made 
 a quaint figure as he walked about the little 
 court ; but the oldest of the monks, wrinkled 
 and bent Pothakes, at ninety was even more 
 quaint. In the summer time Pothakes sits from 
 sunrise to sunset under a flowering tree, and he 
 moves only with its shadow. 
 
 The next day Dumlos received orders to start, 
 and at almost the same moment I received def- 
 inite news that the war had begun in earnest. 
 While Kitso was being saddled I walked with 
 Dumlos and his band to the edge of the village, 
 whence they started off gaily on a full stomach 
 to make war without a commissariat. He threw 
 his arms around my neck suddenly and kissed 
 me, and I believe there were tears in the great 
 
"Seemed to have grown upon the rock." 
 
 " The Father Superior.' 
 
Going to War in Greece 6i 
 
 child's eyes. After I had wet my handkerchief 
 at the well and wiped my face I tried to forgive 
 him. 
 
 I rode with all haste to Trikkala, where I 
 found officers mounting the tables in cafes to 
 read bulletins of victories. I left Castopis to 
 bring tired Kitso on in the early morning, while 
 I was crowded into a rambling old carriage with 
 officers hurrying to different stations along the 
 frontier. Thus we hoped to be on hand for a 
 promised battle the next day. But the carriage 
 broke down after going at a snail's pace all night 
 and I was forced to walk until late in the after- 
 noon before I arrived at Ravenni, just after the 
 last gun of an unimportant artillery fusillade had 
 been fired. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AT last the Turks made war, the Sultan as- 
 suming not the annexation of Crete but 
 the raid of the Irregulars as a direct rea- 
 son for asserting his dignity. M. Delyannis, the 
 Greek prime minister, had invited his rabid 
 countrymen to laugh with him when he asked the 
 Turkish ambassador at Athens, " How can you 
 expect us to do better than your whole army? 
 Has it not failed to keep the Irregulars out of 
 Turkey ? " The ambassador replied meekly that 
 he could not consider this answer an explanation 
 of the worst possible violation of international 
 amity, much less a guarantee that such a viola- 
 tion would not be repeated ; and accordingly 
 with the politest of bows he withdrew from 
 Athens. 
 
 While preparing for war the Sultan had wel- 
 comed such incidents as would hold the blood- 
 thirsty Turk up to European gaze as a martyr 
 
Going to War in Greece 63 
 
 who had borne uncomplainingly ever-increasing 
 wrongs inflicted by the violent Greek. When his 
 preparations were complete the raid of the Ir- 
 regulars pleasantly surprised him with the finest 
 of excuses for action. Even then the first contact 
 of Turkish and Greek regular troops was so 
 managed as to make the Greeks the offenders. 
 On Saturday, April i/th, the Turks moved for- 
 ward on to some neutral ground at the frontier 
 station of Analipsis, whereupon the Greeks fired 
 upon them and they retreated, leaving the con- 
 tested position to be occupied temporarily by 
 their enemy. 
 
 From first to last, indeed, events had played 
 into the Sultan's cunning hands. Incensed by 
 the invasion of the Irregulars, the Turkish sol- 
 diers were chafing for their prey like hounds in 
 leash. Already the Greek peasant Reserves, who 
 like something new as well as the Athenian, 
 ancient or modern, had become a little tired of 
 the business of soldiering. Without increasing 
 in numbers the Army of the Cafe had idled and 
 grown flabby. Its officers who had shouted 
 " Vive la guerre I Toute Varmee est prete pour le 
 combat^' found themselves dumfounded and not 
 prepared at all in the actual presence of war. 
 
64 Going to War in Greece 
 
 Our Headquarters Staff knew nothing about the 
 disposition of the Turkish forces and were hazy 
 about the disposition of their own. The Crown 
 Prince having no plan of campaign, either of de- 
 fense or of offense, Edhem Pasha was kind enough 
 to make one for him. 
 
 Any invasion of Greek territory must be by 
 one of three passes : that of Ravenni, some fif- 
 teen miles to the west of Larissa ; of Meluna, 
 some ten miles almost directly north of Larissa ; 
 and of Nezero, some eight miles to the south 
 and six miles to the east of Larissa through the 
 Vale of Tempe. Ravenni being the most open, 
 the Greek commanders could not believe that 
 Edhem Pasha would attempt to come through by 
 either of the other passes. Accordingly, without 
 watching the movements of the enemy's troops 
 with a view to learning his point of concentra- 
 tion, they placed the flower of the Greek artillery 
 at Ravenni under the direction of Colonel Smol- 
 lenske, the ablest Greek artillery officer. That 
 only a sub-lieutenant and two soldiers had been 
 in the Turkish watch-house at Meluna Pass for 
 two months seemed to convince the Greeks of 
 the superfluity of a strong Greek force there. 
 
 When I arrived at the little cluster of tents in 
 
Going to War in Greece 65 
 
 the mouth of the valley which sheltered Colonel 
 SmoUenske, his officers, and such of his men as 
 there was room for, I learned that all of the news 
 thus far received by him was favorable. The 
 whole frontier from Ravenni to Nezero had 
 gradually blazed up after the first shots at An- 
 alipsis on Saturday, until by Monday all was in a 
 flame ; a leisurely, oriental flame. The opposing 
 sides had lain behind ridges or in their watch- 
 houses and fired intermittently at each other 
 with slight losses. We had taken a few watch- 
 houses and here and there had gained more little 
 points of vantage than the Turks unless no 
 news from Meluna Pass was bad news. The 
 possibilities of a Meluna Pass without any news 
 was so attractive that, tired and sleepy as I was, 
 I was inclined to set out for Meluna that night. 
 But I accepted Colonel SmoUenske's offer of a 
 blanket in his tent and a share of his dinner of 
 mutton, eggs and one orange. 
 
 " You need not worry," he said in his clear, 
 cheery voice. '* You will see some fighting to- 
 morrow. Our friends of the Turkish artillery 
 always begin firing at sunrise. This has been 
 their practice for centuries, I am told, and I sup- 
 pose that their intention is to take the enemy by 
 
66 Going to War in Greece 
 
 surprise. Be assured that the noise of their guns 
 will awaken you in the morning, and I trust that 
 any accidents which may befall you will be as 
 amusing and as harmless as the experience of 
 General Mavromichalis and his staff yesterday. 
 A shell struck a tumbledown shepherd's hut 
 which the general was passing and knocked most 
 of the mud roof on to the heads of himself and 
 staff, without doing them the slightest injury." 
 
 As we ate and as we chatted over our coffee, 
 orderlies and staff officers were constantly com- 
 ing in and the colonel gave orders to them with 
 a directness and self-confidence noticeably lack- 
 ing in most Greek officers of high rank. 
 
 Quite in keeping with the colonel's prophecy, 
 I was awakened at four o'clock the next morning 
 by the booming of guns in the distance. Flashes 
 of fire five miles away, high up on our left, 
 showed the position of the Turkish guns, and for 
 all I could see oriental precedent was hammer- 
 ing away aimlessly at the cold mist which hid the 
 Greek positions in the valley. I started toward 
 the Turkish battery along the slopes at the left 
 which Kitso and I had traversed only a few days 
 before. In half an hour the mist had lifted and 
 our positions were visible. The redoubt of Vigli 
 
Going to War in Greece 67 
 
 where the Turkish Krupps were placed was a 
 high, rocky mountain spur. Our own field guns 
 were skilfully distributed over the plains and out- 
 numbered the guns on Vigli, though inferior to 
 them in calibre. Soon we responded to the early 
 salutation of the enemy and immediately the 
 fire grew brisk on both sides. Sometimes the 
 Turks seemed to be aiming at our batteries, and 
 again they shot quite at random. 
 
 I had thought myself quite out of the line of 
 fire when two half-spent five-inch shells, black 
 streaks ricochetting over the ground, almost 
 jumped into my pocket. A moment later a 
 time shell burst well over my head, though there 
 was nothing within fifty rods of me except some 
 orderlies and water carriers. Going out into the 
 nearest Greek battery, I found the gunners work- 
 ing snappily, while the officers exchanged jokes, 
 and everybody cheered when a Greek shell 
 landed well. In answer there came a hoarse 
 yell from the Turkish gunners hidden behind the 
 gray rocks of Vigli who threw shells all about us 
 but never put one into our battery .itself, which 
 showed the everlasting advantage in warfare of 
 being the bull's eye rather than the rings around 
 it. Many of the Turkish shells failed to ex- 
 
68 Going to War in Greece 
 
 plode, thus becoming as ineffective as so many- 
 ancient round shot sent flying and ricochetting 
 over the valley. In a lull a lieutenant called my 
 attention to the absence of his revolver and said 
 laughingly that the little round visitor which had 
 carried it away the day before had, on account of 
 its nationality, refused to respond to percussion. 
 
 The morning spent in this battery was to me 
 the brightest page in the story of the war. Then 
 only did the Greeks seem superior to the Turks, 
 for our marksmanship was certainly better than 
 theirs and we showed a spirit equal to checking 
 a considerable advance. It was fascinating to 
 watch for the effect of our shells. If the dust of 
 explosion were gray we knew that the shell had 
 fallen far short, on the rocks, without execution ; 
 if the dust were red we knew that it had fallen 
 in the earthwork itself. We must have done a 
 deal of damage, but we had not, as our enthusi- 
 astic artillerymen believed, silenced some of the 
 Turkish guns Avhich had ceased firing. 
 
 Rather, I am inclined to think that the Mo- 
 hammedan gunners were only having a siesta or 
 a cup of coffee and prayers ; and it was most 
 fortunate that Colonel Smollenske did not act on 
 the advice of the enthusiasts to try to take Vigli 
 
Going to War in Greece 69 
 
 by storm in front. The only way to take Vigli, 
 the colonel said, was on the side or the rear. On 
 the previous day as well some of the guns of 
 Vigli had appeared to be silenced, and the Turks 
 had given up the watch-houses with little resist- 
 ance as a further enticement to a suicidal move- 
 ment by the Greek infantry. 
 
 When I left the battery and sought shelter 
 behind a mountain spur I took out my field 
 glasses again and looked in the direction of the 
 musketry which had been rattling on the other 
 side of the valley ever since daybreak. The 
 blue lines of the Greeks standing out sharply 
 against the gray mountain side were in the same 
 position as when I had first observed them five 
 hours before, still hammering away at, to me, an 
 invisible foe. One could not help thinking, as 
 he looked from little height to little height along 
 the horizon which, with earthworks as cushions 
 for bullets and shells, could have been made the 
 finest of redoubts, of how the regular army had 
 wasted its time, and of the pity of spending a 
 sum in arming irregular " petticoat men ** which 
 would have purchased several mountain guns or 
 Maxims. 
 
 There seemed no likelihood of any decisive 
 
JO Going to War in Greece 
 
 conflict at Ravenni. My fear that no news from 
 Meluna might mean great news increased, and I 
 determined to return to Larissa. 
 
 Castopis had been told to wait for me at a 
 small village some five miles in the rear of 
 Ravenni, which was a long enough tramp at 
 midday when one had been up since four o'clock 
 with no breakfast except the half of a small cup 
 of revoltingly thick, strong, black coffee and a 
 piece of soldiers' bread. As I swung along I was 
 cheered by the recollection of the good things 
 in my traveling bags and by the prospect of 
 reaching Larissa from the village in an hour and 
 a half on Kitso's back. But I found that Kitso 
 had been taken ill on the road; and the army 
 veterinary surgeon who happened to be present 
 said that it would be most unwise to ride him for 
 two or three hours. Several horseless cavalry 
 officers posted at the village furnished bread and 
 mutton while I furnished sardines, and we made 
 a grand banquet in the shadow of the shep- 
 herd's hut which the officers were occupying, 
 with horseless cavalrymen to serve us. 
 
 Four companies of Reserves were lounging on 
 the hillside and at the riverside near by. The 
 captain of cavalry who carved the mutton with 
 
Moving only with its shadow.' 
 
 The Army of Desolation. 
 
3 
 
Going to War in Greece 71 
 
 a pocket-knife said that they were waiting for 
 orders. And so, I learned, were many other 
 companies of Reserves scattered four miles out 
 of action along the road from Larissa to Trik- 
 kala, their officers in a state of general perplexity 
 as to geographic details and buttonholing every 
 passerby for news. 
 
 It was four o'clock before I bade good-bye to 
 the officer who had carved the mutton with a 
 pocket-knife. I was not to see him again until 
 the dismal business on the road to Thermopylae. 
 Then he was sitting in a caf^ ten miles to the 
 rear of the army and another cavalry officer was 
 saying to him : ** Who told you to leave your 
 post of duty? Get out of here! Get back to 
 the army, you ! " 
 
 The white dust of the road seemed to blaze 
 like the sun overhead as we rode toward Larissa. 
 To lose Kitso at that moment would be the 
 greatest hardship that could befall me. As I 
 allowed him to choose his pace, we did not ar- 
 rive until dusk. Women were speaking with one 
 another in the streets and in the doorways of the 
 little courtyards which are the Grecian women's 
 world in times of peace. The City Hall was 
 empty, and only a few civilians loitered in the 
 
72 Going to War in Greece 
 
 caf^s. Surfeited shop-keepers gazed as curiously 
 as unsophisticated shepherds at a mounted 
 passerby. Larissa was hushed like the sick room 
 of a fever patient at the crisis. It dared not 
 ask the latest news, for the general air of gravity 
 seemed to portend an unfavorable answer. At 
 Headquarters, aides-de-camp with gestures and 
 sighs said there was no news from Meluna Pass. 
 The officers who came in from nearby posts to 
 the cafe in the evening, however, communicated 
 their lightness of manner to the general public, 
 and Larissa became gay again. 
 
 " Coinme ciy comme qa^ with now and then a 
 watch-house in our hands," they said gaily. 
 " To-morrow Colonel SmoUenske will take 
 Vigli.- 
 
 But they had no news from Meluna Pass. No 
 correspondent, no one of the foreign military at- 
 taches had been to Meluna or was wanted there. 
 At the telegraph office you were told that you 
 might send no telegram about Meluna, and then 
 you knew that no news from Meluna was, indeed, 
 great news and immensely bad news. 
 
 Indisputable evidence of disaster appeared in 
 the streets the next (Wednesday) morning. The 
 advance of the Army of Desolation which hence- 
 
Going to War in Greece 73 
 
 forth was to precede the Army of the Caf6 in all 
 of its marches had begun. Whole families with 
 their simple household goods packed on don- 
 keys and on rude slab-wheeled ox- carts were 
 moving in a sad caravan across the plain. An 
 officer whom I met on the road explained that 
 the Greeks had had to give up Liguria at the 
 mouth of the pass and Karatsali, another village 
 near by, for strategic purposes and the refugees 
 that I saw were their inhabitants. 
 
 Now and then I passed a galloping orderly 
 with the news of his dispatch written on his face. 
 At Turnavo, some five miles to the west of Me- 
 luna Pass, I saw more orderlies waiting in the 
 crooked streets as if perplexed. They were cov- 
 ered with dust and showed the effect of a hard 
 night's work. Peasants with their families and 
 goods were choking up the little square. Every 
 civilian, I learned, had been ordered to leave the 
 town. 
 
 As I drove along the road at the foot of the 
 mountains toward Liguria I heard the same lack- 
 adaisical rattle of musketry all along the moun- 
 tain ridges and occasionally a spent bullet went 
 over my head. Soon I came upon donkeys 
 laden with ammunition, bread carts, stragglers, 
 
74 Going to War in Greece 
 
 sick soldiers resting by the wayside, and other 
 evidences of the rear of a battle line. 
 
 The exchange of hundreds of shells and the 
 two hours' sharp infantry work which were to 
 constitute the action of the next three days has 
 been called the Battle of Mali, and that name 
 will be retained, though other names are as appli- 
 cable. If you will imagine Meluna Pass a river 
 and the sub-plain of Mati a delta, you will best 
 understand the triangular shape of the battle- 
 field. A right-angled mountain spur is at either 
 angle at the base of the triangle. 
 
 The Greeks had built fine military roads along 
 the plain, and also from Pharsala to Domoko 
 and from Domoko to Lamia over the Fourka 
 Pass to Thermopylae, but none up Meluna Pass, 
 and it would seem that with all of their boast- 
 ing the officers were unconsciously preparing for 
 defeat, for they said a road over the pass would 
 be an advantage to the Turks ; quite a needless 
 anxiety, however, considering the destructive 
 power of a little dynamite. Paths, up the ridges 
 for the donkeys with mountain guns could have 
 been easily made. 
 
 A country determined first of all upon a policy 
 of land defense, its only logical policy after the 
 
" An orderly waiting in a crooked street. 
 
 " Evsoni . . . indifferent to shell fire.' 
 
Going to War in Greece 75 
 
 taking of Crete, could have fortified the pass and 
 its surrounding heights with enough mountain 
 and rapid fire guns to have made the air on the 
 Turkish side of the defile so thick with projectiles 
 that an advance up the defile itself would have 
 meant the building of a breastwork for the Turks 
 out of their own flesh. But we had not even 
 defenses within the defile proper where we might 
 have constructed a redoubt at little expense. 
 Our field artillery was at Ravenni where we ex- 
 pected the invasion of an enemy who had not 
 brought his field artillery near Ravenni. In all, 
 I believe he had little more artillery than we, 
 but he had more at the essential point. The 
 ridges along the frontier offered as good natural 
 breastworks for the Turks as for the Greeks. It 
 was not difficult, when we had no spies or scouts, 
 for Edhem Pasha to keep superior numbers busy 
 in the long line from Meluna to Ravenni while 
 he collected a main force superior to any force 
 opposite it. 
 
 With this main force he suddenly dashed up 
 Meluna Pass. Once he gained the other side 
 the Greeks would have to concentrate in the 
 open and their mountain barrier would fall into 
 the hands of the enemy. So surprised were 
 
76 Going to War in Greece 
 
 some of our few artillerymen whose guns com- 
 manded the Turkish advance that they ran away 
 without firing a shot, to the astonishment of the 
 enemy already a little chilled at the prospect of 
 shell fire at short range. The outnumbered reg- 
 ular " petticoat men " in the pass at first fought 
 courageously and gave the enemy its strongest 
 opposition in reaching the plain. On the same 
 day of their success in Meluna the Turks at- 
 tempted, or seemed to attempt, to draw the 
 Greeks on to the disaster of an attack by storm 
 at Ravenni. If Edhem Pasha had no plan of 
 campaign, as some have said, he had an instinc- 
 tive method which, in the face of Greek general- 
 ship, was an excellent substitute for it. 
 
