THE BLIGHT OF ASIA
An Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian
Populations by Mohammedans
and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers; with the True Story of
the Burning of Smyrna
By
GEORGE HORTON
For Thirty Years Consul and Consul-General of the United States in the
Near East
With a Foreword by
JAMES W. GERARD
Former Ambassador to Germany
PUBLISHERS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY, INDIANAPOLIS
COPYRIGRT 1926
BY THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
Printed In the United States of America
PRINTED AND BOUNDBY BRAUNWORTH & CO. INC. BROOKLYN N.Y.
Assyrian International News Agency
Books Online
www.aina.org
“What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto churches which are
in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto
Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.”
-- REVELATIONS, I:11
THE MARTYRED CITY
Glory and Queen of Island Sea
Was Smyrna, the beautiful city,
And fairest pearl of the Orient she—
O Smyrna the beautiful city!
Heiress of countless storied ages,
Mother of poets, saints and sages,
Was Smyrna, the beautiful city!
One of the ancient, glorious Seven
Was Smyrna, the sacred city,
Whose candles all were alight in Heaven—
O Smyrna the sacred city!
One of the Seven hopes and desires,
One of the seven Holy Fires
Was Smyrna, the Sacred City.
And six fared out in the long ago-
O Smyrna, the Christian city!
But hers shone on with a constant glow—
O Smyrna, the Christian city!
The others died down and passed away,
But hers gleamed on until yesterday—
O Smyrna, the Christian city!
Silent and dead are churchbell ringers
Of Smyrna, the Christian city,
The music silent and dead the singers
Of Smyrna, the happy city;
And her maidens, pearls of the Island seas
Are gone from the marble palaces
Of Smyrna, enchanting city!
She is dead and rots by the Orient’s gate,
Does Smyrna, the murdered city,
Her artisans gone, her streets desolate—
O Smyrna, the murdered city!
Her children made orphans, widows her wives
While under her stones the foul rat thrives—
O Smyrna, the murdered city!
They crowned with a halo her bishop there,
In Smyrna, the martyred city,
Though dabbled with blood was his long white hair—
O Smyrna, the martyred city!
So she kept the faith in Christendom
From Polycarp to St. Chrysostom,*
Did Smyrna, the glorified city!
*Martyred at Smyrna, September 1922.
FOREWORD
HERE at last is the truth about the destruction of Smyrna and the
massacre of a large part of its Inhabitants by one who was present.
The writer of the following pages is a man, happily, who is not
restrained from telling what he knows by political reasons or by any
consideration of fear or self-interest. He gives the whole story of the
savage extermination of Christian civilization throughout the length
and breadth of the old Byzantine Empire in a clear and convincing manner
That it should have been possible twenty centuries after the birth of
Christ for a small and backward nation, like the Turks, to have
committed such crimes against civilization and the progress of the
world, is a matter which should cause all conscientious people to pause
and think; yet the writer shows conclusively that these crimes have
been committed without opposition on the part of any Christian nation
and that the last frightful scene at Smyrna was enacted within a few
yards of powerful Allied and American battle fleet.
We turned a deaf ear to the dying Christians, when they called to us
for aid, fully aware that America was their only hope, and now it would
appear that there is a growing tendency in this country to
whitewash the Turks and condone their crimes in order to obtain
material advantages from them.
The author takes the position that this can not be done, as the Turks
have put so great an affront upon humanity that it can not easily be
overlooked, and the truth is sure to come out. He claims that high
ideals are more than oil or railroads, and that the Turks should not be
accepted into the society of decent nations until they show sincere
repentance for their crimes.
Fraternizing with them on any other terms creates a suspicion of
sordidness or even complicity. From the outspoken nature of this book
it will be evident to the reader that the writing of it has
required considerable courage and that it has been inspired
by no other possible motive than a desire to make the truth known about
matters which it is important for the world to know.
(Signed) JAMES W. GERARD
INTRODUCTION
THE editor of a great Paris journal once remarked that he
attributed the extraordinary success of his publication to the fact
that he had discovered that each man had at least one story to tell.
I have been for many years in the Near East—about thirty in all—and
have watched the gradual and systematic extermination of Christians and
Christianity in that region, and I believe it my duty to tell that grim
tale, and to turn the light upon the political rivalries of the Western
World, that have made such a fearful tragedy possible.
Though I have served for the major part of time as an American consular
officer, I am no longer acting in that capacity, and have no
further connection with the United States Government. None of the
statements, which I make, therefore, has any official weight, nor have
I in any way drawn upon State Department records or sources of
information. I write strictly in my capacity as a private citizen,
drawing my facts from my own observations, and from the testimony of
others whom I quote.
I was in Athens in July, 1908, when, at the instigation of the Young
Turks’ “Committee of Union and Progress” the Saloniki army revolted and
demanded the immediate putting into effect of the Constitution of 1876,
which had become a dead letter, and I noted the reaction produced
upon Greece by that apparently progressive move.
I was in Saloniki shortly after and witnessed the sad awakening of the
non-Mussulman elements of that part of the Balkans to the fact that the
much vaunted “Constitution” meant no liberty for them, but rather
suppression, suffering and ultimate extinction.
I was in Smyrna in May of 1917, when Turkey severed relations with the
United States, and I received the oral and written statements of
native-born American eye-witnesses of the vast and incredibly horrible
Armenian massacres of 1915-16— some of which will be here given for the
first time; I personally observed and otherwise confirmed the
outrageous treatment of the Christian population of the Smyrna vilayet,
both during the Great War, and before its outbreak. I returned to
Smyrna later and was there up until the evening of September 11, 1922,
on which date the city was set on fire by the army of Mustapha Khemal,
and a large part of its population done to death, and I witnessed the
development of that Dantesque tragedy, which possesses few, if any
parallels in the history of the world.
One object of writing this book is to make the truth known concerning
the very significant events and to throw the light on an important
period during which colossal crimes have been committed against the
human race, with Christianity losing ground in Europe and America as
well as in Africa and the Near East.
Another object is to give the church people of the United States the
opportunity of deciding whether they wish to continue pouring millions
of dollars, collected by contributions small and great, into Turkey for
the purpose of supporting schools, which no longer permit the Bible to
be read or Christ to be taught; whether, in fact, they are not doing
more harm than good to the Christian cause and name, by sustaining
institutions which have accepted such a compromise!
Another object is to show that the destruction of Smyrna was but the
closing act in a consistent program of exterminating Christianity
throughout the length and breadth of the old Byzantine Empire; the
expatriation of an ancient Christian civilization, which in recent
years had begun to take on growth and rejuvenation spiritually, largely
as a result of the labors of American missionary teachers. Their
admirable institutions, scattered all ever Turkey, which have cost the
people of the united States between fifty million and eighty million
dollars, have been, with some exceptions closed, or irreparably
damaged, and their thousands of Christian teachers and pupils butchered
or dispersed. This process of extermination was carried on over a
considerable period of time, with fixed purpose, with system, and with
painstaking minute details; and it was accomplished with unspeakable
cruelties, causing the destruction of a greater number of human
beings than have suffered in any similar persecution since the
coming of Christ.
I have been cognizant of what was going on for a number of years and
when I came back to America after the Smyrna tragedy and saw the
prosperous people crowded in their snug warm churches, I could hardly
restrain myself from rising to my feet and shouting: “For every convert
that you make here, a Christian throat is being cut over there; while
your creed is losing ground in Europe and America, Mohammed is forging
ahead in Africa and the Near East with torch and scimitar.”
Another reason is to call attention to the general hardening of
human hearts that seems to have developed since the days of Gladstone—a
less exalted and more shifty attitude of mind. This is partly due to
the fact that men’s sensibilities have been blunted by the Great War,
and is also in large measure a result of that materialism which is
engulfing our entire civilization.
GEORGE HORTON
CONTENTS
I TURKISH
MASSACRES
II GLADSTONE AND
THE BULGARIAN ATROCITIES
III FIRST STEPS IN
YOUNG TURKS’ PROGRAM
IV THE LAST GREAT
SELAMLIK
V PERSECUTION OF
CHRISTIANS IN SMYRNA DISTRICT
V I THE MASSACRE OF
PHOCEA
VII NEW LIGHT ON THE ARMENIAN
MASSACRE
VIII STORY OF WALTER M. GEDDES
IX INFORMATION FROM
OTHER
SOURCES
X THE GREEK
LANDING AT SMYRNA
XI THE HELLENIC
ADMINISTRATION IN SMYRNA
XII THE GREEK RETREAT
XIII SMYRNA AS IT WAS
XIV THE DESTRUCTION OF SMYRNA
XV FIRST DISQUIETING RUMORS
XVI THE TURKS ARRIVE
XVII WHERE AND WHEN THE FIRES WERE LIGHTED
XVIII THE ARRIVAL AT ATHENS
XIX ADDED DETAILS LEARNED AFTER THE
TRAGEDY
XX HISTORIC IMPORTANCE OF THE
DESTRUCTION OF SMYRNA
XXI NUMBER DONE TO DEATH
XXII EFFICIENCY OF OUR NAVY IN SAVING
LIVES
XXIII RESPONSIBILITY OF THE WESTERN WORLD
XXIV ITALY’S DESIGNS ON SMYRNA
XXV FRANCE AND THE KHEMALISTS
XXVI MASSACRE OF THE FRENCH GARRISON AT UFRA
XXVII THE BRITISH CONTRIBUTION
XXVIII TURKISH INTERPRETATION OF AMERICA’S ATTITUDE
XXIX THE MAKING OF MUSTAPHA KHEMAL
XXX OUR MISSIONARY INSTITUTIONS IN TURKEY
XXXI AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS UNDER TURKISH RULE
XXXII THE REVEREND RALPH HARLOW ON THE LAUSANNE
TREATY
XXXIII MOHAMMEDANISM AND CHRISTIANITY
XXXIV THE KORAN AND THE BIBLE
XXXV THE EXAMPLE OF MOHAMMED
XXXVI THE 50-50 THEORY
XXXVII ASIA MINOR, THE GRAVEYARD OF GREEK CITIES
XXVIII ECHOES FROM SMYRNA
XXXIX CONCLUSION
APPENDIX
THE BLIGHT OF ASIA
CHAPTER I
TURKISH MASSACRES, 1822-1909
MOHAMMEDANISM has been propagated by the sword and by
violence ever since it first appeared as the great enemy of
Christianity, as I shall show in a later chapter of this book.
It has been left to the Turk, however, in more recent
years, to carry on the ferocious traditions of his creed, and to
distinguish himself by excesses which have never been equaled by any of
the tribes enrolled under the banner of the Prophet, either in ancient
or in modern times.
The following is a partial list of Turkish massacres from
1822 up till 1904:
1822 Chios,
Greeks
50,000
1823 Missolongi,
Greeks
8,750
1826 Constantinople, Jannisaries 25,000
1850 Mosul,
Assyrians
10,000
1860 Lebanon,
Maronites
12,000
1876 Bulgaria,
Bulgarians
14,700
1877 Bayazid,
Armenians
1,400
1879 Alashguerd,
Armenians
1,250
1881 Alexandria,
Christians
2,000
1892 Mosul,
Yezidies
3,500
1894 Sassun,
Armenians
12,000
1895-96 Armenia, Armenians 150,000
1896 Constantinople, Armenians 9,570
1896 Van,
Armenians
8,000
1903-04 Macedonia, Macedonians 14,667
1904 Sassun,
Armenians
5,640
_______
Total
328,477
To this must be added the massacre in the province of Adana in 1909, of
thirty thousand Armenians
So imminent and ever-present was the peril, and so fresh the memory of
these dire events in the minds of the non-Mussulman subjects of the
sultan, that illiterate Christian mothers had fallen into the habit of
dating events as so many years before or after “such and such a
massacre.”
CHAPTER II
GLADSTONE AND THE BULGARIAN ATROCITIES
IN THE list of massacres antedating the colossal crimes which have come
under my own personal observation, is cited the killing of 14,700
Bulgarians in 1876. This butchery of a comparatively few—from a Turkish
view-point—Bulgarians, some fifty years ago, provoked a splendid cry of
indignation from Gladstone. As this narrative develops and reaches the
dark days of 1915 to 1922, during which period whole nations were wiped
out by the ax, the club and the knife, and the Turk at last found the
opportunity to give full vent to his evil passions, it will appear that
no similarly effective protest has issued from the lips of any European
or American statesman.
