Page:Englishwomaninan00elli.pdf/313

 *camps, and never handled with brutality as they work on the roads. Yet they look rough and desperate, showing none of the resignation with which the Turk faces captivity, however ragged and tattered. These Greeks even seem afraid if a Christian woman speaks to them, although they own that their alarm does not come from either a guilty conscience or from terror of their enemies, but only reveals the broken spirit of men betrayed and alone. I feel, however, that to be always surrounded by the useless and horrible devastation you have yourself inflicted, must unnerve the most callous of human beings.

At about six o'clock on our last morning, an officer arrives to conduct us to the station. The train starts at 7-30, reaching Moudania at nine o'clock, where the boat may leave at 9-30, or any time it likes. It is a short and uneventful train journey, only relieved by a brisk trade in tea at our two stopping-places.

We find a high wind and rough seas at Moudania, and the boat has not yet arrived! There is plenty of time to drive to a unit of headquarters, where the officer's mother (whom he had "smuggled" through from Constantinople) gives me coffee and cigarettes beside a welcome fire. We pass the historic house in which Peace was signed; one of the many examples in Anatolia of great achievements from small beginnings.

Moudania is, on the whole, more depressing than any of the miserable towns I have been over; and the officer is, certainly, to be congratulated on having secured the company of his mother.

It was about half-past six in the evening when we were summoned to embark; and there was no sign of the "special cabin" that had been promised me in this little cockle-shell of a boat, on which passengers, nevertheless, are divided according to class. For my part, I chose to travel second, as there was far more air; and, as we opened the door, the "poultry yard" gave us a hearty welcome! The women had