 A rumor was circulated from Headquarters that 
 the ** evacuation " of Liguria at the mouth of the 
 pass without a struggle was due to the misinter- 
 pretation of an order by the ofificer in command 
 there ; but it is hard to withstand the impression 
 that the force at Liguria simply '' funked." 
 Early Wednesday morning the Greeks started to 
 " retake" Liguria; but, without coming into con- 
 tact with the enemy at any point, marched back 
 again to form in line of battle across the breadth 
 of the triangle, where they waited with great 
 
Going to War in Greece jj 
 
 generosity until the Turks should be ready to at- 
 tack on their own conditions. 
 
 Red fezzes in solid masses streamed down the 
 narrow defile unmolested by artillery or sharp- 
 shooters' fire, one battalion going one way and 
 one another to form the right and the left wings 
 of the Turkish battle line. Their right marched 
 to the cover of the brow of a hill, followed by 
 their artillery which appreciated the military 
 road left intact by the Greeks. Bunches of 
 fezzes in the Turkish left stopped in the middle 
 of the plain to form a centre, but the main body 
 kept on moving out in a red streak on our right 
 toward Larissa and soon had occupied a village 
 almost on a line with Turnavo. Greek officers 
 on the rocky bluff shaped like a camel's back 
 just at the right of the Greek batteries watched 
 this spectacle as if entranced, and were moved 
 to little gestures of despair when a great burst of 
 smoke showed that the Greek church in Liguria 
 had been mined. 
 
 Again Edhem Pasha was following a simple 
 plan of strategy. His right remained like a great 
 red blot behind the brow of the hill in a purely 
 defensive position on our left, while his left ad- 
 vanced with increasing strength. Our guns and 
 
yS Going to War in Greece 
 
 our reserves were all placed on our left and left 
 centre. Our right was not being strengthened. 
 General Macris, in charge of the field, was behind 
 the camel's hump rock in a state of seeming para- 
 lytic perplexity. A correspondent told him about 
 the rapid movement on our right, and he was so 
 grateful for information that he sent out some 
 scouts on our centre who rode back unharmed 
 with nothing to tell except that they had heard 
 the sound of bullets. 
 
 Manifestly, if Edhem Pasha tried to drive in 
 our left we could put his right under heavy pun- 
 ishment by converging lines of fire, and should 
 he succeed in this movement, our retreat to La- 
 rissa in good form was easy ; and manifestly, 
 an attack on our centre was equally impractic- 
 able. But if he could flank our right, we would 
 be caught in a crux in trying to retreat around 
 the Turkish left to Larissa which would likely 
 mean our undoing. It was easy enough to guess 
 that the artillery which had moved over to the 
 Turkish right would pass back to their left 
 under the cover of the hill at the right and a 
 line of trees at the centre as they did. 
 
 Late in the afternoon a squadron of Turkish 
 cavalry advanced on our centre, drew the fire of 
 
Going to War in Greece 79 
 
 our guns, and retreated in order without any 
 loss, so far as I could see. Edhem Pasha was in 
 no hurry now that he knew the location of our 
 masked batteries, and this incident closed the 
 first day's spectacle. In Larissa that evening 
 the populace gloated over the story of the whole 
 Turkish cavalry wiped out by our shell fire, and 
 the artillery officers themselves seemed to think 
 they had won a veritable victory. 
 
 Wednesday night was a night to sleep in one's 
 boots if one slept at all. Having proved to my 
 own satisfaction by one o'clock in the morning 
 that no press telegram or private telegram could 
 be sent out of Larissa, I nodded in front of the 
 cafe while horses were being hitched to the cast- 
 off Parisian carriage, which I had chartered in- 
 definitely, to take me back to Mati. The plain 
 of Thessaly was still ours and the camps of the 
 Army of Desolation along the road to Turnavo 
 were safe until daybreak at least. According to 
 reports from Turkish sources as printed in Eu- 
 ropean papers, Turnavo was taken on Tuesday ; 
 but on Thursday morning I was driving through 
 Turnavo and engaged peacefully enough, two 
 miles in the rear of the Greek army, in bolting a 
 breakfast of black bread, cold boiled eggs and 
 
8o Going to War in Greece 
 
 water. When we came to a point which was 
 certain to be out of the line of fire and yet ac- 
 cessible, I bade the driver, under the direst of 
 penalties, to picket his horses and not to leave 
 the carriage until I returned. My luncheon and 
 dinner were in the carriage, moreover, and, if we 
 should have the promised decisive battle I in- 
 tended to drive at top speed to Larissa, where 
 I should find Kitso perfectly fresh to bear me 
 toward a point of communication with New York 
 by telegraph. 
 
 Just before daybreak I sat down on the camel's 
 hump among the Evzoni who with character- 
 istic, gentle politeness made a place for me in 
 their nature's rifle-pit and offered me a share of 
 their mites of black bread and of the oozoo in 
 their flasks. They remembered me from yester- 
 day and now considered me more or less of a 
 comrade. Disappointment at the failure of the 
 expected early attack to materialize was miti- 
 gated by the spectacle of the sun bursting over 
 Pelion and on to the snowy top of Olympus out- 
 lined clearly above the mist which lay over the 
 plain. 
 
 Dissipation of the mist revealed no sign of 
 activity except many curling little columns of 
 
Going to War in Greece 8i 
 
 smoke over the Turkish lines. Mine enemy in 
 the fez and baggy trousers was boiling water. 
 He would like a little bread for breakfast, 
 though bread was not positively essential ; but 
 the small cup of black coffee he must have. 
 Afterward, and not until afterward, he would 
 gladly die for his Prophet. Our soldiers had no 
 fires. Their fine brass kettles, even their coffee- 
 pots, were in Larissa where they were to fall into 
 the hands of the Turks. With plenty of biscuits 
 and bread and coffee in Larissa, Headquarters 
 had made as yet only the scantiest arrangements 
 for their transportation to Mati. 
 
 A glance at the positions showed that the 
 Turkish left had crept up a little on our right 
 which had received few if any of the reinforce- 
 ments that had come up over night. Most of 
 them along with four additional guns had been 
 placed on our left at the left of the camel's hump, 
 while the Turkish right which opposed it re- 
 mained where it was the day before. 
 
 Coffee over, the Turkish guns sent one shell at 
 the polite distance of twenty yards beyond the 
 Greek batteries which seemed to say : " Good 
 morning, gentlemen of the opposition ! Have 
 you had your breakfast, too, and are you ready 
 
82 Going to War in Greece 
 
 to begin ? " Three or four companies of Turkish 
 infantry advanced toward our centre in skirmish 
 order, whereupon the Evzoni made sure that the 
 mechanism of their rifles was in working order 
 and shifted their bandoliers. When two Turkish 
 batteries opened up with a salvo the Evzoni 
 dodged at first, but observing the nonchalance 
 of the foreign military attaches, they showed, by 
 becoming indifferent to the shells which shrieked 
 over their heads to tear up the ploughed ground 
 in the rear of our batteries, that they needed only 
 good handling to make fine regulars. 
 
 The chance the Evzoni longed for was antic- 
 ipated by two Greek shells placed so well into 
 the advancing skirmish line of Turks that it 
 promptly flew to cover ; it did not appear again, 
 having finished a movement which was plainly a 
 feint. The fire of the Turkish batteries dimin- 
 ished and soon ceased altogether and our batter- 
 ies followed their example. Apparently, Edhem 
 Pasha was hardly inclined to attack that day, and 
 the Crown Prince, who had now pitched his tent 
 well in the rear, said that he certainly was not. 
 Correspondents waited in vain until dark for 
 something to turn up and were rewarded only by 
 the sound of intermittent firing along the moun- 
 tain ridges at our left. 
 
Going to War in Greece 83 
 
 There were good reasons why Edhem Pasha 
 should prefer to postpone a pitched battle. He 
 had more artillery coming through Meluna; fur- 
 thermore, that portion of his army which was at 
 this time forcing the pass at Nezeros was ex- 
 pected to make a junction with his flanking left 
 wing. Our only hope of keeping the Turks out 
 of the Thessalian plain was a real battle at Mati. 
 Had we brought up guns and men which could 
 have been spared from other points on the fron- 
 tier, had we surprised the Turkish left at day- 
 break and attacked it with determination and 
 skill but ours was ever the Army of the Cafe. 
 
 On Friday the Turk fired a morning saluta- 
 tion of a few shells after his coffee and then took 
 a siesta from which he awakened suddenly with 
 a salvo from four batteries. One of the officers 
 who was lounging at the little church at the far 
 side of the camel's hump was struck by two frag- 
 ments from one of the cluster of shells that came 
 so unexpectedly. He expired instantly in the 
 arms of a comrade with the words " It is noth- 
 ing ! " on his lips. It was several minutes before 
 the artillerymen were mustered and could return 
 Edhem Pasha's greeting. 
 
 The lapses in the booming of a heavy artillery 
 
84 Going to War in Greece 
 
 fusillade brought to our ears the rattle of musketry 
 on our right, from which Edhem Pasha's gunners 
 had diverted our attention. A sharp infantry 
 attack drove our right in, and it was not late in 
 the afternoon when the flames from the village 
 of Dheleria which had been a mile to the rear of 
 our right on Wednesday told us that it was in 
 the hands of the enemy. Meanwhile, the Crown 
 Prince had ridden through percussion shell fire, 
 which is not dangerous to a man on horseback on 
 ploughed ground, and then had returned to his 
 tent with the air of one who had done his duty ; 
 meanwhile, the Greek cavalry had moved back 
 and forth some two miles in the rear, tiring out 
 its horses. It was variously reported that the 
 Crown Prince and General Mavromichalis and 
 General Macris was each in command of the field. 
 All three were, I think. I saw General Macris 
 behind the bluff mumbling orders to my old 
 escort, the lieutenant of cavalry, with suggestions 
 from a colonel, for he was still the Crown Prince's 
 mouthpiece. 
 
 Having flanked us, the Turkish artillery ceased 
 firing and the Turks rested themselves from the 
 labors of the day with another cup of coffee. 
 Allah would take care of the morrow. 
 
"General Maoris mumbling orders.' 
 
 Stacked high with barley." 
 
Going to War in Greece 8 5 
 
 After dark, while those wounded by shell fire, 
 by the musketry from the ridges, or in the in- 
 fantry attack on our right, were being joggled 
 in bread carts across the bridge over the Peneios 
 into Larissa, the roughly built cathedral on the 
 Acropolis sent out a blaze of light which shim- 
 mered over the surface of the river. Some 
 stragglers who had drifted into the public square 
 said that they had come from a terrible defeat at 
 Nezero which left the Vale of Tempe open to 
 the force which was to form a junction with the 
 Turkish left. For their trouble the stragglers 
 were loudly denounced by the police as cowards 
 and liars, and were locked up. An hour later 
 officers in the cafes were tapped on the shoulder 
 by an orderly and departed in a hurry ; but this 
 was not very unusual in these trying times. 
 
 I strolled up to the cathedral and entering 
 bought the regulation two candles, gluing one of 
 them to a little table and keeping the other to 
 carry in the procession which was already formed 
 outside. Only a few days before the cathedral 
 had rung with cries of, ** Long live the war ! " 
 while all the priests grouped around the bishop 
 had said " Amen ! " to his prayer that the Crown 
 Prince should hasten forth to deliver his fellow- 
 
86 Going to War in Greece 
 
 Christians in Macedonia and Epirus from bond- 
 age. This Friday was the last day of the Greek 
 Lent and the blaze of the candles was the coun- 
 terpart of the blooming flowers on our Easter 
 morning. The procession moved slowly through 
 the principal streets. Returning by way of the 
 public square, Christian after Christian dropped 
 out of line and blew out his candle to listen to 
 the tales of the vanquished stragglers from Nez- 
 ero, now too numerous for the police to sup- 
 press, until the priests alone, bearing aloft in 
 darkness their insignia of Christianity, went up 
 the hill to the church which was soon to be the 
 booty of the False Prophet. 
 
 Our soldiers, who were lying on their arms at 
 Mati, had had the scantiest of rations on Wed- 
 nesday and Thursday. On Friday they had 
 fasted. The Reserves had found that war in deed 
 was not the war of the talk of the cafe. Comrades 
 sent to the well in the rear for water came back 
 with tales of their general's duplicity and of 
 Turkish horrors. A corporal of Reserves, weak 
 for want of food, expressed the feeling of an army 
 which had so ridiculously underestimated its op- 
 ponents when he said at the well: " I heard a bul- 
 let go over my head. They are killing Greeks. 
 
Going to War in Greece 87 
 
 I have seen dead men myself." Greek officers 
 had without reason circulated the tale of wounded 
 Greeks burnt alive in a church by the Turks. 
 This instead of arousing the peasants to the 
 mania of revenge made them quake with fear of 
 a similar fate. All the Irregulars who had been 
 beaten back from the frontier had now wandered 
 from Kalabaka to the principal scene of action. 
 They went up the mountain side, moved around 
 to the right, fired a shot at the enemy well 
 out of range, and then ran away. The peasant 
 soldiers had looked on these mountaineer boast- 
 ers with a taste for brigandage, who were ever 
 telling of their prowess in the village cafes, as 
 the embodiment of physical courage. When 
 the Irregulars showed the white feather the 
 simple Reservist felt that some calamity must be 
 at hand. Thus was the sa.ying of Von Moltke 
 that an untrained soldier meant a loss of three 
 soldiers, for it took three trained soldiers to care 
 for him, illustrated again. 
 
 As his limbs grew stiff from lying on the 
 ground, the simple Reservist's imagination became 
 vivid. For three days he had been inactive 
 within range of the enemy's guns, compelled to 
 see the ploughed ground around him tossed up in 
 
88 Going to War in Greece 
 
 columns of dust ; to listen to the " uh-kung " of 
 bursting shrapnel and the consequent " thr-r-ip " 
 of its fragments as they struck the earth, the 
 sighs of dying bullets which came from the inter- 
 mittent firing on the ridges at the left, and the 
 buzz of an occasional bullet near at hand all 
 needlessly. The soil at the rear of our batteries 
 was as thick with fragments of iron as a German 
 cake with caraway seed, though we had not lost a 
 dozen men all told. At a trying moment on Fri- 
 day the folly of an officer on the ridges at the left 
 was responsible for the spectacle of a dead Evzoni 
 with dangling arms and legs thrown over a plod- 
 ding ass which passed along the whole line of Re- 
 serves. Any one of the few Reserves who was 
 wounded made far more in the imaginations of 
 the peasant boys than ten deaths would had the 
 Reserves been in action. A beating sun on Fri- 
 day helped their empty stomachs to weaken still 
 further brain and body. In the evening they 
 had no camp fires to cheer their spirits. No 
 rollicking soldiers* song was ever heard on the 
 battle field of Mati. Our downhearted Reservist 
 had ceased even to chatter. 
 
 It was too cold for him to sleep on Friday 
 night. He lay on his rifle nervously wakeful 
 
Going to War in Greece 89 
 
 and listening. Stragglers from Nezero had told 
 him the news and then, taking advantage of the 
 privilege of defeat, had hurried on to Larissa, 
 leaving him, shivering and hungry, to face the 
 oncoming reinforcements thousands upon thou- 
 sands, as stragglers always say to excuse their 
 flight for the already victorious left wing of the 
 enemy which was to massacre him then and 
 there. 
 
 The officer, whose presence kept him from 
 carrying out his instinctive desire at once, was 
 probably thinking of the same thing as he was. 
 A word or a sign would be enough to make both 
 of them fly, and this came from Headquarters in 
 the order for the guns and certain portions of 
 the Reserves to draw off, as the first movement 
 of a retreat to Larissa. Only the Evzoni and 
 the Foreign Legion remained at their posts. 
 The remainder of the front lines, seeing the 
 movements in the rear, did not wait for instruc- 
 tions, but hurried on toward the road to Larissa 
 in increasingly tumultuous disorder. On reach- 
 ing the road there was a crux: companies dis- 
 integrated ; officers forgot their responsibilities ; 
 and the fear of each struggling man was increased 
 by the community of fear in which he found him- 
 
90 Going to War in Greece 
 
 self, his inertia of the last few days reacting in 
 spasmodic strength. 
 
 When the Greek cavalry, still wandering aim- 
 lessly over the face of the earth, attempted to 
 pass the chaotic column at the sides of the road, 
 someone raised the cry, " The Turks have come f 
 They are upon us ! Massacre ! Massacre ! " 
 which, flying along the line, was followed by uni- 
 versal firing intended for the Circassian horsemen 
 who were, no doubt, sound asleep five miles 
 away. The bullets went whistling up and down 
 the road, across the plain, and into the air when 
 not dealing death to Greeks. Those officers 
 who did not use their revolvers with equal reck- 
 lessness were powerless to resist such a torrent. 
 The cavalry started into a gallop ; artillerymen 
 cut traces and tried to ride away, intensifying 
 the general belief of the foot soldiers that they 
 were Turks and thus increasing their own dan- 
 ger. A part of the many soldiers of Greece 
 who fell under foot had been shot ; others had 
 fainted or had sunk down from the incapacity of 
 fright, perhaps to be trampled to death. 
 
 A reaction began when the Greek cavalry 
 passed out of sight. Weakness from fasting com- 
 bined with an inherent lack of forcefulness be- 
 
Going to War in Greece 91 
 
 came the helpmeet of discipline. Gradually the 
 tumult subsided. There was another but not a 
 suicidal crux at the bridge at Larissa. Here the 
 Army of Desolation with its crying children, 
 donkeys and ox-carts met the Army of the Cafe 
 and for a moment they became an army of des- 
 peration. 
 
 At dawn the spectacle in the streets of Larissa 
 told dramatically the story of six days' war in 
 Greece. A majority of the officers for the time 
 being stood about in the streets helplessly inact- 
 ive. A puissant minority, angered and strength- 
 ened by shame, set about getting the soldiers up 
 out of the gutter. The Reserves now were like so 
 many sick sheep, and they were easily driven off 
 toward Pharsala in disorder but in a mass by 
 suggesting to them the prospect of five thousand 
 Turkish cavalry sweeping across the plain. Our 
 stores, much of our ammunition, and at least 
 three of the big Krupps on the Acropolis, which 
 had never fired a shot in the defense of Larissa, 
 were lost. We did not burn our bridges, cut our 
 telegraph wires or tear up sections of railroad 
 track, but left all intact for the assistance of the 
 enemy. 
 
 As surprised as the phlegmatic Turk must 
 
92 Going to War in Greece 
 
 have been at the evidences of disaster that lay on 
 the plain in the morning, he did not take advan- 
 tage of hfs opportunity to end the war by an im- 
 mediate attack, or even to cut up our retreat from 
 Larissa with a cavalry charge. Mine enemy in 
 the fez and baggy trousers enjoyed several cups 
 of coffee and several siestas before he followed up 
 his victory. 
 
