MY WIFE and I were at Sevdikeuy, a Greek village a few miles south
of Smyrna on the Ottoman railway, when the news that the Greek army was meeting
with serious reverses arrived. These rumors were not believed at first, but
they grew more and more insistent, throwing the population into an agony of
fear.
At last the report became a certainty. The official news
was received that the Greek army had suffered a terrible and irretrievable
defeat and that nothing now prevented the Turks from descending to the coast.
The population began to leave, a few at first, then more and more until the
flight developed into a veritable panic.
The town was fast filling with refugees from the
interior. The majority of these refugees were small farmers who had lived on
properties that had descended from father to son for many generations. Their
forebears had settled in Asia Minor before the Turks had begun to develop into
a nation. They were children of the soil, able to live and care for themselves
in their little houses and on their few acres, each family with its cow, its
donkey and its goat. They were even producing tobacco, figs, seedless raisins
and other products for export. They were expert in the cultivation and
manipulation of the better qualities of cigarette tobacco and the priceless
raisins, of which latter Asia Minor produces the best quality in the world.
This valuable farmer element, the very backbone of the prosperity of Asia
Minor, had again been reduced to beggary and thrown upon American charity. They
were arriving by thousands in Smyrna and all along the seacoast. They were
filling all the churches, schools and the yards of the Y. M. and Y. W. C. A.
and the American mission schools. They were sleeping in the streets. Many were
getting away during those first days on steamers and sailing craft. The caiques in the harbor, loaded with
refugees and their effects, were a picturesque sight. For the man whose heart
has not suffered atrophy as a result of the Great War, the spectacle of great
numbers of helpless little children was particularly moving. Unfortunately,
atrophy of the human heart has been one of the most noticeable phenomena of the
great Armageddon. Doctor Esther Lovejoy, of New York, already referred to, used
an expression with regard to certain Americans, who were present during the
scenes of suffering and outrage. “Their minds did not seem to register.”
Had she said “hearts,” she would have been nearer the truth. The
refugees carried with them as much of their belongings as their strength
permitted and one often saw a little child sitting on top of a great bundle of
bedding, the whole supported on the shoulders of some man or woman stumbling
along.
In normal times
the sick are not seen, as they are in the houses lying in bed for the most
part. In ease of a great fire or panic one is surprised at the number of sick
or disabled thus brought to light. Many of the refugees
were carrying sick upon their shoulders. I remember especially one old
gray-haired woman stumbling through the streets of Smyrna with an emaciated
feverish son astride her neck. He was taller than the mother, his legs almost
touching the ground.
Then the
defeated, dusty, ragged Greek soldiers began to arrive, looking straight ahead,
like men walking in their sleep. Great numbers—the more fortunate—were sitting
on ancient Assyrian carts, descendants of the very primitive vehicles used in
the time of Nebuchadnezzar.
In a never-ending
stream they poured through the town toward the point on the coast to which the
Greek fleet had withdrawn. Silently as ghosts they went, looking neither to the
right nor the left. From time to time some soldier, his strength entirely
spent, collapsed on the sidewalk or by a door. It was said that many of these
were taken into houses and given civilian clothes and that thus some escaped.
It was credibly reported that others whose strength failed them before they got
into the city were found a few hours later with their throats cut. And now at
last we heard that the Turks were moving on the town. There
had been predictions that Greek troops, on entering Smyrna, would burn it, but
their conduct soon dispelled all such apprehensions. In fact the
American, with the British, French and Italian delegates had called upon General
Hadjianesti, the Greek commander-in-chief, to ask him what measures he could
take to prevent acts of violence on the part of the disorganized Greek forces.
He talked of a well-disciplined regiment from Thrace, which he was expecting
and which he promised to throw out as a screen to prevent straggling bands
from entering the city and even of organizing a new resistance to the Turks,
but could give the delegates no definite assurance. He was tall and thin,
straight as a ramrod, extremely well-groomed, with a pointed gray beard and the
general air of an aristocrat. He was a handsome man, with the reputation of a
lady-killer. That was the last time I saw him, but when I read later of his
standing before a firing squad in Athens, I still retained a vivid mental
picture of that last interview in the military headquarters in Smyrna. If it
was he who was responsible for sending away the flower of his troops to
threaten Constantinople at a time when they were most needed in Asia Minor, he
deserved severe punishment or confinement in a lunatic asylum. He had the
general reputation of being megalomaniac, with not too great ability. Certainly
none but a fool would have accepted the Smyrna post at that time for the sake
of glory. What was needed was a man of energy with a clear understanding of
the situation who would have taken hurried and wise measures to save as much as
possible of the wreckage. But Hadjianesti was busy furnishing in gorgeous style
and repairing a palace on the quay, which he had requisitioned for a residence.
