Vol. XXXI, No. 5 



WASHINGTON 



May, 1917 



THE 



NATflOMAL 



AGAZHN 



ON THE MONASTIR ROAD 



By Herbert Corey 



THE story of Macedonia today is 

 the story of the Monastir road. 

 Along this highway Alexander and 

 Xerxes and Galerius once tramped with 

 their legions. It has been the link be- 

 tween the Adriatic and the yEgean seas 

 ever since history was written. 



For centuries it has carried its ox-carts 

 with their solid wooden wheels, and long 

 trains of donkeys and peasant women 

 bowed under packs. Serb and Bulgarian 

 raiders have descended on Saloniki along 

 it. For thirty centuries fighting men and 

 peasants and thieves and slaves have 

 marched through its bottomless mud. 



Today it is kaleidoscopic as it could 

 never have been in the worst days of its 

 bad history. To the ox-carts and donkeys 

 have been added great camions and whirl- 

 ing cars filled with officers in furs and 

 gold. Natty Frenchmen in horizon blue. 

 Englishmen in khaki, Italians in gray 

 green, Russians in brown, Serbian sol- 

 diers in weather-washed gray, bead its 

 surface. Fezzed Turks are there and 

 Albanians in white embroidered with 

 black, and Cretans in kilts and tights and 

 tasseled shoes. 



COLOR AND MOVEMENT FILL, THE ROAD 

 TODAY 



Airmen, so wrapped in furs that they 

 remind one of toy bears, dash by in cars 

 that are always straining for the limit of 

 speed. Arabs, perched high on their' little 

 gray horses, direct trains of the blue carts 

 of the French army. Gaudy Sicilian carts 



with Biblical scenes painted on their side- 

 boards are dragged through the mire. 



Senegalese soldiers, incredibly black, 

 watch with an air of comical bewilder- 

 ment the erratic ventures of donkeys that 

 seem to have been put under pack for the 

 first time. Indo-Chinese soldiers in pa- 

 goda-shaped hats, tipped with brass, put- 

 ter about at mysterious tasks. Blackish- 

 brown men from Madagascar carry bur- 

 dens. Moroccans in yellowish brown 

 swing by under shrapnel helmets. 



SOLDIERS OE ALLIES TREAD HISTORIC 

 GROUND 



New levies marching toward the front, 

 the sweat beads standing out on their 

 pale foreheads as they struggle under 

 their 6o-pound packs, give the road to 

 the veterans of six months' service — hard, 

 capable, tireless. Overhead the fliers 

 purr on the lookout for the enemy. Big 

 guns lumber along behind caterpillar 

 tractors. Ammunition dumps line the 

 road and hospitals dot it. Girl nurses 

 from France and the United States and 

 all the British Empire ride over it. 



Always the ambulances are there. 

 They are always given the road. The 

 men who turn out for them anticipate the 

 day when, in their turn, they will be rid- 

 ing in a Red Cross car toward Saloniki 

 and home. 



At the farther end of the road is Mo- 

 nastir, taken last winter by the Allied 

 forces in a battle that in any other war 

 would have been set down as great. At 