 An hour after midnight the versatile police 
 who had locked up the stragglers from Nezero 
 had run from house to house, saying : " The 
 Turk is upon us ! The Crown Prince says to fly 
 for your lives with all haste ! " Probably this or- 
 der as given out by Headquarters was scarcely so 
 abrupt or so urgent, considering that the Greek 
 army stood at a distance of eight miles between 
 Larissa and the Turks, with the six hours before 
 daybreak in its favor ; and it is to be presumed 
 that the policeman, Greek fashion, amended his 
 instructions to suit his own taste and the inspira- 
 tion of the moment. As a result, all of the 
 people of Larissa became frantic in their desire 
 for the safety of themselves and their belongings. 
 Sharper than the din of the streets were the moans 
 of the women. All the fear of a subject people 
 who believed their now incensed masters to be 
 
Going to War in Greece 93 
 
 incapable of no horror was pictured in the faces 
 that I saw by the Hght of the street lamps as I 
 made my way with difficulty to my lodgings. 
 
 Castopis, who said that he did not dare to go so 
 near temptation as a battle, had remained behind 
 to superintend the grooms who cared for my 
 pony. On my table I found a note from him : 
 " Honorable Sir : I am called to Volo on per- 
 sonal business. If you do not come to Volo in 
 a day or two I hope to return soon. True to my 
 duty, I have never once had a rifle in my hands." 
 
 The carriage that I had hired could never 
 have been more useful than now, but the driver 
 said that he needed it for his family. There was 
 not room for all of my baggage in my traveling 
 bags at best, and I was not inclined to weigh 
 down my brave Kitso with much else besides 
 myself and the important news which he must 
 bear with all possible speed. So I deliberately 
 left many things, including my canned goods, for 
 the delectation of such of Edhem Pasha's soldiery 
 as should ransack the houses in our street. 
 
 Again and again I congratulated myself that 
 I had kept Kitso fresh by not riding him to the 
 front. I had saddled and bridled him and had 
 my hand on the pommel of the saddle when my 
 
94 Going to War in Greece 
 
 landlady rushed up to me, and screaming *' Tur- 
 cos ! " ran her hand suggestively across her 
 throat. " No ! No ! " I said. But unfortunately 
 at the same time I shook my head, which in 
 Greece means "Yes." The poor woman fell on 
 her knees, moaning and praying. I nodded my 
 head up and down in a Greek " No ! " like an 
 automatic doll and with all the Greek and all the 
 gestures at my command tried to undo the wrong 
 I had done her. 
 
 Then, in springing into the saddle, I ripped my 
 Athenian-made riding-breeches the whole length 
 of the inner seam, just at the moment when my 
 eye discovered that the only piece of house- 
 hold property which my landlady had thus far 
 brought out to her cart was the battered wash- 
 tub in which I had taken my baths. This cha- 
 otic coincidence, despite the horror around me, 
 made a laugh irresistible. 
 
 Kitso's path of duty and mine now lay in the 
 direction of Volo. I knew that I could not send 
 my telegram from there, but I trusted that the 
 news of defeat would not reach Volo with suffi- 
 cient force in time to upset the departure at two 
 o'clock of the regular steamer to Athens, where 
 I could find telegraphic facilities, or transporta- 
 
Going to War in Greece 95 
 
 tion to some neutral port in the event of a clash 
 with the government censor. In each little vil- 
 lage that we passed through I found a repetition 
 of the tumult of Larissa surging around the 
 priest in the public square. He was bidding 
 his people to start at once with whatever goods 
 they had on their carts or donkeys. Instead of a 
 repast of the colored Easter eggs which lay on 
 the table of every shepherd's hut and a day of 
 rejoicing over their faith, they had been 
 awakened by the cries of a messenger on horse- 
 back dashing over the plain, to feed on fear and 
 to join the Army of Desolation in its long march 
 under the hot sun. 
 
 I knew the distance to Volo and how many 
 hours we had in which to make the run. If I 
 were to push Kitso to his greatest speed in the 
 early stages of the journey he might fail me just 
 as we came to the pass leading from Velestino 
 to Volo which proved to be the downfall of more 
 than one horse on that day. So I rode, as it 
 were, with my watch in one hand and the other 
 hand on Kitso's pulse. 
 
 At the foot of the pass I alighted and Kitso 
 and I walked up it like the good comrades that 
 we were. Once at the summit I mounted him 
 
g6 Going to War in Greece 
 
 again and spurred and coaxed out every inch of 
 speed in the willing little fellow until completely- 
 winded (and foundered I thought) he stopped at 
 the door of the hotel in Volo. 
 
 I thrust the reins into the hands of the aston- 
 ished landlord, and crying out to him to take 
 good care of my hero, I rushed on board the 
 steamer, which was crowded with wounded, and 
 with the leading lights of Larissa, including the 
 mayor, who had come on the special train for 
 the wounded at daylight, leaving their constitu- 
 ents to care for themselves. 
 
 " It was a great downfall," said the m.ayor in 
 French, with assumed gaiety. 
 
 Pre-empting a vacant place among the groaning 
 soldiers stretched out on deck, and pulling off my 
 boots, for the first time in four days I lay down to 
 sleep. Some chatter disturbed me and I rose 
 with a complaint on my lips to learn that the 
 chatterers were friends of the man at my elbow 
 who had just died. The next morning I awak- 
 ened to look out upon the wine-dark sea below 
 Chalcis and to recollect my callousness of the 
 previous night as an event in wartime. 
 
 In Athens I was able to avoid the censor, and 
 a month later when I saw the foreign papers, it 
 
Going to War in Greece 97 
 
 was pleasant for brave Kitso's sake, at least, to 
 find that no direct report of the true nature of 
 the retreat from Mati except Kitso's, and none 
 copied from the London papers, had reached 
 New York until two days after his, when all that 
 I had said was fully confirmed by other corre- 
 spondents, who had then reached Athens by 
 means of sailing vessels. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE Cafe de la Constitution in Athens, which 
 had forced the war, grasped the situation 
 of defeat so neatly that it became more 
 popular and influential than ever. " Yonder in 
 the palace," it said, '' is the cause of our misery. 
 Against our wills the King and his ministers led 
 us into war to betray us for Turkish and Russian 
 gold." 
 
 The King and the ministry endeavored to cover 
 the disaster with the old ruse of an orderly 
 retreat for strategic purposes, and not until the 
 arrival of the refugees and the wounded on the 
 steamer from Volo did the Athenian public 
 know of the panic on the road from Mati. So 
 likely did violence to the King seeni then that I 
 promptly secured a room in the hotel overlook- 
 ing the palace steps, an arrangement warranted, 
 indeed, by preparations which the King had 
 made to leave his back door in a carriage and fly 
 
Going to War in Greece 99 
 
 to a British man-of-war in the Piraeus, in case 
 of necessity. 
 
 But the mob, never before so merry, was not 
 too greedy of pleasure. It contented itself with 
 the mild coup of forcing the King to make one 
 of its leading spirits premier while it waited 
 threateningly on the palace steps. The late 
 premier, M. Delyannis, in taking his leave amid 
 groans, said that he had been greatly misunder- 
 stood. He wanted his fellow-citizens to know 
 that he had used all his talent and influence to 
 prevent the war. Whatever wrong he had done 
 had been forced upon him by the King, the 
 white-haired politician declared, with all of the 
 arrogance of an ancient Athenian demagogue. 
 
 Before I met M. Ralli, the new premier, in 
 Athens, I had seen him carrying a rifle about 
 at Turnavo after the manner of the Irregulars. 
 He had been one of the promoters of the Ethnike 
 Haeteria, which had started the war, and having 
 returned to Athens before the retreat, he now 
 became the leader of the successful opposition 
 to M. Delyannis's forward policy. In the first 
 place, he asked for the intercession of the Pow- 
 ers, and in the next place, as an Ethnike Haeteria 
 man with a knowledge of military affairs, he 
 
loo Going to War in Greece 
 
 started at once for the new line of defense from 
 Volo to Pharsala to learn whether or not the 
 position was tenable. 
 
 On the day after his election two or three 
 speakers from the parliament house steps said 
 he was as bad as Delyannis. Those who came 
 out to hear them found the sun too hot for com- 
 fort and returned to the caf^. A dozen of the 
 wildest element broke into a gunshop ; where- 
 upon merchants pulled down their shutters, a 
 number of stalwart citizens began to parade the 
 streets in armed squads, and pillage was at an 
 end. Greece having had its Sedan, Athens im- 
 proved upon Paris, her ideal, with an imagin- 
 ary commune carried on with great comfort in 
 the caf^s on warm days, when the demolition 
 of buildings would have been most tiresome 
 work. 
 
 The caf6 settled down to discuss news of de- 
 feat as it came from civilians returned from the 
 front or from the imagination of city idlers. 
 Our mayor of Larissa sat down at the tables to 
 be a hero much in demand again. Wits painted 
 word-pictures of the Crown Prince running away 
 in his nightshirt, followed by a servant carrying 
 his rubber bathtub filled with plans for the invest- 
 
Going to War in^pfcete; ;,"yi<Jjio', ' ; ,', 
 
 ment of Constantinople. One rumor said that 
 Constantin was hiding in the cellar of his father's 
 country house, some twenty miles from Athens, 
 and another that he had run away to the moun- 
 tains and was crying for his papa to come and 
 save him. The Athenian comic papers were full 
 of jokes of an opera bouffe nature on ** Our Great 
 Downfall." 
 
 But of all the anecdotes from the front the caf^ 
 thought that quite the choicest was about Captain 
 Hadjipatras, one of the Crown Prince's aides-de- 
 camp. The captain drove some women refugees 
 out of the early train that left Larissa for Volo on 
 the morning of the retreat to make room for a 
 crate of live geese intended for the Prince's table. 
 When he replied haughtily to the little station 
 master who remonstrated with him, the station 
 master struck him in the face. He retreated and 
 the geese were thrown out of the car. 
 
 " Is Hadjipatras a brave man ? " the caf^ 
 asked. 
 
 " Oh, yes," was the reply. " He saved the 
 batterie de cuisine / " 
 
 " Will Hadjipatras come back to Athens ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, like this," and the jokers of the 
 caf6 would cross their wrists and chuckle. 
 
IQ2 Going to War in Greece 
 
 If the cafe grew serious its hangers-on talked 
 about the rifles and cartridges which they had 
 bought to keep the Turk at bay when he arrived 
 outside of Athens. A realization of the suffer- 
 ings of the peasants, of- the cost of the disaster 
 to an already bankrupt country, of the shame of 
 defeat, of racial honor, the cafe never had. If a 
 week before it had asked that Greece be left 
 alone to fight out her own destiny, it now in the 
 same breath continued its abuse of Europe as 
 the cause of all her miseries, while it expected 
 Europe to stay the hand of the Turk. 
 
 Some talked of the annexation of Macedonia 
 and Epirus as well as the reversion of Thessaly 
 as the penalty the Powers would exact from the 
 Sultan. For the caf^ was not alone the spoiled 
 child of the Greek people, whom it ruled with 
 whatsoever foolishness it misfht devise and label 
 democracy. It had succeeded on a broader scale 
 also by labeling the foreign policy of Greece with 
 the Parthenon. When the caf^ had complained, 
 the extent of the Hellenic kingdom had been in- 
 creased. 
 
 " We have only to stir up a row and the Powers 
 will give us more territory," said a Greek poli- 
 tician, little thinking that this policy would de- 
 
Going to War in Greece 103 
 
 stroy the national self reliance of a people which 
 has many excellent qualities. 
 
 Considering the issue at stake in a war of race 
 and religious hatred, the small loss of life thus 
 far was almost ridiculous. Excepting the trage- 
 dies in the panic, the Crown Prince's army of 
 forty-five or fifty thousand men in six days' 
 warfare had lost but sixty or seventy killed out- 
 right and five hundred wounded. Four-fifths of 
 the wounds were of a peculiarly superficial char- 
 acter. Our soldier of the cafe had no temper at 
 all for fighting in the open, and he always lay 
 behind the mountain ridges. If a bullet hit a 
 piece of rock the splinters thrown up might cause 
 an abrasion of the face or the scalp which, no 
 matter how slight it was, sufficed to send him to 
 the rear. 
 
 Half of the wounded on the transport from 
 Volo in which I came to Athens were as good as 
 well. I saw a number of them permanently re- 
 move their bandages, revealing only small scabs. 
 Most of the body wounds had been received by 
 nien in flight. When the Turks ran down from 
 their ridge toward the ridge occupied by the 
 Greeks, the Greeks usually bolted before the 
 Turks reached the hollow between the two ridges. 
 
I04 Going to War in Greece 
 
 Had the Greeks stood their ground such Turks 
 as were not killed in clambering up the incline 
 would have been too short of breath to have 
 handled a bayonet with any force when the op- 
 portunity for using it came. Sometimes the 
 pursuers ran a little faster than the pursued, 
 reaching the position occupied by the Greeks 
 before the Greeks reached the ridge beyond, 
 and then they had a moment's opportunity to 
 hit the Greeks in their backs. 
 
 Up to the battle of Domoko our surgeons met 
 with no bayonet wounds and with not more 
 than a score of gunshot wounds. The enemy's 
 bullet was so easily extracted, it made such a 
 clean, small wound which healed so quickly, and 
 all wounds resembled one another so closely, that 
 surgeons who had come from France, Germany 
 and England to gain experience soon found their 
 work a grind far more commonplace than the 
 routine of accidents in hospitals at home. There 
 was a general scramble among them for the 
 favor of attending any soldier who had a gun- 
 shot wound, and a private with a jagged piece of 
 shell still in his thigh alone of all the wounded 
 that I saw in the Athenian hospitals seemed to 
 be suffering acutely. 
 
Going to War in Greece 105 
 
 Grizzled shepherds, who had tramped many 
 miles to Athens, came to the bulletins outside 
 the hospitals and falteringly spelled out the 
 names of their sons. Then they went inside to 
 kiss their sons, and if the doctor bade them not 
 to chatter both father and son would look at 
 each other in silence and thumb their beads. 
 The shuck, shuck of the beads was the only 
 sound to be heard in the room for serious wounds, 
 where all the faces were as white as the sheets 
 and all of the bodies lay stretched out flat on the 
 cots. 
 
 Through an interpreter I asked a little Evzoni 
 with a bullet hole in his leg how it felt to be 
 wounded. 
 
 " Something stung me," he said. ** I put my 
 hand to the spot and then I held it up quick, like 
 that, and it was covered with blood. Then I was 
 very much frightened for fear I was going to die, 
 but soon I found I wasn't going to die. It 
 didn't hurt much, after all, and I am glad I was 
 wounded. The doctor took the bullet out and 
 gave it to me and I'll take it home to show to 
 all my friends in the caf^." 
 
 Over each cot was hung a small lithograph of 
 the Virgin Mary, a present from the Queen. 
 
io6 Going to -War in Greece 
 
 Her Majesty came to the hospital day after day 
 to go away in tears caused by the open re- 
 proaches, even insults of the soldiers, who believed 
 with the Cafe de la Constitution that the royal 
 family had betrayed their country which they 
 never considered as being hers also. As a Rus- 
 sian she was hated even more bitterly than her 
 easy-going Danish husband. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 UPON returning, after three days, to the Volo 
 which was so lately in a violent panic, 
 I found it gay and flippant. If Colonel 
 Smollenske's rifle-pits and batteries, as far away 
 as five miles, failed to keep the Turks off it could 
 fall back upon the Greek fleet which had arrived 
 in the harbor and cleared decks for action, ready 
 to put a girdle of shell fire around the town 
 whenever the admiral said the word. It was 
 reported in well-informed circles, however, that 
 the fleet had no ammunition, and for the sake of 
 its reputation it is to be hoped that this rumor 
 was true. 
 
 Before the war the fleet had promised equally 
 great things with the invasion of Epirus by the 
 division of the army under Colonel Manos at 
 Arta. Manos was back again at Arta whence he 
 had started, and the fleet which had lain idle, 
 when, unopposed by the Sultan's navy that would 
 
io8 Going to War in Greece 
 
 not float, it might have bombarded Salonica or 
 occupied Turkish islands, now gained dubious im- 
 portance as a weapon of defense. 
 
 Foreign men-of-war had sailed into the harbor 
 behind it to protect foreigners and their property, 
 and the officers and men must be entertained. 
 Hotels reopened for the busiest time of their 
 existences. Wounded Turkish prisoners were 
 placed on a cart drawn by unwounded Turkish 
 prisoners and escorted about the streets by the 
 rabble of the quays. At night a Greek battleship 
 threw a searchlight over the mountainsides to 
 spy out any movement by the enemy under 
 cover of darkness ; gilt braid added more color to 
 the quaint little cafes ; the oars of the men-of- 
 war's boats lighted the bay with a brilliant 
 phosphorescence ; and there was even talk of 
 organizing a vaudeville out of the material at 
 hand. 
 
 My own great interest in Volo was the recovery 
 of my pony, Kitso. The landlord of the hotel 
 had given him into the charge of another man 
 who had lent him to a priest who preferred not 
 to carry out his inspection of the army on foot. 
 I followed the priest by inquiry all day and finally 
 overtook him just as he reached Volo on his 
 
Going to War in Greece 109 
 
 return. I hugged Kitso, who pounded the earth 
 with his forefoot and rubbed his nose against my 
 arm, meaning to say, I thought : " You didn't 
 throw me over after all, old pal. By hooky ! 
 I'll get a big pail of barley and have my back 
 rubbed with a currycomb, now." 
 
 Our new battle line extended along some 
 twenty-five miles of mountain ridges overlooking 
 the southern side of the upper plain of Thessaly. 
 Colonel SmoUenske was in command of the troops 
 immediately about Velestino, a village at the 
 edge of the plain some three miles from the 
 mouth of the pass leading to Volo. The Crown 
 Prince had his headquarters at Pharsala and the 
 bulk of the troops was under his immediate com- 
 mand. SmoUenske had had no difficulty in bring- 
 ing off all of his guns. His troops were in every 
 respect in better condition than those of the 
 main division. At Pharsala for the first two or 
 three days there existed a sort of anarchy 
 tempered by a general inertia. Once the Crown 
 Prince's carriage was surrounded by angry sol- 
 diers who demanded food. For a moment assas- 
 sination was feared, but the staff officer with a 
 political future gave the leading malcontents a 
 gentle push and they fell back. Many of the in- 
 
no Going to War in Greece 
 
 fantrymen had thrown away their rifles and 
 water bottles in the panic, besides their blankets 
 which were sadly needed for the cold, damp 
 nights. 
 
 A businesslike commissariat could have pro- 
 vided the Crown Prince's army immediately with 
 mutton and cheese, and with bread in a few 
 hours. Pharsala was connected with Volo by 
 the branch of the Thessalian railway running 
 from Velestino to Kalabaka, just in the rear of 
 our new lines. Volo being still the self-evident 
 base of supplies, as soon as the Crown Prince had 
 decided to retreat, arrangements could easily have 
 been made for their transportation. Indeed, I 
 am not loth to say that the space occupied in the 
 trains by the prime minister, his friends and 
 numerous other hangers-on who went out to in- 
 spect the army, might better have been used for 
 their weight in loaves of bread. However, the 
 army was not in a starving condition, as re- 
 ported. After the first two days, though the 
 food was not plentiful or hygienic, it was suffi- 
 cient to subsist upon. 
 
