e parched and
yellow fields on either side still littered with the debris of
war--broken _camions_ and wagons, shattered cannon, pyramids of
ammunition-cases, vast quantities of barbed wire--and sprinkled with
white crosses, thousands and thousands of them, marking the places where
sleep the youths from Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Serbia, Canada,
India, Australia, Africa, who fell in the Last Crusade.

Monastir is a filthy, ill-paved, characteristically Turkish town, which,
before its decimation by the war, was credited with having some 60,000
inhabitants. Of these about one-half were Turks and one-quarter Greeks,
the remaining quarter of the inhabitants being composed of Serbs, Jews,
Albanians, and Bulgars. Those of its buildings which escaped the great
conflagration which destroyed half the town were terribly shattered by
the long series of bombardments, so that to-day the place looks like San
Francisco after the earthquake and Baltimore after the fire. In the
suburbs are immense supplies of war _materiel_ of all sorts, mostly
going to waste. I saw thousands of camions, ambulances, caissons, and
wagons literally falling apart from neglect, and this in a country which
is almost destitute of transport. Though the town was packed with
Serbian troops, most of whom are sleeping and eating in the open, no
attempt was being made, so far as I could see, to repair the shell-torn
buildings, to clean the refuse-littered streets, or to afford the
inhabitants even the most nominal police protection. The crack of rifles
and revolvers is as frequent in the streets of Monastir as the bang of
bursting tires on Fifth Avenue. A Serbian sentry, on duty outside the
house in which I was sleeping, suddenly loosed off a clip of cartridges
in the street, for no reason in the world, it seemed, than because he
liked to hear the noise! Dead bodies are found nearly every morning.
Murders are so common that they do not provoke even passing comment. In
the night there comes a sharp bark of an automatic or the shattering
roar of a hand-grenade (which, since the war proved its efficacy, has
become the most recherche weapon for private use in these regions), a
clatter of feet, and a "Hello! Another killing." That is all. Life is
the cheapest thing there is in the Balkans.

The only really clean place we found in Monastir was the American Red
Cross Hospital, an extremely well-managed and efficient institution,
which was under the direction of a yo