The curious feature is that, owing to the propaganda carried on by
the hunters of certain concessions, an anti-Christian and pro-Turk
school has sprung up in the United States.
In “A Short History of the Near East”, Professor William Stearns Davis,
of the University of Minnesota, referring to the Bulgarian atrocities
1876, says:
“What followed seems a massacre on a small scale compared with the
slaughter of Armenians in 1915-16, but it was enough to paralyze the
power of Disraeli to protect the Turks. In all, about twelve thousand
Christians seem to have been massacred. At the thriving town of Batal
five thousand out of seven thousand inhabitants seem to have perished.
Of course neither age or sex was spared and lust and perfidy were added
to other acts of devilishness. It is a pitiful commentary on a
phase of British politics that Disraeli and his fellow Tories
tried their best to minimize the reports of these atrocities. They
were not given to the world by official consular reports, but by
private English journalists.”
The above is interesting, as it illustrates a quite common method of
government procedure in such cases. The Tory does not seem to be a
unique product of British politics.
While I was in Europe recently, I talked with a gentleman who was in
the diplomatic service of one of the Great Powers and was with me in
Smyrna at the time that city was burned by the Turkish army. This
gentleman was in complete accord with me in all details as to that
affair, and asserted that his Foreign Office had warned him to keep
silent as to the real facts at Smyrna, but that he had written a full
memorandum on the subject, which be hopes to publish.
It is significant that the Turks in 1876 were championed by Jews, while
to-day such Jews as Henry Morgenthau, Max Nordau and Rabbi Wise are
prominent among that group of men who are raising their voices in
behalf of oppressed Christians. It is due to their influence, and to
the voices of such senators as King of Utah and Swanson of
Virginia, that confirmation of the Lausanne Treaty has been
deferred until the blood on the bayonets and axes of the Turks
should get a little drier.
Speaking of Disraeli, Gladstone wrote to the Duke of Argyle: “He is not
such a Turk as I thought. What he hates is Christian liberty and
reconstruction.”
The Bulgarian massacres were made known by an American consular
official, and denounced by Gladstone in a famous pamphlet. They led to
the declaration of war by Russia, the treaty of San Stefano and the
beginning of the freedom of Bulgaria.
In a speech at Blackheath in 1876, Gladstone said:
“You shall retain your titular sovereignty, your empire shall not be
invaded, but never again, as the years roll in their course, so far as
it is in our power to determine, never again shall the hand of violence
be raised by you, never again shall the flood gates of lust be opened
to you.”
In his famous pamphlet, Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East,
we have the following, a thousand times truer to-day than when it was
written:
“Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible
manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their
Mudirs, their Blmhashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their
Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the
province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance,
this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to
those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and
of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted
and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral
sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in an European jail,
there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose
indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that
which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which
remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all the
fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring up in
another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking with blood
and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame.
That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the
portion of our race which did them; that the door should be left open
to the ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over
the world.”
“We may ransack the annals of the world, but I know not what research
can furnish us with so portentous an example of the fiendish misuse of
the powers established by God for the punishment of evil doers and the
encouragement of them that do well. No government ever has so sinned,
none has proved itself so incorrigible in sin, or which is the same, so
impotent in reformation”
The time will never come when the words of Gladstone, one of the
wisest of English statesmen, will be considered unworthy of serious
attention. The following characterization of the Turk by him has
been more aptly verified by the events that have happened since
his death than by those that occurred before:
“Let me endeavor, very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline what
the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of
Mohammedanism simply, but of Mohammedanism compounded with the
peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mohammedans of
India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of
Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first
entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever
they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as
far as their dominion reached, civilization disappeared from view.
They represented everywhere government by force as opposed to
government by law.—Yet a government by force can not be maintained
without the aid of an intellectual element.— Hence there grew up, what
has been rare in the history of the world, a kind of tolerance in
the midst of cruelty, tyranny and rapine. Much of Christian life was
contemptuously left alone and a race of Greeks was attracted to
Constantinople which has all along made up, in some degree, the
deficiencies of Turkish Islam in the element of mind!”
To these words of Gladstone may appropriately be added the
characterization of the Turk by the famous Cardinal Newman:
“The barbarian power, which has been for centuries seated in the very
heart of the Old World, which has in its brute clutch the most famous
countries of classical and religious antiquity and many of the
most fruitful and beautiful regions of the earth; and, which, having no
history itself, is heir to the historical names of Constantinople and
Nicaea, Nicomedia and Caesarea, Jerusalem and Damascus, Nineva and
Babylon, Mecca and Bagdad, Antioch and Alexandria, ignorantly holding
in its possession one half of the history of the whole world.”
In another passage Newman describes the Turk as the “great anti-Christ
among the races of men.”
CHAPTER III
FIRST STEP IN YOUNG TURKS’ PROGRAM (1908-1911)
TO COMPREHEND this narrative thoroughly, one must remember that the
East is unchangeable. The Turks of to-day are precisely the same as
those who followed Mohammed the Conqueror through the gates of
Constantinople on May 29, 1453, and they have amply demonstrated that
they do not differ from those whom Gladstone denounced for the
Bulgarian atrocities of 1876. Those who are building hopes on any
other conception will be deceived; they will be painfully deceived if
they make treaties or invest large sums of money on Western ideas
of the Oriental character.
I am neither “pro-Greek,” “pro-Turk,” nor anything except
pro-American and pro-Christ. Having passed the most of my life in
regions where race feeling runs high, it has been my one aim to help
the oppressed, irrespective of race, as will be shown by documents
submitted later, and I have won the expressed gratitude of numerous
Turks for the aid and relief I have afforded them on various occasions.
I am aware of the many noble qualities of the Turkish peasant, but I do
not agree with many precepts of his religion, and I do not admire
him when he is cutting throats or violating Christian women. The
massacres already enumerated are a sufficient blot upon the Turkish
name. They were made possible by the teachings of the Koran, the
example of Mohammed, lust and the desire for plunder. They sink into
insignificance when compared with the vast slaughter of more recent
years, conducted under the auspices of Abdul Hamid, Talaat and Company,
and Mustapha Khemal.
It should be borne in mind, however, that it was not until after the
declaration of the constitution that the idea “Turkey for the Turks”
took definite shape and developed into the scheme of accomplishing
its purpose by the final extinction of all the Christian populations of
that blood-soaked land—a plan consistent with, and a continuation of,
the general history of Mohammedan expansion in the ancient
home lands of Christianity.
At the time of the declaration of the constitution in 1908, I was in
Athens. My first intimation of the event was a procession of Greeks
carrying Hellenic and Ottoman flags, marching through the streets on
their way to the Turkish legation, where they made a friendly and
enthusiastic demonstration.
The idea in Greece and the Balkans generally was that the constitution
meant equal rights for all in Turkey, irrespective of religion—the dawn
of a new era. Had this conception proved true, Turkey would to-day be
one of the great, progressive, prosperous countries of the world.
The weakness of the conception was that in an equal and friendly
rivalry, the Christians would speedily have outstripped the Ottomans,
who would soon have found themselves in a subordinate position
commercially, industrially and economically. It was this knowledge
which caused the Turks to resolve upon the extermination of the
Christians. It was a reversal of the process of nature; the drones were
about to kill off the working bees.
During these days a member of the Turkish Cabinet made a speech at
Saloniki, advocating the closing of all the foreign missionary schools,
as well as native Christian, arguing: “If we close the Christian
institutions, Turkish institutions will of necessarily spring up to
take their place. A country must have schools.”
Immediately after the fall of Abdul Hamid, I was transferred to
Saloniki. There was great rejoicing over the fall of the “Bloody
Tyrant,” and the certainty prevailed that the subjects of Turkey
had at last united to form a kingdom where all should have full liberty
to worship God and pursue their peaceful occupations in security.
The fall of Abdul Hamid had been made possible by the cooperation and
aid of the Christians.
But the latter — Greeks, Bulgars, Serbs — were soon cruelly
disillusioned. A general persecution was started, the details of which
were reported to their various governments by all the consuls of the
city. This persecution first displayed itself in the form of sporadic
murders of alarming frequency all over Macedonia, the victims being, in
the beginning, notables of the various Christian communities. A
favorite place for shooting these people was at their doorsteps at the
moment of their return home. It became evident that the Turkish
Government, in order to gain control of the territory, was bent upon
the extermination of the non-Mussulman leaders. Many of those murdered
had been prominent in the anti-Abdul movement.
From the extermination of notables, the program extended to people of
less importance, who began to disappear. Bevies of despairing peasant
women who bad come to visit the vali (Turkish governor) and demand news
of their husbands, sons or brothers, appeared on the streets of
Saloniki. The answers were usually sardonic; “He has probably run away
and left you,” or “He has probably gone to America,” were favorite
replies. The truth, however, could not long be hidden, as shepherds and
others were soon reporting corpses found in ravines and gullies in the
mountains and woods. The reign of terror, the Turks’ immemorial method
of rule, was on in earnest, and the next step taken to generalize it
was the so-called “disarming”. This meant, as always, the
disarming of the Christian element, and the furnishing of weapons to
the Turks.
An order was issued that all persons must give up their guns and other
weapons, and squads of soldiers were sent out through villages to put
this edict into effect. That the object was not so much to collect
hidden arms as to terrorize the inhabitants was soon made evident from
the tortures inflicted during the search. Bastinadoing was a favorite
measure. The feet of the peasants, accustomed to going barefoot,
were very tough; they were therefore tied down and their toes beaten to
a pulp with clubs.
Another form of torment frequently resorted to by the “Government of
Union and Progress,” was tying a rope around the victim’s waist and
slipping a musket between the body and the cord and twisting until
internal injury resulted. Priests were frequent victims of this
campaign of terror and hate, the idea being to render them ridiculous
as well as to inflict hideous suffering. The poor creatures were made
to stand upon one foot while a soldier menaced them with a bayonet. If
the priest, finally exhausted, dropped the upraised foot to the
ground, he was stabbed with the bayonet.
The prisons were bursting with unfortunate people existing in
starvation and filth. An American tobacco merchant related to me that a
prominent Greek merchant disappeared from the streets and for several
days screams were heard issuing from the second story of a certain
building. This Greek was not killed, but was finally released. He
showed the American round pits all over his body. He had been tied
naked to a table and hot oil dropped on him. When he had asked, in his
agony, “What have I done!” his persecutors replied, “We are doing
this to show you that Turkey has been freed for the Turks.” He was
doubtless let go to spread the glad news.
A well-known British correspondent, a pro-Bulgar, stated that he had
sent reports of these persecutions to the British press, but could not
get them published. He had the obsession that the reason was because
the whole British press was owned by Jews, but it is not easy to follow
him in this deduction. The true reason is to be found in some
government policy of the moment.
It was this indiscriminate persecution of Greeks, Bulgars and Serbs
which drove them into the same camp and enabled them to chase the Turk
out of Macedonia, even though they did fall at one another’s throats as
noon am they got rid of the common enemy. Any one inclined to doubt the
veracity of the above description must understand, if he knows anything
of Balkan matters, that it needed a pretty serious state of affairs to
cause Greek and Bulgar to fight on the same side.
The persecution to which all the races in the Empire were
subjected, with the exception of the Turks, is well-depicted in the
following article in the “Nea Alethia”, a conservative journal
published in the Greek language, in Saloniki, which used all its
influence in favor of harmony and moderation. The following is
from the issue of July 10, 1910, or about two years after the
declaration of the famous “Constitution”:
“Before two years are finished a secret committee is unearthed in
Constantinople, with branches all over in important commercial towns,
whose intentions are declared to be subversive of the present
state of affairs. In this committee are found many prominent men and
members of Congress. All discontent seen in the kingdom has its
beginning in this perverted policy. Our rulers, according to their
newly adopted system of centralization upon the basis of the
domination of the ruling race have given gall and wormwood to all the
other races. They have displeased the Arabs by wishing them to abandon
their language. They have alienated the Albanians by attempting to
apply force, though conciliatory measures would have been better. They
have dissatisfied the Armenians by neglecting their lawful
petitions. They have offended the Bulgarians by forcing them to live
with foreigners brought purposely from other places. They have
dissatisfied the Serbians by using against them measures the harshness
of which is contrary to human laws.”
