AMERICAN CONSULATE GENERAL

Athens, Greece, September 27, 1922

SUBJECT: The Near Eastern Question

THE HONOURABLE

THE SECRETARY OF STATE

WASHINGTON.

SIR:

I have the honour to submit to the Department a statement of what has been and is going on in the Near East, with a brief discourse on the events and causes which have led up to the appalling tragedy that is now being enacted at Smyrna.

I have the honour to call the attention of the Department to the fact that immediately after the Greeks landed in Smyrna, I telegraphed that this would prove a second "Syracusan Expedition", referring to the war against Syracuse in 413 B.C. which led to the complete depletion of the Athenian treasury and the effacement of Athens as the leading power of the ancient world.

In another dispatch, whose date I cannot refer to here as the archives are in Smyrna, I predicted that if the Greek army retreated from Asia Minor it would be followed by the entire Christian population and said that anyone who could not foresee this was not familiar with the situation of the Near East and the mentality of its peoples. A copy of this was forwarded to Constantinople, and I remember receiving an explanation to the effect that the new Turkish administration which would be established would be a "kindly and benevolent administration."

Of course in some circles, the hideous and outrageous conduct of the Turks in Smyrna will be explained by the rage created among the Turks by the devastation caused by the Greek army in its retreat upon this city. I have been in the Consular service in the Near East for nearly thirty years and there are some things which all men who have had long residence in this country absolutely know. After the atrocious and frightful massacre of Armenians in 1915, of which I reported to the Department full accounts given me by the nativeborn American eye-witnesses, representatives of American firms who came to Smyrna, I did not see how anyone could longer have faith in the kindly intentions of the Turks towards the Christian populations of the empire. About one million and a quarter Armenians perished in that awful affair, done to death by slow torture under circumstances of the most dreadful cruelty. This methodical extermination of the Christian population has been going on steadily since. The fear inspired in the Christian population is such that the non-Mussulman inhabitants of Smyrna would in any case have run away at the first definite announcement that the Turks were coming back. This is so plain that anybody ought to be able to see it.

The last great Sultan of the old Ottoman empire was Abdul Hamid, the last great ruler who knew what the Ottoman empire was, namely the remains of the old Byzantine empire, composed of various industrial and progressive races whom the Turk lived upon as a parasite by taxing them. Abdul Hamid knew that the safety of the so-called Ottoman empire lay in keeping the Christians in dissension, a not very difficult task, - and as far as Macedonia was concerned, he kept a special expert at Salonica whose duty it was to provoke rows between the Bulgarians, Greeks and Serbians. When he was deposed and the so-called new Turk came into power, they commenced, as my dispatches and those of all my colleagues at the post at that time will show, to persecute and exterminate Bulgarians, Greeks and Serbians indiscriminately and a general reign of terror was started. The prisons overflowed and Salonica began to fill with women reporting their husbands had been killed or spirited away. No general massacre took place but sporadic killings almost amounting to a massacre, besides brutal tortures, prevailed all over Macedonia. The situation became so intolerable that the Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbians were obliged to get together for long enough to drive out the Turk, a thing which they could have done at any time for many years past but for the dissensions mentioned above. It is true that they fell at each other's throats as soon as their task was finished but they stayed together long enough to accomplish this.

What has been at the back of the minds of the Turks ever since the fall of Abdul Hamid is well represented in their slogan, "Turkey for the Turks". Themselves unprogressive, except in the arts of war, incapable of commerce on a large scale or manufacturing, inventions or modern industry, they are jealous of the Christians whom they regard as thriving at their expense. I have heard Turkish politicians make speeches at Salonica in which they affirm that if the Christians were exterminated and driven out, the Turks would of sheer necessity progress and develop schools, commerce and industry. Then followed the great massacre mentioned above and other great massacres on a smaller scale.

The regime of the Greeks in Asia Minor was the only civilised and beneficent regime which that country has seen since historic times. I was in close touch with Mr. Sterghiades through it all, I have travelled widely through the country, I have talked with scores of native-born Americans who have travelled over the region and I absolutely know of what I am talking. Greeks were more severely punished for aggressions against Turks than Turks for aggressions against Greeks. Brigandage was practically suppressed, security very generally reigned and insofar as the means of the Greek government permitted, Mr. Sterghiades supported and originated civilised institutions and progress and promoted agriculture, and industry. The Greek farmers, who had but a few years before been driven out from their homes and their villages destroyed, had largely returned and had begun again the cultivation of the famous Sultana grape on a large scale, of tobacco and other agricultural products. I am sending the Department, in another dispatch, a list of the various benevolent acts towards American educational institutions by Mr. Sterghiades together with another list of the opposite kind of treatment which they have suffered from the Turks. Those institutions are forever lost in Smyrna and vicinity -the large college and agricultural school of Dr. MacLachlan, which has been growing for thirty years, with its expensive buildings constructed with American money, has no longer a reason for existing. The end of that admirable institution was significantly brought to a full stop by the attack upon Dr. MacLachlan himself by Turkish soldiers, in which he nearly lost his life. The Greeks and Armenians who largely supported it are gone, not to return for many years. The Turks will not attend it. Mrs. Caldwell, wife of one of the professors, told me yesterday that their Turkish students whom they regarded as fine young men, with well moulded characters, slumped all their civilisation and became savages when the Turks arrived in Smyrna. The Girls School, one of the most admirable institutions in the Near East, the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A. and two institutions for working among the Turks, both of which had been liberally supported by Mr. Sterghiades, are all hopelessly gone. There will doubtless be some business with Smyrna in the near future, some figs will be raised and possibly some raisins and tobacco, but the whole territory is devastated, the real progressive workers are gone and any large development along progressive lines is over perhaps forever.

The Greeks in Smyrna district contended with many difficulties:-(1st) the apathy of the native population which did not support them as it should, (2nd) the impossibility to really placate the Turk, (3rd) the big Levantine, British, French and other merchants who had made fortunes under the old Turk of the capitulations and knew that it was impossible to exploit the Greek, (4th) the hostility of the large Catholic element which is just as bitter against the Greeks as it was in the days of the Byzantine empire.

Another thing that has greatly handicapped the Greeks is their pernicious and corrupt politics. The amount to which politics is played in Greece and the extent to which the Greek politician will go, even to the sacrifice of his country and of many lives in order to keep his party in power for a few weeks can hardly be believed. The overthrow of Venizelos, Greece's great advocate in Europe and America, and the bringing back of its discredited king, was the beginning of the end. Politics is played to such an extent that even now, in the face of this tremendous tragedy to Greece, it is not lost sight of, and the Royalist party will not even allow Venizelists to distribute money which they are receiving from Europe or to establish soup kitchens.

I firmly believe from my observations in Smyrna and from information which I have received from various sources, that the terrible disaster which has happened to the inhabitants of Asia Minor was the result of a contemptible political move. The party in power believed they could not get the help of Europe without turning out Constantine and bringing back Venizelos. Without that help, they could not stay in Smyrna, they could not announce that they were willing to withdraw their armies from the Smyrna district, and they therefore deliberately provoked the debacle which the world has seen. For months there has been a steady withdrawing of Venizelist officers and their replacing by trusted Royalists, many of whom have been deserting their troops, leaving whole regiments without officers. I am credibly informed that the Greek army, even at the last moment, could have made a stand and retrieved the situation as the Turkish forces which entered Smyrna were insignificant. But even the Greek officers who desired to make a stand and expressed their ability to do so were ordered to retire. The whole pitiful tragedy, resulting in the most poignant human suffering on a great scale, must provoke general disgust, and discouragement, with reference to Greeks, Turks and Europe. Mustapha Khemal had an opportunity to justify the praises of his European and American propagandists and to put the Christians to shame by entering Smyrna peacefully and affording protection to all its inhabitants. Instead a revolting massacre was perpetrated, which I have already described but which I shall refer to again. Looting and pillaging and rape and massacre went on on a large scale immediately after the entry of the Turks, their vengeance first breaking upon the Armenian population, who were accused of having thrown bombs. The truth is that very few bombs were thrown, possibly half a dozen at the utmost and those in a quarter of the city where Armenians are seldom seen. This was no excuse for a hunting, night and day for three days, of Armenians by squads of regular soldiers and their killing in the most revolting manner by being shot, stabbed, hacked to death or having their throats cut publicly in the streets. Armenians were systematically hunted and killed throughout the entire city and their houses methodically broken into, street by street, pillaged, and the men taken out and killed. No pro-Turk propaganda can obscure what actually occurred in Smyrna;-there were too many reliable witnesses-the truth is sure to come out.

After the great fire, as a result of which the whole Christian population was forced upon the quay where it remained for days stretching its hands to the battleships in the harbour, screaming and pleading for help and dying of hunger and thirst, the conduct of the Turks was abominable. Miss Emily MacCallum, director of the Girls School in Smyrna, who returned from that city this morning, says that there: are still great throngs of these miserable creatures on the quay and along the seashore, without water and without food and dying, and that the stench of these dead bodies is terrible. There are still two hundred thousand waiting on the quay to be taken off. It has been announced that all of the men, from eighteen to forty-five years of age, are to be taken as prisoners of war and marched into the interior, and she saw, corroborating statements by others recently from Smyrna, large bands of men being marched away by Turkish guards. The heart of the whole world has been calloused by the European war but there are still people living who can appreciate, the fearful loved ones. Anyone who has ever lived in the Orient will know that the fate of these people is certain death. During the Great War, while I was in Smyrna, the rayahs, or Greek Ottoman subjects, were forcibly taken for military service and set to digging trenches and other work in the rain, without blankets or tents or food, and three out of four of them died. The families will be brought away, wives and sisters and children will be without-natural protectors, and must perish unless indefinitely cared for.

It will be the theory of some that no relief work should be done in Greece and that the brunt of feeding all the refugees brought there should be borne by that country as she was responsible for the great debacle, but the funds of Greece are exhausted and she is unequal to this task, and I do not know why innocent third parties should be made to suffer for the faults of others.

I wish to repeat that the consistent policy of the Turk, since the fall of Abdul Hamid, has been the expulsion, killing and elimination of the Christian races. I have made several successful prophecies and I now make another: If the Khemalist forces are allowed to enter Constantinople, the awful scenes which we have witnessed in Smyrna will be repeated in that city. In view of all that I have said and of all that has happened, I see no reason why the Turk should massacre Armenians and Greeks in the Pontus, in Armenia and Asia Minor, and give them a "kindly and beneficent regime" in Constantinople.

I wish now to point out the difference between the Greek and the Turk. The Greek has undoubtedly massacred Turks but no nation has such a consistent history of massacres on a great scale or ever had in the world's history as the Turk. Greek politics are corrupt and vicious but the Greek is capable of civilisation along modern lines; he builds hospitals, universities, founds steamship lines, introduces modern agriculture and, given liberty, he develops. I see a difference between the excesses of a furious and betrayed army retreating through a country which it had held for several years and without its officers, and the conduct of the victorious Turkish army which, instead of protecting the helpless people which it had in its power, deliberately set about massacring and outraging it.

No one who has not lived in the Near East can understand how utterly incapable of progress the Turk is. No one, who has not travelled through the Turkish villages or through the back region of the Turkish empire, can understand how hopelessly unprogressive a people is who, holding for nearly five hundred years the fairest and richest part of the earth's surface, has never made a sewing machine nor a plough, nor a steam engine, nor a battleship, nor a cotton gin, nor a pin, nor a match. Anyone who hopes for the progress of Turkey inhabited only by Turks is hoping for the leopard to change its spots. [...]

I have the honour also to point out to the Department that all massacres on a large scale perpetrated by Turks, and the history of the Turkish empire is largely a history of massacres, are always ordered by higher authorities. Anyone who believes that the forces of Mustapha Khemal got out of hand at Smyrna and that he controlled them as soon as he could, knows nothing about the history of Turkey or events in the Near East. I believe also if the Allied fleets in Smyrna harbour, the French, Italians, British and Americans, had emphatically told Mustapha Khemal that there must be no massacring, none would have taken place. If they told him today that he must cease carrying off the men between eighteen and forty-five into the interior, he would stop, but when he sees the great powers of the world sitting by in security on their battleships watching his fearful procedures, he is emboldened to greater and still greater excesses. The sight of a massacre going on under the eyes of the great powers of Europe and with their seemingly tacit consent, is one that I hope never to see again.

I believe that when the real truth is known of what happened in Smyrna and what has been happening in the Near East, all decent people in Europe and the United States will feel as I do.