 The enemy came on very slowly. He first ap- 
 peared in front of Pharsala, engaging the Evzoni 
 and the Foreign Legion, which had remained on 
 
Going to War in Greece 1 1 1 
 
 the plain of Mati true to their duty. Conduct- 
 ing themselves with courage equal to that of the 
 Foreign Legion, the Evzoni suffered even greater 
 loss. The Crown Prince must have seen this 
 little force fighting its way to the cover of the 
 mountains under the heavy fire of vastly supe- 
 rior numbers, which were gaining on it because 
 it had neither the aid of Red Cross men nor 
 of stretchers to carry its increasing number of 
 wounded ; but he sent out no succor whatsoever. 
 
 Later events made me very glad that I had 
 chosen to be with Colonel Smollenske's rather 
 than the Crown Prince's division. First, recon- 
 noitering parties of Turkish cavalry appeared in 
 the neighborhood of Velestino ; then, advancing 
 in a leisurely manner, so large a force appeared 
 on Smollenske's right as to leave no doubt of 
 Edhem Pasha's intention to force his way 
 through to Volo. From Volo his troops could 
 have moved along the seashore and around the 
 mountains to our rear. Then, by flanking the 
 Crown Prince's left, he might even have hoped 
 to force the army of Greece to capitulate. 
 
 But the determined and unskillful attempt of 
 his infantry to take our rifle-pits near the pass 
 completely failed, and the more determined and 
 
1 1 2 Going to War in Greece 
 
 more unskillful attempt to take a battery in the 
 rear by a cavalry charge proved to be as merciless 
 and costly as the charge of the Light Brigade. 
 Two or three of the Turkish infantrymen actu- 
 ally succeeded in reaching the pits, where they 
 were bayoneted and tossed out. For a few mo- 
 ments the advance halted, hanging grimly to 
 the ground which it had taken ; but a steady 
 stream of bullets pouring from the concealed 
 Greeks was more than even Turkish courage 
 could stand and it retreated with a loss of prob- 
 ably a fourth of its numbers. 
 
 That the men in the rifle-pits held their 
 ground was testimony to the superior spirit of 
 Smollenske's troops, though the number of dead, 
 considering the Greeks' opportunity, was no com- 
 pliment to their marksmanship. The comparative 
 ease with which the Turks were driven back was a 
 sufficient exemplification of the absurdity of try- 
 ing to take earthworks by storm in front under 
 modern conditions unless a general is willing to 
 crowd in reserves at the rear until butchery gains 
 his object. 
 
 As for the cavalry charge, it gave the impres- 
 sion that Edhem Pasha's bloodthirsty Circassian 
 horsemen, chafing under the exactions of moun- 
 
Going to War in Greece 113 
 
 tain warfare, had prevailed upon him to give 
 them a task of a downright hazardous nature, 
 which would show the rest of the army the stuff 
 that real Circassians are made of ; and that 
 Edhem in an accommodating spirit had told 
 them to take in the rear our battery on a high 
 knoll to the left and rear of Velestino. This 
 battery, as our batteries often were, was planted 
 in a field of barley which had just headed. Vel- 
 estino was in our hands and we had some infan- 
 try in front of it, though we had withdrawn from 
 two villages a little farther out. Up on the 
 mountain side to the left of the barley field bat- 
 tery was a two gun battery, while to the rear of 
 it were still two more guns. These as well as six 
 or seven hundred rifles could play upon any ob- 
 ject advancing within two thousand yards of the 
 object of attack. 
 
 The first intimation that the spectator had of 
 the charge was a dark, snakelike streak approach- 
 ing Velestino, which field glasses revealed as two 
 squadrons of cavalry. At the distance of a mile 
 they burst into a dead gallop, and we played 
 on them with all the force of guns and musketry 
 that could be brought to bear, and the effect was 
 soon evident. The Circassians replied by spur- 
 
114 Going to War in Greece 
 
 ring their horses straight up the hillside and ris- 
 ing in their saddles and shooting as they rode. 
 Despite their boasts of remarkable marksmanship, 
 in this style of practice it had practically no 
 effect upon our gunners and rifle-pits when a 
 critical test came. 
 
 Before the battalion was half way up the knoll 
 the failure of the charge was apparent, but those 
 cavalrymen with unimpeded and unwounded 
 horses still held to their purpose with a grand 
 courage and coolness. The cross fire and the 
 narrowing of the direct course to the object of 
 attack brought the horses too close together for 
 practical purposes. A wounded horse that fell 
 checked the career of horses behind him, and 
 their rearing and plunging forced horses and men 
 together in a tumult which was a wriggling, dark 
 target (when not obscured by the dust and smoke 
 caused by bursting shells) for the Greek riflemen, 
 little harassed by wild Turkish artillery fire, who 
 fired as fast as they could. Wounded Circas- 
 sians with wounded horses tried to climb upon 
 riderless horses. Some riderless horses bolted 
 right up to the battery itself. For a moment 
 the battalion stopped in a crux as if one living 
 being in its death agonies, and then every man 
 
Going to War in Greece 115 
 
 with a sound horse under him turned and rode 
 back as fast as he could, perhaps to fall by the 
 fire that followed fiendishly after him. 
 
 With a mighty cheer the Greek riflemen 
 swarmed like ants out of their earthworks to- 
 ward the knoll. '' This is what we thought war 
 would be like!" they exclaimed in their glee. 
 Smollenske in half an hour had become the 
 national hero, and his eyes might well twinkle as, 
 with his accustomed smiling calm, he received a 
 little red flag with a white crescent and a white 
 star and a silk embroidered cap of a Circassian 
 captain as trophies of his success. A highly- 
 colored story of the action was telegraphed to 
 Athens and as soon as possible his portrait was 
 hung up in the shop windows and pictures of the 
 glorious victory as drawn by an Athenian artist 
 were for sale in the streets. When I saw the colo- 
 nel in his tent on a hill to the rear of Velestino 
 he divided an orange with me as of yore and said 
 that he thought the Circassians had lost half of 
 their number, which is considered an overesti- 
 mate, I believe. 
 
 The wounded Circassians left on the knoll 
 looked down in shame, uttered no groans and 
 meekly obeyed the commands of their captors. 
 
1 1 6 Going to War in Greece 
 
 Some of the killed had been struck in vital spots 
 both by fragments of shells and by bullets. Such 
 of the wounded cavalry horses wandering about 
 in dumb agony as were injured past recovery were 
 shot. One took up his position in the succulent 
 barley fields which was a hospital bed and soup to 
 him, until, after three days of convalescence, he 
 dashed off to the Turkish line. When the 
 Greeks went out to bury the Turkish dead the 
 enemy at first fired on them by mistake. 
 
 In bloodshed the rest of the fighting along the 
 line from Pharsala to Velestino was compara- 
 tively child's play. The rifle-pits at the left of 
 Velestino fired desultorily at the Turkish rifle- 
 pits and the Turkish rifle-pits answered when 
 they were in the mood. Edhem Pasha was play- 
 ing us with shell fire in the same eccentric man- 
 ner as he had when he wished to hold the atten- 
 tion of our right and centre at Mati, only experi- 
 ence had made him economical and he was using 
 less ammunition. Turkish gunnery had not im- 
 proved. Artillerymen were in danger only when 
 the enemy aimed at the rifle-pits, and the rifle-pits 
 were in danger only when the enemy aimed at 
 the battery. Water carriers and loiterers who 
 might be in the outer rings of the target had the 
 most reason for fear. 
 
Going to War in Greece 1 1 7 
 
 Watching this mimic warfare which sent no 
 wounded or dead to the rear soon ceased to 
 be as interesting as the stork on the minaret 
 of the ruined mosque at Velestino. In all of 
 the Thessalian villages storks had taken pos- 
 session of the fast tumbling minarets, and the 
 stork at Velestino was a most phlegmatic fel- 
 low. No booming of guns or rattle of musketry 
 disturbed the perfect equanimity with which he 
 poised himself on one long, slim leg, his neck 
 drawn down so far that his great beak seemed to 
 be fastened between his wings. As a philosophic 
 tenant who did not pay rent, in the event of 
 Thessaly falling again under Turkish rule, he 
 could simply transfer his nest to the steeple of 
 a Greek church which in its turn would then be 
 going to ruin. 
 
 The ridges from Velestino to Pharsala instead 
 of running parallel with the plain as on the late 
 frontier, for the most part ran at right angles to 
 the plain, thus offering the hollows as a purchase 
 for a quick surprise movement which, once it 
 gained possession of a ridge, would have the 
 enemy on the flank forcing him to reform his 
 line of battle. Some five miles west of Velestino 
 were hollows and ridges better suited than any 
 
1 1 8 Going to War in Greece 
 
 others along the range for capture by storm. 
 Colonel Smollenske, who was not fond of exer- 
 cise, never rode along the mountain path over 
 this part of his position. There was no adequate 
 map of it and the officers made none. The line 
 of troops that had been placed there was thinner 
 than at any other point between Velestino and 
 Pharsala. Edhem Pasha took these ridges not 
 suddenly by moonlight, but by one of his cus- 
 tomary daylight surprises which always deceived 
 the Greek generals. 
 
 After his disasters Edhem Pasha, changing his 
 plan of attack, withdrew all of his forces from 
 our right and centre, giving up a village on the 
 plain just beyond Velestino, which we then un- 
 necessarily occupied by a force that must retreat 
 directly we were attacked again either on the 
 centre or on the right. Owing to absolutely no 
 cover on the plain to the right of Velestino, 
 where military operations were bounded by lake 
 Karla, ten miles distant, it was easily ascertain- 
 able that the enemy in his new position could 
 engage us on the right only after a march of ten 
 or fifteen miles. But Colonel Smollenske re- 
 moved no guns and scarcely any troops from his 
 right and centre to protect his left, which had 
 
Going to War in Greece 119 
 
 been much weaker from the first on account of 
 the expected struggle at the mouth of the pass. 
 Had he feared another and a surprise move- 
 ment on the pass, a system of signals or of 
 cavalry scouts could have almost instantly ap- 
 prised him of it. 
 
 While here as elsewhere there was a good 
 road for a retreat, but no lateral roads, yet the 
 mountain passes allowed of a fairly rapid move- 
 ment from one part of the line to another. En- 
 durance and marching were the qualities most 
 boasted of by the Greek officers in comparing 
 their privates with the soldiers of other armies. 
 Had not two untrained peasant boys from the 
 fields, beaten by the Western trained athletes in 
 all tests of momentary strength, easily beaten 
 them in turn in the long race from Marathon? 
 
 At all events, it was better for SmoUenske at 
 a trying moment in defensive operations to run 
 a little risk of being flanked on his right than to 
 leave his left in such a condition that it was cer- 
 tain to be flanked for SmoUenske may be se- 
 riously criticised because he has too much ability 
 to be treated with that whimsicality which in 
 general best suits an account of the doings of the 
 Army of the Cafe. His leadership inculcated 
 
1 20 Going to War in Greece 
 
 some measure of spirit among his troops. He 
 could apply the knowledge he had acquired at 
 school inxJF ranee in forming a battle line. But 
 being by nature oriental, he could not see the 
 necessity of changing his plan of battle in cer- 
 tain details in accordance with the change of 
 conditions or of rapid or sudden movements. 
 Being an European trained oriental, he had not 
 studied his orient well enough to know that the 
 oriental is not given to night attacks or any other 
 form of surprise. He had failed to remember 
 that while the Russo-Turkish war had shown the 
 Turk to be the most tenacious of face-to-face 
 fighters, it had also shown him to be incurable 
 of a prejudice against a night picket service, and 
 therefore subject to surprises by very simple 
 ruses. Edhem Pasha was a Turk, but withal an 
 individual ; and no Greek commander studied the 
 characteristics of method peculiar to the general 
 opposed to him. 
 
 For these reasons Colonel Smollenske may not 
 justly lay all of the blame on the Crown Prince 
 because the army of Greece retreated again on 
 May 6th, the date which Edhem Pasha had de- 
 cided upon. 
 
 After coffee on the morning of the sixth the 
 
Going to War in Greece i 2 1 
 
 desultory firing on the immediate left of Veles- 
 tino gained in volume, and a large force of Turks 
 followed by the Turkish cavalry was seen mov- 
 ing toward the weak point of our lines until they 
 disappeared behind a mountain spur. Our rifle- 
 pit which had been so effectual in checking the 
 mad horsemen who had tried to take a battery 
 in the rear began to fire volleys at the Turkish 
 rifle-pits, and the Turkish riflemen answered in 
 an indirect and rather supercilious manner by de- 
 voting all their attention to the gunners on the 
 height a littleiarther to the left. In a short time 
 the firing from the extreme left became much 
 heavier than that in the vicinity of Velestino ; 
 but no movement of reserves to the left was 
 noticeable. 
 
 Attracted by this activity, invisible to us on 
 account of the intervening ridges, with two com- 
 panions, Mr. Wright, an artist of the Illustrated 
 London News, and Mr. H. W. Blundell, who was 
 purely a spectator, I rode off in that direction. 
 Gradually the zigzag bridle path led us to the 
 rear as we passed over ridge after ridge, bringing 
 nearer and nearer the rattle of musketry which 
 always exasperatingly continued to be hidden by 
 the crest of some spur just in front of us. When 
 
122 Going to War in Greece 
 
 water carriers had been turning back for the last 
 mile, we were convinced that the crest of the 
 next ridge would surely afford the view that we 
 sought ; but from its summit we saw only several 
 bands of Irregulars swarming in retreat along the 
 path and over the mountain sides. Some of 
 them took hold of the bridles of our ponies 
 and crying " Turcos ! " pointed to the ridge just 
 beyond. 
 
 While my companions were to make sand- 
 wiches out of the bread and meat in our 
 saddle-bags, I volunteered to go up the ridge 
 mentioned by the Irregulars. The ascent made, 
 I could see no sign of life on the next crest. 
 For the last ten minutes all of the firing had 
 seemed to come from the ridges below nearer 
 the plain, where we had already seen some Re- 
 serves straggling along toward Velestino. We 
 thought they had been scared by the retreat of 
 the Irregulars and had slipped out of their offi- 
 cers* hands. The spot where I was standing was 
 a mile to the rear of an imaginary straight line 
 drawn from Velestino. 
 
 My conclusion that the ridge just in front of 
 me was unoccupied was shattered a few seconds 
 after it was reached by puffs of smoke blown out 
 
Going to War in Greece 123 
 
 from the little clumps of bushes on the ridge, 
 followed by four or five bumblebees coming un- 
 comfortably near to my ears. It is folly to 
 allow skilful sharpshooters the opportunity to 
 draw a bead on one. But in the face of a number 
 of rifle barrels in front of red fezzes even at a hun- 
 dred yards it is unwise to move about. If you do 
 you stand a chance of being hit by some of the 
 bullets which may go approximately near to the 
 target. So stepping directly back I stooped, 
 and was well covered just at the moment when 
 mine enemy sent a volley buzz-buzzing over my 
 head, probably meant for the band of Irregulars 
 that he thought must be under my command. 
 Investigation of the source of a bullet coming 
 from behind which went splip against a rock at 
 my side revealed a band of Irregulars on the hill 
 beyond firing directly over my ridge at the in- 
 visible Turks on the opposite ridge. Apparently 
 my companions and I had made this long ride 
 for the purpose of getting between the advanc- 
 ing enemy and the retreating Greeks, without 
 gaining any view of the extraordinary movement 
 which had flanked Colonel SmoUenske. 
 
 But in a land of uncertainty the unexpected 
 is always to be expected. Looking at the ridges 
 
1 24 Going to War in Greece 
 
 toward the plain I saw a vivid tableau of the 
 Army of the Cafe making war. The Greeks in 
 disorder were skurrying down one side of a ridge 
 and the Turks were climbing up the other side 
 in hot pursuit. A yell directly in front re- 
 minded me of the fellows who had sent me a 
 swarm of bees, but no honey. Fezzes and baggy 
 trousers had sprung from their hiding-places with 
 a yell and they were clambering down the slope 
 toward my ridge like so many red-headed turtles, 
 making me feel forcibly the lack of facilities 
 which might confront a correspondent who was 
 taken prisoner. 
 
 My companions had postponed their prepara- 
 tions for luncheon until they should be more cer- 
 tain of their position. When I reached them 
 they had the ponies ready to mount. We hesi- 
 tated to follow the regular path lest it should 
 lead us into the open arms of the Turk, and ac- 
 cordingly laid out a course of our own straight 
 over the mountains. As we were passing over 
 the next ridge a bullet or two splashing at our 
 ponies' feet, as well as the echo of a yell, reminded 
 us that the Turks had taken the ridge under 
 whose kindly protection we had intended to eat 
 a sandwich in peace. Mr. Wright dismounted 
 
Going to War in Greece 125 
 
 and went back for a better view and was shot at 
 for his trouble. 
 
 It was then about one o'clock and at two 
 o'clock the Crown Prince had telegraphed orders 
 to Colonel Smollenske to fall back on Armyro, 
 which was some fifteen miles to the rear near the 
 sea. Colonel Smollenske in his report protested 
 against this order, saying that there was no 
 necessity for his retreat when his lines were in an 
 excellent position to wage battle. To this day, I 
 believe the Greek people accept this, their hero's, 
 view. But the experience of my friends and my- 
 self convinces me that if the colonel's intention 
 was not to retreat of his own accord, then the 
 Crown Prince's order came just in time to save 
 the army from a calamity. 
 
 With all gratitude for the oranges he has 
 divided with me, I confess that the colonel has 
 some talent for politics. 
 
 One hour before he received the order to fall 
 back, as we had such an excellent opportunity 
 for knowing, only the flying Irregulars remained 
 between the Turks, who were more than even 
 with his own headquarters, and their possession 
 of the railroad between Velestino and Pharsala. 
 Edhem Pasha had cut the Greek lines in two. 
 
1 26 Going to War in Greece 
 
 separating the forces of the Crown Prince and 
 Colonel Smollenske for good and all, and flank- 
 ing both. As on the other mountain range, he 
 had engaged our whole force with a nominal at- 
 tack while he had hammered with all the men 
 that he could spare on a certain position. 
 
 The slight opposition of two mountain guns, a 
 few riflemen and five hundred Irregulars (whose 
 incapacity was already well demonstrated) had 
 made this success the least costly of any that 
 the Turks had gained. It is said that the Crown 
 Prince and Colonel Smollenske each thought that 
 the other ought to defend this weak point, with 
 which neither was familiar either by report or by 
 personal examination. Three days previous, a 
 foreign military attache had drawn three simple 
 lines a straight line, then a straight line bent 
 back on the left, and a line to the rear illus- 
 trating Edhem Pasha's second scheme of attack, 
 and the correspondents and attaches who saw it 
 at the time had agreed with him. 
 