“But for us Greeks words are useless. We have every day before us such
a vivid picture of persecution and extermination that however much we
might say, would not be sufficient to express the magnitude of the
misfortunes, which since two years have come upon our heads. It is
acknowledged that the Greek race ranks second as a pillar of the
Constitution and that it is the most valuable of those contributing to
the prosperity of the Ottoman fatherland.”
“We have the right to ask, what have we, Ottoman Greeks, done that
we should be so persecuted? The law-abiding character of the Ottoman
Greeks is indisputable. To us were given promises that our rights would
remain untouched. Despite this, laws are voted through which churches,
schools, and cemeteries belonging to us are taken and given to others.
Clergymen and teachers are imprisoned, citizens are beaten, from
everywhere lamentation and weeping are heard.”
“With what joy we Ottoman Greeks hailed the rise of the 10th of July!
With what eagerness we took part in the expedition of April, 1909! With
what hopes we look forward even to-day to the future of this
country! It is ours, and no power is able to separate us from it.”
“The Greeks are a power in Turkey; a moral and material power. This
power it is impossible for our compatriot Turks to ignore. When will
that day come when full agreement will exist between the two races!
Then only hand in hand will both march forward, and Turkey will
reach the height which is her due.”
The following is from my Saloniki diary, dated December 11, 1910:
“Wholesale arrests, in some of the towns all the prominent citizens
being thrown into jail together.”
“Series of assassinations of chiefs of communities, in broad day,
in the streets. Fifty prominent Bulgarians thus shot down, and many
Greeks.”
“The following figures were obtained from a report of the Turkish
Parliament and locally confirmed:
In the Sandjack of Uskub, 1,104 persons bastinadoed; Villayet of
Monastir, 285 persons bastinadoed; Saloniki, 464 persons bastinadoed;
(of these 11 died and 62 were permanently injured.) Casas of
Yenidje-Vardar, Gevgeli, Vodena, 911 persons were bastinadoed.
All the prisons are crowded with Christians; many have fled into
Bulgaria and thousands of men, women and children are hiding in the
mountains.”
This was the state of affairs two years after the declaration of the
Constitution, and it was this common suffering which Greeks,
Bulgars and Serbians endured, which drove them together and forced them
to declare the First Balkan War, in October of 1912, in which the Turk
was practically driven out of Europe until Christian statesmen of the
Great Powers brought him back again. Turkish power has always been
built upon Christian dissension and aid.
In the (at that time) pro-Turk “Progres de Saloniqne”, a journal
published in the French language at Saloniki, appeared an article which
expresses a state of feeling among Oriental peoples which has taken
great distension since the date of the article (July 22, 1910). What
was then a fire bids fair now to grow into a general conflagration, due
to the building up, by Christian powers, of the sinister puissance of
Mustapha Khemal:
“In the space of three years,” says the article, “the Orient, twice and
from its two extremities, has marvelously astonished the civilized
world: first, by the great victory won by the Japanese over the
strongest of Occidental peoples, and next by the wonderful
revolution in Turkey! In fact, it is a marvel, which is being
accomplished to-day! There is no comparison between the Orient of
to-day and that of ten years ago. What is more curious is that this
Oriental movement has taken the form of two separate currents, which,
starting from the two extremities of the Orient, are going to meet
and their points of junction will be, in all probability, India.”
“At the head of these movement will be found the peoples belonging to
the same race—the Mongolians. Each one possesses the unquestionable
title to the moral and intellectual supremacy of the great countries
over which their influence extents.”
“The Japanese are incontestably at the head of the peoples professing
Buddhism, the doctrine of Confucius, etc.; the Turks, defenders of
Islam for centuries, are the incontestable leaders of the people
professing Islamism. Therefore, the two movements, starting from the
two extremities of Asia, from the Bosphoros and Tokio, go spreading,
each one in an appropriate field prepared in advance by history itself
to accept it, then, since they are essentially the same, they will
unite at their point of junction, to form a common and formidable
Asiatic current. With this in view, the Occident is feeling uneasy and
agitated.”
Immediately after the reestablishment of the Constitution, then, the
first step of the dominant race was to solidify its supremacy by
measures of suppression, oppression, and murder. The Turks also
deliberately undertook to force all the non-Turkish races to become in
language, laws, habits and almost all other particulars, “Ottomans.”
(Professor Davis’ “Short History of the Near East”)
It is exactly this policy, in operation, which is referred to in the
clipping from the “Nea Aletheia”, quoted above. A more foolish project
was never conceived by the mind of man—that of forcing whole nations to
change their languages and habits overnight. The impossibility of this
scheme becomes all the more evident when the reader reflects that
an inferior civilization was attempting to impose itself upon a
superior one. The Turk never had any intention of giving equal liberty
to all the peoples who were so unfortunate as to be in his power.
Failing to “Turkify” them, as it has been called, his only next
alternative was to massacre and drive them out, a policy not long in
developing.
CHAPTER IV
THE LAST GREAT SELAMLIK
(1911)
A PICTURESQUE incident in the process of “Turkifying” took place
in Macedonia in May and June of 1911. Mehmet V arrived in Saloniki on
May thirty-first of that year on a battle-ship escorted by the greater
part of the Turkish fleet. It had been known for some days that he was
coming, as his advance guard, in the shape of tall flabby eunuchs,
cooks, etc., began to appear and lounge about in front of the principal
hotels. The town was liberally beflagged, and the different
communities made demonstrations in his honor, the Bulgarians
showing especial enthusiasm. He visited Uskub and Monastir and,
from the former place, proceeded to the Plain of Kossovo, where the
decisive battle was fought, which brought the Turks and the Turkish
blight into Europe. There on June 15, 1389, the Sultan Amurath defeated
the heroic Lazarus, King of the Serbians. This Turkish victory, whose
evil consequences have lasted down into our own times, was made
possible by treachery of Christian allies, the real cause of all
Turkish triumphs.
Amurath himself was slain, and it was in the plain where are found his
simple monument and a mosque in commemoration of his name, that Mehmet
V, the witless dotard and befuddled puppet of the Young Turk Committee,
called together all the various picturesque tribes of Turkey in Europe
for a grand selamlik, or service of prayer.
Besides civilians, some of whom are said to have walked for days to be
present, there were thousands of troops, and many famous regiments,
carrying ancient battle-torn flags. A huge tent had been erected for
the sultan, and the vast throng seated itself upon the ground. As the
priests recited the service and the thousands of worshippers bent their
foreheads to, the earth and sat up again, the sea of red fezzes rose
and fell rhythmically like a wide field of poppies swayed by the wind.
There have been in the world’s history few more picturesque and
impressive sights than this last selamlik on the ill-omened “Plain of
Blackbirds.”
I was presented to Mehmet (or Mohammed V) at Saloniki, and a more
flabby, pitiful, witless countenance it would be difficult to imagine.
The bleary eyes were puffy underneath, the lower lip dropped in
slobbery fashion. His Imperial Majesty was accompanied by several
shrewd-faced prompters, of the Europeanized type, and he never uttered
a word without turning to one of them with a helpless and infantile
expression for directions as to what to say or do. When the interview
was finished, Mehmet turned his back and started to walk away. He had
gone but a few steps when one of the prompters whispered to him,
whereupon he faced about ponderously and slowly twisted his
features into a ghastly and mechanical grin. It was as clear as any
pantomime could be made that he had been instructed to smile when
taking leave, and had forgotten a part of his lesson.
Mehmet V had been kept in confinement all his life, practically, by his
brother, the great and cruel Abdul, by whom it was said that he had
been encouraged to absorb daily incredible quantities of raki. He was a
kindly harmless soul, who bad been selected by Enver and the rest
because he had become practically an imbecile.
The great selamlik made a strong appeal to the Turks, deeply stirring
their religious feelings, but it is needless to say that it did not
accomplish much “Turkeifying” the Christian element. And all this time
the crafty Abdul, the fatuous “Sick Man’’ of Europe, one of the
greatest diplomats and murderers in the history of the world, was
confined with a small array of wives in the Villa Allatini at Saloniki.
CHAPTER V
PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS IN SMYRNA DISTRICT
(1911-1914)
IN 1911, I was transferred to Smyrna, where I remained till May of
1917, when the Turks ruptured relations with the United States. During
the period from 1914 to 1917, I was in charge of the Entente
interests in Asia Minor and was in close contact with Rahmi Bey, the
famous and shrewd war governor-general.
The Greek subjects in Asia Minor were not disturbed for the
reason, as explained by Rahmi Bey, that King Constantine was in reality
an ally of Turkey and that he was preventing Greece from going
into the war. The Rayas, or Greek Ottoman subjects, of the Port
were, on the other hand, abominably treated. These people were the
expert artisans, principal merchants and professional men of the
cities, and the skilled and progressive farmers of the country. It was
they who introduced the cultivation of the famous Sultanina raisins,
improved the curing and culture of tobacco, and built modern
houses and pretty towns. They were rapidly developing a civilization
that would ultimately have approached the classic days of Ionia. A
general boycott was declared against them, for one thing, and posters
calling on the Mussulmans to exterminate them were posted in the
schools and mosques. The Turkish newspapers also published violent
articles exciting their readers to persecution and massacre. A meeting
of the consular corps was held and the decision was taken to visit the
vali and call the attention of His Excellency to the danger that these
articles and this agitation might disturb the tranquility of a peaceful
province.
The consuls visited the vali, with the exception of the German
representative, who alleged that he could not join in such a move
without the express authorization of his government. This action of the
German official on the spot is another confirmation of the assertion
that Germany was to a large extent co-guilty with her Turkish
allies in the matter of the deportations and massacres of Christians.
In fact, there is little doubt that Germany inspired the expulsion of
the Ottoman Greeks of Asia Minor at that time, as one of the
preliminary moves in the war, which she was preparing.
The ferocious expulsion and terrorizing by murder and violence of the
Rayas along the Asia Minor littoral, which has not attracted the
attention it merits, has all the earmarks of a war measure, prompted by
alleged “military necessity,” and there is no doubt that Turks and
Germans were allies during the war and were in complete
cooperation. A study of this question may be found in
Publication No. 3, of the American Hellenic Society, 1918, in
which the statement is made that one million, five hundred
thousand Greeks were driven from their homes in Thrace and Asia Minor,
and that half these populations had perished from deportations,
outrages and famine.
The violent and inflammatory articles in the Turkish newspapers, above
referred to, appeared unexpectedly and without any cause. They were so
evidently “inspired” by the authorities, that it seems a wonder that
even ignorant Turks did not understand this. Cheap lithographs were
also got up, executed in the clumsiest and most primitive
manner—evidently local productions. They represented Greeks cutting up
Turkish babies or ripping open pregnant Moslem women, and various
purely imaginary scenes, founded on no actual events or even
accusations elsewhere made. These were hung in the mosques and schools.
This campaign bore immediate fruit and set the Turk to killing, a
not very difficult thing to do.
A series of sporadic murders began at Smyrna as at Saloniki, the list
in each morning’s paper numbering from twelve to twenty. Peasants going
into their vineyards to work were shot down from behind trees and
rocks by the Turks. One peculiarly atrocious case comes to mind: Two
young men, who had recently finished their studies in a high-grade
school, went out to a vineyard to pass the night in the coula (house in
the country). During the night they were called to the door and chopped
down with axes. Finally the Rayas, to the number of several hundred
thousand, were all driven off from their farms or out of their
villages. Some were deported into the interior, but many managed to
escape by means of caiques to the neighboring islands, whence they
spread over Greece. A few thousand Turks destroyed the region, which
the Greeks were developing and rendering fertile, from Pergamus clear
down the coast to Lidja. I went over the whole region and took
photographs of the ruined farmhouses and villages. Goats had been
turned into flourishing, carefully tended vineyards and acres of
roots had been dug up for fuel.
Most of the Christian
houses in Asia Minor are built of a wooden framework, which serves as
an earthquake proof skeleton for the walls of stone and mortar. The
Turks pulled the houses down by laying a timber across the inside
of the window—or doorframe—to which a team of buffaloes or oxen was
hitched. A Turk would reside in one of the houses with his wife, or
with his goats and cattle, and thus tear down a circle of houses about
him. When the radius became too great for convenience, he moved into
the center of another cluster of houses. The object of destroying the
houses was to get the wooden timbers for firewood.
