October ii, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
II 
The Great Fire at Salonika 
Bv H.iCollinson Owen (Editor of The Balkan News). 
FOR all those who have had to make Salonika and 
its region their home for a considerable period during 
the war, time and things will now always be marked 
by one great division — before the Great Fire and 
after. It has cut clean across our lives, and in many ways upset 
them considerably. It is, at the time of writing, an im- 
possible thing to order a cup of tea in Salonika. There is not 
a single hotel or cafe. 
("onflagrations which lick up a square mile of a city 
within a very few hours, are after all not everyday occur- 
rences, and it is a curious feeling to walk through wliat were 
one J well-known streets and to find on every hand only a 
crumbled pile of rubbish, with here and there a heap still 
smouldering a fortnight or more after the outbreak. It is 
depressing to stumble along a street of fallen bricks and look 
at the ragged outline of what was once one's own flat at the 
top of (for Salonika) a noble building. It is melancholy to 
.-.tumble a little further, mount a crumbling staircase and 
gaze into the uasightly ruins of what was once ona's own 
club, and reflect that in that corner stood a table where for 
hundreds of nights all sorts of parties gathered over dinner 
and told stories of the Great War as they had seen it in almost 
every quarter of the world. And by the time the ruins of the 
Post (Mcc, one's own particular Bank (fortunately solvent 
in spite of the disaster) and one's favourite caf6 have been 
inspected — well, it is pardonable to feel that the bottom has 
been kn<xked out of existence, and that Salonika before the 
lire, with all its defects, was a paradise compared with 
Salonika after the lire. 
It was an extraordinary scene while it lasted. San 
Francisco had its fire after the earthquake, and so did Val- 
paraiivo, but I doubt if anybody liying has seen a more striking 
i)laze than did we who were, present at the destruction of old 
Salonika. This ancient battt;red city has in its soul a sort 
of itch for catastroph •. It is never happy unless it is throwing 
off another chapter of history. Plagues, massacres, attacks 
by barbarians and tires, with now and again an earthcjuake, 
have been its portion. The Young Turks began their revolu- 
tion here (Talaat Pasha, by th? way, was a Post Office clerk 
in Salonika). 
Only five years ago there was a pitched battle between the 
Hulgarians and the Greeks in the centre of the town, and the 
bullet-pitted minaret of St. Sophia, which was the centre of 
that particular disturbance, now looks down on an area of 
wholesale destruction. A few days later King George of 
(ireece was assassinated as he walked along the main street 
of his new city. Salonika becomes one of the storm-centres 
of the Great War, and the annies of all the Allies send their 
divisions here. And now we have our fire. If there ever 
was a city marked down for an unquiet life it is Salonika. 
It is not worth while wondering what will happen next. 
All the same for a few days after the fiercest of the blaze 
had died down, an unwonted peace brooded over the place. 
Normally, the most damnably noisy of cities-^with its 
rattling springless carts on cobbled streets, its scolding donkey 
boys, the rasp and screech of iron shop-fronts being pulled 
up and down (the most dreadful noise (m earth this), and 
countless other nerve-racking sounds— it became a town of 
uncanny calm and quiet, where the footfall of the passer-by 
could be heard. To this succeeded a period when loud 
explosions startled us a dozen times a day, and half-bricks 
or whole ones came rattling over from the places where the 
engineers were blowing down dangerous shells of gutted 
buildings— precarious structures which, with the natural 
perversity of things, refused to topple down save after repeated 
iieavy charges, although previously they seemed ready to 
collapse at the slightest vibration. Just when one had accepted 
tiie idea of being one of the few living things in the stricken 
city, the soul of Salonika began to stir amid its dust and 
ashes. 
In a week the trams were running again along the calcined 
front ; the graceful caiques, which beat a hurried retreat 
from the harbour wall on the night of the fire came flocking 
back with all sorts of food (including luscious melons) from 
the islands ; little open-air market^ sprang up ; here and 
there shops discovered miraculously intact amid the ruins, 
prized open their warped iron shutters and bjgan business 
again. The one cinema left standing announced a forth- 
coming performance for the benefit of the sinislres, and in 
short, Salonika made some sort of effort to show that in 
spite of disa.ster, it was not too downhearted.. 
