Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 134, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1915 — WAR STIRS TENEDOS Peaceful Life of Little Island Becomes Distracted. [ARTICLE]

WAR STIRS TENEDOS

Peaceful Life of Little Island Becomes Distracted.

Moslems aAd Greeks Watch Battle for the Dardanelles With Conflicting Emotions—Place of Vantage for Correspondents. Tenedos. —War is a good teacher of geography. The attack on the Dardanelles has brought Into prominence this little island, whose existence was previously unknown to the millions. The peaceful and uneventful life of its 3,000 Inhabitants has been distracted. The sound of the guns, the upheaval of a world-war has come to their doors. It has one dominating height, this little Island of six by three miles —Mount Elias —and to this height during the bombardments flocked all the Tenedlotes to watch the epoch-making fight. Before the Balkan wars the Moslem inhabitants were in the majority; with the advent bf the Christian rule of the Greeks most of them left, crossing to the opposite shore only four miles away, where the half-moon of Islam still floats. A few still remain, forming a group apart, keeping to themselves and avoiding their fellow Christian citizens. If you want to get them you must go to* their spiritual chief, the Mufti. Oh the day of the attempt to force the narrows all of them climbed up to Mount Elias, but they kept apart from their fellow islanders, forming a group to themselves, with the Mufti at their head, silently watching the drama of their country enacted before their eyes. No sound was uttered by them that day; only on the intelligent face of the Mufti could one discern relief that the day had not gone so well for the allies, that another respite had been gained for the Empire of Islam. Tenedos, besides its normal population supports 2,000 Greek refugees from the opposite shores, persecuted and expelled from their homes. These also flocked to Mount Elias. Many of them were from Chanak and the villages in the straits. They were watching their hearths and homes shelled by the fleet, but they cared little whether their belongings were set on fire, hatred against those who

drove them from their homes being uppermost in thought. Every shell from the ship that was seen to go home was acclaimed by them, after the excitable eastern fashion, with loud shouts of hatred, such as “Burn the tyrants! Kill the dogs!” When night eame and it was seen that the allies would not pass that day, they silently and sorrowfully descended from Mount Elias, with bitterness in their hearts that the day of their deliverance had not yet come. It was not likely that, with the unique position Tenedos afforded for watching the naval operations, it would have been left for long undiscovered by war correspondents. Telegrams flashed to the world’s press from its shores, stirred editors and soon correspondents from all parts of the world were on their way to this previously unknown spot. One by one they arrived by the weekly boat service to the island, until with the last batch, their numbers grew to a score. 5 The one sleepy official who acted as postmaster, telegraph director, clerk and telegraph boy, saw with regret his peaceful life invaded. He was called upon suddenly to do the work that ten men could not cope with. He was taking more messages in an hour than he would ordinarily be called* upon to deal with in a year. In despair he allowed his little den on an inner office to be invaded, and he gave himself up as lost when ten, fifteen and even twenty correspondents at once called upon him to take dispatches. There was nothing to be done but turn the correspondents themselves into telegraph clerks, registering and taking in their own money, and carrying their own dispatches to the Eastern Telegraph office. And what a bewildering variety of currency there was to deal with: Sovereigns and louis, shillings, French pieces, and French and English bank notes, intermingled with Turkish and Greek coins and paper. A Babylon es rates, values and exchange to deal with. It was sufficient to drive crazy a much stronger brain than that of the old telegraphist.