September 26, 1922

Since writing the above, I have been informed that the three Entente powers have sent a note to Mustapha Khemal announcing that, with their consent, his armies will be allowed to occupy Constantinople and Thrace. The panic, which this announcement must necessarily cause among the native Christians and even European inhabitants of Constantinople, has, I am sure, commenced. The Department is better qualified to know what is going on in Constantinople than I am here but I hazard this assertion as certainty without definite information. The native Christians do well to leave such of them as can get away, for even if measures are taken to prevent a savage massacre on the arrival of the Khemalist troops, the life of the Christian will be intolerable and unsafe and massacres will surely be perpetrated from time to time in the future. Long observation has convinced me that the Turk is incapable of governing Christian populations. Such may have thrived under the old Turk in a general way, despite the numberless massacres which are a blot upon Turkish history, but the policy of the New Turk will render the life of the Christian element impossible.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

1) Turkish massacres are always carried out by order of superior authorities. This is a well-known principle and the way in which various historic massacres have been conducted abundantly proves it. Such was the case at Smyrna, and Mustapha Khemal's statement that he could not control his troops is false. It is a curious fact that the Turk is still able to deceive Europeans, despite long observation of his tactics. It is probable that one emphatic word to the Turkish commander by the French Admiral would have stopped the massacre and all the horrors that followed.

2) It should be borne in mind that it has been for some time the policy of the Turkish nationalists to exterminate and eliminate the native Christian element in Turkey. Any one forming plans for future business or diplomatic relations with Turkey should bear this in mind and be fully of the changed conditions in the country.

3) Khemalism has been built up by the Allies by their weakness and dissension. The conduct of France has been one of faithlessness to the Allies, with the purpose of obtaining concessions, and undermining British influence in the Near East. Great Britain, on account of labour opposition and Mussulman unrest in India, is obliged to swallow this bitter pill, with the hope that concessions to Khemal will quiet the Mussulmans of India. This is a mistake and has been a mistaken policy from the beginning. The entry of the Khemalists into Constantinople will arouse the Mussulmans of India beyond control.

4) Constantinople is today as it was at the time of its fall the outer bulwark of Europe against the hordes of Asia, and once it is given over to the Turk, he will commence a war of conquest upon the Balkan States- if not today, tomorrow, and if not this year, next year, and the peace of Europe will be perpetually in danger. The Turk is a race who has no interests in the arts of peace and who knows nothing but war and conquest. It is impossible for him to refrain from warlike operations. Any plans made on his promises or on any different suppositions are doomed to disappointment and statesmen who form any schemes for the future on any different basis are building on a false foundation.

I am unfortunately but a simple official, not occupying an exalted position, and my words will perhaps not bear great weight, but I know whereof I am speaking and some who read these lines will live to see them verified.

OBSERVATION:

The men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, who are today being torn from their wives, sisters, mothers and children, amid pitiful scenes that only a DeQuincey could describe, and being driven away by the Turks to perish by slow starvation and exposure, are the peaceful farmers of Asia Minor and the citizens of Smyrna who were never is sympathy with the government of Constantine and who are in no wise responsible for the fearful fate which has befallen them. This unrighteous act is being carried out without even a word of protest by any civilised government.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

American Consul General,

Smyrna.

Part II

Reports Concerning Attitudes of the Turks

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 of violating Christian women. The massacres already enumerated are a sufficient blot upon the Turkish name. They were made possible by the teachings of the K oran, 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 T urkish 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 necessity 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 door-steps 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 had 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 where 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 bocly. 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 soon as 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 Aletheia, 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 l0th 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, I 9 1 0:

" 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 f gures were obtained from a report of the Turkish Parliament and locally confrmed:

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 Salonique, 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. frst, 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 movements will be found the peoples belonging to the same race-the Mongolian. Each one possesses the unquestionable title to the moral and intellectual supremacy of the great countries over which their influence extends.

The Japanese are incontestably at the head of the peoples professing Buddhism, the doctrines 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 itsey 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."i

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.

PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS IN SMYRNA DISTRICT

(19l 1-1914)

In 1 911 , 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 governorgeneral.

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 tranquillity 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 production. 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 farm-houses and villages. Goats had been turned into flourishing, carefully tended vineyeards 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 door-frame-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.

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 Frenchmen, 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. These 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 f ring 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 f ring The panic was so great that a woman with her child was drowned in sixty centimetres 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 Chistians 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, terrifed 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 mysey and f re on the robbers. This produced the desired effect, and these unfortunates were enabled to embark with what they had savedfrom 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 mysey the f rst aid before embarking them for Mitylene. I aff rm 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 diffucult 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 inl914, of which he was an eye-witness, for several reasons. It is necessary to the complete and substantiated picture of 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 Iying 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 knite 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 fngers of his left hand had been carried away.

From an 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 learn at this moment an atrocious detail. An old paralytic who had been Iying 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 f ve characteristics of the sacking of a city; theft, pillage, fre, 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 estaS lished, 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."

NEW LIGHT ON THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES

(1914~1915)

In l915, 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 these 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, withgreatreluctance, theArmenians 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 off cials 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 ffteen 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, Merisna and other cities and towns in the district.

Gradually small numbers sent away from the abovementioned towns began to arrive in Aleppo, relating the harrowing details of the deportations, or the actual killing of relatives andfriends, 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 Frovince 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 ever been heard of them thereafter. Their fate has been recorded in the annals of God, so it is needless 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, travelling perhaps a thousand miles and reaching Aleppo in August, about four months afterward, afoot, without suffeient food, and even denied drink by the brutal gendarmes when they came to the wells by the wayside. Bundreds of the prettiest women and girls had been stolen by the 7'urkish 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 eye-witnesses, 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 and 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 from 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 that it ought to be published and widely studied by an who have the broad interests of humanity at heart. It Rwill 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 scepticism."

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 woks 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 confidentially, 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 id 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 f resides, 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 Nestorians of Syria, and a part of the Greek Christians-have suffered."

Doctor Lepsius prepares his report in the manner of a 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 the 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 plan 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.

STORY OF WALTER M. GEDDES

"I left here on the sixteenth of September, 1915, for Aleppo. I f rst saw the Armenians at Af on 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 frst brutality; I saw a woman and her baby separatedfrom 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 ffty thousand; their condition was terrible. They were camped on both sides of the railway track, extending fully haya 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 andfood 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 ffty 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 had 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 heard all along the road. They had to go at last hay a mile for water from this encampment, and the condition of the camp was flthy.

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 father 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 Iying on thefloor 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 flthy.

The British consulate was f lled 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 twowheeled carts which made daily rounds to all the places where the Armenians were concentrated. These carts were open at frst 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

In Damascus I found conditions practically the same as in Aleppo; and here hundreds are dying every day. From Damascus, they are sent stillfarhter 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. AII 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 sto sunset, the road as far as one can see is crowded with these exiles. Just outside of Tarsus I saw a dead woman Iying 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 form 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 ffty years of age.

At Bairamoglou, I talked with a woman who was demented from the sufferings she had undergone. She told me that her husband andfather 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 breadfor 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 paidfor 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 f lthy condition. The f lth 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, Iying 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 diffoult and often times crude conveyances drawn by buffalos, oxen and milch 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."

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, she 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 t*ove 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 heardf ring all around. We said, 'The killing has begun.' All night we waitedfor them, my mother and I, we waitedfor 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. An 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 off cial 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 °f 1915, under a def nite system, the soldiers going from town to town. Young men were f rst 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, breezeswept 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 fgure 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 the once prosperous region of the Black Sea is one of the darkest and foulest pages even in Turkish history.

The flourishing communities of Amasia, Caesarea, 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.

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 disembarkment 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 Mobile 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 Christiansii, 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 whom I saw a short time after the landing of the Greek troops. I was present in Smyrna when the ring-leaders 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 ring-leaders, 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.iii

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 impresslon nere.

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. Tranquillity 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 selfrespecting 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. Sterghiades, 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 representatives 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, E xcellency," 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 a man the guilty priest was.

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. Sterghiades, 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 he 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 be 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 the contagious diseases, such as malaria, syphilis, etc.

A microbiological laboratory was established for the diagnosis of infectious diseases with an equipment of sanitary motor cars for bringing in the sick from distant points, small wagons for the transportation of infected articles and portable outfits for disinfection 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 hea!ing and diagnostic inoculations, serums, antitoxins, antlgonococcus, etc.

The sanitation of the town on an extensive scale, sewerage, water-supply, streets, etc.

Sanitary works for the combatting of malaria, the draining of marshes, etc.

The combatting 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 puericulture.

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 insitutions:

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 quarter-master'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 a,t 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.iv

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 smal 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,v 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.

THE GREEK RETREAT

(I922)

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 wellarmed. 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 wash-basin 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.

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 moher 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 Khemal 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 Nicae, 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, Ephesus, 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 unforget-. table 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, theentrance 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.

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, twentyfive 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, besides the residences of the most prosperous merchants, among whom were Greeks, Armenians and Dutch. On this street also were several of the Consulates, the building owned by the French Government being an imposing structure, suitable even for an embassy.

The residences mentioned were elegant in appearance and contained treasures of rugs, expensive furniture, works of art and Oriental curios.

The city was divided largely into quarters, though this was not a rigid arrangement. The Turkish lay to the east and south, and, as is usual in all mixed Ottoman towns, occupied the highest part, extending up the sides of Mount Pagus, (and does still, for that matter, as it was not burned). Architecturally it is a typical jumble of ramshackle huts, with very few, if any, buildings of a superior order. To the east are grouped most of the Jews, while the Armenian quarter lay to the north of the Turkish and contiguous with it. The Greek area was north again of the Armenian.

In speaking of the population of Smyrna one should not forget to mention the "Levantines." There seems to be some doubt in the American mind as to who these really are. The term is usually applied to any inhabitant of the Near East, and is supposed to carry with it an implication of deceit and sharpness in business. A "Levantine" is really a foreigner whose forefathers settled in that country one or more generations ago, avho has become thoroughly versed in Oriental dealings, who speaks the languages, and some of whose ancestors may have intermarried with Greeks or Armenians.

As the Oriental understands it, the population of that country consists of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Levantines. The latter have thriven immenseIy, and there are two small towns, Boudja and Bournabat, both within half an hour by rail from the metropolis, inhabited principally by descendants of British, French and Dutch, whose ancestors settled a hundred years or so ago in the Near East. These two villages are very beautiful. Many of the residences are imposing, and the parks and rose gardens surrounding them are not surpassed anywhere in the world. Their owners lived, (or live, such of them as have gone back) the lives of merchant princes. They have been able, protected by the capitulations, to amass great fortunes. These people generally resent being called "Levantines," and cling to their original nationality. During the Great War their sons enlisted with enthusiasm, and the German and Turkish cannon and other instruments of destruction took heavy toll of the debonair and wealthy youth of Boudja and Bournabat.

The principal business thoroughfare of Smyrna was the Rue Franque, on which were situated the great department and wholesale stores of the Greeks, Armenians and Levantines. At the shopping hour in the afternoon, this street was so crowded that one moved through it with difficulty, and among the motley throng ladies in costumes of the latest fashion, looking for that sort of merchandise that ladies shop for everywhere, formed a large part.

Social life presented many attractions. Teas, dances, musical afternoons and evenings were given in the luxurious salons of the rich Armenians and Greeks. There were four large clubs: the "Cercle de Smyrne", frequented mostly by British, French and Americans; the "Sporting," with a fine building and garden on the quay; the "Greek Club" and a "Country Club" near the American college with excellent golf links and race course.

In no city in the world did East and West mingle physically in so spectacular a manner as at Smyrna, while spiritually they always maintained the characteristics of oil and water. One of the common sights of the streets was the long camel caravans, the beasts passing in single file, attached to ropes and led by a driver on a donkey in red fez and rough white-woolen cloak. These caravans came in from the interior laden with sacks of figs, licorice root, raisins, wood, tobacco and rugs. While the foreigner is apt to be afraid of these ungainly beasts, one often saw a Greek or Armenian woman in high-heeled boots and elegant costume, stoop and lift the rope between two camels and pass under. At the north end of the city is a railroad station called "Caravan Bridge," because near by is an ancient stone bridge of that name over which the camel caravans arriving from as far away as Bagdad and Damascus, used to pass.

Reference has already been made to the gaiety of the natives. One of the chief institutions of Smyrna about which naval men always inquire, was the Politakia, or orchestras of stringed instruments, guitars, mandolins and zither. The players added great zest to the performance by singing to their own accompaniment native songs and improvisations. The various companies gave nightly concerts in the principal cafes and were often called upon for entertainments in private houses.

The lightheartedness of the Smyrniotes was well-nigh irrepressible and continued almost until the last days when it was extinguished forever. During the Great War the British bombarded the fortress. At first the sound of the big guns terrified the inhabitants, but when it was discovered that there was no intention of throwing shells into the city itself the whole population gathered on the housetops and at the cafes to witness the flashes and the bursting of the projectiles. The cannonading was plainly visible from the quay and became a regular theatrical performance, chairs on the sidewalks being sold at high prices.