V'or my own part, I have long since ceased to feel it strange 
to look out of one of the miraculously saved buildings on- an 
acre or so of rubble with rows of skeleton windows, and melted, 
twisted girders hanging down in festoons like lianas in a 
tropical forest. / Below coughs and spits the exhaust of 
a petrol engine installed by the British Army, so that it 
may have at least a one-page daily journal in spite of the 
stocks of paper that went to swell the great bonfire. It was 
not easy at first producing even tliis newspaper, but it is well 
to have plenty to do when you are working in a sort of grave- 
yard where the persistent dust comes creeping through the 
windows all day long, and there is no water either for washing 
or drinking. Doubtless this business of being constantly 
occupied has prevented one from realising to the full extent how 
completely the tire has changed one's existence ; and it 
has also dimmed to some extent the memory of that extra- 
ordinary day when the fire that started high up in the Jewish 
quarter, swept down stage by stage until it reached the 
water's edge knd pushed a large proportion of the population 
into the sea— or, at any rate, on to the lighters of the British 
Navy. 
Strange Eviction Scenes 
Between 5 and 7 in the afternoon I was watching one 
of the strangest eviction scenes of all time, as street after 
street of crowded Jewish houses, tenements, courts and 
hovels were licked up and patriarchal Jews by the himdred 
with fezzes and white beards and a local sort of gaberdine 
costume known as the inlari, rushed about actively in spite 
of the skirts that chmg round their slippered feet. It was an 
amazing and a sad scene— wailing families huddled together, 
the crash of falling houses as the flames tore along, swept 
by the strong hot wind known as the vardar ; a slow moving 
mass of pack-donkeys, loaded native carts, hamah carrying 
enormous burdens on their lx;nt backs ; Greek boy scouts 
(who seemed to be doing excellent work), soldiers of all 
nations ; ancient wooden fire engines that creaked paj;heti- 
callv as thev spat out ineffectual trickles of water ; family 
groups carrying beds (hundreds and hundreds of flock and 
feather beds), wardrobes, large mirrors, sewing machines 
(every family, clung to its sewing machine) and a general 
indescribable collection of ponderous rubjjish. 
The evacuation of each street came in a panic rush as its 
inhabitants realised that their homes also were doomed. All 
the way down the hill the narrow streets were littered with 
these pathetic objects, broken or cast aside in the gathering 
rush. By 9 p.m. the more modern and commercial quarter, 
with its many well-built shops, warehouses and hotels, was 
attacked. Here merchandise of all descriptions took ths 
place of the household gods of the houses up the hill, but it 
was the same story— very little that was dumped into the 
street could be carted away. Merchants who had scoffed 
at the idea of the fire invading their quarter now dashed 
about in panic, imploring transport that was not to be had. 
So, as the short hours passed, practically the whole of the 
central portion of the city was ablaze— the- sea a red glare 
as'it reflected the furnace of the mile-long front ; ships pushing 
luirriedly away from the sea wall, with one caique blazing ; 
and thousands of refugees crowded on the port— black pigmies 
against a titanic crimson background. 
At some moment kite in the evening a great change 
occurred. The British Army, which up to then had belonged 
strictly to the British Army, suddenly, in a twinkling, became 
everyone's property, and from apparently nowhere hundreds 
of great lorries appeared. Soon they were packed with 
families and what was left to them of furniture, and went off, 
came back again, and repeated the work a dozen times. 
Tommy was at his best, and in spite of the smoke and glare 
and nois.' and the spectacle— apparently— of the universe 
burning, there was order and method once the problem of 
getting the people away was tackled. In the midst of it all 
I remember buying a id. slice of melon at the corner of the 
English Quay and thinking it was one of the best things I 
had everlasted. The nu'lon vendor, as he sliced up liis fruit, 
seemed to regard catastrophes as excellent things. 
By four in the morning the spcc:tacle of a big hotel being 
destroyed in a quarter. of an hour or so was commonplace. 
The sight later oi calcined Salonika, once the first rush of the 
fire was spent, seemed quite natural after the blaze iwc had 
seen. By now we who still work in the middle of it regard a 
ruined city as more or less a normal thing. The Greek Press 
has said some extremely flattering, even fulsome things about 
the work of the British soldiers during and after the fire. 
Now has come a contest of wills as to the future rebuilding 
of Salonika. And when modern Greek meets ancient and 
unchanging Israelite, you may look out lor the tug-of-wai". 
