The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-03-06
|MONKSO OF MT. ATHOS ARE EFEARFUL OF RAID Ask Protection of Head of
 Greek Church EMPEROR OF RUSSIA Petition Put Before Russian Minister at Athens-May Send Marines to
 Protect Twenty Convents
 on Mountain
EMPEROR OF RUSSIA


 February 11.-(Correspondence of the As- sociated Press)-The monks of Mt. Athos have appealed to the holy mother church of Russia for protection Disturbed in their quiet unworldly lives by the ap- proach of the world war to a Balkan battlefield several months ago, the holy synod of the community, which consti- tutes the thoroughly democratic- govern ment of the 20 convents, long deliberated the peril threatening them. They are not ignorant of war. At one time their convent walls were mounted with can non and in the early part of the last century they took, with sad results for themselves, prominent part in the Greek war for independence from Ottoman rule War, therefore, is a very positive hor- TOT to the monks of Mt. Athos. So, after due deliberation, they decided to send two of their presidents (of whom there are four named in rotation from each of the convents each year to Athens, to lay their fears before the representative of the secular head of the Greek church. In pursuance of this decision armed with loaf of black bread. a little paper of salt and an ikon of great beauty, newly painted with loving monkish care, the two black-robed elders of the ancient re-
 
 of their cliffs and walls, sea-girt, and braved the troubled waters of the Aegean to put their difficulties before Prince Demidof, imperial Russian n1in- ister to Greece.
 HEAD IS EMPEROR
 The secular head and most powerful defender of the Greek church in the world outside of Mt. Athos is the Emperor of all the Russias. To him in person they could not go. The way was cut off Neither through Bulgaria in arms nor by way of the besieged Bosphorus could these legates of Mt. Athos come to their next friend and protector. So they went as best they could to his representative. dressed in their ample, flowing robes, their pot hats with outworn tiles turned upside down, and their uncut hair and patriarchial boards. And the Russian minister received them, gave them food and drink in his exquisite palace in Ath- ems in return for their bread and salt, and treating them with great respect, assured them their case would be put be- fore the Emperor himself, and that con- tlngent of Russian marines would be sent to guard the peninsula if they had to come all the way from Archangel to get there. He told them not to fear, for the Bulgarians, too, are of the Greek church and themselves have a convent all of their own on Mt. Athos; and it was scarcely conceivable that even the least scrupulous of Bulgarian .komitad- jis' or bandits should lay hostile hands upon the holy things of the church.
 But what has bothered the monks of Mt Athos has not been the Bulgarians. The monks in vague sort of way know that their treasures of golden images, brilliant studded altar utensils, manu scripts centuries and centuries old, are sufficient to tempt almost any man. They fear. not perhaps. an organized attack, but a raid against which their hired guard of 50 soldiers would be helpless. So second deputation has just been dispatched to Athens, and some of the more precious of their sacred possessions their bits of the true cross, their saintly mementoes of the, holy founders of the various convents, around which shrine after shrine has been built through the ages-have been placed in the security of the steel safe of the imperial Russian legation at Athens.
 AN EXTRAORDINARY SIGHT Certainly one of the most extraordi- nary and beautiful sights of the whole world is convent-crowned Mt. Athos. The Chalcidic peninsula, stretched south into the Aegean sea like three fingers of a great hand, has the mountain itself as the nail on the easternmost finger But the mountain is merely a sort of lofty IHarDle-Wnlte anu OakeH-Sreen lanQlnark, on the garlanded sides of which are hun dreds of shrines and huts of individual anchorites The whole peninsula itself is the garden ground of 20 convents, most of them either at the waters edge or perched high upon cliffs or mounted on the terraced hillsides overlooking the water. Their architecture, their extraor- dinary setting, stages a scene for the passerby on the deck of coasting steam ar Tar ba 1aI in tJ,a world.
 There are some 5000 monks and lay brethren on Mt. Athos. But there are no women, nor any female animal of any kind, not even a chicken. Women have several times sought to penetrate within the forbidden bounds of the peninsula, notwithstanding the stringent prohibition most always failed, and their failure has often been very uncomfortable for them