 Before two o'clock my companions and I were 
 back on one of the highest ridges overlooking 
 the village of Velestino, and at this late hour we 
 saw reserves being moved over toward the ad- 
 vancing enemy. Some of this reinforcement en- 
 
Going to War in Greece 127 
 
 gaged the enemy for a brief period, which was 
 followed by silence and then the heavy yell of 
 the Turks who had taken another ridge well 
 around to our rear. 
 
 I became interested for the moment in an 
 officer on one of the farthermost ridges, a dwarf, 
 as seen through the field glasses, outlined clearly 
 against the sky and gesticulating feverishly to- 
 ward the rear. But the mule driver, allowed too 
 much freedom, did not come to take away the 
 one mountain gun which constituted the officer's 
 sacred honor, and the officer remained bravely at 
 his post until he disappeared in the swarm of 
 Turks that came over the hill, while we who 
 looked on listened for the yell of triumph which 
 we knew was floating over the ridges and hollows. 
 
 Smollenske's retreat was skilfully made and 
 unfolded itself like a panorama from the heights 
 where we were standing. We saw the first 
 movement, which was the drawing off of those 
 Reserves and guns on his right which had been 
 so unfortunately inactive. Then followed such 
 other guns and troops as were obscured from 
 the enemy's view behind a line of ammunition 
 and commissariat donkeys, whose slow, melan- 
 choly pace now seemed a part of the sad busi- 
 
128 Going to War in Greece 
 
 ness. Reserves who had been moved forward to 
 the left came scrambling down over the rocks to 
 the path to form into company order. Company 
 joined company, moving on in the obscurity of 
 the valley until they formed a long blue line 
 winding over the path toward Armyro. As the 
 lines on the foremost ridges in contact with the 
 enemy fell back companies on the ridge behind 
 covered their retreat. 
 
 We pitied the gray-haired officer whose com- 
 pany came up to the crest which thus far had 
 been our own province. He had lost his lieuten- 
 ants, either by death or by desertion. His men 
 stopped in the valley to argue with him. When he 
 seemed to have persuaded them of the necessity 
 of obeying his orders, he started up the ascent. 
 After he had gone a dozen steps he realized that 
 they had not stirred and that he was quite alone. 
 He went back again to argue with a command 
 every man of which considered himself a strate- 
 gist by the right invested in him by the generous 
 rule of the Cafe de la Constitution in Athens. 
 Eventually, a third of them refused to follow him 
 at all. On reaching the crest it took several 
 minutes to convince the two-thirds that one big 
 rock was not the best breastworks for the lot, 
 
Going to War in Greece 129 
 
 though at the time not so much as the singing 
 of a spent bullet was heard. 
 
 Experience had taught our own little party the 
 advisability of a traveling base of supplies of our 
 own, and this was a small tug with a crew of char- 
 acteristic Athenians waiting in the bay at Stak- 
 asi near Armyro. For the sake of speed we did 
 not take the road of the regular retreat but that 
 followed by some straggling Reserves, who had 
 thrown away their guns and were weakly stum- 
 bling along, and by the petticoat Irregulars, who 
 stopped and fired their rifles under our ponies* 
 noses at some imaginary object which they must 
 have thought to be a Turk. We reached the 
 shore opposite the tug without any other of the 
 inconveniences of the retreat from Mati, and 
 the next morning were in Athens with our tele- 
 grams. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 GAY and trustful Volo had seen all of its 
 much boasted precautions for defense 
 pass away in a day. The evening after 
 SmoUenske's retreat from the mouth of the pass 
 the foreign consuls, I am told, went out, lanterns 
 in hand, to hold a parley with Edhem Pasha. 
 He promised to occupy the town without dam- 
 age to property, particularly to foreign property, 
 provided that the Greek fleet withdrew from the 
 bay. As the fleet was still short of ammunition 
 and only too glad to be accommodating the con- 
 suls could easily agree to this condition, and the 
 next day the fleet steamed down to Armyro to 
 make a show of protecting SmoUenske's force. 
 
 Stylida and Lamia succeeded to Volo's posi- 
 tion as the base of supplies for the Crown 
 Prince's army, which, having been flanked on its 
 left at the same time as on its right wing, had 
 retreated across the plain from Pharsala to the 
 heights of Domoko. Stylida is a small port on 
 
Going to War in Greece 131 
 
 the Gulf of Lamia across from Thermopylae, 
 connected with the town of Lamia by a very 
 narrow gauge railway and by a five mile ride 
 along a pleasant highway. Lamia is beyond the 
 head of the gulf between the mountain barrier 
 in which Leonidas placed his trust and another 
 mountain barrier which separates it from Do- 
 moko, and on the direct road from Domoko to 
 Thermopylae. 
 
 On entering the Gulf of Lamia attention was 
 first attracted to Stylida by a huge German flag 
 floating over a German hospital tent with all 
 modern appliances which, having just arrived 
 from Berlin, now waited almost impatiently for 
 wounded from the next battle. In the Gulf of 
 Lamia as in the Gulf of Volo, government trans- 
 ports found themselves in the corhpany of the 
 flotilla of the Army of Desolation. Caiques filled 
 with refugees, caiques stacked high with barley 
 which had been gathered green to save it from 
 the Turks, small sailing-boats with all the house- 
 hold effects they could carry, and all manner of 
 boats were leaving or preparing to leave for the 
 neighboring islands where already thousands of 
 their fellow-sufferers were at the point of starva- 
 tion. 
 
1 3 2 Going to War in Greece 
 
 At Lamia I saw the carriage which had taken 
 me to Liguria on my way to Meluna Pass. The 
 driver was in a cheerful frame of mind, having 
 followed the rear of the army with a comfortable 
 method of retreating for well-to-do officers at 
 commensurate charges. My companions and my- 
 self secured it as a base of supplies by the day 
 for an indefinite period. With their baggage and 
 tinned meats piled around them and even on 
 them, the London Thnes^ the Manchester Guard- 
 ian and Mr. Blundell started for Domoko. 
 
 Both the Times and the Guardian had had 
 two ponies at the beginning of the campaign, but 
 had lost them through appropriation by the 
 government or by a more direct and less re- 
 sponsible form of theft. When I had reached 
 the shore at Stakasi where our tug was anchored 
 after the retreat from Velestino, I had been in 
 doubt whether it would not be better to shoot 
 my pony rather than to allow him to fall into the 
 hands of some itinerant master who would treat 
 him to kicks and curses instead of barley. With 
 some misgivings I had sent him on to await me 
 at Stylida in charge of a servant. Now I was 
 on his back again, and despite the hollows be- 
 tween his ribs, for which I knew the remedy, he 
 
" All the household effects that they could carry. 
 
 With their baggage and tinned meats." 
 
Going to War in Greece 133 
 
 was not lame and was the same reliable old com- 
 rade not to be exchanged for any place in a 
 rickety, cast-off Parisian carriage. 
 
 There is a fine military road lately made from 
 Lamia to Domoko, over the Phourka Pass, which 
 has been the main artery of commerce between 
 Thessaly and Greece proper and the resort of 
 brigands since the dawn of history. Camels, 
 which have been bred and used in small numbers 
 in Lamia for many years, were appropriated for 
 transportation purposes by the Government. 
 They, and the carts which Lamia and the army 
 could muster, followed the military road. But 
 the heavy-laden donkeys went by the old moun- 
 tain path along with the Reserves and the red- 
 shirted Garibaldian volunteers fresh from Italy, 
 who toiled on and on at midday and were disap- 
 pointed again and again at not seeing at the 
 next turn of the path the one well in the pass 
 with its shade and cool water, which finally ap- 
 peared suddenly like a fairy with an urn of 
 water in hand springing up in front of a thirsty 
 traveler on a desert. 
 
 On the other side of the pass is a little plain 
 to be crossed before reaching the heights of Do- 
 moko. Here was encamped the travel-stained 
 
134 Going to War in Greece 
 
 Army of Desolation, the peasants tending their 
 herds which they had driven for so many miles, 
 and the women cooking, or washing their clothes 
 at the brookside with the stone slabs at the base 
 of the mountain ridge for washboards. They 
 were more fortunate than their comrades on the 
 islands in that they had food. 
 
 Domoko, a small collection of houses on a hill- 
 side under an acropolis with a crumbling old 
 citadel, was called " wonder city " by the ancients 
 on account of its beautiful situation. Nature 
 does all that she can to make Domoko healthy, 
 and man all that he can to make it unhealthy. 
 An army with no sanitary regulations flocking in 
 quite turned the scale against Nature. The 
 little public square was deep with mud, sewage 
 and the debris from the butchery of sheep. In 
 its dirty little caf^, thick with smoke which 
 could not effectually cover up other smells, un- 
 shaved officers in frayed, bespattered uniforms 
 were now talking as gaily of an armistice, which 
 was about to be signed preparatory to peace ne- 
 gotiations, as they had talked of war in Larissa. 
 
 Soon information came from the Crown Prince 
 in so direct a manner that the armistice became 
 a settled fact in the mind of the whole army. 
 
"Garibaldians . . . toiled on and on at midday. 
 
 Shade and cool water 
 
I 
 
Going to War in Greece i 3 5 
 
 Correspondents already down with dysentery or 
 threatened with it, or finding the revulsion of 
 their stomachs against the fare at Domoko un- 
 bearable, returned to Lamia and to Athens, the 
 London Times and Mr. Blundell being among 
 them. So the Manchester Guardian and I 
 found ourselves in undisputed possession of the 
 field, which, as we successfully defied dysentery 
 and as we had Carlos, proved to be fairly com- 
 fortable. 
 
 When I became acquainted with the merits of 
 Carlos, easily the foremost dragoman in Greece, 
 I confess to having felt at once a growing fond- 
 ness for his employer, the Ma7ichester Guardian. 
 Since the flight of Castopis, the Guardian and I 
 had pooled commissariats, with Carlos as chief 
 steward and my new dragoman, Aristocles, an 
 odd and not unentertaining Greek from Con- 
 stantinople, as assistant. Carlos had secured for 
 us well up on the hillside a private house with a 
 balcony, whose owner had joined the Army of 
 Desolation. Here we set up housekeeping with 
 two plates and two cups and entertained the 
 Foreign Legion and other friends with mutton 
 and bread and a foreign cheese which dwindled 
 and dwindled until not another piece could be 
 
136 Going to War in Greece 
 
 cut out of it. One day while Carlos was away at 
 Lamia, where he succeeded in recovering one of 
 the Guardian s ponies, we nearly starved. Aris- 
 tocles announced gravely that there was no 
 bread, no mutton and no salt to be found in the 
 town. In half an hour after his return, Carlos 
 secured all these things; also a chicken, which 
 he broiled over a charcoal fire while he gave 
 Aristocles advice on the use of diplomacy and 
 threats in catering. The salt, he said, had come 
 from the Crown Prince's own commissariat. 
 
 Among those who ate with us at our wooden 
 table was a little Reservist, weak for want of 
 food. He had just passed his examination for 
 the Greek diplomatic service, and out of love of 
 his country was now suffering the hardships of 
 other privates who slept on the hillside. He 
 insisted that he was not at all hungry, but once 
 we convinced him that we had more mutton and 
 bread than we could consume he was able to 
 muster a ravenous appetite. 
 
 That wonderful man, the Swedish lieutenant, 
 occasionally burst in upon us like a dash of sun- 
 shine. He was one of seven Swedish military 
 attaches who had come to Greece in search of 
 professional information, which he had gained 
 
' > ) ^ 5 \ ' ' ' 
 
 " Washing their clothes at the brookside. 
 
 ..^SaMfl 
 
 '' On leave. 
 
Going to War in Greece 137 
 
 by means of a great deal of professional expe- 
 rience. Unlike the others he was not in uni- 
 form, but wore a civilian's suit with a black coat 
 of the German military style buttoned up tightly 
 under his chin. Their uniforms were bespat- 
 tered ; they had given up shaving, and they were 
 jaded, as it seemed that anybody at Domoko 
 ought to be, and as the lieutenant was not. 
 
 The lieutenant had a notebook containing in- 
 formation about every position along our lines 
 which he had gained on foot under a broiling sun. 
 At Larissa his infinite politeness and wide knowl- 
 edge had made us think him a Miss Nancy. 
 But we soon learned that all night on foot would 
 not bend his straight back, which never failed to 
 bend when he bowed ; that in walking over 
 ploughed ground in a hailstorm of bullets he 
 was more interested in keeping his boots clean 
 than in anything else. In the panic on the road 
 from Mati, though he could not speak a word of 
 Greek, he had drawn his revolver and brought 
 order out of disorder in his immediate vicinity. 
 Again, after bringing in a wounded Evzoni 
 under a galling fire which no one else would 
 face, his first act was to fleck the dust from his 
 clothes. As he perched himself upon an oasis in 
 
138 Going to War in Greece 
 
 the slime of Domoko clean shaven, moustache 
 brushed up, spotless clothes, looking fit for a 
 ball and asked you if you did not think that the 
 Greeks were making many mistakes, he seemed, 
 despite his cleverness, just a little exasperating. 
 
 While riding over the positions to the left of 
 Domoko one day, the Guardian and I met a 
 London doctor who was a graduate of Oxford 
 and an ex-Tommy Atkins who had served in the 
 Soudan, both being members of the Foreign 
 Legion. They stood up very straight, except 
 for wavering knees, saying that they were not 
 hungry and not done up at all. But not heed- 
 ing their protests we put them on our ponies and 
 took them back to town, where Carlos fed them 
 well ; and this was the beginning of our friend- 
 ship with the Legion. 
 
 I think the apotheosis of the Legion was a brief 
 conversation between Tommy and one of his 
 fellow volunteers, a Scotch professor of Greek. 
 
 " Wot is this bloomin' old Parthenon I 'ear so 
 much abowt? " Tommy asked. 
 
 " It's a it's a historical building ! " replied 
 the professor. 
 
 But they continued to be good comrades. 
 
 With the exception of three or four Armenians 
 
Going to War in Greece 139 
 
 the Legion was entirely composed of Europeans. 
 After distinguishing themselves by begging to 
 have a Turkish peasant who was taken prisoner 
 on suspicion burned alive, the Armenians ran 
 away for good and all the first time they were 
 under fire. All social classes were represented 
 in the little body of a hundred men, which in- 
 cluded ages from sixteen to fifty. Some of them 
 had come to Greece for the fun of the thing and 
 some were inspired by the high ideals of the 
 professor of Greek. The great majority were 
 either French or English. I recall only one Ger- 
 man, and him because he received a bullet through 
 his clothes for trying to steal a pony, a fact 
 which he related as a charming experience min- 
 gled with regret that he had still to walk. A 
 number of young Danes at first found real 
 pleasure in volunteering in the cause of the son 
 of their King and afterward determined to be 
 " game " like their comrades. 
 
 Affecting to despise the Legion, the Crown 
 Prince had, nevertheless, always placed it in the 
 most dangerous position in his lines. A staff 
 officer was heard to remark that nobody would 
 mind if all of the foreigners were killed. At 
 Mati the Legion, left alone on the plain under 
 
140 Going to War in Greece 
 
 the moonlight, because it would not run with- 
 out orders, heard the rumor that the Turkish 
 cavalry was about to descend upon it. 
 
 '* Then the proper thing to do is to fix bayo- 
 nets, I have read," said the Scotch professor of 
 Greek. 
 
 " Helas / Yes," said a beardless student of the 
 Sorbonne. " No horse will run upon one, I have 
 read, if you hold it steady." 
 
 Thus the picturesque little band with its colors 
 uplifted made ready to receive the whole Turkish 
 horse with none the less courage because the 
 Turkish horse, contrary to rumor, was fast asleep. 
 
 Now, having stationed the Legion in front of a 
 break in the mountains which he expected the 
 Turks would try to force, the Crown Prince sent 
 to it, instead of food, an order forbidding the ap- 
 propriation of any stray beast or fowl, which it 
 disobeyed whenever possible. Whatever deli- 
 cacies the phlegmatic Englishman enjoyed were 
 the bounty of the Frenchman, duplicating the 
 experience of the allied forces in the Crimea. 
 There is no forager so gay or so ingenious as a 
 Frenchman, who is always able to spy out a 
 chicken and grab it by the leg, anticipating any 
 squawks that would attract attention. Then he 
 
Going to War in Greece 141 
 
 will easily make a fire out of wet twigs, cooking 
 it to a beautiful brown, and perhaps implicate the 
 officer in the crime by tempting him to accept a 
 succulent wing. 
 
 When the Legion and the Swedish lieutenant 
 were not entertaining us it was gratifying to 
 know that the gray-bearded telegrapher, who had 
 run away from Larissa and Pharsala at the last 
 moment with a bundle of antedated press tele- 
 grams under his arm, had reached Domoko un- 
 harmed. Early in the ante-bellum days at 
 Larissa he would always say on being questioned 
 that he had sent our telegrams, and he was be- 
 lieved until roundabout inquiry revealed that he 
 meant that they had gone to Athens by mail 
 after they had lain in his office for several days. 
 The vehemence then poured upon his head by 
 many angry correspondents made him thereafter 
 absolutely noncommittal. If you finally asked 
 him, " Is this really a telegraph office ? " he shook 
 his head and waggled his trembling hands as he 
 said softly, *' I don't know ! " You could go no 
 further for you could not justly even swear at 
 such a pitifully bent, little old man who had sud- 
 denly found himself in the midst of such a cha- 
 otic world of responsibilities. But if you patted 
 
142 Going to War in Greece 
 
 him on the back and sympathized with him his 
 mind seemed to clarify, and in this way he and I 
 struck up a friendship. 
 
 One London correspondent who was supposed 
 to have the right of way over all other corre- 
 spondents because he represented a paper of ex- 
 treme Phil-Hellenic sympathies, on reaching 
 Athens after a month's hard work, including a 
 tramp over Pindos in snow up to his thighs, tele- 
 graphed to his editor, " I have sent fifteen tele- 
 grams and ten articles by mail. How many have 
 you received ? " The answer was : '* None. 
 Come home ! " 
 
 The old telegrapher might have defended him- 
 self by saying that the telegraph service was as 
 good as the postal service. At Domoko the pile 
 of letters deposited in the dark little room called 
 the post-office grew and grew, for none of them 
 were ever sent away. If a Greek mail carrier be- 
 came excited in discussing politics he was likely 
 to toss his mail bags into the sea. To such ir- 
 regularities I owe the loss of some of the best of 
 my photographic films. As a further vexation, 
 my first camera had been smashed at Mati and I 
 was not able to get another until I left Athens 
 for Domoko. 
 