Both at this time and during the progress of the Great War, the Rayas
were drafted into the army where they were treated as slaves. They were
not given guns, but were employed to dig trenches and do similar work,
and as they were furnished neither food, clothing nor shelter, large
numbers of them perished of hunger and exposure.
The beginning of the work on the “Great Turkish Library” at Smyrna
was peculiarly interesting as a revelation of the mentality of the
race. Christians were used for the labor, the taskmasters, of
course, being Turks armed with whips. When I called the attention of
Rahmi Bey, the governor-general, one day to the fact that there were
not sufficient books existing in his native tongue to justify the
construction of so great an edifice, he replied:
“The first thing is to have a building. If we have a building the books
will necessarily appear to fill it, and even if they don’t, we are
going to translate all the German books into Turkish.”
The structure was never finished, and consequently the books have
not been written.
CHAPTER VI
THE MASSACRE OF PHOCEA
(1914)
THE complete and documentary account of the ferocious persecutions of
the Christian population of the Smyrna region, which occurred in 1914,
is not difficult to obtain; but it will suffice, by way of
illustration, to give only some extracts from a report by the French
eye-witness, Manciet, concerning the massacre and pillage of Phocea, a
town of eight thousand Greek inhabitants and about four hundred Turks,
situated on the sea a short distance from Smyrna. The destruction of
Phocea excited great interest in Marseilles, as colonists of the very
ancient Greek town founded the French city. Phocea is the mother
of Marseilles. Monsieur Manciet was present at the massacre and pillage
of Phocea, and, together with three other Frenchman, Messieurs
Sartiaux, Carlier and Dandria, saved hundreds of lives by courage and
presence of mind.
The report begins with the appearance on the hills behind the town of
armed bands and the firing of shots, causing a panic. Those four
gentlemen were living together, but when the panic commenced they
separated and each installed himself in a house. They demanded of the
Kaimakam gendarmes for their protection, and each obtained one. They
kept the doors open and gave refuge to all who came. They improvised
four French flags out of cloth and flew one from each house. But, to
continue the recital in Monsieur Manciet’s own words, translated from
the French:
“During the night the organized bands continued the pillage of the
town. At the break of dawn there was continual “tres nourrie” firing
before the houses. Going out immediately, we four, we saw the most
atrocious spectacle of which it is possible to dream. This horde, which
had entered the town, was armed with Gras rifles and cavalry muskets. A
house was in flames. From all directions the Christians were rushing to
the quays seeking boats to get away in, but since the night there were
none left. Cries of terror mingled with the sound of firing. The panic
was so great that a woman with her child was drowned in sixty
centimeters of water.”
“Mr. Carlier saw an atrocious spectacle. A Christian stood at his door,
which the bandits wished to enter, as his wife and daughter were in the
house. He stretched out his arms to bar the way. This motion cost him
his life for they shot him in the stomach. As he was staggering toward
the sea, they gave him a second shot in the back, and the corpse lay
there for two days.”
“Fortunately there were two steamers in port, and we managed to embark
the unfortunate Christians in small groups. Despite all our efforts,
these wretched people were in such haste to depart that they upset the
small boats. An odious detail proved the cynicism of this horde, which,
under pretext of disarming those leaving, shamefully robbed these poor,
terrified people of their last belongings. They tore away from old
women packages and bedding by force. Anger seized me and I blushed to
see these abominations and I told an officer of the gendarmerie
that if this did not stop, I would take a gun myself and fire on
the robbers. This produced the desired effect, and these
unfortunates were enabled to embark with what they had saved from the
disaster, which proves that the whole movement could have been easily
controlled.”
“But the plundering was stopped only in our immediate
neighborhood. Farther away we saw doors broken in and horses and asses
laden with booty. This continued all day. Toward evening I mounted a
little hill and saw a hundred camels laden with the pillage of the
city. That night we passed in agony, but nothing happened.”
“The following day the methodical pillage of the city
recommenced. And now the wounded began to arrive. There being no
doctor, I took upon myself the first aid before embarking them for
Mitylene. I affirm that with two or three exceptions, all these wounded
were more than sixty years of age. There were among them aged women,
more than ninety years of age, who had received gunshots, and it is
difficult to imagine that they had been wounded while defending their
possessions. It was simply and purely a question of massacre.”
This extract is given from Monsieur Manciet’s description
of the sack of Phocea in 1914, of which he was an eye-witness, for
several reasons. It is necessary to the complete and substantiated
picture the gradual ferocious extermination of the Christians
which had been going on in Asia Minor and the Turkish Empire for the
past several years, finally culminating in the horror of Smyrna;
it is a peculiarly graphic recital, bringing out the unchanging
nature of the Turk and his character as a creature of savage passions,
living still in the times of Tamerlane or Attila, the Hun;—for the Turk
is an anachronism; still looting, killing and raping and carrying off
his spoil on camels; it is peculiarly significant, also, as it
tells a story strongly resembling some of the exploits of Mohammed
himself; it also gives a clear idea of what happened over the entire
coast of Asia Minor and far back into the interior in 1914, temporarily
destroying a flourishing and rapidly growing civilization, which
was later restored by the advent of the Greek army, only to go out in
complete darkness under the bloody and lustful hands of the followers
of Mustapha Khemal; it rings again the constant note, so necessary to
be understood by the European or American, that this was an
“organized movement,” as Monsieur Manciet says:
“We found an old woman lying in the street, who had been nearly
paralyzed by blows. She had two great wounds on the head made by the
butts of muskets; her hands were cut, her face swollen.”
“A young girl, who had given all the money she possessed,
had been thanked by knife stabs, one in the arm and the other in the
region of the kidneys. A weak old man had received such a blow with a
gun that the fingers of his left hand had been carried away.”
“From all directions during the day that followed families arrived that
had been hidden in the mountains. All had been attacked. Among them was
a woman who had seen killed, before her eyes, her husband, her brother
and her three children.”
“We learned at this moment an atrocious detail. An old paralytic, who
had been lying helpless on his bed at the moment the pillagers entered,
had been murdered.”
“Smyrna sent us soldiers to establish order. As these soldiers
circulated in the streets, we had a spectacle of the kind of order
which they established; they continued, personally, the sacking of the
town.”
“We made a tour of inspection through the city. The pillage was
complete; doors were broken down and that which the robbers had not
been able to carry away they had destroyed. Phocea, which had been a
place of great activity, was now a dead city.”
“A woman was brought to us dying; she had been violated by seventeen
Turks. They had also carried off into the mountains a girl of sixteen,
having murdered her father and mother before her eyes. We had
seen, therefore, as in the most barbarous times, the five
characteristics of the sacking of a city; theft, pillage, fire, murder
and rape.”
“All the evidence points to this having been an organized attack with
the purpose of driving from the shores the Rayas, or Christian
Ottomans.”
“It is inconceivable that all these persons should have had in their
possession so many army weapons if they had not been given them. As for
the Christians of old Phocea, there was not for one instant an
effort at defense. It was, therefore, a carnage.”
“We read in the journals that order had been established, and that, in
the regions of which we speak, the Christians have nothing further to
fear, neither for themselves, nor for their possessions. This is not a
vain statement. Order reigns, for nobody is left. The possessions have
nothing further to fear, for they are all in good hands— those of the
robbers.”
CHAPTER VII
NEW LIGHT ON THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES
(1914-1915)
IN 1915, the time of the vast extermination of Armenians, Consul Jesse
B. Jackson was stationed at Aleppo, and greatly distinguished himself
by the aid, which he gave those unfortunate people. As Consul Jackson
was in these horrible scenes, it would be interesting to read his
reports, if they were obtainable, but unfortunately they are not.
Quotation can fortunately be made from the account, here published for
the first time, of a native-born American citizen who was at Aleppo and
was an eye-witness of the things which he describes:
“The forerunner of events in which the unfortunate Armenians were
to be massacred and forced to undergo the most severe hardships
occurred at Zeitun, a town situated about five days’ journey north
of Aleppo, in February, 1915, when, with great reluctance, the
Armenians were made to submit to disarmament by the Turks. Following
the Zeitun incident, similar action was taken in Aintab, Alexandretta,
Marash, Urfa, etc.”
“Shortly after the disarmament of the Armenians in the
above-mentioned places, the deportations began, which were so
destructive to the Armenian race and were carried out on orders
from the Turkish officials in Constantinople.”
“Throughout the terrible days of the deportation, Consul Jackson
was repeatedly called upon to render assistance and to use every effort
to prevent the deportation of any one in Aleppo. This, during the time
when he represented fifteen different countries and was protecting
their various interests. (This was during the war, of course, before
Turkey severed relations with the United States.) It can be readily
seen that his position was a very delicate one, and every move on his
part had to be made with the utmost care in order not to call down upon
him and especially his assistants, the displeasure of the Turkish
authorities.”
“While Consul Jackson was endeavoring to the best of his ability to
stop a massacre in Aleppo, news began to leak in of the terrible
atrocities that were occurring in connection with the deportations from
Sivas, Harput, Trebizonde, Bitlis, Diarbekir, Mardin, Caesarea,
Konia, Adana, Mersina and other cities and towns in the district.”
“Gradually small numbers sent away from the above mentioned towns began
to arrive in Aleppo, relating the harrowing details of the
deportations, or the actual killing of relatives and friends, or the
unbelievable brutalities of the gendarmes toward young girls, and more
attractive women, or the carrying off by Turks and Kurds of
beautiful girls and countless other atrocious crimes committed against
them.”
“One of the most terrible sights ever witnessed in Aleppo was the
arrival, early in August, 1915, of some five thousand terribly
emaciated, dirty, ragged and sick women and children, three thousand on
one day and two thousand the following day. These people were the only
survivors of the thrifty and prosperous Armenians of the province of
Sivas, carefully estimated to have been originally over three hundred
thousand souls. And what became of the balance? From the most
intelligent of those that reached Aleppo, it was learned that in early
spring of 1915 the men and boys over fourteen years old had been called
to the police stations in that province on different mornings
stretching over a period of several weeks and had been sent off in
groups of from one thousand to two thousand each, tied together with
ropes and that nothing had over been heard of them thereafter. Their
fate has been recorded in the annals of God, so is needles to dwell
thereon here. These survivors related the most harrowing experiences
that they endured en route, parting from their homes as they did before
Easter, traveling perhaps a thousand miles and reaching Aleppo in
August, about four months afterward, afoot, without sufficient food,
and even denied drink by the brutal gendarmes when they came to the
wells by the way side. Hundreds of the prettiest women and girls had
been stolen by the Turkish tribes who came among them every day.”
Of the fate of the men and boys over fourteen, who were carried away
and never heard of again, many corroborating accounts were received at
Smyrna. It is certain that they were killed, the Turks chopping
many of them to death with axes, to save ammunition.
As we are still dealing with the systematic extermination of Christians
previous to the burning of Smyrna by the Turks, a few pages will be
devoted to the destruction of the Armenian nation, the most
horrible crime in the history of the human race in its details of lust
and savagery and suffering, as well as in extent, and which
definitely outlaws its perpetrators from the society of human beings
and from the fellowship of civilized nations, until such time as full
repentance is convincingly shown and an honest effort made, in so far
as possible, to make reparation.
There have probably been destructive movements that have cost more
lives than that of the extermination of the Christians by the Turks.
Tamerlane, for instance, swept over vast stretches of country,
killing and burning for the mere love of destruction. He spared neither
Mussulman nor Christian. But there were features of fiendish cruelty
and long-drawn-out suffering in the Ottoman persecution of the
Christians that did not characterize the methods of Tamerlane.
Reference will be made to the most notable official collections of
evidence on the subject, and two important documents, reports of
American eyewitnesses, will be given. These latter have never before
been published. One of the fullest and most reliable sources of
information on the Armenian massacres is the official publication of
the British Parliament, 1915 entitled “The Treatment of the Armenians”,
containing documents presented to Viscount Grey of Falloden, Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs, by Viscount Brice. A copy can be found in
the Library of Congress, at Washington. These documents really
constitute a large volume, giving evidence from all sources as to the
Armenian butcheries amid extermination by slow torture. Much of the
testimony here given is so revolting, and so outrages all human
feelings and sensibilities, that one refrains from quoting it.
