Still a part of its pavement remained and appeared gloriously obstructed by an arch of triumph near whose weatherbeaten stone base were working barefooted bootblacks wearing the scarlet fez.
An endless variety of uniforms filed through the streets, and this diversity in attire as well as the ethnical difference in the men who wore it was very noticeable.

The soldiers of France and the British Isles touched elbows with the foreign troops.

The allied governments had sent out a call to the professional combatants and volunteers of their colonies.

The black sharpshooters from the center of Africa showed their smiling teeth of marble to the bronze giants with huge white turbans who had come from India.

The hunters from the glacial plains of Canada were fraternizing with the volunteers from Australia and New Zealand.
The cataclysm of the world war had dragged mankind from the antipodes to this drowsy little corner of Greece where were again repeated the invasions of remote centuries which had made ancient Thessalonica bow to the conquest of Bulgarians, Byzantians, Saracens, and Turks.
The crews of the battleships in the roadstead had just added to this medley of uniforms the monotonous note of their midnight blue, almost like that of all the navies of the world....