Passing from the European quarter-Greeks and Armenians are here classed as Europeans-into the Turkish, one found himself in the days of the Arabian Nights. The civilization, the manners, the isolation of the women, who were either not seen at all or passed through the streets closely veiled, were all such as one finds described in the Thousand and One Nights. Mention should be made particularly of the letter-writers, generally kindly old hodjas who sat at tables taking down the love-letters and other missives that were whispered in their ears. Groups of befezzed Mussulmans sat about smoking their water pipes beside antique fountains or in the shade of clambering grapevines.

The American interests in Smyrna were very important. Besides the omnipresent Standard Oil Company, there were the great MacAndrews and Forbes licorice firm with its spacious offices and thousands of employees and laborers, all the principal tobacco companies whose business amounted to millions yearly, the exporters of figs and raisins and carpets, and after the Greek occupation, the importers of agricultural implements and automobiles.

There were important American educational and ,humanitarian institutions as well as archeological expeditions to Sardis and Colophon. The excavators at Sardis during their last campaign made a notable discovery of thirty gold coins of Croesus, which were taken charge of by me and brought to the United States immediately after the Smyrna disaster. They also, with my aid, succeeded in obtaining the first large consign ment of original marbles that has ever been sent to any American museum. These latter were shipped to America for the Metropolitan Museum of New York. All these marbles and coins were, for political reasons, sent back to Constantinople from New York.

I shall permit myself to digress sufficiently at this point to make the observation that I took keener satisfaction in bringing these remarkable atinquities to the United States than in any other single act of my entire consular career. This satisfaction was shared by the late Howard Crosby Butler, who added to my pleasure by his unstinted commendation. Perhaps if this great scholar and courtly gentleman had not died suddenly in Paris, he might have prevented the sacrifice of these treasures to business and political interests- futilely and unreasonably sacrificed.

Among the interesting ancient monuments existing in Smyrna are two aqueducts which can be seen from the railroad running to Boudja. There is also the so-called "Tomb of Tantalus," the mythical founder of the town. The excellent water supply of the city is still derived from an ancient source known as the "Baths of Diana."

The road from Smyrna to Boudja skirts the beautiful Valley of St. Anne, so named because she is supposed to have been buried there. Through this flows the river known as the Meles, by the banks of which Homer may have composed his great epics.

The civilization of this ancient and beautiful city was essentially Greek. The great mills of Nazli, which before the war supplied an excellent quality of flour not only to Smyrna vilayet but to the rest of Turkey and even exported to Europe, were founded by a Greek. Of the three hundred and ninety-one factories at Smyrna, three hundred and forty-four were Greek and fourteen Turkish. Statistics of this nature could be multiplied indefinitely.

The two principal native schools-both Greek- were the "Homerion," an institution for girls, and the "Evangelical School" for boys, the latter under British protection. These were academies of great merit, affording a liberal course of education, and their graduates, many of them successful men and women, are to be found in all parts of the world. The library of the Evangelical School was recognized by scholars as containing a large and invaluable collection of books, manuscripts and inscriptions, many of which can never be replaced.

Among other irreparable losses caused by the fire should be mentioned two very ancient copies of the Bible, one kept in a church in Smyrna, and the other the special charge of a small communtiy of Christians who are said to have fled from Ephesus when that city was sacked by the Turks centuries ago, and to have founded a small village whose sole object was the preservation of this venerable book. This part of the tale should not be finished without reference to the records of the American Consulate. Smyrna was one of the oldest of our foreign offices and contained many despatches signed by Daniel Webster and others equally famous in our history, besides interesting references to incursions of the Barbary pirates, and an account of the saving of a famous Polish patriot by a small American cruiser, which cleared for action and demanded his release from an Austrian battle-ship. There have been many thrilling and inspiring episodes in the history of our navy where commanders have acted on their own responsibility in behalf of justice and humanity. Such episodes were more frequent before the perfection of the wireless and the submarine telegraph. It is a consolation to reflect that the spirited incident mentioned above occurred in the harbor of Smyrna, to balance, as it were, the history of the locality.

I was engaged before the fire in going through the ancient records and preparing a resume of their contents. Among the treasures of the Consulate were twelve magnificent old wood-prints of the battle of Navarino, giving different stages of the action, with faithful reproductions of the various ships with their nannes, which, as they were my personal property, I had intended to present to our navy department. I believe that there are no other copies of these prints in existence.

Smyrna is now mass of ruins and a Turkish village. It should be borne in mind, however, that history repeats itself. Smyrna was rebuilt by Greeks after its destruction by Lydians, and Hellenic civilization again reasserted itself after the ferocity of the Turkish pirates of 1084, and the frightful butcheries of Tamerlane. A great city is the flower of industry and a peaceful and prosperous civilization. When the farmers swarm over the plains and the sailors go down to the sea in ships, then the bazaars and warehouses are built, the banks and the counting-houses and the shops of the cunning artisans. Smyrna will grow great again when a live and progressive Western civilization once more develops in Ionia. History has demonstrated that the Greeks, from their geographical position, their industrial and eco~nomic enterprise, and their relative maritime supre~<tnacy in the Mediterranean are the people ultimately destined to carry European progress into Asia Minor unless, indeed, Christianity should utterly fail, and with it, the civilization founded upon it. Smyrna is too near Europe for Turkish retrogression and blight to rest there indefinitely. Its fields are too rich and too valuable to the human race to remain permanently in the hands of a sparse population of incompetent shepherds. The question is often asked: "When will the Turks rebuild Smyrna?" Turkish Smyrna was not burned.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SMYRNA

(September, 1922)

The last act in the fearful drama of the extermination of Christianity in the Byzantine Empire was the burning of Smyrna by the troops of Mustapha Khemal. The murder of the Armenian race had been practically consummated during the years 1915-1916, and the prosperous and populous Greek colonies, with the exception of Smyrna itself, had been ferociously destroyed. The idea has been widely circulated, and seems to be gaining credence, that the Turk has changed his nature overnight.

The destruction of Smyrna happened, however, in 1922, and no act ever perpetrated by the Turkish race in all its bloodstained history, has been characterized by more brutal and lustful features, nor more productive of the worst forms of human sufferings inflicted on the defenseless and unarmed. It was a fittingly lurid and Satanic finale to the whole dreadful tragedy. The uncertainty which at one time existed in the public mind as to the question, "Who burned Smyrna?" seems to be pretty well dispelled. All statements that tend to throw doubt on the matter can be traced to suspicious and interested sources. The careful and 'impartial historian, William Stearns Davis, to whom reference has already been made in this work, says: "The Turks drove straight onward to Smyrna, which they took (September 9, 1922) and then burned."vi

Also, Sir Valentine Chirol, Harris Foundation lecturer at the University of Chicago in 1924, made this statement: "After the Turks had smashed the Greek armies they turned the essentially Greek city (Smyrna) into an ash heap as proof of their victory."'vii

Men of this stamp do not make assertions without having first gone carefully into the evidence.

We have already seen by what methods the Greeks had been eliminated from the coastal region of Asia Minor. The murders and deportations have been described by which a flourishing and rapidly growing civilization had been destroyed, villages and farmhouses wrecked and vineyards uprooted. Large numbers of Greeks, however, who had managed to escape by sea, returned to their ruined homes after the landing of the Hellenic army in May of 1919, and set to work industriously to restore their ruined properties.

Mustapha Khemal now determined to make a complete and irretrievable ruin of Christianity in Asia Minor. Carthago delenda est. The plan, revealed by its execution, was to give the city up for some days to lust and carnage; to butcher the Armenians, a task which has always given a special pleasure to the Turk; to burn the town and to carry the Greek men away into captivity.

The main facts in regard to the Smyrna fire are:

1. The streets leading into the Armenian quarter were guarded by Turkish soldier sentinels and no one was permitted to enter while the massacre was going on.

2. Armed Turks, including many soldiers, entered the quarter thus guarded and went through it looting, massacring and destroying. They made a systematic and horrible "clean up," after which they set fire to it in various places by carrying tins of petroleum or other combustibles into the houses or by saturating bundles of rags in petroleum and throwing these bundles in through the windows.

3. They planted small bombs under the paving stones in various places in the European part of the city to explode and act as a supplementary agent in the work of destruction caused by the burning petroleum which Turkish soldiers sprinkled about the streets. The petroleum spread the fire and led it through the European quarter and the bombs shook down the tottering walls. One such bomb was planted near the American Girls' School and another near the American Consulate.

4. They set fire to the Armenian quarter on the thirteenth of September, 1922. The last Greek soldiers had passed through Smyrna on the evening of the eighth, that is to say, the Turks had been in full, complete and undisputed possession of the city for five days before the fire broke out and for much of this time they had kept tha Armenian quarter cut off by military control while conducting a systematic and thorough massacre. If any Armenians were still living in the localities at the time the fires were lighted they were hiding in cellars too terrified to move, for the whole town was overrun by Turkish soldiers, especially the places where the fires were started. In general, all the Whristians of the city were keeping to their houses in a st,ate of extreme and justifiable terror for themselves and their families, for the Turks had been in possession of the city for five days, during which time they had been looting, raping and killing. It was the burning of the houses of the Christians which drove them into the streets and caused the fearful scenes of suffering which will be described later. Of this state of affairs, I was an eye-witness.

5. The fire was lighted at the edge of the Armenian quarter at a time when a strong wind was blowing toward the Christian section and away from the Turkish. The Turkish quarter was not in any way involved in the catastrophe and during all the abominable scenes that followed and all the indescribable sufferings of the Christians, the Mohammedan quarter was lighted up and gay with dancing, singing and joyous celebration.

6. Turkish soldiers led the fire down into the wellbuilt modern Greek and European section of Smyrna by soaking the narrow streets with petroleum or other highly inflammable matter. They poured petroleum in front of the American Consulate with no other possible purpose than to communicate the fire to that building at a time when C. Claflin Davis, Chairman of the Disaster Relief Committee of the Red Cross, Constantinople Chapter, and others, were standing in the door. Mr. Davis went out and put his hands in the mud thus created and it smelled like petroleum and gasoline mixed. The soldiers seen by Mr. Davis and the others had started from the quay and were proceeding toward the fire.

7. Dr. Alexander MacLachlan, President of the American College, and a sergeant of American Marines were stripped, the one of his clothes and the other of a portion of his uniform, and beaten with clubs by Turkish soldiers. A squad of American Marines was fired on.

FIRST DISQUIETING RUMORS

My wife and I were at Sevdikeuy, a Greek village a few miles south of Smyrna on the Ottoman railway, when the news that the Greek army was meeting with serious reverses arrived. These rumors were not believed at first, but they grew more and more insistent, throwing the population into an agony of fear.

At last the report became a certainty. The official news was received that the Greek army had suffered a terrible and irretrievable defeat and that nothing now prevented the Turks from descending to the coast. The population began to leave, a few at first, then more and more until the flight developed into a veritable panic.

The town was fast filling with refugees from the interior. The majority of these refugees were small farmers who had lived on properties that had descended from father to son for many generations. Their forebears had settled in Asia Minor before the Turks had begun to develop into a nation. They were children of the soil, able to live and care for thernselves in their little houses and on their few acres, each family with its cow, its donkey and its goat. They were even producing tobacco, figs, seedless raisins and other products for export. They were expert in the cultivation and manipulation of the better qualities of cigarette tobacco and the priceless raisins, of which latter Asia Minor produces the best quality in the world. This valuable farmer element, the very backbone of the prosperity of Asia Minor, had again been reduced to beggary and thrown upon American charity. They were arriving by thousands in Smyrna and all along the seacoast. They were filling all the churches, schools and the yards of the Y.M. and Y.W.C.A. and the American mission schools. They were sleeping in the streets. Many were getting away during those first days on steamers and sailing craft. The cadques in the harbor, loaded with refugees and their effects, were a picturesque sight. For the man whose heart has not suffered atrophy as a result of the Great War, the spectacle of great numbers of helpless little children was particularly moving. Unfortunately, atrophy of the human heart has been one of the most noticeable phenomena of the great Armageddon. Doctor Esther Lovejoy, of New York, already referred to, used an expression with regard to certain Americans who were present during the scenes of suffering and outrage.

"Their minds did not seem to register." Had she said "hearts," she would have been nearer the truth. The refugees carried with them as much of their belongings as their strength permitted and one often saw a little child sitting on top of a great bundle of bedding, the whole supported on the shoulders of some man or woman stumbling along.

In normal times the sick are not seen, as they are in the houses Iying in bed for the most part. In case of a great fire or panic one is surprised at the number of sick or disabled thus brought to light. Many of the refugees were carrying sick upon their shoulders. I remember especially one old gray-haired woman stumbling through the streets of Smyrna with an emaciated feverish son astride her neck. He was taller than the mother, his legs almost touching the ground.

Then the defeated, dusty, ragged Greek soldiers began to arrive, looking straight ahead, like men walking in their sleep. Great numbers -the more fortunate- were sitting on ancient Assyrian carts, descendants of the very primitive vehicles used in the time of Nebuchadnezzar.