Lord Grey, then British Secretary of State, on receiving these
documents, wrote to Viscount Bryce:
“My Dear Bryce: It Is a terrible mass of evidence, but I feel it ought
to be published and widely studied by all who have the broad interests
of humanity at heart. It will be valuable, not only for the immediate
information of public opinion as to the conduct of the Turkish
Government toward this defenseless people, but also as a mine of
information for historians in the future.
(Signed) GREY OF FALLODEN”
Various opinions of distinguished people are given as to the
credibility of this evidence. Among others, Gilbert Murray, the famous
scholar and poet, says:
“The evidence of these letters and reports will bear any scrutiny and
overpower any skepticism.”
An expert on the matter of evidence, Moorfield Storey, formerly
President of the American Bar Association, writes cautiously but
conclusively:
“In my opinion, the evidence which you print is as reliable as that
upon which rests our belief in many of the universally accepted facts
of history, and I think it establishes beyond any reasonable doubt the
deliberate purpose of the Turkish authorities practically to
exterminate the Armenians, and their responsibility for the hideous
atrocities which have been perpetrated upon that unhappy people.”
Other works to be consulted in this connection, filled with
corroborating and overwhelming testimony are: “Beginning Again at
Ararat”, by Doctor Mabel E. Elliott; “Shall This Nation Die”, by
Reverend Joseph Naayem; and most convincing of all, the “Secret Report
on the Massacres of Armenia”, by Doctor Johannes Lepsius, German
missionary and President of the German Orient Mission. Doctor Lepsius’
explanation of the necessity for the secrecy of his report, which
was made to his “friends of’ the mission, is illuminating:
“Dear Friends of the Mission: The following report which I am sending
to you absolutely confidentiality, has been printed as a manuscript. It
can not, either as a whole or in part, be given to the public, nor
utilized. The censor can not authorize, during the war, publications
concerning events in Turkey. Our political and military interests
oblige us with imperious demands. Turkey is our ally. In addition to
having defended her own country, she has rendered service to us
ourselves by her valiant defense of the Dardanelles. Our fraternity of
arms with Turkey imposes, then, obligations, but it does not hinder us
from fulfilling the duties of humanity.”
“But, if we must be quiet in public, our conscience does not, however,
cease to speak. The most ancient people of Christianity is in danger of
being wiped out, in so far as it is in the power of the Turks; six
sevenths of the Armenian people have been despoiled of their
possessions, driven from their firesides, and, in so far as they have
not accepted Islam, have been killed or deported into the desert. The
same fate has happened to the Nestonians of Syria, and part of the
Greek Christians have suffered.”
Doctor Lepsious prepares his report in the manner of true German
scholar. It is detailed, exhaustive and authoritative.
A prominent foreign official, not a German, has already been mentioned,
who was constrained to keep silent as to Turkish atrocities. How strong
the Turk is! He can do what he pleases, can break all time laws of God
and man, and everybody, for some reason or other, must keep quiet about
it. A redeeming feature of German complicity in the Armenian horrors
was the acquittal by a German court of the Armenian who wreaked justice
upon Talaat Bey. It is said that the testimony of German missionaries
influenced the court to render that judgment.
The heart-rending and harrowing details of the wholesale murder of the
Armenians can be drawn out indefinitely. Suffice it to say that, in
addition to actual and repeated killings on a grand scale, the plant of
doing to death by the slow torture of deportation is one of the most
devilish that depraved and fiendish brains have ever conceived.
A fresh contribution to the subject confirmatory of all that has
hitherto been written is the report of Walter M. Geddes, of the
MacAndrews and Forbes Company, of New York, which was handed to me by
Mr. Geddes a short time before his unfortunate death in Smyrna. Mr.
Geddes being dead, no fear exists of prejudicing him with the Turks by
using his name. It is perhaps the most remarkable account of a great
historic massacre by slow torture that has ever been written, and
derives its vividness of detail from the fact that the writer
describes the things that he actually saw.
CHAPTER VIII
STORY OF WALTER M. GEDDES
“I LEFT here on the sixteenth of September, 1915, for Aleppo. I first
saw the Armenians at Afion Karahissar where there was a big encampment—
probably of ten thousand people—who had come down from the Black Sea.
They were encamped in tents made of material of all descriptions, and
their condition was deplorable.”
“The next place I saw them was at Konia, also a large encampment. There
I saw the first brutality; I saw a woman and her baby separated
from her husband; he was put on our train while she was forcibly held
behind and kept from getting on the train.”
“The next place where there was a large encampment was at
Osmanieh, where there was said to be about fifty thousand; their
condition was terrible. They were camped on both sides of the
railway track, extending fully half a mile on each side. Here they had
two wells from whence they could get water, one of which was very far
from the encampment, the other at the railway station platform. At
daybreak, the Armenians came in crowds, women and children and old men,
to get to the well to get water. They fought among themselves for
a place at the well, and the gendarmes, to keep them in order, whipped
several people. I saw women and children repeatedly struck with whips
and sticks in the hands of the gendarmes. Later I had occasion to pass
through the camp on the way to the town of Osmanieh and had an
opportunity to see the condition of the people. They were living in
tents like those above described and their condition was miserable. The
site of the encampment had been used several times by different
caravans of Armenians and no attempt at sanitation had been made by
either the Turks or the Armenians themselves, with the result that
the ground was in a deplorable condition, and the stench in the
early morning was beyond description. At Osmanieh, they were
selling their possessions in order to obtain money to buy food. One old
man begged me to buy his silver snuff-box for a piaster in order that
he might be able to buy some bread.”
“From Osmanieh, I traveled by carriage to Rajo and passed thousands of
Armenians en route to Aleppo. They were going in ox-carts, on
horseback, donkeys and on foot, the most of them children, women and
old men. I spoke to several of these people, some of whom had been
educated in the American Mission Schools. They told me that they had
traveled for two months. They were without money and food and several
expressed their wish that they could die rather than go on and endure
the sufferings that they were undergoing. The people on the road
were carrying with them practically all their household possessions and
those who had no carts or animals were carrying them on their backs. It
was not unusual to see a woman with a big pack wrapped up in a mattress
and a little child a few months old on the top of the pack. They were
mostly bareheaded, and their faces were swollen from the sun and
exposure. Many had no shoes on, and some had their feet wrapped in old
pieces of rags, which they had torn from their clothing.”
“At Intily there was an encampment of about ten thousand and at Kadma a
large encampment of one hundred and fifty thousand. At this place,
adjacent to their encampment, were Turkish troops who exacted
“backshish” from them before they would let them go on the road to
Aleppo. Many who bad no money had had to stay in this camp since their
arrival there about two months before. I spoke with several Armenians
here and they told me the same story of brutal treatment and robbery at
the hands of the gendarmes in charge, as I had beard all along the
road. They had to go at least half a mile for water from this
encampment, and the condition of the camp was filthy.”
“From Kadma on to Aleppo I witnessed the worst sights of the whole
trip. Here the people began to play out in the intense heat and no
water, and I passed several who were prostrate, actually dying of
thirst. One woman whom I assisted was in a deplorable condition and
unconscious from thirst and exhaustion, and farther on I saw two young
girls who had become so exhausted that they had fallen on the road and
lay with their already swollen faces exposed to the sun.”
“The road for a great distance was being repaired and covered with
cracked stones; on one side of the road was a footpath, but many of the
Armenians were so dazed from fatigue and exposure that they did
not see this footpath and were walking— many barefooted—on the cracked
stones, their feet, as a result, bleeding.”
“The destination of all these Armenians is Aleppo. Here they are
kept crowded in all available vacant houses, khans, Armenian churches,
courtyards and open lots. Their condition in Aleppo is beyond
description. I personally visited several of the places where they were
kept and found them starving and dying by the hundreds every day.”
“In one vacant house, which I visited, I saw women and children and men
all in the same room lying on the floor so close together that it was
impossible to walk between them. Here they had been for months,
those who had survived, and the condition of the floor was filthy.”
“The British Consulate was filled with these exiles, and from this
place the dead were removed almost every hour. Coffin-makers throughout
the city were working late into the night, making rough boxes for the
dead whose relatives or friends could afford to give them decent
burial.”
“Most of the dead were simply thrown into two-wheeled carts, which made
daily rounds to all the places where the Armenians were concentrated.
These carts were open at first but afterward covers were made for them.”
“An Armenian physician whom I know and who is treating hundreds of
these suffering Armenians who have become ill through exposure on the
trip, hunger and thirst, told me that there are hundreds dying daily in
Aleppo from starvation and the result of the brutal treatment and
exposure that they have undergone on the journey from their native
places.”
“Many of these suffering Armenians refused alms, saying
that the little money so obtained will only prolong their sufferings
and they prefer to die. From Aleppo, those who are able to pay are sent
by train to Damascus, those who have no money are sent over the road to
the interior toward Deir-El-Zor.”
“In Damascus I found conditions practically the same as in
Aleppo; and here hundreds are dying every day. From Damascus, they are
sent still farther south into the Hauran, where their fate is unknown.
Several Turks, whom I interviewed, told me that the motive of this
exile was to exterminate the race, and in no instance did I see, any
Moslem giving alms to Armenians, it being considered a criminal offence
for any one to aid them.”
“I remained in Damascus and Aleppo about a month, leaving for Smyrna on
the twenty-sixth of October. All along the road I met thousands of
these unfortunate exiles still coming into Aleppo. The sights I
witnessed on this trip were more pitiful than those I had seen on
my trip to Aleppo. There seems to be no end to the caravan which moves
over the mountain ridge from Bozanti south; throughout the day from
sunrise to sunset, the road as far as one can see is crowded with these
exiles. Just outside of Tarsus I saw a dead woman lying by the roadside
and farther on passed two more dead women, one of whom was being
carried by two gendarmes away from the roadside to be buried. Her
legs and arms were so emaciated that the bones were nearly through her
flesh and her face was swollen and purple from exposure. Farther along,
I saw two gendarmes carrying a dead child between them away from the
road where they had dug a grave. Many of these soldiers and gendarmes
who follow the caravan have spades and as soon as an Armenian dies they
take the corpse away from the roadside and bury it. The mornings were
cold and many were dying from exposure. There are very few young men in
these caravans, the majority are women and children, accompanied by a
few old men over fifty years of age.”
“At Bairainoglou, I talked with a woman who was demented from the
sufferings she had undergone. She told me that her husband and
father had both been killed before her eyes and that she had been
forced for three days to walk without rest. She had with her two little
children and all had been without bread for a day. I gave her some
money, which she told me would be taken, in all probability, from her
before the day was over. Turks and Kurds meet these caravans as they
pass through the country and sell them food at exorbitant prices. I saw
a small boy about seven years old riding on a donkey with his baby
brother in his arms. They were all that was left of his family.”
“Many of these people go without bread for days, and they become
emaciated beyond description. I saw several fall from starvation, and
only at certain places along this road is there water. Many die of
thirst. Some of the Armenians, who can afford it, hire carriages. These
are paid for in advance and the prices charged are exorbitant.”
“At many places like Bozanti, for example, where there is an encampment
of Turkish soldiers, there is not enough bread for these Armenians and
only two hours from Bozanti I met a woman who was crying for bread. She
told me that she had been in Bozanti for two days and was unable to
obtain anything to eat, except what travelers like myself had given
her. Many of the beasts of burden belonging to the Armenians die of
starvation. It is not an unusual sight to see an Armenian removing a
pack from the dead animal and putting it on his own shoulders. Many
Armenians told me that although they were allowed to rest at night,
they get no sleep because of the pangs of hunger and cold.”
“These people walk throughout the whole day at a shuffling gait and for
hours do not speak to one another. At one place where I stopped along
the road for lunch I was surrounded by a crowd of little children, all
crying for bread. Many of these little tots are obliged to walk
barefooted along the road and many of them carry little packs on their
backs. They are all emaciated, their clothes are in rags and their hair
in a filthy condition. The filth has given rise to millions of flies
and I saw several babies’ faces and eyes covered with these insects,
the mothers being too exhausted to brush them away.”