Going to War in Greece 143 
 
 But the Army of the Caf^ itself ? It was the 
 same old Army of the Cafe, only very much jaded, 
 as anything of tinsel was bound to be after being 
 trailed in humiliation and the dust all the way 
 from Meluna Pass to Thermopylae, a distance of 
 only forty miles, but made most difficult by the 
 army's inherent weaknesses. In saying that we 
 had lost no guns the Crown Prince, who accepted 
 the word of officers who wished to cover their 
 shame, may have been sincere enough. His 
 force still had about thirty field and mountain 
 guns, exclusive of three of the Krupps bought 
 for the defense of Larissa. 
 
 General Macris now occupied a small room in 
 a village house, which, however, was not in as 
 sharp contrast to his former quarters as was the 
 latest apartment of the Crown Prince to the 
 palace in Larissa, where, I believe, Edhem Pasha 
 found the doors open and many table delicacies 
 to welcome him as its new tenant. The general 
 was still the Crown Prince's chief adviser. He 
 did not show the effects of defeat as much as 
 his superior, who had aged perceptibly in a 
 month. Both kept to their quarters. The Crown 
 Prince, whose pale face seemed oddly out of 
 place in a land where everybody was tanned, 
 
144 Going to War in Greece 
 
 never rode out, either because of fear of violence 
 or from a disinclination for physical exercise which 
 the branch of the Danish royal family occupying 
 the throne of Greece seems to have absorbed 
 along with other traits not conducive to intel- 
 lectual force from the people whom it nominally 
 governs. I was interested in speaking with him 
 after ** the great downfall," as the officers, deter- 
 mined to be grand at all events, called their de- 
 feat. He received me in his room, its furniture 
 consisting of a cot, two chairs and a table and 
 its only ornament a photograph of his wife and 
 children in a little standard on the table. 
 
 ** I am very unpopular now," were almost his 
 first words. " But I have suffered myself. I 
 went without food for twenty-four hours. My 
 servants ran away and I lost my baggage. We 
 were forced to retreat by superior numbers, but 
 we can hold Domoko unless the superior num- 
 bers become overwhelming. The lack of disci- 
 pline is in part due to the fact that I am not al- 
 lowed to punish deserters. I was opposed to the 
 war and I feared this result." 
 
 Again and again spectators had remarked 
 upon the great suitability of rifle-calibre machine 
 guns for the kind of warfare of this campaign. 
 
Going to War in Greece 145 
 
 A dozen of them on the front ridges at the weak 
 point in our Pharsala-Velestino lines could have 
 driven back the attack which forced the second 
 retreat. When you noticed a new Maxim with 
 its nose pointing out of a window in the Crown 
 Prince's quarters, naturally you became curious. 
 
 "We have just received it as a present," he 
 said. " It uses a lot of ammunition, doesn't 
 it?" 
 
 ** It will not waste more than the Irregulars," 
 I suggested. 
 
 " Yes, the Irregulars have been a great nuisance. 
 Unfortunately, our officers do not know how to 
 operate the Maxim, but I suppose they might 
 learn. We have thought of giving it to some of 
 the Englishmen in the Foreign Legion who do 
 know how to use it. I am uncertain as to what 
 we shall do with it." (As a result, it never fired 
 a shot in the battle of Domoko.) 
 
 There is an old-time prophecy, often on the 
 tongues of modern Greeks, that when Greece 
 should have a king by the name of Constantin 
 the Byzantine Empire would be reestablished 
 through his efforts. Prince Constantin, the future 
 King Constantin, at the age of twenty-nine as 
 commander-in-chief of forty thousand men who 
 
146 Going to War in Greece 
 
 had twice been defeated, was now the object of 
 all his people's hatred. His father had not come 
 to the front as expected, but had remained at 
 home in summer lassitude, escaping as much of 
 the blame as he could. Constantin was tired of 
 the business of soldiering. Not made of the 
 stern stuff necessary for a good officer, he also 
 lacked the training and the mind of a general. 
 He longed to return from the angry glances of 
 the soldiers to his family in Athens and from 
 living on mutton, bread and cheese and dress- 
 ing without a valet to a life to which he was bet- 
 ter suited. It was wrong to put one so unfit 
 in such a position of responsibility ; but we 
 could sympathize with him better if he had 
 shown a braver spirit. Longing for the end of 
 the campaign, he lay back idly like a fatalist and 
 allowed the Army of the Cafe to drift on in 
 a chaotic state. 
 
 " We have our men placed all along the 
 ridges," said General Macris, who seemed to 
 think that nothing more was necessary. 
 
 Only the artillerymen awoke from their lassi- 
 tude for an hour or two each day to do what 
 they considered a work of superfluity because 
 there was an armistice. They tore away the 
 
Going to War in Greece 147 
 
 stone wall of the mediaeval fort, occupied by- 
 many cannon in its day of usefulness, and substi- 
 tuted the more practicable defense of earth and 
 brush. Here they placed one of three big 
 Krupps which had been saved from Larissa, and 
 on surrounding heights they placed the other 
 two. Our field and mountain guns were put 
 mostly on the ridges directly in front of Domoko, 
 to protect the ravine which leads up to the town 
 from the plain. If the Turks did not try to force 
 their way through at this point they surely 
 would at another pass some ten miles out on 
 the left, where the Evzoni and the Foreign Le- 
 gion were stationed. The generals, disagreeing 
 in this with the military attaches, believed it to 
 be quite impossible that the Turks would at- 
 tempt to scale the far more difficult ridges at the 
 right, and accordingly made it their weakest line. 
 From the citadel the whole stretch of some 
 twenty miles of our position was visible, except- 
 ing the extreme right. 
 
 For ten days the Turks showed no signs of 
 movement. With field glasses you could see 
 faintly figures pottering about in the neighbor- 
 hood of the villages and in the morning the fires 
 for boiling coffee. Two or three fezzes creep- 
 
148 Going to War in Greece 
 
 ing up every day so near to our lines as to be 
 killed or taken prisoners suggested that either 
 certain of the enemy were tired of inaction or else 
 were playing the spy. If you heard at the caf^ 
 that the Turks were celebrating the Feast of 
 Beiram or might be waiting to complete prepa- 
 rations for their plan of attack, the suggestion 
 was drowned in the talk that the armistice hav- 
 ing been declared for ten or twenty or thirty 
 days what mattered a little disagreement about 
 details ? meant that the war was over ; and, why 
 should not the Turks be quiet ? 
 
 Our Irregulars were still with us, helping on 
 the chaos. They sauntered about, wasting car- 
 tridges as they pleased. If they jammed the 
 mechanism of their rifles by neglect they took 
 them to the sidewalk shoemaker, who, for a 
 drachma, oiled them until they worked again. 
 He had picked up guns thrown away by deserters 
 who wandered unmolested over the hills, and sold 
 them at a reasonable figure to any Greek who 
 wished to start a band of braves of his own to 
 help demoralize his country's army. Official 
 talk of disarming the Irregulars ended in the re- 
 turn of the dozen rifles, which staff officers had 
 taken in a burst of energy, to glib " petticoat 
 
I 
 
 Reserves . . . choked the streets." 
 
 Took them to the sidewalk shoemaker." 
 
Going to War in Greece 149 
 
 men " who enlisted the support of political 
 hangers-on in a protest against this gross in- 
 fringement of the rights of property. 
 
 " Why put ourselves to the trouble ? Let 
 them have the rifles," said the staff officers. 
 '* What matters it when there is an armistice? " 
 
 The vindicated Irregulars soon found a new 
 diversion in robbery, and Reserves were of ne- 
 cessity assigned to protect the herds and the 
 household goods of the Army of Desolation. 
 So certain of the armistice were most of the 
 officers that they began to swagger around in 
 their soiled uniforms with some of their old-time 
 bravado, saying: *' We have not had a true bat- 
 tle. Ah ! we have been betrayed. We have 
 been forced to retreat against our wills. Had 
 we been given a chance to fight the result would 
 have been different." 
 
 They could have found basis for a faint hope 
 for the opportunity they longed for had they 
 gone to the telegraph office where all news was 
 received. The little old man did not make the 
 wish the father of the fact with the ease of the 
 Crown Prince and General Macris. He shook 
 his head and said: "An armistice is expected, 
 but it is not yet certain." From this one could 
 
150 Going to War in Greece 
 
 only surmise that the Powers were pressing the 
 Sultan for an armistice to which he had not yet 
 agreed. In the face of ten days of inactivity and 
 reiteration of an armistice by the whole world 
 of Domoko there remained the fact that the 
 Turks, who had been thus far an army of offense 
 forever carrying redoubts, and thereby suffering 
 far greater losses than their hated Christian ene- 
 mies, would strain a point for the privilege of a 
 little more blood-letting. 
 
 " When there is an armistice," cried the offi- 
 cers, " what does it matter if there is no regular 
 commissariat arranged ; if the bread carts wait 
 in the streets of Lamia until their drivers have 
 finished their political discussions at the caf6 
 before starting for Domoko ? " 
 
 Our soldiers had suffered steadily for lack of 
 sufficient bread and cheese, which they preferred 
 to mutton. But the mutton need not come 
 from Lamia. The Army of Desolation would 
 still honor a paper drachma. It had in its herds 
 enough meat to supply the Army of the Cafe 
 for many weeks, if arrangements for its purchase 
 and distribution had been made. With the 
 nights so cold that I shivered under my own 
 heavy coverings, scarcely half the soldiers had 
 
" If the bread carts wait in the streets of Lamia- 
 
 Looking down disdainfully on the Reserves. 
 
Going to War in Greece 151 
 
 blankets. Four or five of them would curl up 
 together after dark and share what blankets they 
 had between them. The Evzoni showed the ef- 
 fects of discipline by having retained their heavy 
 native coats, their knapsacks and water bottles. 
 
 But how the Evzoni had changed, I thought 
 as I saw a company of them moving along the 
 road into the town. Their blue coats were 
 faded, their leggings brown with dirt. Their 
 old accuracy of marching had been supplanted 
 by the self-sufficient style of trained mountain- 
 eers. They stood erect, scornful of the Reserves 
 about them. Having been bathed in fire, they 
 were no longer the King's show soldiers but 
 devil-may-care veterans, jaunty in a spirit of de- 
 fiant fatalism. It was a pity that they had not 
 had a better chance. 
 
 What did it matter when there was an armis- 
 tice? The engineers talked politics instead of 
 building needful roads and earthworks. The op- 
 ticon-telegraph had ceased to be of enough in- 
 terest to be used with any thoroughness. Cav- 
 alrymen wore out horses on rocky inclines in a 
 half-hearted attempt at orderly service when a 
 system of signals would have done the work 
 much better. No one minded if a private added 
 
152 Going to War in Greece 
 
 his weight to the ammunition on a donkey whose 
 back bled profusely as it toiled up the mountain 
 path. 
 
 " What does it matter when there is an arm- 
 istice ? " asked the officers out on the ridges. 
 Even volunteers fresh from Athens were not 
 drilled. Soldiers on leave from the ridges choked 
 the streets of the town. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 IN our little household Monday morning, May 
 loth, began in the routine manner of the 
 nine other mornings of Domoko's inactive 
 confidence which had preceded it. If you might 
 have stepped out on to our balcony, looking down 
 you would have seen the everlasting two or 
 three tired Reservists straggling into town. 
 Near by them was one of the slim-snouted, semi- 
 wild village hogs enjoying a piece of army refuse ; 
 and a few yards beyond, at a well, were two more 
 Reservists washing lamb's entrails which they 
 were going to roast on a stick. 
 
 But looking down was down, indeed ; and look- 
 ing up was up, indeed. For the trouble of a 
 glance over the shoulder you could see the sun 
 rise on the Thessalian plain. While breakfast 
 was being prepared, forgetful of neglected sani- 
 tation, you would have enjoyed this enchanting 
 picture to the full as one takes in a breath of 
 fresh air when he emerges from an unventilated 
 bedroom. 
 
154 Going to War in Greece 
 
 General Maoris was chatting with a colonel 
 and looking at the wall when at nine o'clock I 
 entered his room expecting to be told for the 
 sixth or seventh time that he had no news ex- 
 cept that the armistice was as good as signed. 
 He rose as deliberately as ever to receive me, 
 and bowed and spoke with his usual politeness. 
 After we had lighted cigarettes, he said : 
 
 '* Three battalions of Turks are advancing on 
 our left, monsieur. If you will come back in an 
 hour I shall be delighted to tell you if there is 
 to be an attack. We had expected the enemy 
 to try to force in our left, as you know, mon- 
 sieur. Consequently, we are quite prepared to 
 receive him." 
 
 As the report of the advance had first come 
 from the citadel it had not yet reached the 
 square or the broad road at the right of the 
 town which was always filled with gossiping 
 stragglers. At the house opposite the Crown 
 Prince's headquarters were the usual number of 
 bread carts, baggage mules and loungers, in dis- 
 order. On the hillside above the road was an 
 even more motley gathering of the odds and 
 ends of an army's rear. 
 
 Once the great news started it traveled as fast 
 
" Reserves straggling in." 
 
 Beyond, at a well . . . two more Reservists." 
 
Going to War in Greece 155 
 
 as a shadow on the plain. All stragglers, whether 
 officers or privates, suddenly gave up gossiping 
 to look in the direction of the villages in the 
 distance which were supposed to be occupied by 
 the enemy. Most of them could see nothing. 
 Those with sharper eyes saw faintly dark lines 
 and dark masses which could not be trees or 
 bushes. All surrounded their officers to ask ex- 
 cited questions. The self-sufficient officers re- 
 plied : 
 
 " They are going away ! " 
 
 " They are celebrating a feast ! " 
 
 " They must be going away or must be cele- 
 brating a feast because there is an armistice ! " 
 
 Riding down the military road, which dips and 
 bends around the corners of crest after crest until 
 it merges into the plain, I was soon able to see 
 distinctly with my glasses that the general's 
 three battalions of half an hour ago were the 
 Turkish army being thrown out in a line of battle 
 seven miles long. 
 
 A colonel of artillery with glasses in hand, re- 
 turning from a position nearer the plain, lifted 
 his cap and drew rein to say in French : 
 
 *' Are you going to see the Turk, gentlemen ? 
 It is nothing, gentlemen, I assure you, nothing." 
 
156 Going to War in Greece 
 ** Do you mean that what we see yonder 
 
 " Nothing, gentlemen, nothing ! " he cried 
 back as he rode away. 
 
 How long Headquarters believed that it had 
 only three battalions to deal with I do not know. 
 It was not until ten o'clock that a glimmer of 
 the truth lighted up the minds of loitering offi- 
 cers, who became gesticulatory and chattering, 
 and then speechless, as they looked beseechingly 
 from the plain to their friends and then beseech- 
 ingly back to the plain. 
 
 Never again do I expect to see so grand a 
 spectacle as that of the Turkish advance to the 
 attack and the three hours' steady and grim 
 musketry and artillery fire which followed. The 
 ridges were as a gallery and the plain below as a 
 stage. But it was not mimic warfare that we 
 were to see. When a man fell he was not to rise 
 with the fall of the curtain. In the rifle-pits or 
 in the batteries a correspondent could have seen 
 only part of the battle. This time it became his 
 duty to remain outside of the line of fire. From 
 our seats, which we selected with due care, we 
 could see whatever action might take place ex- 
 cept behind the brown mountain five or six miles 
 
5 , J ' ' ,' ^ ' ^ 
 
 " The broad road at the right of the town." 
 
 "^Bread carts, baggage mules and loungers.' 
 
Going to War in Greece 157 
 
 to the right. We were directly in line with the 
 ravine which constituted our centre. The splen- 
 dor but not the power of the scene which we 
 beheld might have been heightened if the Turks 
 had been clad in the brilliant silk turbans, the 
 vast flowing trousers and adorned with the broad, 
 ornamented, ineffectual swords which inconven- 
 ienced the Janizaries in the days when they 
 were beginning to lose their virility and their 
 country its military supremacy. 
 
 What we saw instead were dark blocks and 
 columns and lines of that same fighting race now 
 clad in the practical marching costume of the 
 regenerate Turkish host, armed with unorna- 
 mented and terrible modern weapons and not ad- 
 vancing with grandiose irregularity but in scien- 
 tific order. There was something in the very 
 movement of this oncoming force which said that 
 it thirsted for more bloodletting ; while the ac- 
 tion of all the soldiers on the ridges and the loit- 
 erers on the roads out of Domoko said that they 
 had seen more than enough of war. 
 
 When, finally, the Greeks had awakened to the 
 truth, officers and men on leave to a number to 
 put a blush upon the cheek of discipline began 
 to bustle one another, some rushing off to their 
 
158 Going to War in Greece 
 
 companies and some, I fear, making straight for 
 the rear ; while the remainder, too cowardly to 
 perform their duty, too shameless to hide their 
 faces, loitered on to enjoy the battle as illegiti- 
 mate spectators. 
 
 It was apparent before noon that the Turks 
 were going to attack our centre and our right. 
 Already they had swung in two miles this side 
 of the pass at our extreme left, where the flower 
 of our soldiery, the Evzoni, was stationed. But 
 looking over toward the mountain path on our 
 left I saw a long line of Reserves moving away 
 from the scene of the coming battle. General 
 Macris was still determined that any conflict 
 must follow the plans that he had laid down for 
 Edhem Pasha. 
 
 From the mouth of the ravine the miHtary 
 road runs on across the plain like a gray river 
 until it disappears altogether with two or three 
 gleaming streaks, resembling flecks of foam on 
 the crest of a bronze sea, which mark its distant 
 windings toward Pharsala. Up to a mountain 
 spur some four miles out, however, it is perfectly 
 straight. This spur bounds a semi-circular branch 
 of the plain, our side of which constituted our 
 right. Thousands of Turks had now made this 
 
Going to War in Greece 159 
 
 gray river black with uniforms and red with 
 fezzes for a distance of two miles. Many red and 
 black streams flowed into it beyond the spur, 
 while on the hither side of the spur the main 
 stream spread out into a broad, studied delta 
 with channel splitting into channel. This delta 
 began significantly half a mile out of the range 
 of our three big Krupps. Here, the infantry 
 marched off by battalions, the battalions broke 
 into companies, and the companies deployed in 
 skirmish order ; while the field artillery galloped 
 forward on our right of the road, swinging into 
 line. 
 
 The largest stream of the delta ran out at a 
 right angle to the course of the river. Evidently 
 its line of red fezzes was going to join the fig- 
 ures, which our glasses had revealed on the moun- 
 tain beyond, in an attack upon our right. 
 