He deserved to be pitied, for it is probable that he was not well-balanced
mentally.
It was definitely asserted that the Turkish cavalry
would enter the town on the morning of September 9, (1922). The Greek general
staff and the high-commissioner with the entire civil administration, were
preparing to leave. The Greek gendarmes were still patrolling the streets and
keeping order. These men had gained the confidence of every one in Smyrna and
the entire occupied region by their general efficiency and good conduct. Whatever
accusations may be substantiated against the Greek soldiers, nothing but praise
can be said of the Greek gendarmes. All my former colleagues at Smyrna and all
residents of the district will bear me out in this statement. There would be an
interval between the evacuation of Smyrna and the arrival of the Turkish forces
when the town would be without a government of any kind. Some of the
representatives of foreign governments went to the high-commissioner and asked
him to leave the gendarmes until the Turks had taken over, under assurance from
the latter that they would be alowed to depart without molestation. The
high-commissioner did not grant this request. I did not join in it. The Greek
officials all left. Mr. Sterghjades had but a few steps to go from his house
to the sea where a ship was awaiting him, but he was hooted by the population. He had done his best to make good in an impossible situation.
He had tried by every means in his power to make friends of the implacable
Turks, and he had punished severely, sometimes with death, Greeks guilty of
crimes against Turks. He founded a university at Smyrna, bringing from Germany
a Greek professor with an international reputation to act as president.
One of the last Greeks I saw on the streets of
Smyrna before the entry of the Turks, was Professor Karatheodoris, president of
the doomed university. With him departed the incarnation of Greek genius of
culture and civilization in the Orient.
The Hellenic
forces left, civil and military, and the interregnum of a city without a
government began. But nothing happened. Mohammedans and Christians were quiet,
waiting with a great anxiety. The supreme question was: How would the Turks
behave? The French and Italian delegates assured their colonies that Khemal’s
army consisted of well-disciplined troops and that there was nothing to fear. I
had no anxiety for the native-born Americans, but was very uneasy about the two
hundred or more naturalized citizens, many of them former Ottoman subjects.
I, therefore, did not take the responsibility of assuring the native
population, Greeks and Armenians, that they would be perfectly safe, neither
did I say anything that might tend to create panic. Many ladies, American and
others, left at this time. I counseled my wife to go, but she refused, thinking
that her staying might give comfort to those who remained. I decided to select
a place of rendezvous for the American citizens and to notify all of them to
keep in the neighborhood of this place as much as possible and, in case of
serious disorders and general danger, to take refuge there. I picked out the
American theater, a large and suitable building on the quay, for the purpose
and called the leading members of the American colony, native and naturalized,
to a meeting in my office and advised them of the measures taken, to be
applied in case of need. When I told them that the meeting was dismissed, Mr.
Rufus W. Lane, now a merchant of Smyrna, but formerly American consul there,
arose and said: “We did not come here solely to save
our own skins. The refugees that are pouring by thousands and thousands into
the city are dying of starvation and nobody to help them. I had hoped that this
meeting bad been called together to take measures to succor these poor people.”
A Provisional Relief Committee was organized on the spot and a sufficient
sum of money contributed to begin operations. All the leading American firms
offered their lorries and automobiles and their personal services. Bakers were
hired and set to work, stocks of flour found and purchased, and in a few hours
this organization was feeding the helpless and bewildered refugees who were
crowding into the city. But for the American colony in
Smyrna thousands would have died of starvation before the Relief Unit could
arrive from Constantinople.
In the meantime I was insistently telegraphing for
American men-of-war to come to Smyrna. If there was ever a time when a
situation demanded the presence of naval units, this, I thought, was that
occasion. Though our colony was not great, our business interests and property
holdings were very considerable indeed, to say nothing of our large schools
with their staffs of teachers and professors.
The navy in those waters was under the control
of that very fine officer and gentleman, Admiral Mark L. Bristol. I had reason
to think that the admiral had perfect confidence in the good intentions and
administrative abilities of the Turks and believed that the latter would bring
a kind and benevolent administration to Smyrna. In response to telegraphic insistence with the State Department a wire
was received to the effect that destroyers would be sent to Smyrna, as cruisers
were not available, for the protection of American lives and property. Two
small destroyers were accordingly sent. Naval units of
Great Britain, Italy, France and the United States were present at Smyrna, and
anchored but a few hundred yards or nearer from the houses on the quay during
the appalling, shameful and heartrending scenes which followed.
Next: Chapter XVI | Previous: Chapter XIV | Book Contents | Book main page