“Diseases broke out in several places along the road, and in Aleppo
several cases of typhus fever among the Armenians were reported when I
left. Many families have been separated, the men being sent in one
direction and the women and children in another. I saw one woman, who
was with child, lying in the middle of the road crying, and over
her stood a gendarme threatening her if she did not get up and walk.
Many children are born along the way and most of these die as their
mothers have no nourishment for them.”
“None of these people have any idea where they are going or why they
are being exiled. They go day after day along the road with the hope
that they may somewhere reach a place where they may be allowed to
rest. I saw several old men carrying on their backs the tools of their
trade, probably with the hope that they may some day settle down
somewhere. The road over the Taurus Mountains in places is most
difficult and often times crude conveyances drawn by buffalos,
oxen and milk-cows are unable to make the grade and are abandoned and
overturned by the gendarmes into the ravine below. The animals are
turned loose. I saw several carts, piled high with baggage on the top
of which were many Armenians, break down and throw their occupants
in the road. One of the drivers, who was a Turk, and who had collected
an advance from the people whom he was driving, considered it a huge
joke when one woman broke her leg from such a fall.”
“There seems to be no cessation of the stream of these Armenians
pouring down from the North, Angora and the region around the Black
Sea. Their condition grows worse every day. The sights that I saw on my
return trip were worse than those on my trip going, and now that the
cold weather and winter rains are setting in, deaths are more
numerous. Roads in some places are almost impassable”
CHAPTER IX
INFORMATION FROM OTHER SOURCES
I have often been impressed with the hopelessness of making people
who have not been eye-witnesses, comprehend the dreadful character of
the massacres which were carried on by the Turks against the Christian
population of the Orient. I have never been able to describe sights
that I have witnessed in such manner as to make my listeners
actually see and understand. It frequently happens that people,
sitting in their comfortable houses, lay aside an article or book on
the subject, with the remark: “We are fed up on Armenian atrocities.”
Here is another strong point of the Turk’s position: he has killed so
many human beings and over so long a period of time that people are
tired of hearing about it. He can, therefore, continue without
interference.
In Doctor Elliott’s “Beginning Again at Ararat”, gives the following
story of a young girl, heard in the rescue home in Turkey, of which she
was in charge:
“I was twelve years old, I was with my mother. They drove us with whips
and we had no water. It was very hot and many of us died because there
was no water. They drove us with whips, I do not know how many days and
nights and weeks, until we came to the Arabian Desert. My sisters and
the little baby died on the way. We went to a town, I do not know its
name. The streets were full of dead, all cut to pieces. They drove us
over them. I kept dreaming about that. We came to a place on the
Desert, a hollow place in the sand, with hills all around it. There
were thousands of us there, many, many thousands, all women and girl
children. They herded us like sheep into the hollow. Then it was dark
and we heard firing all around. We said, “The killing has begun.” All
night we waited for them, my mother and I, we waited for them to reach
us. But they did not come, and in the morning, when we looked around,
no one was killed. No one was killed at all. They had not been killing
us. They had been signaling to the wild tribes that we were there. The
Kurds came later in the morning, in the daylight; the Kurds and many
other kinds of men from the Desert; they came over the hills and rode
down and began killing us. All day long they were killing; you see,
there were so many of us. All they did not think they could sell, they
killed. They kept on killing all night and in the morning—in the
morning they killed my mother.”
This quotation is given because it condenses in a few vivid and
convincing words the clearest description that has appeared anywhere of
the character of the Turkish “deportations” of the Armenians. All the
official documents and the testimony of a host of American, German and
other eye-witnesses corroborate the accuracy of this picture.
In the report of the Military Mission to Armenia, commonly known as the
“Harbord Mission,” published by the American Association for
International Conciliation, in June, 1920, is to be found the
following passage:
“Meanwhile there have been organized official massacres of the
Armenians ordered every few years since Abdul Hamid ascended the
throne. In 1895, one hundred thousand perished. At Van, in 1908, and at
Adana and elsewhere in Cilicia in 1909, over thirty thousand were
murdered. The last and greatest of these tragedies was in 1915.
Massacres and deportations were organized in the spring of 1915, under
a definite system, the soldiers going from town to town. Young men were
first summoned to the government building in each village and then
marched out and killed. The women, the old men and the children were,
after a few days, deported to what Talaat Pasha called “Agricultural
Colonies,” from the high, breeze-swept plateaus of Armenia to the
malarial flats of the Euphrates and the burning sands of Syria and
Arabia. The dead, from this wholesale attempt on the race, are
variously estimated at from five hundred thousand to a million,
the usual figure being about eight hundred thousand. Driven on
foot under a hot sun, robbed of their clothing and such petty articles
as they carried, prodded by bayonets if they lagged,
starvation, typhus, and dysentery left thousands dead by the trail
side, etc., etc.”
I have in my possession another report of a credible European who
witnessed the destruction of the Armenians at Aleppo and elsewhere,
which gives many details similar to those found in the memorandum
of Mr. Geddes, but I refrain from offering it here for fear of wearying
the readers. In view of the difficulty of producing the testimony of
eye-witnesses, and as this report has never been published, it is a
valuable historical document. Enough has been said, however, to
convince the reader that the extermination of the Christians of Turkey
was an organized butchery, carried out on a great scale, and well under
way before the Greeks were sent to Smyrna. We have seen it in operation
in the days of Abdul Hamid, “the butcher,” we have seen it more fully
developed and better organized under Talaat and Enver, those
statesmen of the “Constitution.” We shall behold it carried out to its
dire finish by Mustapha Khemal, the “George Washington” of Turkey.
This part of the story would not be complete if I passed over in
silence the systematic extermination, and the satiating of all the
lowest passions of man or beast which characterize Turkish massacres of
the Greeks and Armenians of the Pontus. There have been, from time to
time, descriptions of the massing of bands of these wretched people at
different points on the shores of the Black Sea where they had
arrived after long journeys on foot and indescribable hardships, and of
the relief given them by American organizations. Often officers of
these organizations, or American missionaries, have uttered cries of
protest, which have caused a momentary feeling of wonder in the minds
of the American people, or have passed unheeded. Yet the systematic
massacre, deportation, plundering and violation that went on among the
Christians of once prosperous region of the Black Sea is one darkest
and foulest pages even in Turkish history.
The flourishing communities of Amasia, Caesaria,
Trebizonde, Chaldes, Rhodopolis, Colonia, centers of Greek civilization
for many hundreds of years have been practically annihilated in a
persistent campaign of massacre, hanging, deportation, fire and rape.
The victims amount to hundreds of thousands, bringing the sum total of
exterminated Armenians and Greeks in the whole of the old Roman
province of Asia up to the grand total of one million, five hundred
thousand. Thus has been created that “regenerated” Turkey, which has
been compared in some quarters to Switzerland and the United States.
CHAPTER X
THE GREEK LANDING AT SMYRNA
(MAY, 1919)
I RETURNED to Smyrna in 1919, shortly after the Greek army had landed
in the city. As the Turkish plan of extermination was well under way
before the arrival of the Greek troops, the Christian peasants had been
driven out of the entire region with the exception of the city itself,
and many had perished, their farms and villages being destroyed. They
had scattered over the Greek islands and the continent, and at
Saloniki, where the Greek government had constructed barracks to house
them, there was a considerable settlement of them.
Much has been said of atrocities and massacres committed by the Greek
troops at the time of their landing at Smyrna on May 15, 1919. In fact,
the events that occurred on that and the few succeeding days have been
magnified until they have taken on larger proportions in the public
mind than the deliberate extermination of whole nations by the
Turks, and no consideration seems to have been given to the prompt
suppression of the disorders by the Greek authorities and the summary
punishment of the principal offenders, several of them by death.
The facts of the case, as learned from American missionaries, business
men and others of undoubted veracity, are as follows: The evening
before the dismemberment there was a reunion of the Allied naval
commanders and, according to one of those present, there was a
discussion as to the plan under which this action ought to be carried
out. My informant stated that the American commander was in favor
of cooperating with the Greeks by policing the different sections of
the city with Allied Marines, but that the Englishman advocated
letting the Greeks “run the whole show” alone. This information is
given second hand and its accuracy can not be vouched for, but it seems
probable.
At any rate, the advice attributed to the American was practical,
but could not be followed for evident reasons. We could not disembark
because we were, as usual, “observing”; and there was such strong
jealousy among the Allies regarding Asia Minor, that they could not go
ashore either together or separately. This was the first indication of
the lack of united support that ultimately caused the Greek disaster
and the destruction of Smyrna.
The whole responsibility was therefore thrown upon the
Greeks, who landed among a population, so far as the Turks were
concerned, more insulted by their advent than the white citizens of
Mobil would be if it were given over to a mandate of negro troops. To
the Turk, the Hellene is not only a “dog of an unbeliever,” but he is a
former slave.
As the Greeks proceeded in the direction of the Konak, or Government
House, situated in the Turkish quarter, they were sniped at. I was
informed by numerous eye-witnesses, not natives of Smyrna, that the
sniping grew into a fusillade.
The sanitary expert of the American hospital, situated in the region of
the Konak, related to me the following incident: Hearing the sniping,
he ran out into the yard of the hospital, fearing that if shots were
discharged from there they might draw the Greek fire. He saw a Turk
with a rifle up in a tree of the hospital yard. He pointed a revolver
at him and told him to come down. The Turk obeyed. This informant was a
native-born American citizen, not of Greek or Armenian extraction.
The Greeks took a number of prisoners whom they marched down the quay
in the sight of the Allied and American battle-ships, making them
hold up their hands. They are said to have stabbed several of their
prisoners with bayonets in sight of the people in the houses and on the
ships. There was no massacre, in the sense of a general killing of
prisoners, but some few they did thus kill; this act appears murderous,
contemptible and idiotic, and the Greeks may be left to explain it as
best they may.
There was an uprising in the town, something in the nature of a riot,
and some more Turks were killed. Various estimates have been given by
Americans who were present as to the number killed, ranging from fifty
to three hundred. The latter is a high estimate. There was also
considerable looting, both in Smyrna and the outlying regions.
Speaking of this affair in a pamphlet entitled “The Great Powers and
the Eastern Christians”, (Published by the Anglo-Hellenic League, No.
49) William Pember Reeves says:
“So far as the persons killed in Smyrna were Turks, they numbered, I am
told, seventy-six, killed partly by Greek soldiers and partly by the
town mob. About one hundred of other nationalities were killed also.
The ring leaders in the business were executed by the Greek authorities
and compensation paid to the families of the victims.”
Where Mr. Reeves obtained his information is unknown to me, but it
coincides with that which was given me by Americans who were present
and who I saw a short time after the landing of the Greek troops. I was
present in Smyrna when the ringleaders in the disturbances of May
second were condemned and shot.
It was here that the Greek governor-general displayed that
resolution and marked ability, which characterized his entire regime at
Smyrna. He suppressed the disturbances completely in a very short
space of time and severely punished the evil-doers. Three of the
ringleaders, Greeks, were taken out to a square beside the railroad
connecting Boudja and Smyrna and publicly shot and buried where their
graves could be seen by all the people passing between that
popular summer resort and the main city. This trio had been previously
tried by court-martial and sentence had been executed immediately.
Many others were tried and received lesser sentences. The populace
was informed that Greeks disturbing the peace would be more severely
punished than Turks, a policy which was carried out during the
entire Hellenic administration and contributed no little to the
unpopularity of the governor-general among the native Christian
population.
In all seventy-four sentences were passed on those convicted of
disturbing public order on the days immediately following the
landing of the Greek military authorities: three of death; four of
hard labor for life; two of hard labor for a term of years; twelve of
long and fifty-three of shorter terms of imprisonment. Of the
seventy-four sentenced, forty-eight were Greeks; thirteen Turks; twelve
were Armenians and one a Jew. The three persons executed were Greeks,
one of them a soldier.
Mr. Sterghiades, the Greek governor-general, ordered all those who had
loot in their possession to give it back immediately, under pain of
heavy punishment, and specified a certain warehouse on the Rue
Franque where it was to be delivered, and practically all the
plunder was given up. All Turks who claimed to have been robbed were
invited to present their claims to the government and these were
accorded with so little question that numerous Turks profited immensely
by presenting false or exaggerated demands. In addition, many
Greek landed proprietors and prominent inhabitants of the smaller
towns went out into the country and by haranguing the peasants and
protecting the Turks, contributed greatly to the restoration of
order in the rural regions.
