With the Serbs in Macedonia

42 WITH THE SERBS IN MACEDONIA
was doomed, and thus gracefully he sped his
parting guests. It was better than fiddling.
Fires are notorious for their freakishness, but
there was one freak of this fire that betrayed the
handiwork of the High Gods of Irony. At the
corner of the Place de la Liberte, in the very
heart of the flames, stood a big Oriental Stores,
''
an enemy trading concern out of bounds " to
the Allied troops. This escaped without the
slightest injury, not even a pane of glass in the
iron-shuttered windows being broken. It was
a new, modern, fire-proof building, faced with
marble, which, of course, explains its survival.
If the military could do little to check or
control the fire, they could and they did do
much for its eighty thousand victims. Naturally
there was a certain amount of looting, especially
before the Allies formally took charge. Many a
native came out of the fire with more worldly
goods than he had ever possessed before it, and
here and there a few soldiers and sailors helped
themselves to drink and anything else they
fancied. But few though those black were, hardly any of them were British.
sheep
That
night and during the days and nights that
followed Tommy covered himself with glbry.
In two days he did more to make a new Ally a
lifelong friend than all the AlHed diplomacy has
accomplished.