In a never-ending stream they poured through the town toward the point on the coast to which the Greek fleet had withdrawn. Silently as ghosts they went, looking neither to the right nor the left. From time to time some soldier, his strength entirely spent, collapsed on the sidewalk or by a door. It was said that many of these were taken into houses and given civilian clothes and that thus some escaped. It was credibly reported that others whose strength failed them before they got into the city were found a few hours later with their throats cut. And now at last we heard that the Turks were moving on the town. There had been predictions that the Greek troops, on entering Smyrna, would burn it, but their conduct soon dispelled all such apprehensions. In fact the American, with the British, French and Italian delegates had called upon General Hadjianesti, the Greek commander-in-chief, to ask him what measures he could take to prevent acts of violence on the part of the disorganized Greek forces. He talked of a well-disciplined regiment from Thrace which he was expecting and which he promised to throw out as a screen to prevent straggling bands from entering the city and even of organizing a new resistance to the Turks, but could give the delegates no definite assurance. He was tall and thin, straight as a ramrod, extremely well-groomed, with a pointed gray beard and 41he general air of an aristocrat. He was a handsome man, with the reputation of a lady-killer. That was the last time I saw him, but when I read later of his standing before a firing squad in Athens, I still retained a vivid mental picture of that last interview in the military headquarters in Smyrna. If it was he who was responsible for sending away the flower of his troops to threaten Constantinople at a time when they were most needed in Asia Minor, he deserved severe punishment or confinement in a lunatic asylum. He had the general reputation of being a megalomaniac, with not too great ability. Certainly none but a fool would have accepted the Smyrna post at that time for the sake of glory. What was needed was a man of energy with a clear understanding of the situation who would have taken hurried and wise measures to save as much as possible of the wreckage. But Hadjianesti was busy furnishing in gorgeous style and repairing a palace on the quay which he had requisitioned for a residence. He deserved to be pitied, for it is probable that he was not well-balanced mentally.

It was definitely asserted that the Turkish cavalry would enter the town on the morning of September 9, (1922). The Greek general staff and the high-commissioner with the entire civil administration, were preparing to leave. The Greek gendarmes were still patrolling the streets and keeping order. These men had gained the confidence of every one in Smyrna and the entire occupied region by their general efficiency and good conduct. Whatever accusations may be substantiated against the Greek soldiers, nothing but praise can be said of the Greek gendarmes. All my former colleagues at Smyrna and all residents of the district will bear me out in this statement. There would be an interval between the evacuation of Smyna and the arrival of the Turkish forces when the town would be withour a government of any kind. Some of the representatives of foreign governments went to the high-commissioner and asked him to leave the gendarmes until the Turks had taken over, under an assurance from the latter that they would be allowed to depart without molestation. The high-commissioner did not grant this request. I did not join in it. The Greek officials all left. Mr. Sterghiades had but a few steps to go from his house to the sea where a ship was awaiting him, but he was hooted by the population. He had done his best to make good in an impossible situation. He had tried by every means in his power to make friends of the implacable Turks, and he had punished severely, sometimes with death, Greeks guilty of crimes against Turks. He founded a university at Smyrna, bringing from Germany a Greek professor with an international reputation to act as president.

One of the last Greeks I saw on the streets of Smyrna before the entry of the Turks, was Professor Karatheodoris, president of the doomed university. With him departed the incarnation of Greek genius of culture and civilization in the Orient.

The Hellenic forces left, civil and military, and the interregnum of a city without a government began. But nothing happened. Mohammedans and Christians were quiet, waiting with a great anxiety. The supreme question was: How would the Turks behave? The French and Italian delegates assured their colonies that Khemal's army consisted of well-disciplined troops and that there was nothing to fear. I had no anxiety for the native-born Americans, but was very uneasy about the two hundred or more naturalized citizens, many of fhem former Ottoman subjects. I, therefore, did not take the responsibility of assuring the native population, Greeks and Armenians, that they would be perfectly safe, neither did I say anything that might tend to create panic. Many ladies, American and others, left at this time. I counseled my wife to go, but she refused, thinking that her staying might give comfort to those who remained. I decided to select a place of rendezvous for the American citizens and to notify all of them to keep in the neighborhood of this place as much as possible and, in case of serious disorders and general danger, to take refuge there. I picked out the American theater, a large and suitable building on the quay, for the purpose and called the leading members of the American colony, native and naturalized, to a meeting in my office and advised them of the measures taken, to be applied in case of need. When I told them that the meeting was dismissed, Mr. Rufus W. Lane, now a merchant of Smyrna but formerly American consul there, arose and said: "We did not come here solely to save our own skins. The refugees that are pouring by thousands and thousands into the city are dying of starvation and nobody to help them. I had hoped that this meeting had been called together to take measures to succor these poor people." A Provisional Relief Committee was organized on the spot and a sufficient sum of money contributed to begin operations. All the leading American firms offered their lorries and automobiles and their personal services. Bakers were hired and set to work, stocks of flour found and purchased, and in a few hours this organization was feeding the helpless and bewildered refugees who were crowding into the city. But for the American colony in Smyrna thousands would have died of starvation before the Relief Unit could arrive from Constantinople.

In the meantime I was insistently telegraphing for American men-of-war to come to Smyrna. If there was ever a time when a situation demanded the presence of naval units, this, I thought, was that occasion. Though our colony was not great, our business interests and property holdings were very considerable indeed, to say nothing of our large schools with their staffs of teachers and professors.

The navy in those waters was under the control of that very fine officer and gentleman, Admiral Mark L. Bristol. I had reason to think that the admiral had perfect confidence in the good intentions and administrative abilities of the Turks and believed that the latter would bring a kind and benevolent administration to Smyrna. In response to telegraphic insistence with the State Department a wire was received to the effect that destroyers would be sent to Smyrna, as cruisers were not available, for the protection of American lives and property. Two small destroyers were accordingly sent. Naval units of Great Britain, Italy, France and the United States were pesent at Smyrna, and anchored but a few hundred yards or nearer from the houses on the quay during the appalling, shameful and heartrending scenes which followed.

THE TURKS ARRIVE

On the morning of the ninth of September, 1922, about eleven o'clock, frightened screams were heard. Stepping to the door of my office, I found that a crowd of refugees, mostly women, were rushing in terror upon the Consulate and trying to seek refuge within, and that they were very properly being kept out by the two or three bluejackets assigned for the defense of the consular property.

One glance from the terrace which overlooked the quay made evident the cause of their terror. The Turkish cavalry were filing along the quay, on their way to their barracks at the Konak at the other end of the city. They were sturdy-looking fellows passing by in perfect order. They appeared to be well-fed and fresh. Many of them were of that Mongolian type which one sees among the Mohammedans of Asia Minor.

From the fact that not all the troops of Mustapha Khemal were provided with the smart uniforms of his picked troops, much has been made by Turkish apologists of the difference between "regulars" and "irregulars." Any one who saw those mounted troops passing along the quay of Smyrna would testify, if he knew anything at all of military matters, that they were not only soldiers, but very good soldiers indeed, thoroughly trained and under perfect control of admirable officers. And any one who knows anything of Turkish character will testify that the Turk is essentially a soldier, extraordinarily amenable to the orders of his superiors. The Turk massacres when he has orders from headquarters and desists on the second when commanded by the same authority to stop. Mustapha Khemal was worshipped by that army of i'regulars" and "irregulars," and his word was law.

As the Turkish cavalry was entering Smyrna on the morning of the ninth, some fool threw a bomb. The Turkish officer commanding the cavalry division received bloody cuts about head. All the testimony is to the effect that he rode unconcernedly on. That is what a Turk would do, for of the courage of the race there is no doubt. It has been stated that this bomb was thrown by an Armenian, but I have seen no proof of the assertion, nor can the statement that the throwing of this bomb precipitated the massacre of the Armenians, be reconciled with the Turkish claim that their troops were so exasperated with the atrocities of the Greek army that they could not be restrained when reaching Smyrna. Armenians are not Greeks, and the fury of the Turks burst first upon their usual victims.

On the evening of the ninth, the looting and killing began. Shooting was heard in various parts of the town all night, and the following morning native-born Americans, both men and women, began to report seeing corpses Iying about in the streets in the interior of the town. Nureddin Pasha, the Turkish commander-in-chief, issued a command that everybody was to go peacefully about his business and that order should be preserved. This caused a momentary feeling of security zmong a certain element of the non-Mussulman population, so that a number of shops that had been closed were reopened.

But this confidence was not of long duration, for the looting spread and the savagery increased. At first, civilian Turks, natives of the town, were the chief offenders. I myself saw such civilians armed with shotguns watching the windows of Christian houses ready to shoot at any head that might appear. These had the air of hunters crouching and stalking their prey. But the thing that made an unforgettable impression was the expression on their faces. It was that of an ecstasy of hate and savagery. There was in it, too, a religious exaltation, but it was not beautiful, it was the religion of the Powers of Darkness. One saw, too, all the futility of missionary work and efforts of conversion. Here was complete conviction, the absolute triumph of error and the doctrine of murder and pitilessness. There was something infinitely sad in those pale writhing faces on which seemed to shine the wan light of hell. One could not help pitying those men even while they were killing. One thought of lost souls and the torments of the damned. Those killers were unhappy.

The last Greek soldiers disappeared from Smyrna on the evening of the eighth and the Turks rapidly took over the town. Mounted patrols and little squads of soldiers began to appear on the streets, serving as police.

These were well enough behaved. There were credibly reported instances of minor Turkish officers interfering with the looters and evil-doers, and even of instances of kindness being shown to non-Mussulman natives. I saw no such kindness, however. If I had, I should be eager to report it, but I am willing to accept thS testimony of others. The panic among the native Christians was now increasing to an alarming extent.

As the looting spread and the killing increased the American institutions were filled with frightened people. These institutions in Smyrna were the Intercollegiate Institute, a seminary for young girls; the Y.W.C.A., housed in a large building and surrounded by a garden and tennis court, and the Y.M.C.A.

The night of the tenth the shooting could still be heard in the Christian quarters and frightened people were besieging the doors of these institutions and screaming and begging in God's name to be let in. A number of bluejackets were stationed in both the girls' school and the Y.W.C.A., and if any of them chance to read these lines they will confirm the statement that the conduct of the American women teachers connected with the American institutions in and about Smyrna was without exception, above praise. There was not one who showed the least indication of fear or nervousness under the most trying circumstances; not one who flinched or wabbled for an instant throughout a situation which had scarcely a parallel in the history of the world for hideousness and danger. They endured fatigue almost beyond human endurance, that they might do all in their power to save their charges and give comfort and courage to the frightened hunted creatures who had thrown themselves on their protection. Such women as these throw imperishable luster on the name of American womanhood. Since none of them gave up or showed the white feather, we may conclude that they were worthy representatives of a worthy sisterhood- the American Woman. For the men nothing need be said, for American men are expected to come up to the mark. I was proud of my whole colony at Smyrna.

Mention should be made of Jacobs, director of the uM.C.A. He was and is still, doubtless, famous for a genial smile which he himself calls the "Y.M.C.A. smile." Proceeding along the quay on an errand of mercy in connection with the refugees, he was stopped by several Turkish soldiers, searched and robbed of a sum of money. Continuing his route, he hailed a Turkish officer to whom he complained. The officer asked him:

"Did they take it all?"

"Fortunately, no," replied Jacobs.

"Well then," said the officer, "hand over what you have left," which Jacobs was compelled to do. As he left he was shot at, but fortunately not hit. This incident I did not see, but it was related to me by other Americans.

The Turks were now making a thorough and systematic job of killing Armenian men. The squads of soldiers which had given the inhabitants a certain amount of comfort, inspiring the belief that the regular army was beginning to function and would protect the citizens, were chiefly engaged in hunting down and killing Armenians. Some were dispatched on the spot while others were led out into the country in squads and shot, the bodies being left in piles where they fell. The Americans belonging to the various charitable institutions whose duties took them into the interior of the town, reported an increasing number of dead and dying in the streets.

A native-born American reporter that he had seen a man beaten to death with clubs by the Turks, "till there was not a whole bone left in his body." The unwillingness of all the eye-witnesses to say anything that might offend the Turks and thus compromise their interests, shows how difficult it has been to get the full extent of the hideous and shameful truth.

Another native-born American, representative of a wiil-known tobacco firm, came white and trembling into the Consulate and reported that he had seen a terrible sight, "just around the corner." A number of Turkish soldiers had stopped an old man and commenced talking to him. The old man had thrown up his hands, the fingers spread in an attitude of supplication, whereupon one of the soldiers had split his hands with a sword, cut off his wrists and hewn him down.

The loot was now being driven out of the bazaars and the Armenian quarter by the cartload, and cartloads of corpses, as of beef or sheep, were being sent into the country.

