The names of the many cities and countries on the postcards represent Europe and the Near East on the eve of the First World War. It was a world fitting to a cultured, cosmopolitan trader, as Isaac Bezas was. This world would violently and irreversibly change though, after 1918. It was the time when the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, the Russian, German and Ottoman Empires and only a part of the modern Greek state existed.
Espacially interesting is the name of Thessaloniki: From Salonique – Turquie and Salonich or Saloniki or Salonika – Europ. Türkei, as well as Salonicco – Turchia Europea from 1914 onwards, after a short period of confusion, to Salonique – Grèce.