Prominent among these was a certain Mr. Adamopolos, owner of a very
large estate at Develikeuy, a village about thirty-five miles out of
Smyrna, who proceeded there and compelled his peasants to restore
sheep and other belongings, and threatened with dire punishment
any Greek who should harm a Turk.
There was also a lawyer by the name of Athinogenis, who calmed an
uprising of Greek villagers at Boudja by explaining to them the real
meaning of the Greek landing. Mr. Athinogenis came to America in behalf
of the autonomy of Asia Minor and created a good impression here.
To this list must be added a certain Mrs. Baltadzis, wife of a
naturalized American citizen, who visited a farm owned by her near
Smyrna and kept the peasants in order. Tranquility was soon
restored, as much by the influence of the better-class Greeks as
by the severe measures taken by the Hellenic civil administration. That
it could be so restored, was nothing less than a miracle when one
considers the persecutions, which the Greeks had so recently suffered.
Many of the Greek peasants had been robbed and abused by the very Turks
whom they would now gladly get even with.
One incident will be sufficient to illustrate the sort of thing that
was smarting in the memory of the Christian peasantry: A small farmer
with a large family had planted a field of beans for food for his wife
and children—beans being one of the principal articles of food for
these people. A Turkish officer staked out his horse in this
field, whereupon the farmer asked him if he might not put the animal in
a grass plot, where was excellent pasturage. The reply was a
horse-whipping, accompanied by abusive and contemptuous epithets
in the presence of his family and the village, by the officer. This is
a mild incident illustrative of the general conduct of the Turks toward
the Christians. It is given because it came within my personal
observation, and I knew the farmer, who was a very worthy and
self-respecting man.
Great numbers of the Greeks had almost unforgettable insults and
injuries smoldering in their hearts. Standing on the balcony of the
Consulate, I have seen a Turkish cabman pass a Greek confrere and lash
him with his whip, a cowardly act, because resistance on the part of
the latter would have meant death and there was no one to whom he could
have recourse for justice. In many cases the Greeks who took the Turks’
sheep were only trying to get their own back, previously taken.
One sinister event occurred in a village not far from Smyrna, which
will be understood in this country especially in the Southern
States. A certain powerful Turk had made free with several Christian
girls, and soon after the landing the fathers and brothers seized and
hanged him. The virtue of their women is an extremely sensitive point
with Greeks.
Mr. Stergbiades, the Hellenic high-commissioner, or
governor-general, was a remarkable man in many ways. A Cretan, like Mr.
Venizelos, he had been selected by the latter for the post, and a more
difficult it would not be easy to imagine. Possessed of a strict sense
of justice and a high ideal of duty, he lived as a hermit, accepting no
invitations and never appearing in society. He wished, he informed
me, to accept no favors and to form no ties, so that he might
administer equal justice to all, high and low alike. It soon became
known that when he issued an order he expected it to be obeyed.
On one occasion I was present at an important service in
the Orthodox Cathedral, to which the representative of the various
powers, as well as the principal Greek authorities had been invited.
The high-commissioner had given the order that the service should be
strictly religious and non-political. Unfortunately, Archbishop
Chrysostom (he who was later murdered by the Turks) began to introduce
some politics into his sermon, a thing which he was extremely prone to
do. Sterghiades, who was standing near him, interrupted, saying: “But I
told you I didn’t want any of this.” The archbishop flushed, choked,
and breaking off his discourse abruptly, ended with, “In the name of
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen,” and stepped off the rostrum.
The high-commissioner was once on his way to a country village to
officiate at the dedication of a school when one of his companions
said: “Some ugly stories are told about the priest out there. He
refused to say the prayers over the dead body of a poor woman’s child,
because she did not have the full amount of his fee, and it was buried
without the rites of the church.”
The high-commissioner made no reply to this and expressed no opinion.
On his arrival at the village a delegation came down to meet him,
including the mayor, the priest, etc. Upon being presented to the
father, the high-commissioner slapped the latter soundly in the face,
saying: “Wretch! I don’t want to know you. You are a disgrace to the
Church and to the Greek nation.”
“But this isn’t the same priest, Excellency,” explained the
bystanders. “This is a good man. We sent the other away.”
“Give him a hundred drachmas for his poor,” said His Excellency to his
secretary, and thus the incident was closed. At any rate, he had
forcibly expressed his opinion of the sort of man the guilty priest was.
CHAPTER XI
THE HELLENIC ADMINISTRATION IN SMYRNA
(MAY 15, 1919—SEPTEMBER 9, 1922)
DESPITE many difficulties, the Greek civil authorities, as far as
their influence extended, succeeded in giving Smyrna and a large
portion of the occupied territory, the most orderly, civilized and
progressive administration that it has had in historic times. Mr.
Sterghiadis, who continued to the last his policy of punishing severely
all offenders of Greek origin against the public order, lost, for that
reason, popularity in Asia Minor. When he left Smyrna after the debacle
of his troops he was hooted by the people of the town who had not come
loyally to his support. He was, indeed, a great man who made a supreme
effort to perform a superhuman task and who is suffering from the
obloquy that always attaches to failure.
Here are some of the civilizing reforms which the Hellenic
administration introduced into the Smyrna region:
1. During the war, under Turkish rule, the morality of the
Christian inhabitants of all nationalities had greatly
deteriorated. The Turk had no respect or regard for non-Mussulman
women, whom he regards as his legitimate prey. All the American
residents of Smyrna during this epoch will remember the orgies indulged
in by a certain high Turkish official and his friends and the example
set the European colony by a prominent Anglo-Levantine lady who
became his acknowledged and public mistress. The lady in question was
proud of her position and afterward explained it by saying that she had
accepted it to use her influence to prevent persecutions and that a
monument should be set up in her honor. In one of the first
conversations which I had with Mr. Sterghiades after his arrival, the
governor general told me that the Christian people had been debauched
by the Turks and had lost their self-respect and their morality, and
that they needed an awakening of their pride of race and religious
instincts. One of his first acts was to suppress the
disorderly houses located in the central portions of the town, and
in this he met with determined opposition from various of the foreign
consuls whose subjects owned these houses and conducted them. Helpless
to enforce an edict against a European subject, he stationed gendarmes
in front of the establishments in question who took down the names and
addresses of all frequenters and thus caused their patronage so to
dwindle that they were obliged to close. Playing of baccarat and other
forms of gambling for high stakes had also become a crying evil in
Smyrna, resulting in the ruin of several people and even in suicides.
Mr. Sterghiades suppressed gambling in the clubs, and private houses,
wherever it came to his notice.
2. The Hellenic Administration supported and aided in every way
possible educational institutions. Its support and encouragement of
American educational and philanthropic institutions will he taken
up later. It is chiefly to be praised, however, for the measures which
it took, paid for out of the Greek Treasury, for the maintenance and
improvement of Turkish schools. It continued the Moslem secondary
schools at its own expense, the taxes for their support having
been taken over by the Ottoman public debt as security for a loan
contracted by the Ottoman Government. The Greek administration
supported by funds from its treasury, two Moslem high schools in
Smyrna, two at Magnesia and Odemish, and two seminaries in the
provinces, paying therefore yearly seventy thousand Turkish pounds. It
kept in vigor the Turkish system of primary education, appointing
prominent Mussulmans in the various villages to superintend the
same. It maintained a Polytechnic school at Smyrna, at which two
hundred and ten poor Mussulman, children were educated and supported,
paying therefore thirty-six thousand Turkish pounds yearly. In addition
to this, it was especially helpful to those American institutions and
schools, which operated in the Turkish quarter and among Turkish
children.
3. The Greek administration made a serious and intelligent effort to
organize a sanitary service for the compiling of statistics, the
betterment of sanitary conditions and the suppression of epidemics and
contagious diseases, such as malaria, syphilis, etc. A microbiological
laboratory was established for the diagnosis of infectious diseases
with an equipment of sanitary motorcars for bringing in the sick from
distant points, small wagons for the transportation of infected
articles and portable outfits for disinfections on the spot. To
describe the work of this service alone, which was organized on a large
scale and abundantly supplied with means, material and money, would
require a good-sized pamphlet. As a result of these measures, plague,
exanthematic fever and smallpox were got so under control that they
disappeared as epidemic diseases in the occupied zone. Needless to
say that systematic war was waged against lice and rats. A Pasteur
institute was opened at Smyrna by the Greeks on the eighteenth of
August, 1919, under the direction of a specialist working in
conjunction with a staff of experts. Out of over one thousand five
hundred patients treated during the first two months of its existence
who had been bitten by dogs, jackals or wolves, only four died.
Treatment was free in this institute. Previously sufferers had been
obliged to go to Constantinople or Athens and those who could not raise
the funds were left to die. I have myself assisted poor Turks, frantic
with fear, to make the trip to Constantinople for treatment. One
section of the University of Smyrna, founded by the Greek
administration, was that of the Institute of Hygiene, divided into
two sections, hygiene and bacteriology. It was all ready for business
when the Turks burned Smyrna, possessing an installation similar
to that of the great universities of Europe, including a good library
and complete equipment of appliances. It would never have lacked money
or support, and would have been at the service of all classes,
irrespective of creed or race. Here is the program which it was about
to put in operation:
Gratuitous bacteriological, hygienic and industrial examinations
for all classes of the community.
The preparation and gratuitous distribution of all healing and
diagnostic inoculations, serums, antitoxins, antigonococcus, etc.
The sanitation of the town on an extensive scale, sewerage,
water-supply, streets, etc.
Sanitary works for the combating of malaria, the draining of marshes,
etc.
The combating of trachoma.
The combating of phthisis on a large scale, (dispensaries,
asylums, convalescent homes, special hospitals, sanitation of houses,
etc.)
For infants: dispensaries, gouttes de lait, creches, foundling homes,
etc.
For children: various philanthropic institutions. For mothers:
pre-natal pre-culture.
Education and training of doctors to compose the service of public
health.
Training for midwives and nurses.
Organization of a registry office of births and deaths.
Organization of special medical statistical service
4. Financial aid on a large scale was furnished, as was the
distribution of flour, clothing, etc., to refugees caused by the
Khemalist raids in the interior and the destruction in 1919 of the
cities of Aidin and Nazli. Among those so succored were thousands of
Turks.
5. All American missionaries, as well as educational and
charitable workers in Smyrna and its hinterland during the Greek
occupation, will verify the statement that the Hellenic administration
showed itself most helpful and cooperative in many ways, aiding their
labors among Turks as well as Christians. Here is a list of certain
benevolent acts toward these institutions:
The high-commissioner granted to the Y. M. C. A. a large house on the
quay, one of the biggest and finest in Smyrna, for use as a “Soldiers’
Home.” He also helped its management in many ways by detaching
Greek soldiers for its service.
An adequate building was also given to be used as a “Soldiers’ Home” at
Magnesia, where many facilities were afforded.
The civil department of the Y. M. C. A. was in need of an adequate
building for its installation. The Greek authorities requisitioned a
cafe belonging to a Greek for that purpose. It was still in
operation at the time of the burning of the city.
The same Y. M. C. A. organized on a large estate near Smyrna an
installation for the study of agriculture by young men. The Greek
administration helped this organization by furnishing tents,
blankets and other requisites from the quartermaster’s department
and a motor-car for transportation.
The Y. M. C. A. had also organized at Phocea, near Smyrna, a summer
camp for boys. The Greek administration helped by furnishing lumber, a
boat and other materials, and allowed the importation of a motor-car
free of duty.
The Y. W. C. A., which was managed by Miss Nancy McFarland, was helped
in many ways by the Greek administration in the form of considerable
sums of money, lumber and supplies.
A branch of the girls’ school, known as the Intercollegiate
Institute, was started at Guez Tepe by Miss Minnie Mills for Mussulman
women. The high-commissioner furnished a part of the equipment for this.
For the N. E. R. at Smyrna the high-commissioner gave Miss Harvey five
hundred pounds Turkish to be used in favor of poor Mussulman women.
The American College near Smyrna is situated in a place contiguous to a
marsh formerly flooded by stagnant water causing malaria. The Greek
administration drained the swamp and repaired the road passing by
the college.
