Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 181, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1919 — SAVE YANK CITY IN MACEDONIA [ARTICLE]

SAVE YANK CITY IN MACEDONIA

Red Cross Cares for People ... Made Dostitute by Buk -- garians. . - LIKE REAL AMERICAN CITY Headquarters of American Oil and Tobacco Interests Opens After Bulgarian Occupation —See Awful Picture of Misery. Ka valla, Macedonia. —Few Americans, except those in the tobacco industry, have ever heard of this little port on Aegean sea. Yet it has many features and activities to commend it to the interest of the, people of the United States. Here the finest tobacco in the world —the bulk of which is consumed in America —is grown. Here the great American tobacco companies have export headquarters. Here the biggest oil company of the United States and America’s, greatest relief organization, the American. Red Cross, have distributing centers. Indeed, Kavalla has Come to have some of the aspects of a real American city. are so many Americans here that one feels hiipself -only a few hundred miles from home, instead of in the heart of a remote region whose beginnings antedate the birth of Christ. Bulgaria Wants Harbor. For years Bulgaria has looked upon Kavalla with a covetous eye. Although defeated and subdued, she looked hopefully to the peace congress at Paris to give her Kavalla as a port. Yet Kavalla is not a harbor. It is merely a roadstead affording good anchorage for coastwise steamers. Millions of dollars and endless development would be required to convert the city into a first-class port. But Bulgaria, which now has only the shallow port of Dedeagatch at the mouth of the Gulf of Enos, was and is anxious to get an outlet through Macedonia and the sea for her large output of tobacco, wheat, live stock, silk and attar of roses, and would be quite ready to spend any sum in developing and deepening the harbor. Kavalla is situated on a rocky pe# nlnsula and is dominated by the ruins of an old Venetian fort. It isfprotected from the south by the Greek island of Thasos. Back from the seacoast is a mountainous district known in Macedonia as the Pangaion.

Coursing through the valley, on Pangaioh’s eastern slope, is the placid Anghista river, which some historical writers believe to be the stream where Paul baptized Lydia. On all sides of the mountains in this region is rich arable land peculiarly adapted to the growth of tobacco. The best leaf in the world is grown here, and so valuable are the fields for tobacco culture that very little else is cultivated. During the war the Bulgarians adopted in Kavalla the same ruthless practices they followed in all occupied territory. They pillaged and destroyed. They, made every effort to make the land uninhabitable. They cut down the trees and carried off furniture and everything made of wood. They sacked the homes and drove the Greek inhabitants out. As a result of all this, when the Greek commission of the American Red Cross established relief posts here, a few days after the armistice, their representatives found living conditions almost unsupportable. First Red Cross Base. Kavalla was the first city in Macedonia to become a base for Red Cross operations. The natives speak with unbounded gratitude of the help .given them by the Americans. They say the food furnished by the American Red Cross was the first substantial nourishment they had in four years. No section of the Balkans ever presented a more depressing picture of nrfsery and squalor. When the Americans came in they found the inhabitants dying by the dozen from famine, exposure and typhus. They immediately established soup kitchens and dispensaries and gave

out tens of thousands of Americanmade garments. They sent in doctors, nurses. and medicalsuppliesThey"" distributed hundreds of - thousands of loaves of bread made of American flour. They established shelters for the homeless women and children. They cared for the hordes of broken and dispirited Greek ar ’ Serbian soldiers who had been released from vile prison camps in garia. Ir* their devotion to the task of rescuing the typhus-stricken population two of their number lost their lives and three nurses contracted the dread disease.