This catastrophe, although it did not directly affect the Allied armies, created a problem which the military authorities could not disregard, viz., that of housing and feeding many thousands of refugees. By far the greater part of these were Jews, and the Greek authorities, supported in this by General Sarrail, had at first contemplated their evacuation, and it was proposed that they should be sent to Old Greece, to the islands and abroad, so as to avoid exposing them to hardships and to preserve the city from the dangers of epidemics, which the excessive overcrowding in the few remaining houses might easily have caused. This scheme naturally appeared the soundest from the point of view of public health. Incidentally it also presented the advantage, from the Greek point of view, that with the exodus of a large part of the Jewish inhabitants, the Greek element would have come to constitute an absolute majority of the population, thus eliminating the danger that at the future Peace Conference, the Salonica Jews, anything but attached to the Greek régime, might demand autonomy on the basis of “self-determination.” In any case the question was settled by the Jews themselves, who, save a very small minority, refused to depart. They knew that as long as the Allied armies were there they were assured of a necessary minimum of food, and that they would be able, in a very short time, to make good the losses they had suffered, whereas if they went to Old Greece or elsewhere they would find themselves in the midst of an unfriendly and poor population, where they could not even manage to earn their daily bread. It was said of the Salonica Jews, as of the Armenians, that their idea of paradise was an endless street of shops with Allied soldiers walking up and down it; Salonica, even after the fire, was not very different from this picture. The Jews whose houses were still standing were very generous in giving hospitality to their less fortunate co-religionists, and everyone was ready to limit the space occupied. Provisionally, the British gave shelter to many thousands of the more needy refugees in some large camps on the outskirts of the city, while the Greek Government and all the Allied armies contributed towards feeding them. Little by little, all found shelter of some sort, goodness knows how, and soon trading on a small scale began to spring up again. At first it would be an itinerant pedlar with a tray full of reels of cotton, a few pairs of stockings, some yards of linen or canvas, and a little hardware. Then the tray became a hand-cart, with a somewhat more abundant stock of goods, and the hand-cart was next transformed into a stationary cart. A few days later the cart was sheltered by a few boards; the whole outfit soon began to take on the appearance of a modest hut, a little better stocked, almost a regular shop. The profits of these traders, owing to the great scarcity of goods, were quite fabulous.