IN the winter of 1896–97 I had been acting as Special Correspondent for the _New York Herald_ in Vienna, when, towards the end of February, things began to wear a sinister aspect between Turkey and Greece. Thus I left for Salonica on March 8, in order to await there the development of events. On that day Greece finally declined to accede to the demand of the Great Powers to recall Colonel Vassos from Crete. Thereupon Turkey began to mobilize her forces, and to push them forward towards the southern frontier of Thessaly. It was only subsequently, when Greece had also concentrated nearly all her forces on her northern frontier, and Greek volunteers, armed by the Ethnike Hetairia,[3] together with Greek regular troops, repeatedly made incursions into Macedonia, that Turkey declared war. Even then, however, there were hopes of peace left, for Turkey was still inclined to listen to the urgent request of the Great Powers not to assume the offensive. Footnote 3: A secret Greek political organization with Pan-Hellenistic aims to the activity of which the disturbances in Crete and the outbreak of the Græco-Turkish war were partly due. At Salonica I had a dull time, living in a state of suspense, with nothing to do but read the newspapers at the Club on the quay, or gaze at the snow-capped crest of Mount Olympus across the bay. A few warships appeared now and then in the offing. The largest ironclad of the Italian navy, the _Duilio_, anchored in front of the city, and it was a treat to visit it and to note the spick-and-span efficiency of the ship. Rumours of the wildest kind from all manner of unreliable sources—mostly of Greek origin—reached us daily. They tended to show that whatever might be the forces at the disposal of the Turks, Ananias with his hosts was on the side of the Greeks. His artillery was firing its missiles, and these travelled with incredible velocity to the ends of the earth. We learnt from more reliable sources, however, of raids over the frontier undertaken by the Greek Ethnike Hetairia, with whom were the Greek regulars, and who were reported to have committed various acts of pillage and murder, even in the neighbourhood of Salonica, whose Greek population made no secret of its sympathies with the Greek cause. It was not safe to go about after dark, although one felt inclined to risk much to partake of the decently cooked food and that collective social and convivial life which the Germans—here, as elsewhere in Turkey—maintained in the Kegel Club at the Hôtel Colombo.