Disasters

Hundreds of minor earth shocks and a score of major quakes occurred, last week, in a narrow area some 500 miles long and stretching from Varna, on the Black Sea across Bulgaria, Thrace and the islands of the Aegean Sea to Corinth, in Greece. As the first shocks rumbled at Corinth, a telegraph operator frantically clicked off the words: "Help! Help! All is lost!" Over, and over he repeated the frenzied message. Then the earth reeled, the telegraph office collapsed, crushing the operator, and, with a universal cataclysmic roar, virtually every building in Corinth tumbled to the ground.

Soon Minister of Communications General John Metaxas hurried out to the quake area from Athens. Said he, after surveying Corinth: "Nothing but a heap of ruins remains. No house can be repaired, and structures which still threaten to fall must be pulled down. The material damage amounts to at least 620,000,000 drachmas ($8,000,000)." Fortunately the loss of life was slight, since the population of .Corinth, terrified by preliminary tremors, took refuge in the open before the major quakes began.

Swift to send aid were the British, French and Italian governments, all of which despatched war vessels with supplies for the 10,000 Corinthians who are now homeless, shelterless. Swifter still came the succor of the American Near East Relief, which maintains agents and nurses permanently in Greece. Meanwhile rich Athenians contributed generously and rapidly to a relief fund established by Old Paul Koun-douriotis, the revered admiral who is President of Greece because he alone is trusted as a man of honor--much as Germans trust Old Paul Ludwig Hans von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg.

Other Catastrophies. In the long, narrow area of.disaster a cyclone swept the islands of Syra & Mitylene, in the Aegean Sea, unroofing hundreds of houses. A quake racked Adrianople, in Thrace. Finally a tidal wave rose from the Black Sea to inundate the Bulgarian port of Varna, which simultaneously quivered.

Since the Bulgarian city of Philippopolis had already suffered an earthquake, last fortnight (TIME, April 30), the Bulgarian Government of Prime Minister Andrea Liaptcheff was fully aroused, last week, and proceeded by drastic means to cope with the additional disasters as they occurred.

By unanimous vote of the Sobranye (Parliament) all taxes were increased 20% to provide a relief fund. In quake areas a curfew bell was rung at 9 p. m., and persons seen prowling near shattered buildings after that hour were presumed to be thieves and fired upon at sight by military sentries. Profiteering in food or building materials was checked by a special law providing that offenders should have their entire property confiscated and should receive publicly 25 lashes.