New Britain herald., 1915-12-28
EUROPEAN MARCHES
 NOTABLE IN HISTORY
Islands Again battle-ground Be-
 tween Orient and 0CCident

Washington, ID. C., Dec. zo.- NlLh the shipping of the center of the Flu ropean storm and its gathering in intensity toward the Balkans, Turkey in-Europe, and the Near East, those islands which dot the course between Europe and Asia, battlegrounds in the 25O0 years of struggle between the Orient and Occident for suprem- acy, are forming once more a part of the area where the future of the West is to be decided. There are no lands in the world whose stories are more absorbing than those of these islands. A bulletin just issued by the National Geographic Society gives sketch Of the islands as presented in com munication to the Society by Ernest Lloyd Harris. It is as follows:
 Where a broken fringe of islands parallels the coast of Asia Minor, be- ginning with famed Rhodes in the south; running northward. narrowly separated from the mainland, past the peninsula of Gallipoli, and ending near the present Aegean coast of Bull garia, is the dividing line between the Occident and Orient. These is- lands are the European marches, where Asia and Europe have clashed | throughout all history. Here we find Persian pitted against I Greek, Roman against Pontien, By l zantine against Moslem, Crusader | against Saracen, Turks against Mogul, and, today, Europe divided against it. self, and against the East.
 Picturesque Region.
 Not only has Asia Minor and the | islands facing its shores been the stage upon which have been enacted some of the most gigantic events in human history, but it is at the present time one of the most interesting and picturesque regions in the world. 1t has been termed the quintessence of the East For nowhere else will you | find, thrown together in close associaS ton, so many things of the East-the camel caravan; the groves of cypress, olive, plane, and valonia trees; the mosque and lowering minaret; latticed windows and yelled women, and background made up of the remnants of an ancient civilization.
 Rhodes, whose history is one chap ter after another of fascinating TO- nance from days of remote antiquity, through its reign as cultural center during the age of Roman occupation, and its golden period as the strongs hold of chivalry during the occupa- , ton of the island by the order Of the Knights of St. John, once. dominated . the eastern Mediterranean; as a vest pocket England off the coast of Asia Minor.
 Held By Italy.
 Rvas~ 1ans.~ , educations at Rhodes, but imperial 7 Rome and Byzantium finally absorbed 3 the schools of Rhodes. Next the I Knights of St. John, founded in the I eleventh century at Jerusalem, after many hardships, frightened again the annals of the islands by making it their home. They assumed the nape
 of the Knights of Rhodes and after :, innumerable wars, were at last forced to retire, in 1922, before the Turks to Malta. At the present time the . island is being held by Italy, which took possession in 1912, in the course of her war with Tripoli.
 "Chios, 150 miles to the north
 once one of the richest members of the Ionian Union, subject, in turn, to Athenian, Roman, Italian and Turkish domination, has long been a bone of contention between the Turk and Greek, and was first reunited to~fts parent country, Greece, in 1913, after separation of more than 2,300 years.
 Turks Devastated Land.
 "The Chians joined their brother Greeks in the wars of liberation, which began in the first years of the last century, In 1922, the Turks slaughtered 30 1000 Chians in the space of two months and sold 32,0O0 others into slavery and the land was thor oughly devastated.
 "Samos, at the mouth of the bay upon which stood ancient Ephesus, the Magnificent, formed one of the oldest settlements of the Ionians in the Mediterranean Samos was the birth place of the philosophe CT Pythagovas, and here, too, was the wonderful Temple of Hera, beast of the Grecian world. .a
 'sThe islands of the Aegean taken together constitute one of the most historic and interesting insular region ] in the world Besides the twenty principal ones, which have lent much to history; there are innumerable smaller ones. The larger islands have a number of fertile and we'll watered valleys and plains, the prin- cipal products of which are wheat, wine, oil mastic, cotton, silk, raisins, honey. and wax. Coral and sponge fisheries are numerous and in most of the islands the ancient Greek type(