 For three hours we had watched the prepara- 
 tions without once hearing the boom of a gun or 
 the crack of a rifle. Neither song nor cheer 
 arose from the ridges where our infantry was 
 stationed. If the movements along the military 
 road were perplexed they were not noisy. The 
 soldiers of the Cafe were not shouting defiant and 
 scornful challenges to the enemy ; rather, they 
 
i6o Going to War in Greece 
 
 were noting every rod of his advance as if he 
 were a rising tide that lapped their bodies which 
 were pinioned by the uniforms that they wore 
 and the presence of their officers. 
 
 Vast at all times as silence on a great plain is, 
 it had now become heavy, ominous and chilling. 
 Softly, and at noon, it was broken by two distant 
 booms, bearing with the speed of sound the sur- 
 prising information that Edhem Pasha had scaled 
 the heights on the far right with two mountain 
 guns. These he could scarcely have brought up 
 in a single morning. Unknown to our generals 
 he must have been preparing for some days to 
 overcome the greater natural obstacles offered to 
 a turning movement on our right wing. Until 
 the far bloodier attack on our centre completely 
 drowned it, we continued to hear desultory firing 
 from this direction. What progress the Turks 
 were making we might not know then, as all the 
 action was invisible. 
 
 At noon the plain was entirely under shadow. 
 The suggestion that the indisposition of the 
 Turks to fight in a rainstorm might prevent a 
 battle after all passed away with flying clouds. 
 By one o'clock the sunlight was again bewitching 
 the landscape with colors. 
 
Going to War in Greece i6i 
 
 The form of the impending attack upon the 
 ravine which was the key to our centre became 
 more and more wedge-shaped. At one it had 
 seemed as if our outposts would be engaged by 
 three o'clock. But the enemy was taking his 
 time. For an hour his front lines of skirmishers 
 remained practically stationary. They were be- 
 ing arranged in better order for securing a maxi- 
 mum of execution with a minimum of loss ; more 
 battalions were being stretched out on their rear 
 to push them forward if they should waver. It 
 was quite proper, in the meantime, that all fel- 
 lows in fezzes and baggy trousers should rest 
 legs tired by marching, should eat a piece of 
 bread and enjoy a deep draught from their water 
 bottles before they made the supreme effort of 
 the lives which many of them were about to sac- 
 rifice. 
 
 This ravine which merges into the plain in 
 front of the town of Domoko is shaped like the 
 letter V, the ridges that form its sides extending 
 along to the right and to the left as boundaries 
 to the plain. On the crests of these ridges were 
 a dozen mountain guns and on the immediate 
 heights behind them were still other mountain 
 guns and also field guns. At the base of the 
 
1 62 Going to War in Greece 
 
 front ridges, extending along the plain either to 
 the right or to the left of the prongs of the V, 
 was a mile of rifle-pits which were continued half 
 way down the prongs where they joined a heavy 
 line of riflemen stretched across the ravine from 
 one side to the other. Lying between the crest 
 of the ridges and the rifle-pits, behind whatever 
 rocks or undergrowth they could find for cover, 
 were the seven or eight hundred Garibaldians 
 and also a number of Reserves. Any force which 
 reached the line that stretched across the middle 
 of the ravine must advance for a half mile under a 
 continuous cross-fire. 
 
 Moreover, a line of riflemen spanned the 
 broadest part of the V, they being expected to 
 fall back on the line to their rear. Six hundred 
 yards farther out, two or three companies rested 
 in a circular breastwork, while half a mile beyond 
 that was a battalion strung out on a long strip of 
 ploughed ground to engage the enemy. The 
 ends of this line persisted in huddling in close 
 order, showing that the troops did not relish be- 
 ing separated when they faced the whole Turkish 
 army. Their officers trusted that they would be 
 able to spread them out at the last moment, but 
 were deceived. 
 
Going to War in Greece 163 
 
 In a half hour after the firing on the extreme 
 right had begun there was a heavy earthshaking 
 report which announced that at last one of our 
 Krupps which were intended originally for the de- 
 fense of Larissa was in action. It never rose to 
 such importance again, and sank into the insig- 
 nificance of the third violin in a concert when, 
 three and a half hours later, the battle began in 
 earnest. None of its shells did less harm than the 
 first, which exploded some twenty yards in front 
 of an advancing battery. We waited and we al- 
 most longed for a reply from some of the field 
 guns which we knew Edhem Pasha had stretched 
 out on the right of the road behind his skir- 
 mishers. When he did reply he replied languidly 
 with an occasional random shot, despite the fairly 
 regular fire of our Krupps and field guns which 
 appeared to be doing considerable damage. 
 
 At half past three the little black, red-topped 
 figures of the Turkish skirmish line, in order as 
 regular as the trees of a young orchard, were al- 
 ready so near to the forward line of Greeks, which 
 was kept steady with difficulty, that the first ex- 
 change of shots was momentarily expected. 
 
 But it was almost four o'clock when a roll of 
 smoke arose from the foremost Greek line. A 
 
164 Going to War in Greece 
 
 few seconds later we heard the rattle of this vol- 
 ley, though not until after we had seen little 
 puffs of smoke in front of the leading Turkish 
 skirmishers. Instantly the right of the Greek 
 line caved in some ten men from the end, and in 
 three minutes every man was in retreat. As 
 soon as they were out of the way the earthwork 
 opened with a volley and had only begun an ir- 
 regular fire when we noticed that the circular 
 blue line which marked it so plainly on the field 
 was already broken by brown patches. 
 
 In just four minutes the earthwork was 
 emptied of all except the dead. To the naked 
 eye its defenders seemed to be coming in on a 
 dog trot. Through the glasses, however, the 
 blue figures, leaving now and then a prostrate 
 comrade behind, were hastening toward the 
 ridges as eagerly as so many bearers of news 
 from Marathon, some hobbling with wounds in 
 the foot or leg; a few, crawling. Only an occa- 
 sional one properly loaded his rifle as he ran and 
 then turned to fire. 
 
 All made for the rifle-pits at the base of the 
 ridges ; or for the line across the broad end of 
 the V which lasted five or six minutes before 
 its fragments hastened back to the other cross 
 
Going to War in Greece 165 
 
 line half way down the ravine. Such paltry op- 
 position as had been offered thus far had not de- 
 layed the Turks in the least ; and a swarm of 
 bees might have done more to oppose their 
 skirmishing order. The ease with which they 
 had cleared their path must have emboldened 
 them for the final effort. Knowledge of his char- 
 acter only increased one's anxiety as to the effect 
 of so precipitate a retreat upon the Greek Re- 
 servist. 
 
 The Turkish artillery still continued to fire 
 only occasional random shots. Obviously Ed- 
 hem Pasha was waiting until his skirmishers were 
 well up to the ridges before he played his bat- 
 teries in earnest. 
 
 With their rifle barrels resting on the soft earth 
 while they crouched as low as they could, only a 
 cap, a patch of black hair and a bronzed forehead 
 exposed, the Reserves waited for their fleeing 
 comrades to pass out of their line of fire. Nearer 
 and nearer came the thousands of little puff-balls 
 blown out of Turkish rifles like soap bubbles out 
 of a pipe, until the point of the wedge was 
 within the prongs of the V. 
 
 Our guns began to play with all their capacity. 
 The rifle-pits at the base of the ridges and the 
 
1 66 Going to War in Greece 
 
 line across the ravine blossomed with volleys 
 which seemed to cause no hesitation in the ad- 
 vance. Simultaneously, twenty-one great balls of 
 smoke rolled out of as many dark blotches in 
 line on the plain ; and after twenty-one shells had 
 been scattered over the rifle-pits and the front 
 ridges, we heard the booming of a salvo from 
 Edhem Pasha's batteries when they set out to 
 cover an infantry attack in their best style. 
 
 The number of irregular shots quickly follow- 
 ing warranted the reckoning that Edhem had be- 
 tween forty and fifty fieldpieces within range of 
 the ravine. Immediately he began to advance 
 split batteries. Galloping horses swinging a gun 
 into position made a beautiful picture under the 
 patchy sunlight. 
 
 " It is like a field day," said a foreign military 
 attache at my elbow. 
 
 Most of the puff balls were now mingled in a 
 cloud of smoke. Its steadily advancing front 
 ranks seemed to be drawing the Turkish wedge 
 after them, like fishermen pulling in a net on a 
 foggy morning. 
 
 " But if it were truly a sham, and in Western 
 Europe," the attache added, " the commander-in- 
 chief, in high dudgeon, would have ordered the 
 
Going to War in Greece 167 
 
 Turks in the cross fire off the field as being 
 nominally dead." 
 
 For a quarter of an hour half of the enemy's 
 guns were trained on our three gun battery for 
 brevity's sake I shall call it the end battery oc- 
 cupying the foremost ridge and nearest to the 
 right of the ravine which it commanded at a mur- 
 derously short range. 
 
 You remembered the gunners of this battery 
 in the easy-going days of the ** armistice " as bur- 
 rowing out snug places in the mountain side to 
 keep off the wind at night ; as clumsily sewing up 
 rents in their clothes instead of gossiping in the 
 streets ; as seemingly superior beings, with gun- 
 ners' pride, who looked down upon the infantry- 
 men lolling on the hills beyond. 
 
 Would they now come up to expectations ? 
 Or, would they desert their guns and scamper 
 down the ridges? Plainly, their business was to 
 pound the advancing Turkish wedge, while the 
 heavier guns on the ridges at their rear dealt 
 with the Turkish batteries. They were the 
 backbone of the rifle-pits and the line across the 
 ravine ; and, once their support was missed, all the 
 Greek infantrymen in and near the ravine would 
 seek safety with the instinct of one man ham- 
 
1 68 Going to War in Greece 
 
 pered by the devices and legs of many crowded 
 into that neck of a bottle, the mouth of the ra- 
 vine, with the Turks at their heels. 
 
 Simultaneously, a cluster of five trails of blue 
 smoke seemed to leap out of the sky just over 
 the hardest-hit gun of all, the one nearest to the 
 ravine, sending down a shower of iron, which, 
 strange to say, knocked over only one man. 
 Coming through a cloud of dust which was laden 
 with splinters of rocks and fragments from a shell 
 that had burst by percussion, you saw an artil- 
 leryman running away from the second gun of 
 the end battery, and almost involuntarily you 
 said : " His comrades will follow." But the little 
 fellow was only going to the limber after another 
 shell. He returned with it as fast as he could 
 scramble over the rocks, and a minute or two 
 later it had exploded among the Turkish in- 
 fantry. 
 
 Suddenly a burst of yellow smoke flew up to 
 the rear of the gun nearest the ravine just as the 
 artilleryman who brought its shells was about to 
 lay his hands on another. The limber had been 
 blown to pieces and the shell-carrier was the 
 object of a miracle. He rose like one from the 
 dead, and, at the beck of a hastening officer, hur- 
 
Going to War in Greece 169 
 
 ried off to get a loan from his neighbor's limber. 
 Once the shell was brought, the officer himself 
 slipped it into the breech and the bearer with 
 the other artillerymen of the end battery, super- 
 ciliously unmindful of the Turkish batteries, 
 went on throwing iron into the Turkish infantry 
 where it was needed but not wanted ; went on, 
 in the midst of a rain of flying fragments, being 
 covered with dust, blood and glory. You knew 
 now that the men in the end battery would stand 
 their ground until they were killed off to a man. 
 You knew that they had learned to love that 
 living, speaking piece of steel, a gun, and there- 
 fore they would not desert her for love of God or 
 fear of death. 
 
 Soon the Turks themselves were convinced that 
 at a moment when shells were so valuable the 
 end battery must be silenced in another way. On 
 previous occasions they had found our infantry 
 more easily frightened than our artillery, and 
 they now shifted their fire from the ridge to the 
 line across the ravine which, in turn, became the 
 critical point of the battle. The wedge was mov- 
 ing more slowly, its front ranks being thinned so 
 rapidly that they might have stopped but for the 
 impetus of the reserves being crowded in from 
 
170 Going to War in Greece 
 
 the rear. An occasional Turk who longed to be 
 the first to bathe his bayonet in Greek blood that 
 day, rushing on ahead, would almost reach a 
 rifle-pit before he fell dead or wounded. When 
 only wounded he continued to fire. 
 
 If either side of the wedge, e7i masse, should 
 reach the rifle-pits, many, though less than the 
 number of its dead, would force that test of cold 
 steel for which the Greeks had so little stomach. 
 Some of the Greek riflemen had become so ner- 
 vous that they lay gasping, and aimlessly work- 
 ing the mechanism of their rifles, without having 
 placed cartridges in them. That chilling buzz- 
 buzz-buzz of the storm of bullets above their 
 heads would no longer deter them from rising 
 once the line across the ravine broke. 
 
 The steps of the front ranks of the Turkish 
 skirmishers became shorter and less frequent. 
 On the right side of the wedge they were little 
 more than a shuffle of pretense. Finally, the 
 Turkish field guns, which had been shooting 
 wildly, seemed to find the range of the line across 
 the ravine. Two shells burst at the same mo- 
 ment plump in its right end. The ten or dozen 
 men who must have been killed and wounded 
 had no place in your thoughts. Would the 
 
Going to War in Greece 171 
 
 score that had scattered, which fast became two, 
 three and four score, be whipped back into po- 
 sition? The Turkish wedge seemed almost to 
 be swinging its huge body as it made ready to 
 spring upon its prey immediately its prey turned 
 tail. The break extending from the right of the 
 line, where the shells had exploded, finally 
 reached a point where three or four blue figures 
 stood their ground, and there it stopped. A few 
 well-chosen words and the courage of a lieutenant 
 or even of a private may have turned the tide. 
 Those who had strayed from the fold were 
 gradually brought back to their places by officers 
 who were vigorously swinging their swords, until 
 there was again a line of blue stretching from 
 spur to spur, once more eloquent with a raking 
 rifle fire. 
 
 The right side of the Turkish wedge which 
 had given and received lead so steadfastly, which 
 had been the especial object of favors from the 
 end battery, showed through the smoke a dog- 
 gedly wavering bend in its line whose ends 
 slowly fell back four or five grudging steps even 
 with the bend, steadily firing. A string of bodies 
 marked clearly where it had stood a moment be- 
 fore. From instinctive realization of superior 
 
172 Going to War in Greece 
 
 force which he could not overcome the Turkish 
 skirmisher continued to recede. The point of 
 the wedge had also ceased to advance. All were 
 too tenacious to fall back rapidly, as indeed 
 they might not have done had they tried to, on 
 account of the reserves which were still being 
 pushed into the rear of the wedge. Shortly after 
 five o*clock it was clear enough that the attack 
 was a failure. 
 
 You breathed freely again. You put down 
 your field-glasses and lifted your eyes from the 
 ravine to see the sunlight playing on that part 
 of the plain, in the neighborhood of Pharsala, 
 the serenity of which was undisturbed by the 
 killing of a thousand or more men a few miles 
 away. Suddenly, you almost jumped to your 
 feet as the ground shook under you, concurrent 
 with a mighty burst of sound just over your head, 
 which merely announced that the citadel gun 
 was sending another shell into the Turkish bat- 
 teries. It was followed by all the rattle and roar 
 of battle, which awakened you to the fact that 
 for the bad quarter of an hour for the artillery- 
 men in the end battery and for the bad quarter 
 of an hour that followed for the infantrymen in 
 the line across the ravine, your sense of hearingV 
 
Going to War in Greece 173 
 
 had been robbed of its function by your sense of 
 sight. 
 
 The Krupps on the citadel and on the heights 
 behind the citadel were quite out of reach of the 
 Turkish field guns. As you saw the gunners 
 of the citadel Krupp dancing about joyously after 
 every successful shot, you felt a devilish desire 
 that at least one shell might be dropped near 
 enough to give them a taste of what the gun- 
 ners in the end battery had suffered for their 
 sake. Their marksmanship was generally excel- 
 lent as it ought to have been, because it is one 
 thing to take aim when you are out of danger, 
 and quite another when your eyes are blinded 
 with dust and there may be a drop of a comrade's 
 blood on the end of your nose. 
 
 In their haste to reenforce the wedge the 
 Turks brought a solid battalion within range of 
 the citadel Krupp, which promptly transferred 
 its attentions from the Turkish batteries to this 
 more enticing mark. There was a broad grin on 
 the face of the lieutenant at the range-finder as 
 he adjusted his aim with great coolness and care. 
 Your heart was beating with the same fiendish 
 hope as his when he finally stepped back, and a 
 second later your eardrums seemed to crack and 
 
174 Going to War in Greece 
 
 you watched a dark streak flying over six miles 
 of ridges and plain. The shell landed in the 
 middle of that battalion, and must have killed 
 more men than any other shell fired in the cam- 
 paign. The lieutenant swung his cap and cheered 
 as if he were mad. You hoped that the artil- 
 lerymen on the front ridge at the right had seen 
 this bit of destruction, too ; for you knew how 
 much good it would do them. The battalion was 
 brought quickly back into line and then was 
 deployed with all speed. If our lieutenant had 
 spent less time in celebrating his feat he might 
 have had another shot at it in closed form. His 
 next try was for an advancing battery, which he 
 missed by a good twenty yards. 
 
 Gradually falling away from the right ridges, 
 where the fire against them was much heavier, 
 the Turks moved over to the left prong of the V 
 where the ridges were lower and less precipitous. 
 The left prong of the V was also at a broader 
 angle to the line across the ravine, with a consid- 
 erable bend, and could not offer so broad a cross 
 fire. Edhem continued to advance some of his 
 batteries on the right in the teeth of the heavy 
 fire from our field guns and Krupps, while he 
 brought five or six of his pieces around to the 
 left of the military road. 
 
Going to War in Greece 175 
 
 As the skirmishers advanced toward the left 
 side of the V, the Greek riflemen there kept up 
 a steady succession of volleys, which finally made 
 the enemy halt with the same reluctance that 
 he had halted on the right, this time on the edge 
 of a piece of ploughed ground. A few venture- 
 some fanatics went farther, but not the mass. 
 The places of those who were killed in the front 
 ranks were taken by those who came forward 
 from the ranks behind. 
 
 When the curtain of darkness fell upon the 
 scene of butchery at seven o'clock and we who 
 had had seats in the gallery for the spectacle 
 arose, this front line of the Turks was still hang- 
 ing doggedly on to the patch of ploughed ground, 
 at a needless loss of life, as much as to say : 
 
 ** Edhem Pasha, we cannot go farther ; but, in 
 the name of the Prophet, we will hold every inch 
 that we have." 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE world, already surfeited with Greek de- 
 feats, as soon as it knew that the Army of 
 the Cafe had been defeated again, had little 
 interest to spare for the one real fight of the war ; 
 but, I pray you, do not forget the artillerymen in 
 the end battery. If you have heard that they 
 bore themselves with small credit in the first 
 seven days' fighting, remember that they were 
 only peasant boys then and not veterans ; imagine 
 the misery in their hearts, in their empty stom- 
 achs and aching limbs, when they had to draw off 
 their guns in the darkness, carrying their wounded 
 comrades as best they might. 
 