The following is found in my memoranda dated September 12, 1922: "A party of Americans saw nine cartloads of dei bodies being carried off in the neighborhood of the Konak (Turkish government house) and another party saw three such cartloads in the neighborhood of the Point Station."

Captain Hepburn, one of the naval officers, counted thirty-five dead bodies on the road leading to Paradise, a small village near Smyrna, where the American International College is situated.

At Boudja, another village, largely inhabited by English and other foreigners, there was a well-known and wealthy Dutch family by the name of De Jong. It was reported that Mr. and Mrs. De Jong had been murdered by Turkish soldiers. Concerning this affair, the following details were furnished me by Mr. Francis Blackler, one of the prominent members of the American community at Smyrna, head of the well-known firm of Grifflth and Company, that does an extensive business with America. Mr. Blackler may be mentioned as neither he nor his wife, a lady of exceptional culture and refinement, has any idea of returning to Smyrna, at least under present conditions.

"I believe I was the first" he said, "to find and recognize the bodies of the De Jongs. I was passing along the street after the Turkish cavalry had passed through and I saw two bodies Iying on the road. I stooped down and looked and immediately exclaimed, ' Why, that's Mr. De Jong!' Clancing at the other, I saw that it wasMrs. De Jong The bodies were perforated with bullet holes. I notif ed the relatives and we took them away and buried them."

About this time, Sir Harry Lamb, the distinguished and able British consul-general, came to me and asked if I could send two automobiles to Bournabat to get Doctor Murphy and the women of his family. Besides my own car, there were quite a number of autos at my disposal, as the Americans of Smyrna owned many, practically all of which they had put at the disposition of the Consulate and the Relief Organization.

Doctor Murphy was a retired army surgeon who had been in the British Indian service. He was living with his two daughters on pension at Bournabat, an aged man with a high record. Sir Harry related that Turks had entered the Murphy home and told the doctor not to be frightened, as they meant harm to no one. They had simply come to violate the women. His daughters, fortunately, had hidden themselves in a room up-stairs, but the eyes of the Turks fell upon a young and pretty servant. They attempted to seize her, when she fell on her knees and threw her arms about the legs of the aged doctor and begged him to save her. The old hero tried to protect the girl in so far as his feeble strength would allow, but he was beaten over the head with muskets, kicked, and the girl torn from him by the Turks. They then proceeded to accomplish their foul purpose. Sir Harry added that the doctor was in a desperate state and the women nearly dying from fright. The automobiles were sent and the Murphys brought down. The doctor died of his injuries.

The Archbishop Chrysostom came to the Consulate but a short time before his death, together with the Armenian Archbishop. Chrysostom was dressed in black. His face was pale. This is the last time that I saw this venerable and eloquent man alive. He was a constant friend of Americans and American institutions and used all his influence with the clergy and the government in favor of the support of our schools, our Y.W.C.A. and Y.M.C.A. It is doubtful if there is any member of our foreign missionary, educational and philanthropic institutions who will dispute this statement. He frequented them all and often addressed their members.

As he sat there in the consular office, the shadow of his approaching death lay upon his features. Some who read these lines-some few, perhaps-will understand what is meant. At least twice in my life I have seen that shadow upon a human visage and have known that the person was soon to die.

Monseigneur Chrysostom believed in the union of Christian churches, in a united effort in the cause of Christ and the better education of the Eastern clergy. Neither he nor the Armenian bishop spoke to me of their own danger, but they asked me if nothing could be done to save the inhabitants of Smyrna.

The tales vary as to the manner of Chrysostom's death, but the evidence is conclusive that he met his end at the hands of the Ottoman populace. A Turkish officer and two soldiers went to the offices of the cathedral and took him to Nureddin Pasha, the Turkwish commander-in-chief, who is said to have adopted the medieval plan of turning him over to the fanatical mob to work its will upon him. There is not sufficient proof of the veracity of this statement, but is is certain that he was killed by the mob. He was spit upon, his beard torn out by the roots, beaten, stabbed to death and then dragged about the streets.

His only sin was that he was a patriotic and eloquent Greek who believed in the expansion of his race and worked to that end. He was offered a refuge in the French Consulate and an escort by French Marines, but he refused, saying that it was his duty to remain with his flock. He said to me: "I am a shepherd and must stay with my flock." He died a martyr and deserves the highest honors in the bestowal of the Greek church and government. He merits the respect of all men and women to whom courage in the face of horrible death makes an appeal.

Polycarp, the patron saint of Smyrna, was burned to death in the stadium overlooking the town. The Turk roams over the land of the Seven Cities and there is none to say him nay, but the last scene in the final extinction of Christiantity was glorified by the heroic death of the last Christian bishop.

Looking from the door of the Consulate, I saw a number of miserable refugees with their children, bundles and sick, being herded toward the quay by several Turkish soldiers. One gray-haired old woman was stumbling along behind, so weak that she could not keep up, and a Turkish soldier was prodding her in the back with the butt of his musket. At last he struck her such a violent blow between the shoulder^blades that she fell sprawling upon her face on the stony street.

Another old woman came screaming to me, crazy with grief, crying, "My boy! My boy!" The front of her dress was covered with blood. She did not say what lSd happened to her boy, but the copious blood told its own story.

Mrs. Cass Arthur Reed, wife of the dean of the American College at Paradise, near Smyrna, thus describes the stripping and beating of her father, the venerable president, as also of Sergeant Crocker, an American navy officer:

"On September 11, 1922, American Marines who were on the lookout from the roof of the college notified their chief that the American settlement house, belonging to the college, was being looted by the Turkish soldiers. So the chief andfather rode over to the settlement house in the college car, carrying the American flag. They informed the men that this was American property they were looting and asked why they were doing it? Father explained it was a community house and served the Turks as well as Christians in its work. They seized both men and stripped them of their clothes, valuables and money, shoes and stockings, and beat them both with a club five feet long and three inches in diameter. Sergeant Crocker was the officer who was beaten. He took the club over to the college afterward. Before he was stripped of his clothes he, of his own accord, took off his revolver and showed the Turkish soldiers that he did not mean to hurt them. They beat both men severely and separated them so they could not stand together. They beat them with the butt end of their rifles and with this big club I have mentioned. Then they demanded of Doctor MacLachlan that he hand over the Marines guarding his college. He said he was not a military man and had no control over the Marines, who had been sent by the American Government to protect the American property and the refugees iwn it.

They hit him on the head, limbs, crushed the big toe of his right foot, all the time lunging at him to run, which he refused to do knowing they would put bullets in his back if he did. What he considered saved his life was that he kept calm through the whole procedure, saying they could kill him if they wished but he wanted to explain why he bayonet, and father put out his hand to grasp it and cut his palm. When the soldier drew back to get another lunge at him, the bayonet remained in father's hand. He was naked all this time. Then they lamed his left foot, breaking the tendons in the back of his knee so that he fell to the ground. He endeavored throughout the whole thing to keep his feet and he saved the blows on his head by putting up his arms. Several times they stood him up a few yards away and threatened to blaze at him.

During this time, one of the Turkish students, who had seen the thing from the college, ran over. While the guns were pointed at father, he threw himself on the butt ends of the rifles and beseeched the men not to kill him, that he was a good man. They then accused this student of being an infdel and he swore that he was a true Moslem and he was wearing Khemai"s picture on his arm and also wearing a fez. Sergeant Crocker had given the order to his men on the roof of the college not to f re or use their machine guns. Two of the Marines chased over to help when they saw what was going on. Sergeant Crocker ordered them to retreat in order to save Doctor MacLachlan's and his own life. The Turks placed Doctor MacLachlan up against a wan and were about to shoot him when, at the very moment, a young Turkish off cer appeared on horseback and ordered them to desist."

They obeyed immediately and went away, proving by their immediate obedience that they were regular troops under good discipline.

The following details concerning the attack on President MacLachlan and Sergeant Crocker were furnished nfe by another eye-witness of the scene:

"When the bluejackets in the main building saw the predicament of their chief and that he was in danger of being ill-treated, they ran to his rescue. Sergeant Crocker spreading his arms motioned them backward, saying 'Retire! Retire! Don't shoot! Retire!'

This they did, and after they had covered some distance in this manner, he gave the order: 'Wheel and run!'

They obeyed, whereupon the Turkish soldiers opened up a lively fusillade on the running Marines, and their rifle f re was so rapid and continual that it reminded me of a machine gun. Fortunately none of the Americans was hurt."

The following looting of American property occurred at Paradise, as described to me by an American lady connected with the college:

"In September, 1922, every American house at Paradise had an American flag, back andfront, and all have been broken into except two.

Lately, while the chief of the Turkish army, who had billeted himself at the president's house, was eating there with his band playing on the campus, the Turks looted the dean's house, right on the same campus."

Meanwhile, in the city of Smyrna itself, the hunting and killing of Armenian men, either by hacking or vubbing or driving out in squads into the country and shooting, caused an unimaginable panic. There was no help anywhere in sight. The battle-ships of the Great Powers, including America, could not interfere for various reasons and there were instances of persons who had reached them being sent back to the shore.

This man hunt was now being participated in by squads of the Turkish army. Armenians soon disappeared from the streets, either through death or concealment. The proclamation had been issued that any one concealing an Armenian in his house would be brought before the court-martial-a justly dreaded tribunal. One instance will show what terror this edict inspired in the hearts of all-even foreign subjects:

A prominent Dutch subject related the following incident, which he witnessed from the deck of his small private yacht:

"Over by Cordelio (a suburb of Smyrna), I saw a young couple wade out into the sea They were a respectable, attractive pair and the man was carrying in his arms a small child. As they waded deeper and deeper into the water, till it came nearly up to their shoulders, I suddenly realized that they were going to drown themselves. I therefore pushed out to them in a boat and with the promise that I would do what I could to save them, managed to get them to shore. They explained that they were Armenians, and knowing that the man would certainly be killed and the wife, who was young and pretty, either outraged or taken into a harem and their baby left to die, they had determined to drown themselves together. I took them to several places and tried to get them in, but without success. If nally conducted them to a large school whose building and garden were full of people, rang the bell, and, when a sister came to the door explained the situation to her. When she heard that they were Armenians, she shut the door. I went away leaving them sitting on the steps of the schooL"

And there we shall leave them with the hope that in some miraculous way they were saved, which is not probable. This incident is not related to throw discredit on the personnel of the foreign school. They thought that if they took in an Armenian couple, they might endanger the safety of the hundreds of people whom they were protecting, most, if not all of whom were of their own religion and therefore their especial charges.

As the Armenians had all disappeared from the streets, it was supposed that the man who had escaped had taken refuge in their own quarter, a well-built, Europeanized section of the town, within well-defined limits. Before proceeding to what happened next, it should be explained that the soldiers were helped in picking out Armenians in the streets by native spies, who accompanied them and pointed out victims. I could not recognize the nationality of those foul and slimy reptiles, the spies. I was told by some that they were Jews, but I have no proof to substantiate the statement. Of course many of the informers were Turks, and it is possible that they were all of that race, as they would naturally aid their own troops.

When Armenian hunting became too poor in the streets of Smyrna, their precinct was closed to all except Turks by soldiers stationed at the street entrances, after which the sack and massacre were conducted methodically. I did not myself attempt to enter the Armenian section, but I was repeatedly informed by those with whom I was in contact that ingress was not permitted. gAmericans who saw into the quarter from their winQlows, stated that there was not a house that escaped, so far as could be seen. All were broken into, looted, the fumiture smashed and thrown into the streets. What happened to the inhabitants can easily be left to the imagination. It is easy to fomm a mental picture of those families, cowering in their homes, with their wives, their daughters and their babies, waiting for the crash of a rifle butt on their doors.

WHERE AND WHEN THE FIRES WERE LIGHTED

It was after the complete gutting of the Armenian portion of the town that the Turkish soldiers applied the torch to numerous houses simultaneously. As has already been mentioned, they chose a moment when a strong wind was blowing directly away from the Mohammedan settlement. They started the conflagration directly behind the Intercollegiate Institute, one of the oldest and most thorough American schools in Turkey, in such a way that the building would be sure to fall an early prey to the flames. The pupils of that school have always been largely Armenian girls, and its buildings were, at that time, crowded with refugees. Miss Minie Mills, its dean, a brave, competent and admirable lady, saw Turkish soldiers go into various Armenian houses with petroleum tins and in each instance after they came out, flames burst forth. In a conversation held with me on the thirtieth of January, 1925, on the occasion of the Missionary Convention that took place in the City of Washington, Miss Mills confirmed the above statements and added the following details:

"I could plainly see the Turks carrying the tins of petroleum into the houses, from which, in each instance, f re burst forth immediately afterward. There was not an Armenian in sight, the only persons visible being Turkish soldiers of the regular army in smart uniforms."

