Show U 41 17 KURDS ON ori WEL THE PLAIN OF or TROY ANNON awakening the echoes over ilium a plains where tho the allies have been trying to pound their way beyond the dardanelles Darda nelles stir many legendary memories of this historic battle region and bring to mind tho the oddest contrasts cont rants raids hero here dhore now modem modern ordnance Is hurling its messengers ot at destruction homers heroes waged their spectacular single banded handed combats while admiring armies grouped themselves around to watch it la to a far cry from the romantic stege siege of 0 troy to tho the terribly impersonal bat tie tle of today yet tho the old walls of troy bring some sort of at inspiration to the tile soldiers fight ingIn their shadows soldiers of the allies or of the turks excavated ilium near one ot of the present wars great battlefields tle fields Is 18 deac bed in a commini cation to the national geographic society by jacob E conner the trojan walls are still in evidence those same walls that defied the onslaught of agamemnon and aus of aaa nestor doomed ulasta and achilles to fall at last by stratagem they remain as a ruined and abandoned stage minus ita its paraphernalia shercon was played so many centuries ago an insignificant little drama compared with modern modem events but it was a drama so big with human interest divinely told toll that the world has never known its it equal wars in these cr crowded oded times are aro tor for gain but in the youth of at the world if we take the iliad literally men could afford to fight light for an ideal hence the homeric warfare was a beautiful a poetic pastime seriously serious lp res lilting to some happy few who wore ware thenceforth rewarded with immortality in song troy well worth a visit As tho the theater of the horld s greatest epic poem troy deserves deserT cs a visit any year e ei ery year in the thoughts and emotions it revives and stimulates in the aroused sense of indebtedness of nil all subsequent literature and art it richly re repays ays a visit the classical student will leave it in a daze of meditation upon things more rial to him than tho the things he has sen and touched on the site where the lerman savant manti unearthed homers troy nine layers of old lime time cities wore were found one above bove the other they were destroyed and forgotten here during the more than years that civilization has lived upon the products of the fert fertile ile the topmost layer contained the remains of the roman citi city r of ilium two hellenic villages were vere found directly beneath it which flour nourished here between 1000 B C and the christian ca ein the sixth city from the bottom bottor was identified as homers troy the bottom layers contained tho the remains of at prehistoric settlements unimportant villages that have es every memory except these few uncovered decaying decay inc stones in the second or burnt city probably years before the time of troy was univ found a considerable mass of at burled buried treasure silver allver jara jars gold dagger daggers and vonder wonderfully fully wrought diadems of gold describing the country around troy air mr conner continues yonda Is the summit of mt sit ida where the sods gods in solemn conclave so often sat where here cloud compelled zeus sometimes thought two ways in his mind at once or else ended all debate with a nod that shook 1 agh I b olympus an and caused the heavens to ra reverberate and glow with tho the flash of his thunderbolt away oyer oyez yonder skirting the ridge idge of ilium Is Sim simmia oits stream or should bo be but the thu bridge across it allows upon our approach that modern Is no more than a creek worse than that following its attenuated course less than a mile downstream we ue die this cover that it ends in a morass instead of tho the Scam arder ae as ot 01 yore and the latter stream la is scarcely less de ds appointing for it is no more dignified in size or appearance in fact their sluggish currents united can scared boast of banks except at occasional intervals for both streams are low only broad swales merging with mith the adjacent plain with no continuous cur rent toward the sea except in seasons of high water it if such are ever known and such beautiful bil plains they were well worth fighting for gently undulating as they retreat from the former river course courses and most home like cultivable place places for peaceful abode little rounded oak trees are studded about the plain in solitary in dependent fashion oak trees lesem bling apple trees in eize size and peri perl ahery behold the ruins at last A ion long 9 lov lo v ridge some four or five miles in length ends abruptly like a bromon tory projecting into the sea above which it tl rises about 30 30 ft feet t the ridge Is 1 the eo so called hill of ilium the sea Is the flood plain of the and the scamander historically known BL AL the plain of troy and the bromon tory with its crown of rains ruins Is troy itself you walk around the ruins and make tho tile surprising discovery that it tte walking were good ou could easily do it in ten minutia astonishing Is this all there was of troy and did this little stronghold withstand a nine gears eara siege and still remain by force im lm possible the whole hill of at ilium ma may 7 have been forti fortified lied and to so some we ex tent populated ted otherwise how ans the gar garrison rimon provisioned Cn poetic like these never troubled ho lio mer so why bother about them athin sight almost of denedos the island base of the attacking allied armies and within sound and reach of the big guns the old ruins are watching over the present lighting a greeting from the da daas of the firt ua great western siege to thy the greatest gr eates siege of modern lime |