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Anciata Directory 06
The soldiers thus designated are not given rifles, nor are they trained for service, but are simply employed as servants to the regular soldiers. It is easy to understand that no one can endure such conditions of military life, the result being that each and every one of these non-Moslems sells whatever property he has in order to pay the ransom and get away from the army, and from Turkey as well. In ten days, since this peculiar recruiting began, fully ten thousand Greeks found a way of escaping from Constantinople, many of them finding a refuge in the free and hospitable United States. This getting away is not so easy, writes the same correspondent, because officials of the various ports are exacting heavy sums from the fugitives before letting them go. Graft and extortion in this case reign supreme, and it costs anywhere from three to fifteen pounds ($13 to $70) to "buy" a police or port official. This process, originating in Constantinople, is widespread in the provinces, and the sums paid in this way by the non-Moslems to escape military service amount to millions. "Let the infidels pay!" say the Turkish officials. "They have taken our ships, and they have to pay for it."
When Caesar understood this state of things, he called an assembly of the troops, and made an address to them. He told them that he was astonished to learn to what an extent an unworthy despondency and fear had taken possession of their minds, and how little confidence they reposed in him, their general. And then, after some further remarks about the duty of a soldier to be ready to go wherever his commander leads him, and presenting also some considerations in respect to the German troops with which they were going to contend, in order to show them that they had no cause to fear, he ended by saying that he had not been fully decided as to the time of marching, but that now he had concluded to give orders for setting out the next morning at three o'clock, that he might learn, as soon as possible, who were too cowardly to follow him. He would go himself, he said, if he was attended by the tenth legion alone He was sure that they would not shrink from any undertaking in which he led the way.
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