All the agricultural implements, which were imported for the use
of the returning Greek refugees or for resale at cost price or on
credit for the purpose of restoring the destroyed areas were
purchased by the high commission exclusively from American factories at
my request. Thus thousands of plows were brought in to be distributed
among Turks as well as Christians.
A farm of thirty thousand acres situated at Tepekeuy, used by the
Greek administration for the study of motor-culture, was bought and
made exclusive use of American motor-plows. As a result, students
completing the course recommended to the landowners the use of American
motor-plows.
While I was in Saloniki during the war, the American Y. M. C. A. was
greatly aided, both financially and morally, by the Greek authorities,
both Mr. Venizelos and the Greek archbishop being friendly to this
institution and present at the dedication of its new house.
The American missionaries, who had an agricultural college and a school
there, were at first viewed with suspicion by the Greeks for the reason
that they all spoke Bulgarian and continued to reach in that language
after the Greek occupation. I brought the missionaries and the Greek
authorities together and since then the said authorities have been most
benevolent to the missionaries and helpful to them in many ways. At my
invitation the late King Alexander came to Saloniki to visit the
various missionary and educational institutions and assured them of his
friendly interest and support.
During the Greek administration, I traveled frequently over a
large part of the occupied territory and visited many of the interior
villages. I found perfect security everywhere, native Greeks and Turks
living together on friendly terms. In general there would be in
each village a small administrative office in charge of a petty
officer and two or three aides. I noticed the persistent effort, which
these people made to fraternize with the Turks and to placate them.
Very often have I taken my coffee in the public square of some small
town with the Greek officials, the Turkish hodja, (A teacher in the
secondary Turkish school attached to a mosque) and various of the
Mohammedan notables. - I remember particularly shortly before the
Greek defeat sitting thus with a venerable hodja and a Greek surgeon
under a plane-tree, helping to celebrate the marriage of the hodja to
his fourth wife, which had taken place the day before.
The dark side of this seemingly idyllic picture is that quite
frequently the two or three Greek officials would be found some
morning with their throats cut, whereupon an order would be sent to the
village that the names of the assassins must be revealed or the
town would be burned. This, if I remember correctly, was modeled upon
our so-called “punitive expeditions” in the Philippines, which the
Greek authorities often cited to me in speaking of the matter. In no
case did the Turks reveal the names of the offenders and at least twice
my office has been invaded by the notables of some town who
complained that their village had been burned. On each occasion, I
asked: “Were the Greek officials in your town murdered last night?” And
the answer on both these occasions was, “Yes, but we could not tell the
names of the offenders because we did not know who they were.”
There were also sporadic acts of great ferocity committed against the
peaceful Christian inhabitants of the country, which were always
attributed by the Turks to roving bands of Chetas. Who these Chetas
were, I do not know, but it is my opinion that they did not come from
far. I remember one particularly atrocious case-the massacre and
disemboweling of a Greek miller and his wife and their two
children.
CHAPTER XXII
THE GREEK RETREAT
(1922)
For years the Greek army had been holding a long line without
sufficient food and clothing. Many of these troops had been sent by the
Allies to fight for them in Russia where they had suffered severe
losses. They were reduced to a state of extreme demoralization. They
were fleeing from an implacable enemy from whom they could expect
no mercy, if captured. They covered, such of them as got away, the
distance from the front to the coast in record time. The entire Moslem
population through which they passed was hostile and well-armed. That
they found time to do much massacring or that they were in a state of
mind to stop by the way for the purpose of attacking women seems hardly
credible. That they did burn and lay waste the land may be taken for
granted. The Greeks have claimed military necessity for this, and it
would appear that they could plead such necessity if ever it can be
pleaded. They certainly had more reason for laying bare the country
between themselves and the advancing Khemalists than had our own
Sherman on his “March to the Sea.”
There is one thing, which any one who has ever traveled through
Turkish-ruled lands will see at a glance. Whatever nuclei of
civilization existed in the Ottoman Empire outside of Constantinople
were Greek, Armenian or something besides Turkish. The non-Mussulmans
built the good houses and the better parts of the towns. Many of the
Christian houses and towns had already been destroyed by the followers
of Talaat and Enver, leaving little of any permanent value in the path
of the Greek army.
A Turkish villager’s house usually consists of one room without any
furniture. At one side is piled, often as high as the wall, a supply of
thick quilts. When he goes to bed he takes down one or more of these
and sleeps on the floor, or, in the better houses, on a bench that runs
around the wall. When he eats he sits on the floor with his heels under
him. He cooks in the fireplace. His culinary outfit consists of one
earthen pot, a large washbasin out of which the family eats their
pilaff, one big spoon for each member of the household and a small one
for stirring the coffee. A briki, or long-handled coffee pot, is an
important part of his installation.
Many who have dined with rich denatured Turks at Constantinople or with
some pasha will deny the accuracy of this picture, but it is in the
main correct and describes the houses that compose ninety-nine out of a
hundred Turkish villages wherever found. It is for this reason that the
Turk may be able to carry on for a long time without business,
manufactures, imports or any of the accessories of civilization.
His crude agriculture will suffice for his primitive wants. If the
region which he occupies really belongs to him, then he may say that he
has a right to the kind of civilization, or lack of it, that suits him
best and for which he is most adapted. Whether the Christian world
should have looked on and aided him while exterminating the
non-Mussulman population of Asia Minor is another question.
The difficulties of the Greek retreat are well illustrated by an
incident narrated to me by the Reverend Dana Getchell who came
into my office from the interior a few days before the arrival of the
Khemalists. He said that when he had gone to bed in the evening in his
small hotel everything had been quiet, but that he had been awakened in
the morning by the sound of tumult in the streets, and looking from the
window, he saw the whole Christian population rushing toward the
railroad station, carrying such of their belongings as they had been
able to snatch. On inquiring what the trouble was he was informed that
the Turks were coming. He went to the station himself and saw a long
train of cars on to which a small detachment of Greek soldiers was
attempting to embark the frightened people. While this operation was
being conducted the Mussulman villagers came out from their houses, all
armed, and began to fire upon the soldiers and the train. A battle
ensued in which the officer commanding the detachment and several of
his soldiers were killed. But the soldiers stood their ground well and
succeeded finally in getting away with the larger part of the
Christians.
This specific incident throws light upon the Greek retreat as it shows
that the Moslems were, in general, in possession of concealed weapons
and that they did not hesitate to use them.
CHAPTER XIII
SMYRNA AS IT WAS
THE burning of Smyrna and the massacre and scattering of its
inhabitants has aroused widespread humanitarian and religious
interest on account of the unparalleled sufferings of the
multitudes involved. But there is another element in the United States,
not numerous, that has been more deeply saddened by the fate of this
ancient town—the classical scholars and historians.
The eyes of scholars, ever since the great discoveries of
Schliemann, have been turned toward the island of Crete, where it is
now known that a highly developed civilization existed, contemporaneous
with early Egyptian, and of which the ancient cities of Tyrins and
Mycenae were outposts. It is believed that the ancestors of the royal
houses of these settlements came originally from Asia Minor, and
it is possible that the conception of the grim old lions above the gate
of Mycenae, symbolizing the courage of its kings, may have been
imported from Asia. Theseus, that attractive and romantic hero, who
finally became one of the rulers of the Mythical Age of Athens, is
connected with Asia Minor through the Amazons, who were feminine
priestesses of the old cult of the many-breasted nature goddess of
Ephesus.
From Ionia, the mother civilization spread to old Greece, to Sicily, to
Italy and along the shores of the Black Sea, and finally to Europe and
America! It is more than probable that Homer was a Smyrniote, or
an inhabitant of Asia Minor, and for countless years his writings were
a sort of Bible or sacred book, molding the character of millions.
Perhaps the earliest conception of monogamy, certainly the most
beautiful, comes from Homer’s poems. Our conception of the family is
Greek; we get it from the Odyssey, very probably written in
Smyrna, thousands of years ago.
During the days of the Byzantine Empire, that splendid, romantic and
tragic power which developed a magnificent civilization and kept
the lamp of learning alight all through the darkness of the Middle
Ages, Asia Minor flourished and was the province which contributed most
to the strength and firmness of the general fabric. The exploits of
Nikephoros Phokas and the romance of Diogenes Akritas, immortalized in
verse, are well known even to those scholars who are not Byzantine
specialists. Those were the days of the great land barons who kept
regal state and whose forgotten history should be a vast treasure-house
for romantic novelists. Later, Ionia is of intense interest to the
whole Christian world. It is the land of the Seven Cities of the
Revelation, of the Seven Churches and the wonderful mystical poem of
St. John the Divine. Six of the candles went out in eternal darkness
long ago, but that of Smyrna burned brightly until its destruction on
the thirteenth of September, 1922, by the Turks of Mustapha Klhemal and
the death of the last of its great bishops whose martyrdom fitly ended
its glorious Christian history.
Polycarp, the patron saint of Smyrna during the long years of its
existence as a Christian city, was burned alive in an ancient stadium
whose contour is still plainly visible, on February twenty-sixth, in
the year A. D. 156; Chrysostom was tortured and torn in pieces by a
Turkish mob in front of the military headquarters of the Khemalist
forces in Smyrna on September ninth, A. D. 1922. In Asia Minor were
held the great Christian assemblies: at Nicea, Ephesus and Chalcedon,
were born the Church fathers, St. Paul and the two Gregories. It was at
Ephesus, near Smyrna, that St. Paul fought with beasts after the manner
of men.
Greek civilization has again and again developed in Asia Minor to be
crushed by Asiatic invasion. At its height it produced the immortal
cities of Pergamus, Smyrna, Colophon, Philadelphia, Ephrsus,
Halicarnassus. The whole land was dotted with lesser towns adorned with
schools of art and beautiful temples from many of which sprang
famous philosophers and poets. Ionia is a graveyard of ancient Greek
cities and marble villages toward which the interest of American
scholars has been turning more and more. A pioneer in this field was J.
R. Sitlington Sterrett, who has left an unforgettable name among
American archeologists.
The climate of Smyrna resembles very much that of Southern California.
Snow rarely, if ever, falls in winter, and during the summer the
country is daily refreshed by a breeze from the sea, the embates, or,
in the Smyrna dialect, the imbat.
The route to Smyrna from Athens lies between Euboea and Andros and
between the islands of Chios and Mytilini, the ancient Lesbos, famous
as the home of Sappho. It skirts the great promontory of Kharabournou
and enters the Hermian Gulf. To the left is the ancient city of Phocea.
A colony from Phocea founded Marseilles, France, some thousands of
years ago. It is interesting to know that the massacre and expulsion of
the inhabitants in June, 1914, excited special interest and sympathy in
the modern French city.
The harbor of Smyrna is one of the best in the world, comparable to
that of Vancouver. At the bottom of the Hermian Gulf we come to a sort
of sea-gate, the entrance to the harbor proper, in which the largest
sea-going craft can safely anchor. Smyrna has attained great
importance in late years as a commercial port. While other harbors,
especially that of its ancient rival, Ephesus, have been filled by
deposits brought down by the rivers, that of Smyrna has not suffered
the same fate, the silt of the delta of the Hermus having tended only
to narrow its mouth.
Among the first objects pointed out to the traveler on entering
the bay are the “Two Brothers,” or twin mountain peaks, which are
identical in appearance. At the right is the ancient fortress
bombarded by the British fleet during the war whose guns can plainly be
seen by passengers upon steamers. Soon after passing the fortress,
Smyrna appears nestling in the arms of a long, white, semicircular bay,
resembling that of Naples, to which it is scarcely second in
beauty, and climbing the slopes of Mount Pagus, crowned by an ancient
wall and fortress. The city itself, with its suburbs, stretched
far around the semicircle on both sides.
At the time of its destruction it is probable that the inhabitants
exceeded five hundred thousand in numbers. The latest official
statistics give the figure as four hundred thousand, of whom one
hundred and sixty-five thousand were Turks, one hundred and fifty
thousand Greeks, twenty-five thousand Jews, twenty-five thousand
Armenians, and twenty thousand foreigners: ten thousand Italians, three
thousand French, two thousand British and three hundred Americans.
The principal promenade was the quay, on which were located the
American theater, the prettiest building of its kind in the Ottoman
Empire, many cinemas, the best hotels, various modern and
well-constructed office buildings, besid