Picture Caption -
The little Greek sitting on his
trunk is going back to "get even" with a "bushwhacker"
who pillaged his home.
Article published in "The Day Book", Chicago, Illinois, October 11, 1912
GREEKS GOING TO WAR MOSTLY TO AVENGE
New York, Oct. 11 - Thousands upon thousands of Greeks, all over America, are leaving their tiny shoe shine parlors, their hat-cleaning niches and their little corner fruit stands these days and are sailing home "to fight." They are marching down to the docks in New York in big companies to the lift and swing of martial tunes and the beautiful blue flag of Greece flaps over them.
But - it is vengeance, rather than patriotism, that animates them.
Nearly every Greek who is sailing has a "grudge to wipe out" - or seems to have. And these grudges are all against "bashi-bazouks" or Turkish bush-rangers.
"I know the six men - I know the six men," muttered Dimitrios Vranas between his teeth, as he sat on the rail of the steamship "Madonna," about to drop anchor for Greece.
"I know them, and they shall die. They shall all die. I do not care so much about the war itself. I do not like to fight. But these six men - now I have the chance to kill them, and I shall do it. I will spend all my money to go over just to see them die.
"Our little home was in the village of Hemara. My brother and myself lived there happily - most happily - with our old father and mother. We had a vineyard and made our living from the grapes.
"One night Lazar and I went to town to sell our fruit. When we came back in the morning, our house had been ransacked and burned to the ground. Our old father and mother had died in the flames.
"We could not bear ever to live there again. We came to America. That was three years ago. We started a shoe-shining parlor and made money.
"A year ago our relatives wrote that they knew the six bashi-bazouks who killed our parents. 'The time will come,' we said then, and we will get even with these men.'
"Now the time has come! We have got our six men marked! We have plenty of lead for them."