What I Saw in Berlin and Other European Capitals During WartimePiermarini
History
What I Saw in Berlin and Other European Capitals During Wartime
Piermarini
Europe -- Description and travel; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
News here is practically all of the "made in Germany" type. At
Dedeagatch, besides a few Bulgarian papers, the only foreign papers
I could get were those of Berlin and Vienna. The successes of the
Serbians in the north do not please the Bulgarians; every day there are
incidents on both the Bulgarian and Greek frontiers.
The day before I reached Dedeagatch two Bulgarian sentries had been
killed in a fight with Serbian sentries. Of course, such incidents,
which would lead to unavoidable international complications if they
happened on the frontier of a great European country, are here
considered as merely incidents, and one cannot base on them hurried
judgments and deductions.
Regarding Great Britain, she has the sympathies of the Bulgarian
diplomacy, which is naturally inclined towards the nations who, like
England, protected the small Balkan States; but, I repeat, one feels
that Bulgaria will shake off her neutrality only when she sees the
chance of immediate gain in doing so, and in no case before having
waited a long time; time enough to see "how the cat jumps."
* * *
I have found him.
I am not sorry for the uncomfortable journey; I am not sorry for the
days wasted, nor for having missed, for a few hours only, the weekly
boat from Salonika to Athens; for it was in a little town called
Drama, where I had to stop an hour or so, that I met the wonderful man.
I bless a thousand times the hours of unspeakable boredom, the many
punishments for unlearned lessons, the terrific anxiety for the
examinations which worried my school days while learning the Greek
language, for it was in Tessalian dialect, which, luckily, is more
similar to old Greek than modern Greek itself, that my precious man
spoke. His existence has been denied by most. He has no equal in
England, I am sure, nor in Germany, nor in France, probably not one
in all Europe. He is more difficult to find than the white fly or the
black diamond of the old Oriental legends. If I had not been afraid of
trouble with the British police when I got back to England, I should
dare to write candidly that I am glad of Turkey's declaration of war
because, without it, I should never have gone to Drama and never have
met him.
"_Him_" is the man who has never heard of the war.
His look is like the look of any man a little over middle age; his
condition is corresponding to the condition of an English gentleman
farmer; his education is certainly far superior to the education of an
ordinary middle-class man. He knows and still reads daily a few pages
of his favourite classic works Homer, Anacreon, Hesiod. He does not
read newspapers.
I didn't realise my luck until we had talked a quarter of an hour--at
least, struggled hard to do so.
"And what do you think of the war?" I asked him at a certain moment.
"The war! Which war?"
"Yes, the big war; the war between England, France, Russia, and Serbia
on one side and Germany and----"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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