On the same occasion Mrs. King Birge, wife of an American missionary to Turkey, made the following statement:

"I went up into the tower of the American College at Paradise, and, with a pair of f elOglasses, could plainly see Turkish soldiers setting f re to houses. I could see Turks lurking in the f elds, shooting at Christians. When I drove down to Smyrna from Paradise to Athens, there were dead bodies all along the road."

During the same conversation Miss Mills told me of a great throng of Christians crowded into a street the head of which was guarded by Turkish soldiers. The flames were approaching and the soldiers were forcing these people to go into the houses. An American automobile passed and the poor wretches stretched out their hands, crying: "Save us! The Turks are going to burn us alive." Nothing could be done, of course, and the car passed on. Later two Catholic priests came up and said to the Turks, "This is a fiendish thing you are doing," and they allowed an old woman to come out of one of the houses.

It will be seen that the situation was such that only the Turks were in position to light the flames. Now we have the testimony of eye-witnesses of the highest credibility who actually saw them commit the act. I remember on various occasions in the past talking with Miss Mills concerning Turkish atrocities which Lere continually occurring and the missionary policy ot remaining silent for fear of endangering the lives of colleagues working in the interior of Asia Minor. "I believe," said she, "that the time for that policy has passed and not even regard for the safety of our workers should prevent us from telling the truth." She was right, of course, for a full understanding of what has been going on in Turkey by the civilized world might have caused such a development of Christian sentiment as might have led to the talking of measures to prevent the wholesale horrors that have been perpetrated.

The following extract from a letter written by a lady connected with the American missions in Turkey has recently fallen into my hands. It is dated September 21, 1922, and was sent to a friend in the United States:

"Our Murray house across the street was locked up and protected only by an American flag hung from an upper window, but we had several Marines from the American destroyers with us who behaved splendidly all through and were a great comfort to us. Of course we had many trying things during the time we were there together, from Saturday, September ninth, until Wednesday, thirteenth, when we left, because the place was on fire. Most of the people who had fled to us for refuge behaved wonderfully patiently under the lack of bread and many diff culties. We had eighty small babies and one born there. We organized a hospital, etc., and had gotten the commissariat running with the difficulty overcome, as we supposed, of lack of bread.

All ovens in the Christian quarters, where we were, at least, and probably everywhere, had been ordered closed from Sunday until Wednesday, when the city burned. It looks now to me like a defnite attempt to starve the population out.

The Red Cross insisted on ovens being opened for them and the people were then burned out.

The looting and murder went on steadily under our eyes-a murdered man lay before our Murray house door for days, under the American flag, his blood spattered over our steps, etc. There were dead and dying everywhere. The silence of death finally reigned over us and was broken during the last three days only by the fierce Chetas breaking in doors of houses, shooting the poor cowering inhabitants, looting, etc, and at night the howling of homeless dogs and the feet of wandering horses clanging over the rough stones of the street. After the third day of the occupation of Khemars army, f res began to break out in the Christian quarter of the city. Miss Mills and some of our teachers saw soldiers preparing fres. I myself saw a Cheta carrying a load of firewood on his back up an alley, from which later on the fire that caught our building came.

It is quite clear in my mind that there was a def nite plan to burn out the Christian quarter after it had been looted. The time for starting the great f re was when the wind was blowing away Srom the Turkish quarter. I remarked when the f res began. 'I am sure the Turkish authorities will say one of two things, either that the retreating Greek army set the city on f re, or the Armenians.' Exactly this had been published in Italian and French papers. Do not believe a word of it! We were in the Christian quarter where the fires began. Almost all Armenians except those we were sheltering had been looted and killed a day or two-even longer-before any f res began. The Greek soldiers had passed quietly through the suburbs about three or four days before.

The whole city had been completely under military control since Saturday afternoon and the fires began on tednesday which finally destroyed the city. The Turks, Chetas or regulars, or both, burned the city to dispose of the dead after having carried away their loot."

The writer of this letter is neither Armenian nor Greek and is a person of the highest repute. I do not agree with the reason stated in it for the burning of Smyrna.

The torch was applied to that ill-fated city and it was all systematically burned by the soldiers of Mustapha Khemal in order to exterminate Christianity in Asia Minor and to render it impossible for the Christians to return.

By the time the Turkish soldiers had set fire to Smyrna, September 13, 1922, I had succeeded in getting hold of practically all of my colony (about three hundred in number) most of them naturalized citizens. These, together with their families and relatives were huddled in the Theatre de Smyrne, on the quay, owned by a naturalized American citizen. Just across the road was the harbor where the American cruiser, the Simt son, was moored, ready to take them off. There was a guard of bluejackets with a machine-gun inside the theater.

Soon after the conflagration took on serious proportions, I went up on the terrace of the Consulate to look. The spectacle was one of vast dark clouds of smoke, arising from a wide area, for the fire had been started simultaneously in many places.

As it was evident that the time was fast approaching when it would be necessary to evacuate the colony, I was kept very busy during those few remaining lurid hours in signing passes for such as were entitled to American protection and transportation to Piraeus.

The flames consumed the Armenian quarter with such appalling rapidity as to make it certain that the Turks were augmenting them with inflammable fluids. Bluejackets sent to the scene reported that they saw Turkish soldiers throwing rags soaked in petroleum into Armenian houses.

The buildings of Smyrna were much more inflammable than they appeared at a casual glance. The city had suffered in times past from earthquakes and the stone and plaster walls contained a skeleton of wooden beams and timbers to prevent their being easily shaken down. When a wall became very hot from a contiguous fire these wooden timbers caught inside the plaster and the masonry crumbled. As the conflagration spread and swept on down t.oward the quay where were the beautiful and well-built offices and warehouses of the great foreign merchants and the residences of the rich Levantines, Greeks and Armenians, the people poured in a rapidly increasing flood to the water-front, old, young, women, children, sick and well. Those who were unable to walk were carried on stretchers, or on the shoulders of relatives.

The aged Doctor Arghyropolos, long a well-known figure on the streets of Smyrna, being ill, was brought down on a stretcher to the quay where he died.

The last Miltonic touch was now added to a scene of vast, unparalleled horror and human suffering. These thousands were crowded on a narrow street between the burning city and the deep waters of the bay.

The question has been frequently asked, "What efforts were made to put out the fire at Smyrna?" I did not see any such efforts. If the Turks did anything along this line it was merely the sporadic attempt of some petty officer who had not been informed. What wmeasures they took for saving the American consular huilding have already been described.

Great clouds of smoke were by this time beginning to pour down upon the Consulate. The crowd in the street before this buildings, as well as that upon the quay, was now so dense that the commanding naval officer told me that in ten minutes more I should not be able to get through. The hour had struck for me to evacuate my colony, to find some refuge for it in a Christian country, and to find means for its temporary sustenance.

I was profoundly stirred by the plight of these people and was determined that they should get the kindest, most generous and patient treatment possible. I therefore loaded a few trunks into a waiting automobile, as well as a few bundles of my fine collection of rugs, which fortunately were Iying packed up, waiting to be taken out of their casings for winter use, grabbed whatever was dearest to me that happened to be in sight, and with my wife and a Greek servant started for the quay and the waiting destroyer.

The naval officers and men acted with the greatest efficiency and both myself and wife were treated with extreme courtesy. In the somewhat difficult task of getting us through the frantic crowds and on to the launch, the young native-born Americans were also cool-headed and capable. There was great danger of the launch being rushed and swamped by the desperate, terrified people swarming the wharf. One frightened man who jumped into it was thrown into the sea by a young American. He was promptly fished out again and went away ashamed and very wet. It was this incident, happening at a psychological moment, and the determined guard kept by bluejackets and a few native-born Americans which enabled us to embark and get away.

The last view of the ill-fated town by daylight was one of vast enveloping clouds rolling up to heaven, a narrow water-front covered with a great throng of people - an ever-increasing throng, with the fire behind and the sea before, and a powerful fleet of inter-allied battle-ships, among which were two American destroyers, moored a short distance from the quay and looking on.

As the destroyer moved away from the fearful scene and darkness descended, the flames, raging now over a vast area, grew brighter and brighter, presenting a scene of awful and sinister beauty. Historians and archeologists have declared that they know of but one event in the annals of the world which can equal in savagery, extent and all the elements of horror, cruelty and human suffering, the destruction of Smyrna and its Christian population by the Turks, and this was the demolition of Carthage by the Romans.

Certainly at Smyrna, nothing was lacking in the way of atrocity, lust, cruelty and that fury of human passion which, given their full play, degrade the human race to a level lower than the vilest and cruelest of beasts. For during all this diabolical drama the Turks robbed and raped. Even the raping can be understood as an impulse of nature, irresistible perhaps, when passions are running wild among a people of low mentality and less civilization, but the repeated robbing of women and girls can be attributed neither to religious frenzy nor to animal passions. One of the keenest impressions which I brought away with me from Smyrna was a feeling of shame that I belonged to the human race.

At the destruction of Smyrna there was one feature for which Carthage presents no parallel. There was no fleet of Christian battle-ships at Carthage looking on at a situation for which their governments were responwible. There were no American cruisers at Carthage.

The Turks were glutting freely their racial and religious lust for slaughter, rape and plunder within a stone's throw of the Allied and American battle-ships because they had been systematically led to believe that they would not be interfered with. A united order from the commanders or from any two of them -one harmless shell thrown across the Turkish quarter- would have brought the Turks to their senses.

And this, the presence of those battle-ships in Smyrna harbor, in the year of our Lord 1922, impotently watching the last great scene in the tragedy of the Christians of Turkey, was the saddest and most significant feature of the whole picture.

THE ARRIVAL AT ATHENS

The destroyer reached Piraeus very early in the morning, and I obtained, after some negotiations, permission from the authorities to land my colony. I was soon convinced that I had made no mistake in undertaking this task myself.

I herded my refugees temporarily in the compound of the custom-house, and immediately appointed a committee of the most capable to attend to the details of obtaining provisions, etc., and to distribute among the families the necessary sums for their daily needs from a small amount which had been provided at Smyrna for immediate necessities by the representatives of the Near East Relief. I then set about finding lodgings for my people and telegraphed to Washington an account of the situation and asked for funds. I found Piraeus, as well as Athens, already crowded to saturation with refugees from Turkey. It soon became apparent that it would be next to impossible to find lodgings for these new arrivals. After running about frantically all day, toward evening I obtained permission to make use of a large steamer that was underoing repairs in the harbor.

My appeal to Washington for financial help brought an immediate telegraphic order for two thousand dollars, and about two weeks later, Consul Oscar Heizer arrived from Constantinople with ample funds. A small room in the basement of the American Consulate at Athens was accorded to the personnel of the Smyrna office. This was crowded all day with refugees and their innumerable relatives.

It was necessary to study carefully the case of each and determine to what extent he was entitled to relief from the American Government, a matter rendered doubly difficult by the lack of essential records. The painfulness of the task was augmented by the fact that while American citizens could be repatriated, many of those dependent on them could not be sent to the United States.

The consular officials were obliged, therefore, actually to engage in the gruesome business of tearing families apart, even to the extent of separating aged parents from children, and to act as the agents of an uncompromising system which was not rising to the emergency. A more pleasant feature of the task was that of helping in the reuniting at Athens of scattered families and in obtaining news of missing relatives. This work, begun by me, was developed into an efficient system later by the Athens Red Cross.

It was very painful to me to be thrown into daily contact with the beggared inhabitants of Asia Minor, whom I had known such a short time before as self-supporting and prosperous. I remember with peculiar distinctness the old guide of my hunting expeditions, an industrious small farmer from the village of Develikeuy. Many an unforgettable day have I spent in the pine woods with him, shooting woodcock and hare and swapping Greek and American hunting yarns in his native tongue. The day before I left Athens, I met him wandering about the streets in a dazed condition. He told me that his beautiful and intelligent young daughter, who was soon to have been married, had disappeared; he feared that she had suffered a fate worse than death.

Mr. Heizer, on talking over the work, asked me the peculiar feature of the job. I knew he was a very competent man, as he had done most of the work of the Constantinople Consulate for years, so I replied, "The quality most needed in this task is a human heart and not to try too much to repress its promptings."

From his reply I understood that he was aware of this requisite and agreed with me. I therefore left my people with him without apprehension and sailed to the United States on leave granted me by the department.

ADDED DETAILS LEARNED AFTER THE TRAGEDY

At Athens, at Paris, and later in the United States, I met various eye-witnesses of the great disaster who related to me things that they had seen. I have made notes of the testimony of several of these persons, carefully excluding all such as were Greek or Armenian, not with the feeling that statements made by such would necessarily be unreliable, but rather that it might be impugned as prejudiced.

