The Greek Army entered Thessaloniki in the early hours of Saturday, October 27, 1912 (Old Style). In a moving editorial, the newspaper Makedonia of Thessaloniki in its Sunday, October28, 1912 edition expressed the feelings of the Macedonian Greek as follows:
With warm tears, tears of joy that floods the chest of the slave who recovers his freedom, tears of gratitude that fulfills his existence for his liberator, we salute the Greek army that entered the resplendent city of the Thessalonians.
This brilliant trophy of the heroic and victorious Greek Army demolishes the cornerstone of the Turkish state from the Greek Macedonia. Of the state, which, as the kingdoms of ancient monsters were established on layers of bones. Of the state, which has been synonymous to barbarism and horribleness. Of the state, which holding in one hand the torch of arson and in the other the dagger of the murderer, burned and slaughtered our life and our honor, our faith and our ethnicity, and anything holy and sacred that we have.
And now the pulverized homeland of Aristotle and Alexander [the Great], whose every hill and every valley, every corner and every span, are soaked in innocent Greek blood and former and recent lamentations of the martyrs of the Faith and Fatherland, throws itself free into the warm and loving arms of Mother Greece.
Thus, the great epic of 1821 continues.
With warm tears, tears of joy that floods the chest of the slave who recovers his freedom, tears of gratitude that fulfills his existence for his liberator, we salute the Greek army that entered the resplendent city of the Thessalonians.
This brilliant trophy of the heroic and victorious Greek Army demolishes the cornerstone of the Turkish state from the Greek Macedonia. Of the state, which, as the kingdoms of ancient monsters were established on layers of bones. Of the state, which has been synonymous to barbarism and horribleness. Of the state, which holding in one hand the torch of arson and in the other the dagger of the murderer, burned and slaughtered our life and our honor, our faith and our ethnicity, and anything holy and sacred that we have.
And now the pulverized homeland of Aristotle and Alexander [the Great], whose every hill and every valley, every corner and every span, are soaked in innocent Greek blood and former and recent lamentations of the martyrs of the Faith and Fatherland, throws itself free into the warm and loving arms of Mother Greece.
Thus, the great epic of 1821 continues.