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.
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