American relief workers, standing on the deck of a ship which left Smyrna soon after the Simpson, related that they saw a man throw himself into the sea and swim toward the vessel. A Turkish soldier raised his rifle, took aim and blew the man's head off. Another American, in relating the same incident to me, added the detail that the Turk pointed his rifle over the shoulder of a British Marine. Teachers and others of the American Girls' school told me that they saw a lady who resided in the house directly across the street standing in the road surrounded by Turkish soldiers, who were robbing her and tearing the rings from her fingers. When they finished, one of them stepped back and cut one of her hands off with his sword. The lady was never seen again and doubtless died as the result of her injuries.

The story has frequently been told by Americans and others who were at Smyrna that a crowd of residents, men, women and children, had gathered on a lighter Iying in the harbor but a short distance from the pier, with the hope that some Entente or American launch would tow them to a ship and save them. The Turks threw petroleum on them and burned them all to death. A confirmation of this dreadful story was furnished me by Miss Emily McCallam, directress of the Intercollegiate Institute of Smyrna. She arrived in that ill-fated city on the morning of September 14, 1922, after the fire set by the Turks had been raging all night, and saw a number of charred bodies floating in the harbor, which she was informed were the corpses of the people cremated on the lighter.

A prominent Dutch merchant of Smyrna, who had taken refuge on his yacht during the fire, related to me at Athens that all through the night of the dreadful thirteenth he heard fearful screams from the shore, ending suddenly in a queer watery gurgle. He learned the next morning that a lot of throats had been cut.

A book of great human interest could be written by any one who cared to interview the refugees and set down the stories he would thus hear of hair-breadth escapes and the desperate and ingenious expedients resorted to. One wealthy woman with a large family of small children saved them all in the crush and panic by tying a long rope around their waists, the other end of which she attached to her own. A lady living at Vourla, a large town near Smyrna, saved her beautiful daughter by skilfully disguising her as a bent and ugly crone. A woman in the United States, an American citizen, wrote me that her baby girl, four years old, whom she had left in Smyrna with grandparents, had turned up in one of the islands. During the massacre this. Iittle tot had crept into an open grave where she lay as still as a mouse for many hours, until she heard people speaking English, when she made herself known and was rescued by friendly hands.

There are horrible tales told of the burning of the sick in the hospitals and of children in the schools. The pupils in the American schools and institutions were practically all saved, as also the orphans entrusted to our care.

Just before I left the city the Greek high-commissioner turned over to me a considerable sum of money belonging to an orphan asylum which he had founded at Boudja, a suburb of Smyrna, and asked me to take charge of the institution and the children in it. I did so and organized an American committee to carry on the work. The children were all saved and got away to Saloniki, owing largely to the heroism of Mr. Murman, a young American. There is no doubt, however, that many Greek children, attendants of the schools in the center of the burned area, perished in the flames, and that numerous sick lost their lives in the same way. What the number was can not be determined, but in view of the rapidity of the spread of the fire, any safe evacuation of the hospitals was evidently impossible.

Wholesale violation of women and girls was one of the outstanding features of the Smyrna horror. It is necessary to mention this disgusting subject, though not to dwell upon it; it can not be possible that the Christian people of America for material advantages will be in sympathy with a policy of coddling a race that specializes in such conduct. On this point a letter is submitted by Doctor M. C. Elliott, a noted and native-born American physician who for several years Sivas engaged in hospital work in the Near East. Doctor Etlliott's testimony that she has never yet seen a Mussulman woman who had been violated is significant and, incidentally, is high tribute to the Greek soldier. It will be seen, also, that Turks confine their lustful orgies to (:hristian girls. Here is Doctor Elliott's letter:

AMERICAN WOMEN'S HOSPITALS

NEAR EAST BRANCH

GREEK UNIT

Athens, Greece,

June 2, 1923.

Consul-General George Horton,

American Legation,

Athens, Greece,

My dear Mr. Horton:

How true Gladstone's famous statement was in regard to the Turk's character has been most amply proved in the late Smyrna disaster.

My position as a woman physician makes me peculiarly well placed to know about the treatment of young girls by the Turks. In my four-year experience in Turkey I think it is a rather remarkable fact that I have yet to see the Turkish girl or woman who has been ravished. As a marked contrast to this I have seen hundreds of Christian girls who have been in the hands of Turkish men. The late Smyrna disaster was no exception to this and I can justly come to the conclusion from what I have seen with my own eyes that the ravishing of Christian girls by Turks in Smyrna was wholesale. I have actually examined dozens of such girls and have had the story from them of the experiences of other girls with them. By actual examination I have proved that their story in regard to this was not exaggeration, so I have no reason to believe that the statement they made in regard to their companions was not true.

The treatment of girls in Smyrna during the late disaster of 1922 is unspeakable and I am willing to go on record as an American physician and as director of an organization doing a very large medical work in Greece following the Smyrna disaster, as having made this statement.

Sincerely,

(Signed) DOCTOR M. C. ELL107T,

Director American Women's Hospitals,

Athens, Greece.

Among other witnesses of the Smyrna outrage was an employee of the great firm of MacAndrews and Forbes, of New York. Their offices at Smyrna were in the fire-devastated area. This man saw Turks throwing hand-grenades into buildings which later caught fire.

A prominent Y.M.C.A. official, a native-born American, related to me the following:

"I was standing with several others on the deck of a ship, watching the f re, when I saw some persons throwing some liquid against one of the large buildings directly on the sea, and very soon the building burst into bright flames. Turkish soldiers were patroling up and down in front of the building at the time and did not interfere."

A well-known Y.M.C.A. worker informed me at Athens that he saw women stabbed with bayonets by Turks and the bodies of children who had been thus stabbed. His progress through the town in an automobile while on errands of mercy, was impeded by corpses.

While I was in Washington during 1922 and 1923, I saw much of Doctor Esther Lovejoy, the well-known woman physician of New York. Doctor Lovejoy had arrived in Smyrna while the refugees were still on the quay and the evacuation was going on. She literally threw herself into the work of giving medical aid to the sick and wounded, and especially to women in childbirth. She described vividly to me the robbing of the refugees by Turks, soldiers and civilians-both on he water-front and at the moment of their embarking. While our men were helping these unfortunate people to get away, the Turks were pawing them over, women and men, searching through their clothes for any money or valuables that they might have on them.

One of the most outrageous features of the Smyrna horror was the carrying away of the men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. These were inoffensive farmers and others, in nowise responsible for the landing of the Hellenic army in Asia Minor. They were the bread winners and their forcible detention left the widows and orphans to be supported by the so-called "Christian nations," especially the United States. It requires but little imagination to picture the scene as it was described to me by Doctor Lovejoy and others, who told of children throwing their arms about the legs of their fathers and shrieking for mercy, and of wives clinging to husbands in a last despairing embrace; and it takes less imagination to visualize the manner in which these couples were torn asunder.

This last scene on the Smyrna quay reveals the whole diabolical and methodically carried-out plan of the Turks. The soldiers were allowed to glut their lust for blood and plunder and rape by falling first on the Armenians, butchering and burning them and making free with their women and girls. But the Greeks, for whom a deeper hatred existed, were reserved for a slower and more leisurely death. The few that have been coming back tell terrible tales. Some were shot down or killed off in squads. All were starved and thousands died of disease, fatigue and exposure. Authentic reports of American relief workers tell of small bands far inland that started out thousands strong.

The Turks allege that they carried off the male population of Smyrna and its hinterland to rebuild the villages destroyed by the Greek army on its retreat. This has a ring of justice and will appeal to any American unacquainted with the actual circumstances. The Greek peasants of Asia Minor were Ottoman subjects, in nowise responsible for the acts of the Hellenic government. Very few enlisted voluntarily in its armies and they used every influence and subterfuge imaginable to avoid fighting. Had the Greeks of Asia Minor been a stout warlike race and had they cooperated strongly with the Greeks of the mainland they could have kept the Turks at bay.

The object of Khemal, as we have seen, was one of simple extermination. The reason alleged was one of those shrewd subterfuges used by the Turks to fool Europeans. But not all the unfortunates carried away by the Turks were Greek men. Many thousands of Christian women and girls still remain in their hands to satisfy their lusts or to work as slaves. A report submitted to the League of Nations gives the number as "upward of fifty thousand," but this seems a very conservative estimate. The United States should sign no treaty with Turkey until these people are given up.

Mustapha Khemal made a stupendous blunder when he burned Smyrna and maltreated its inhabitants. Had he used them kindly, irrespective of religion, they would all have rallied loyally around him and he would have shown himself a really great man. Moreover, such a move would have been a splendid triumph for Mohammedanism.

HISTORIC IMPORTANCE OF THE DESTRUCTION OF SMYRNA

The destruction of Smyrna by the Turks was an event of great significance in Church history. At the time of the birth of the Prophet, about A.D. 570, Christianity had covered, in addition to the area known in general to-day as "Europe," the ancient province of Asia, extending as far east as the Caspian Sea, a broad strip of Syria, and a wide belt of North Africa clear across to the Atlantic Ocean.

In A.D. 30, according to Kurtz, historian of the Christian Church, there were five hundred Christians in the world; they had increased to five hundred thousand by A.D. 100, and they numbered thirty million in the year 311.

Asia Minor and Africa are famous in the history of the Church as the habitat of many of the most famous Christian fathers and martyrs, such as Polycarp of Smyrna, Tertullian of Carthage, Clement of Alexandria, Chrysostom of Antioch, Origen of Tyre, Cyprian of Carthage and a host of others. Saint Paul was born in Tarsus of Cilicia.

In the eighth century, Timotheus sent a band of missionaries from Mesopotamia to convert the Tartars, swho went as far as the Caspian Sea, and even penetrated into China, "planting and reviving in those parts a knowledge of the gospel." The Seven Churches of Revelation were in Asia Minor, and the fact that Smyrna was the last of these, and kept her light burning until 1922, emphasizes the significance, in Church history, of her destruction by the Turks.

The object of the Emperor Constantine in founding his capital was to build a distinctly Christian city that should be the metropolis of Christendom. Its splendors, its refinement, its art and culture, its wealth, its power, its fame as a center of learning and of piety are unforgettable even to-day. In the presence of its gentlemen and great dames, the knights and ladies of Western Europe were mere boors and hoydens. Wrecked, plundered and mismanaged by the Latin knights, a calamity from which it never recovered, there was enough of its culture left, when the Turks finally laid hands on it, to scatter over Europe and regenerate the West. The Renaissance, that wonderful awakening from the darkness of the Middle Ages, was largely due to the learning brought into Europe by the scholars of Constantinople, fleeing from the Turk. Those scholars had kept the light of the old classic culture burning during all the years of European darkness and ignorance.

If Constantinople could have been spared and Christianity saved in the Near East, the results to civilization would have been incalculable. What a glorious city a Greek Constantinople would be to-day, if it had always stayed Greek, with its long traditions and its immense treasures of ancient culture! Another and more beautiful Paris, bestriding the Bosphorus, great in commerce, learning, science and all the graces and influences of £hristian civilization.

Thus says Sir Edwin Pears, in his well-known history:

"The New Rome of Constantine Augustus passed under the power of a horde of Oriental adventurers, Turanians by original descent, mongrels by polygamy. This was the greatest victory ever won by Asia in her debate with Europe. For many decades thereafter there seemed at least a possibility that the East might destroy all the fruit of Marathon."

Quoting again from the same author:

" Under the rule of its new masters Constantinople was destined to become the most degraded capital in Europe, and became incapable of contributing anything whatever of value to the history of the human race. No art, no literature, no handicraft even, nothing that the world would gladly keep, has come since 1453 from the Queen City. Its capture, so far as human eyes can see, has been for the world a misfortune almost without any compensatory advantage-poverty as the consequence of misgovernment is the most conspicuous result of the conquest affecting the subjects of the Empire. Lands were allowed to go out of cultivation. Industries were lost. Mines were forgotten. Trade and commerce almost ceased to exist. Population decreased. The wealthiest state in Europe became the poorest; the most civilized the most barbarous. The demoralization of the conquered people and of their churches was not less disastrous than the injury to their material interest$ The Christians lost heart. Their physical courage lessened."

This description of the condition of Asia Minor as the result of the capture of Constantinople continued iwn to the ultimate complete destruction of the Christians by the Turks. Nothing changed in the nearly five centuries that have passed. The Turk has not altered either in his character or his methods. The scenes described by Pears as following the taking of the Queen City, the massacres and violation of womens were duplicated at Smyrna, with the added horror of the sufferings of the Christians on the quay.

After Constantinople, Smyrna, "Ghiaour Smyrna," became the last stronghold of Christianity and Greek culture in the Near East. It had its great and valuable libraries, its leamed men, its famous schools. The Greeks and Armenians could at any time have attained safety by abjuring their faith. Yet, though there have been apostates, they have, in general, kept the faith and have suffered.