 For, that night, we were to fall back for the 
 third time in thirty days. Domoko, which on 
 Monday morning had swarmed with officers be- 
 lieving in an armistice, on Monday evening at 
 dusk was deserted and uncannily silent, was to 
 be pillaged at midnight by the Greek Irregulars 
 
Going to War in Greece 177 
 
 and to be occupied on Tuesday morning by the 
 Turks, who wondered how and why the Greeks 
 had departed so suddenly. 
 
 The reasons for the Crown Prince's decision to 
 retreat, made at a later hour, became evident as at 
 eight o'clock one walked along the road at the 
 right of the town after leaving the telegraph office. 
 In the distance, on the mountain side at the right 
 where the opening gun of the battle had been 
 fired at noon, were plainly visible the lights of 
 burning shepherds' huts which marked just how 
 far the enemy, who unwittingly carried beacons, 
 had advanced. 
 
 Occasional flashes of fire still to be seen near 
 the mouth of the ravine were mostly from the 
 rifles of wounded Turks of unconquerable spirit 
 who thus blindly endeavored to wreak vengeance 
 on their invisible enemies. Along the military 
 road which runs around the ridges down to the 
 plain the jaded Greek cavalry came at a tired 
 trot. Late in the afternoon the cavalry had 
 been ordered to hurry to the ravine, though what 
 they were to charge, unless the Greek infantry, 
 was not exactly clear. Arriving at the ravine 
 some minutes after the crisis had passed, the 
 cavalry turned around and came back in the 
 
178 Going to War in Greece 
 
 company of the wounded who were being trans- 
 ported in the arms of comrades and in the few 
 jolting carts which the medical corps had been 
 able to muster. The total number of stretchers 
 on hand the day before the battle was three. 
 When the one foreign doctor at Domoko over- 
 heard the corps bemoaning the fact, he sug- 
 gested that hammer, nails, cloth and boards were 
 to be had. The corps replied, with a shrugging 
 of shoulders : " Never mind ! It is not neces- 
 sary. For there is an armistice, and the war is 
 finished." A few of the doctors, however, when 
 necessity pressed so suddenly and so hard upon 
 them, had done their duty under heavy fire. 
 One of these I saw lying by the roadside, moan- 
 ing piteously, with a piece of shell in his abdomen. 
 Our carriage was waiting at the rear near a 
 peasant's hut which was occupied by a number 
 of the seriously wounded. Such of these as were 
 actually dying usually bore an expression of stu- 
 pefaction, while an expression of horror, which 
 suggested fear of death, was more often to be 
 seen on the faces of those whose wounds were 
 less serious. An opiate had eased the departure 
 of the mortally wounded, and pain had awakened 
 the imagination of the others. 
 
Going to War in Greece 179 
 
 Joining the procession of wounded we drove 
 on at its halting pace, forewarned every few 
 minutes of a rut in the road by the groans of 
 the limp figures in the cart ahead of us, until we 
 reached the other side of the little plain which lies 
 between the heights of Domoko and the entrance 
 to Phourka Pass. Here, going some distance 
 to one side of the road in a sheltered spot, we 
 staked our horses for the night ; a precaution 
 warranted by the general principle that a cor- 
 respondent's eyes were of more value than his 
 ears in ascertaining the intentions of the Army 
 of the Caf6. If there were to be a retreat we 
 should not be caught in another such crush as 
 that on the road from Mati, and if the fighting 
 continued on the morrow we should be within a 
 short distance of the field of action. 
 
 For the moment our own commissariat was of 
 vital and preponderant interest. You may gorge 
 your stomach, but the food will disappear like 
 tinder in a furnace when you are watching a 
 battle ; and the attack on the ravine was enough 
 to digest three or four dinners. The ever re- 
 sourceful and cheerful Carlos found, grouped 
 around a fire in a hut, some deserters who had 
 roast lamb to sell. We already had bread ; and, 
 
i8o Going to War in Greece 
 
 with a chunk of one of these great staples in 
 each hand and a bottle of the bitter native wine 
 between my knees, I soon reached the summit of 
 human happiness. 
 
 When our dinner was finished we seated our- 
 selves in the carriage to write an account of the 
 battle by the light of a candle, while Carlos lay 
 outside on the ground rolled up in a blanket. I 
 remember that we finally blew out the candle, 
 and then Carlos awakened us with a severe 
 shaking as he shouted : " Those Greeks are re- 
 treating again ! " (Since the panic at Mati Carlos 
 had never referred to himself as a Greek.) 
 
 It was then about one o'clock, and Carlos told 
 us that we had slept scarcely ten minutes. As 
 we rubbed our eyes and walked over toward the 
 road we heard the rumble and jolting of carts and 
 the tremolo of the voices of the Army of Desola- 
 tion which was in the excitement of gathering up 
 its chattels and girding its loins for another march. 
 Dimly outlined at a right angle to the road just 
 at the entrance to the pass was the Greek cavalry, 
 presumably there to reassure the peasants. 
 
 From a military point of view the necessity of 
 the retreat is an open question. If five thousand 
 men, which we could easily have spared from our 
 
Going: to War in Greece i8i 
 
 'to 
 
 other positions, had made a daybreak attack on 
 the right, our line might have been straightened 
 and we might have held Domoko for days, pro- 
 vided that the Crown Prince had kept in touch by 
 a system of signals with SmoUenske's force, which 
 had not been engaged at all on Monday, and 
 both had thrown detachments among the moun- 
 tains intervening between their positions. But I 
 fear that jealousy stood in the way of such coop- 
 eration. The repulse of the Turkish wedge in 
 front of the ravine made it unlikely that Edhem 
 Pasha, oriental, would attack on the second day. 
 If his attempt to carry the ravine by storm in 
 front was only a feint to cover his attack on our 
 right, then either his men got out of his hands 
 or he did not mind having them needlessly butch- 
 ered. His loss must have been three or four 
 times ours, which was about a thousand. The 
 order to retreat was telegraphed from Athens, 
 where the signing of the armistice by the Sultan 
 was hourly expected and must, it would seem, be 
 forced by the Powers before the Turks would be 
 ready to attack the Greeks in their new position 
 before Thermopylae. It may be added that the 
 Constantinople correspondent of a London paper, 
 who telegraphed that Domoko was in the posses- 
 
1 82 Going to War in Greece 
 
 sion of the Turks on Monday three hours before 
 our citadel gun fired its first shot, received the 
 credit for a news victory. 
 
 Dawn found our carriage still moving at a 
 snail's pace, clogged in the glum procession of 
 the Army of Desolation, half way up the pass. 
 A grizzled shepherd driving his flock along the 
 ravine was the only energetic person in sight. 
 He was a Wallachian that is, a Roumanian 
 emigrant and, therefore, had more reason for 
 claiming a direct descent from the Roman con- 
 querors than the modern Greek from the ancient 
 Hellenes. His flock, it would seem, he had kept 
 in hiding for fear it should become the prey of 
 the soldiers of either army. I had seen him, 
 when he was obliged to drive it to the Greek 
 rear under shell fire, as unmindful of flying frag- 
 ments of iron as if they were butterflies, and as 
 mindful as ever lest a lamb should escape. Sud- 
 denly one of his lambs left his flock and ran into 
 the road. He darted after it, in and out among 
 the carts and donkeys, crying : 
 
 "Wouldst thou be meat for the wolves, thou 
 silly one ? ** 
 
 *'No, he would be meat for a soldier," said our 
 smiling still smiling Carlos. 
 
Going to War in Greece 183 
 
 The shepherd had no time for answering jests. 
 Just at that moment he stuck out his crook and 
 caught the hind leg of the erring one in time to 
 save it from being crushed by a cart. Then, pick- 
 ing it up, he tossed it head foremost among its 
 hungry, frightened, bleating fellows and hurried 
 off after another stray which had gone in an 
 opposite direction. There was no sign of his 
 night's labor in his face. For any tale that its 
 carved, wooden lines told he might have been 
 starving or gorged with food, broken hearted or 
 joyous. His thick, uncovered gray hair grew 
 down over his low, bronzed forehead like a 
 thatch. His nose was such as we fancy that a 
 Roman centurion had. He was a grim and nat- 
 ural man, the master of his flock. 
 
 If he alone of that exodus of Biblical coloring 
 was energetic, the fuzzy baby donkeys ambling 
 along on stilt-like legs which appeared to be too' 
 weak to bear even those irresistible handles, their 
 huge, furry ears alone were fresh and sprightly. 
 They v/ere neither more gentle nor helpless than 
 the children strapped on the backs of the 
 maternal and the paternal donkeys ; than the 
 women who carried the youngest of their off- 
 spring in their arms ; than even the bearded 
 
184 Going to War in Greece 
 
 children who were so important as to have a pair 
 of oxen. The bearded children had gone north 
 after the occupation of Thessaly by Greece to 
 make a home. They were the only Greeks op- 
 posed to the war. Now they had to give up 
 their partly made homes. Far worthier sufferers 
 than the Armenians, in starving thousands on 
 the islands of the ^gean Sea and in the rear of 
 the army, they had been unnoticed by the hu- 
 manitarian sentiment of Western Europe because 
 an army supported by them for their defence had 
 so tardily responded to the demands of duty, 
 gratitude and chivalry. 
 
 The Army of Desolation went its way of dis- 
 aster and of suffering with the meekness of a 
 subject race going under the yoke of its latest 
 conqueror. If there were any struggles in its 
 eddies, resulting from simple causes, they were 
 merely pantomimic, lacking the necessary force 
 to do any one physical injury. You heard ever 
 in varying pitch the tremolo of the women and 
 now and then loud cries when the reason for the 
 halt was near at hand ; when part or all of some 
 donkey's pack was about to slide off his back on 
 to the ground. Then the baby donkeys ran to 
 their mothers' sides only to have their meals de- 
 
Going to War in Greece 185 
 
 ferred again as the women tightened a rope and 
 rearranged their household goods ; and once more 
 the helpless procession moved on, the baby don- 
 keys putting all of their trust in their mothers, 
 and the helpless deserters from the Army of the 
 the Cafe, side by side with the helpless peasants, 
 putting all of their trust in the road which was 
 now their common mother. 
 
 In a little ravine near the summit of the pass 
 we saw a road wagon with yellow trimmings, the 
 fine pair of bays hitched to it being tied to a 
 bush. Among the heavy-laden asses and the 
 slab-wheeled ox-carts a woman in a ball gown 
 could scarcely have seemed more out of place. 
 It had brought on the Crown Prince and three 
 members of his staff before any part of his army 
 had begun to fall back. He was lying on the 
 ground, while his aides-de-camp were cutting 
 brush to make a fire to boil coffee. The Army 
 of Desolation passed in silence him whom only 
 prophecy had made a conqueror. 
 
 Coming to a bridle path which enabled us to 
 save two or three miles we took the cut, rejoin- 
 ing the winding, graded, military road just 
 beyond the head of the procession : which was 
 two Turkish prisoners in charge of four Reserves 
 
1 86 Going to War in Greece 
 
 who seemed to advance with the air of having a 
 paltry excuse to offer for what was to follow. 
 
 We might now travel for the rest of the way 
 to Lamia at reasonable speed. By eleveti o'clock 
 we were in front of Lamia's principal caf^. 
 While waiting for coffee and for our horses to rest, 
 our attention was diverted by an aged priest who 
 came riding into the town square with consider- 
 able pomp on a very small ass. He was imme- 
 diately surrounded by hangers-on to whom he 
 told an exciting tale of disaster. 
 
 A minute later, I felt a rough hand against my 
 cheek and an arm around my neck. Dumlos ap- 
 parently had sprung out of the earth. The last 
 time that I had seen the rascal, he was hurrying 
 out of all danger at Velestino, but he had not 
 seen me. 
 
 " Did you kill your hundred Turks ? " I asked. 
 
 " I did, O worthy sir, and many more.*" 
 
 " And yet the Greeks were defeated. How do 
 you explain that, Dumlos? " 
 
 " The infidels came on in their millions. 
 There was only one Dumlos to face them. I 
 killed my hundred and my two hundred, it is 
 true, O worthy sir. But why shouldst thou won- 
 der? Canst thou stop the rainstorm by catching 
 
" The odds and ends of an army's rear." 
 
 " To whom he told an exciting tale. 
 
Going to War in Greece 187 
 
 a hundred drops in thine outstretched hand? 
 If thou wilt give a cup of coffee to a friend who 
 has not eaten for two days I will tell thee all of 
 my adventures." 
 
 While he chattered the Army of Desolation, 
 ever the Army of Desolation and finally the 
 Army of Desolation passed through the square, 
 stopping neither for drink nor for food. Be- 
 tween two detachments of it, as it were, came 
 the remnants of the Greek cavalry. When we 
 left Lamia for Stylida the glum procession was 
 still coming, as if endless. 
 
 At Stylida we were fortunate enough to send 
 our telegrams to Athens on a transport which 
 was carrying all that it could of the wounded 
 whom we had accompanied on the previous 
 evening as far as the entrance to Phourka. Gar- 
 ibaldians and Reserves, with dust-begrimed, red- 
 dish spots around tiny holes in some part of 
 their clothing or blood-stained bandages on 
 their heads, continued to arrive by the little 
 railroad from Lamia as fast as its rolling stock of 
 one locomotive and four or five flat cars could 
 bring them. The Garibaldians had suffered 
 severely, and the devotion of such of them as were 
 not wounded to those who were was touching. 
 
1 8 8 Going to War in Greece 
 
 After ten days of tedious waiting the German 
 hospital with the huge flag had reached the 
 height of its ambition. Its tent being full, first 
 one and then another peasant's house had been 
 occupied, while rows of stretchers on the shore 
 awaited accommodation. A fair-haired surgeon, 
 as spick and span as if on review before his em- 
 peror, decided in a moment's examination of a 
 patient what ought to be done and performed 
 operations with seemingly brutal, but truly 
 Christian, rapidity. 
 
 " It is as I expected," he said with the latter- 
 day self-confidence of his race. " Everything 
 was ready and everything is going on as we had 
 planned." 
 
 In Greece, at that moment, he seemed very 
 wonderful to sleepy eyes, though in Western 
 Europe at any time he would have seemed very 
 commonplace. 
 
 Fair-haired nurses, spick and span, too, sent 
 loiterers, who started to disturb a dangerously 
 wounded man with questions, on about their 
 business, and then recalled them with rugged 
 gestures to move a cot, scolding them roundly in 
 a language which they did not understand, if 
 they did not place it on the ground gently. 
 
-> -> ; 5'.' ' 
 
 ' 5 1 > ' 
 
 "The Army of Desolation, again. 
 
 And, again, the Army of Desolation." 
 
Going to War in Greece 189 
 
 One nurse was vigorously stirring the contents 
 of a great pot over a fine field hospital stove, 
 making all of the soldiers of the cafe who were 
 well enough to be hungry sniff and sniff again 
 and pass the good word around from stretcher 
 to stretcher with suggestive glances. I know of 
 two correspondents who longed for a bowl of 
 this soup, though they might not ask for it under 
 the circumstances. If you have been in a battle 
 and ridden all night without food you can realize 
 how well it tasted to a plain Reservist who had 
 only a flesh wound. 
 
 For us, Carlos found some delicious fresh fish 
 conjured them up out of the sea with a diving 
 rod, along with a man who had a skillet and a 
 charcoal fire, I suppose. He did not care to 
 have us ask him questions about his methods. 
 
 " I know ! I know these Greeks," he would 
 say. " You leave all to rne and you will always 
 live like pashas." 
 
 After dinner, treating us like helpless children 
 as he ever did, he prepared to put us to bed. 
 He tied some blankets across from one pile of 
 unused railroad ties to another, making a ver- 
 itable canopy. Underneath it he spread a quan- 
 tity of unthreshed barley straw, appropriated 
 
190 Going to War in Greece 
 
 from a huge stack which vainly awaited ship- 
 ment to the islands where it would be out of 
 reach of the Turk. Some soldiers who were 
 chattering near by he drove away for fear they 
 might disturb us. What a luxury it was to pull 
 off our boots, to bury our toes deep in the straw, 
 to arrange our blankets, and then to fall asleep 
 instantly from sheer physical exhaustion ! 
 
 The next day brought Stylida a little panic of 
 its own. Peasants gathered on the shore and 
 screamed for boats to save them from the Turks 
 who, some one had said, were only two or three 
 miles away. The big flag floated defiantly over 
 the German hospital while the imperturable sur- 
 geon and nurses went on with their work. 
 
 Personally, we were more interested in the 
 exact location of the Army of the Cafe than 
 anything else information not procurable from 
 rumors but from personal investigation, as ex- 
 perience had taught us. We sent our ponies 
 around by land to Molo, while we crossed the 
 gulf to this village, a few miles to the rear of 
 Thermopylae, which must be the base of supplies 
 for the army's next stand. Stragglers were al- 
 ready coming into Molo with tales of a massacre 
 in Phourka Pass and a terrible panic at Lamia. 
 
3 'J 
 
 y 
 
 The remnants of the cavalry. 
 
 And, finally, the Army of Desolation. 
 
Going to War in Greece 191 
 
 Our ponies arriving dead beat after dark, we had 
 to postpone the ride to Thermopylae. 
 
 The next morning saw the Greek navy and 
 two or three transports in the gulf just in front 
 of Molo. Colonel Vassos's 'troops, which had 
 been recalled from Crete to be sent to the front, 
 having been landed at daylight, were wandering 
 about on the shore and into the town as they 
 pleased. Vassos himself was sitting near the 
 pier surrounded by his staff, while a big Cretan 
 bodyguard swaggered up and down in front of 
 them. In reply to a question the colonel said 
 that the Crown Prince's army was at Thermop' 
 ylae already, and Smollenske was hurrying to 
 Thermopylae around the gulf by way of Lamia, 
 He seemed glum and scarcely self-contained. 
 
 " There will be a terrible massacre at Thermop- 
 ylae a terrible massacre, indeed," he declared, 
 as he looked helplessly at his'straggling men. 
 
 Rowing out to the royal yacht (which was in 
 the harbor) we learned, in truth, that on the morn- 
 ing after the battle the Foreign Legion and the 
 troops covering the retreat had been hotly en- 
 gaged ; Smollenske was still at Armyro ; the 
 Crown Prince's army was in disordered fragments 
 strung from Phourka to Thermopylae; and the 
 
192 Going to War in Greece 
 
 Army of Desolation was encamped in its thou- 
 sands beyond Molo. Greek officers had gone out 
 to confer with Edhem Pasha. A member of the 
 cabinet was also at Phourka. We waited for his 
 return to the yacht an hour later, when he an- 
 nounced that the armistice had been definitely 
 arranged in time to save the Greeks from annihil- 
 ation. 
 
 The war was at an end, having lasted a month. 
 
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