We had another difficulty with General Sarrail concerning the extension of our front. He was always insisting that we should extend our line so as to give the French divisions a chance of more frequent turns of rest, but our sector was one of the most difficult, and the defences were anything but complete, so that General Petitti had constantly opposed this request. General Pennella, to whom it was presented again, replied to the same effect. On General Mombelli, General Sarrail brought new and stronger pressure to bear with the same end in view, but after a careful study of the situation, he came to the same conclusion, and appealed to the Italian _Comando Supremo_. The latter referred the question to the Commander-in-Chief in France, who stated that he would try to convince General Sarrail, but that if the latter insisted on his plan, he would not be able to take upon himself the responsibility of giving contrary orders. As a matter of fact, however, General Sarrail did not insist and the Italian front remained for the moment unchanged. CHAPTER XI FROM THE SALONICA FIRE TO THE RECALL OF SARRAIL On August 18, 1917, there occurred one of those catastrophes in which the history of Salonica is so rich. At about three p.m. a fire broke out in a small house occupied by a poor Jewish widow in the central part of the old town. For four months not a drop of rain had fallen, and at Salonica there was no adequate organization for fighting the flames, except a small and ill-equipped fire-brigade inherited from the Turks. The Allied Armies had their own fire-engines, but the C.A.A. had made no arrangements in view of a possible conflagration in the city, for which the local authorities were supposed to provide. Big fires were by no means unknown in Salonica; some thirty years before a considerable part of the town had been destroyed by the flames, and other fires had occurred fairly frequently. The water supply was totally inadequate and the pressure very weak. The great majority of the houses in the old town were of wood and even in the others there was a great deal of woodwork; as if this were not enough, a high wind was blowing at the time. All circumstances were therefore propitious for a first-class fire. In a very short time the flames spread far and wide, and from the poor hovel of the Jewish widow it soon enveloped a large part of the city in a vast conflagration. About sunset the Italian military band was still playing in the Place de la Liberté near the sea, and no one imagined that the flames could possibly come so far down (the quarter where it had broken out was half-way up the hill). But by ten at night the handsome buildings along the sea front were menaced, and had to be rapidly evacuated; during the night they, too, caught fire. The heat of the flames was so terrific that, although these structures were of brick and stone, they were swept away like the wooden hovels. Even the rails of the railway along the quay on the side