The only civilization that has existed in Turkey since that black year, 1453, has been that supplied to it by the Christian remnant of the old Byzantine Empire. For that reason the work of the American and other missionaries took on a great importance. They went out originally to Turkey to convert Moslems. They found that they could not do this, but that their real mission was with the Christians, who were eager to be uplifted and enlightened. The recent rapid development of the latter in advanced agriculture, industries, commerce, education, was restoring Christianity in the Orient and reknitting the wasted and torn fabric of the old Byzantine Empire. To the great Christian Powers was given a tardy and last opportunity of repairing the wrong that was done the world when St. Sophia, the Temple of the Eternal Wisdom, fell into the hand of the Turk.

NUMBER DONE TO DEATH

How many were massacred in Smyrna and its dependent towns and villages? It is impossible to make any estimate at all accurate, but the efforts to minimize the number must at first glance fail of credence.

Official statistics give the Armenian inhabitants of Smyrna as twenty-five thousand and it is certain that the larger part of the men of this community were killed, besides many women and girls, also numerous Greeks. A despatch to the London Daily Chronicle of September 18, 1922, says: "The lowest estimate of lives lost given by the refugees places the total at one hundred and twenty thousand."

Reuter's Agency, in a despatch of the same date, makes the following statement: "From none of the accounts is it possible to give the exact figures of the victims, but it is feared that in any case they will be over one hundred thousand."

Mr. Roy Treloar,viii newspaper correspondent, wired as follows:' "Nureddin Pasha commenced a systematic hunting down of Armenians, who were gathered in batches of one hundred, taken to the Konak and murdered."

The London Times correspondent telegraphed: "The ldilling was carried out systematically. Turkish regulars and irregulars are described as rounding up likely wealthy people in the streets and, after stripping them, killing them in batches. Many Christians who had taken refuge in the churches were burned to death in the buildings which had been set on fire."

Mr. Otis Swift, correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, visited the Greek islands on which refugees had been dumped by the rescue steamers and saw many of the victims of the tragedy, whose stories and the nature of whose wounds bore additional testimony to the ferocity of the Turks. Here is a short quotation from Mr. Swift's report:

"Hospitals of the Greek islands are crowded by people who had been beaten and attacked by the Turks. In a hospital at Chios I saw a child who still lived, although shot through the face by a soldier who had killed its father and violated its mother. In the same hospital there was a family °f six orphan Armenians. A four-year-old baby °f this family had been beaten with rifle butts because no money had been found sewn in its clothes."

There is no doubt that many thousands of the defenseless inhabitants of Smyrna and the surrounding country were done to death by Turks.

To the number actually killed on the days of the massacre must be added the deported Greeks who perished, the people who died in the flames or were killed by falling walls, those who expired on the quay and those who have since succumbed from want, injuries or grief. The extent of the catastrophe can be Yealized from the magnitude of the relief work that has Eeen carried on ever since, and from the immense sums which have been raised, principally in America, for the maintenance of the widows and orphans.

The following statement is from Mr. Charles V Vickery, Secretary of the Near East Relief, 151 Fifth Avenue, New York:

"In regard to the amount of money which has been spent on relief, I would say that so far as the Near East Relief is concerned the total of money and supplies contributed by the American people has amounted to approximately ninety-f ve million dollars. So far as I know there are no available statistics of the amounts spent by other countries. The largest contibutor has of course been Great Britain, but we do not have any f gures here in our offee.

In answer to your second inquiry as to how much is still necessary, would say that it is extremely diff cult to make an answer that would be reliable as there are so many uncertain factors in the problem, as you know only too welL So far as the Near East Relief is concerned, our programs should very rapidly diminish after another year or two and the Executive Committee has def nitely adopted a resolution to the effect that there shall be some sort of coordination or amalgamation of Near East agencies at the end of f ve years or sooner if practicable. This resolution was adopted approximately nine months J ago.

Near East Relief will need around four million dollars a year for the next two years if present indications are reliable."

One of the most important reports connected with ithe fire is that of the Reverend Charles Dobson, British thaplain of Smyrna, and a committee of prominent Englishmen, all inhabitants of the district, including the British chaplains of Bournabat and Boudja. This report throws the responsibility of the fire upon the Turks, "whose fanatic elements, fed by the license of three days' looting, fired the city in the hope of driving out the non-Moslem and non-Jewish elements." Such a report from such a source, leaves no doubt as to the fact that Smyrna was burned by Turks, although these gentlemen do not take into account the circumstance that the town was in complete control of Khemalist troops at.the time and that regular soldiers of the Turkish army, in uniform, were seen by abundant witnesses to set the fires. It is pertinent in this connection in that it relates incidents of greater ferocity than I have yet given, but which I refrain quoting.ix

EFFICIENCY OF OUR NAVY IN SAVING LIVES

The following radio messages were received by me on the evening of September thirteenth, while at sea, en route to Athens, and after:

9-13-22.

Litchf eld

Simpson

0113 fire has almost reached Consulate. Consulate has escaped with practically all official matter of value. A large number of other Americans have been taken on board and now being taken on board but have no complete muster as yet. Entire population on water front have placed many orphans and employees of American benevolent associations on Winona with request but not order to evacuate them to Athens promising your assistance in matter of their landing, 2220

Litchfeld Capt.

9-14-22.

Simpson

For Horton. Winona leaving 4p.m. to-dayforPiraeus with three hundred andffty refugees directed to report to you for instructions about evacuation. Simpson awaits arrival Winona due about 9 am. Friday signed Hepburn - 1130 Capt. (file)

Simpson rdo

9-15-22.

0800

Direct for Horton. 0114 ref my 0114 dash 1136 Winona will have about 1000 refugees destroyer Odsall left 7 am. for Salonica with 600 an she could carry. Please announce and assist evacuation if possible Hepburn 1900-

Simpson rdo

9-15-22.

7 a.m. date

848 i

S.S. Winona

Consul-General Horton, U.S.S. Simpson-Winona arrives 11 am. to-day with refugees. Please arrange to expedite debarkation. Short of provisions- Walter Master.

Simpson rdo

9-15-22.

Litchf eld Time 0850

848

Simpson

1014 for Horton Am Consul September 14th, 5 p.m. Consulate completely destroyed by f re last night. Code funds and valuable documents saved. Three ffths of city now burning and no apparent possibility of stopping f re. Your personal property including car lost Credit Lyonnais in midst of f re zone and manager and staff gone. Signed, Barnes.

RESPONSIBILITY OF THE WESTERN WORLD

Concerning the manner in which the Turk has always profited from the conflicting interests and jealousies of Christian powers, Lord Morley made the following shrewd remark years ago:

"This peculiar strife between Ottoman and Christian gradually became a struggle among the Christian Powers of Northern and Western Europe to turn tormenting questions in the East to the advantage of private ambitions of their own."

This comment of the famous Englishman was voiced before the full dawn of the Petroleum Age, and while as yet America's chief interest in Turkey was the protection of a few missionaries.

A brief review of the political situation which afforded the Turks unbridled license to "raise the hand of violence," is here necessary. It will be evident that they have again profited by their well-known policy of exploiting the dissensions and conflicting interest of Christian powers. They have been as sensitive as a barometer to the least sign of dissension among European governments or peoples, and have shown extraordinary shrewdness in provoking or augmenting it.

The Turk was the ally of the Germans during the Great War, and perhaps his most useful one. Practically all the gold disappeared from Turkey and there is only one place to which it could have gone. The Turkish Empire was ransacked for wheat and other food supplies. Long train-loads of foodstuffs, marked "Berlin" were moved with great frequency toward Constantinople from Smyrna and other distant points. He held the Straits stoutly against the British and French, and one of his proudest and most frequent boasts to-day is that he defeated them there. Germany, one of the great civilized powers, was the ally of the Turks while they were carrying on the extermination of the Armenians. After the defeat of Germany, it was taken for granted that the bad days of the Christians of the Ottoman Empire were over. Turkey was paralyzed.

Mustapha Khemal, who burned Smyrna and completed the destruction of the Christians, is a creature of Europe. It can not be denied that the original plan of the Allies included the partition of the Ottoman Empire and that various projects were formed and promises made which could not be realized on account of conflicting interests, and that the Turks were aided by one or the other of the Powers either secretly or openly to defeat the ambitions of rivals.

In the course of this sad history, Christians were armed against their hereditary oppressors and then left to the vengeance of the latter. In general, they were abandoned, as no Christian power desired to offend the Turk, from whom great benefits were expected, to be in turn showered on the subjects of the power that showed itself most Turkophile. The United States did not abstain from this gruesome competition. In the beginning, interest prompted the spread of what came to be a well-nigh universal pro-Turk propaganda in Christian countries. When the fearful death harvest of this sinister sowing began to be reaped, fear of popular indignation and disapproval gave rise to a policy of suppression of the truth and to anti-Christian propaganda.

During my days in Saloniki, 1910-14, both Italy and Austria were supposed to be looking forward to an early occupation of that city and their battle-ships made frequent visits there, vying with one another in the lavishness of their hospitality to the inhabitants. The common subject of conversation was, "Which will have Saloniki, Austria or Italy?"

ITALY'S DESIGNS ON SMYRNA

Austria's imperial designs were extinguished by the outcome of the Great War. Italy's, however, burned more brightly than ever. In an article in Foreign Affairs of June 15, 1923, Mr. Francesco Coppola says:

"Although Italy entered the war to combat the German attempt at hegemony and to wrest her historic frontiers and the control of the Adriatic from Austria, Italy's traditional instinct really aimed to secure the indispensable modicum of security andfeedom for expansion. It was for this reason that in the fundamental pact of alliance-the Treaty of London of April, 1915-Baron Sonnino stipulated for Italian colonial compensation in Africa in the event of a Franco-English partition of the German colonies, andfor a corresponding zone in Southern Anatolia in the event of Allied acquisitions in the Levant. It was also for this reason that, later on, when he got wind of the complete plan of a tripartite division of the Ottoman Empire, (disloyally concluded in 1916 between France, Russia, and England without the knowledge of Italy, who had been f ghting for more than a year by their side), he forced the Allies to reopen the question 4and to give an adequate share to Italy. The new treaty Xas discussed in April, 1917, between Sonnino, Ribot and Lloyd George at St. Jean de Maurienne-from which it took its name-and was concluded and signed in London in August of the same year. While leaving Constantinople and the Caucasus, Armenia and part of the Anatolian coast of the Black Sea to Russia, Syria and Cilicia to France, and Mesopotamia and the protectorate over Arabia to England, this treaty assigned to Italy South-western Anatolia, the whole vilayet of Aidin with Smyrna, the whole vilayet oSKonia with A dalia and a small part of the vilayet of Adana But this very treaty contained the poison which was later to weaken it. Even before the war was over, the Allies hastened to avail themselves of the pretext of the absence of Russia's signature to denounce the Treaty of St. Jean de Maurienne. Thus it came about that in the spring of 1919, Lloyd George, taking advantage °f the weakness and temporary absence of Orlando, and violating the treaty of St. Jean de Maurienne and the armistice of Mudros, was able to arrange that Smyrna and the surrounding neighborhood be given to Greece. This was done with the full consent of Wilson, who, absolutely ignorant of European and Mediterranean affairs, blindly allowed himself to be governed by idealistic impulses and natural prejudices and with the approbation of Clemenceau, who was only too delighted to be able to 'jouer un mauvais tour a l'Italie.' "

Some of the Italian publicist's conclusion are open to discussion but his article sets forth the Italian frame of mind. There was much talk at Smyrna during the time of the Greek occupation in military circles and among the Levantines about Italian efforts to build a port farther to the south, in the vicinity of ancient Ephesus, that would become the chief harbor of Asia Minor and leave Smyrna to sink into insignificance. Many stories were told also of Italian efforts to win the affections of the Turk. In any case, it is certain that bands of Turkish marauders were in the habit of crossing the line from the Italian zone and of attacking and killing Greeks, after which they would take refuge with the Italians, where they could not be pursued.

The statement that the Turks received munitions and many arms from Italian shippers was persistently repeated, and has never been successfully refuted. The Italian viewpoint has already been explained. They considered that Smyrna had been promised them and that the Hellenic forces had been hurried there by their unfaithful allies to forestall their own landing. Italy can consider herself very fortunate that she did not beat the Greeks to Smyrna, for even with her own resources, so superior to those of King Constantine, she would have had her hands full.

But, the point is, her attitude contributed to the Greek defeat, the burning of Smyrna and the final destruction of the Christians of Asia Minor. Much valuable Italian property was destroyed as well as that of others. An aftermath of Italian antipathy to Greece may be seen in the bombardment of Corfu and the seizure of the island by the Italian fleet on August 31,1923.

On the twenty-seventh of the same month, five Italian members of the commission for the delimitation of the frontier between Albania and Greece were waylaid on a lonely road in Albania and foully murdered by unknown persons. The demands of the Italian Government, including a payment of fifty million liras, were refused by the Greeks, on the ground that culpability had not been established. A request by Greece that the affair be referred to the League of Nations was refused and the island bombarded, with We result that sixty-five civilians, largely refugees, were killed or wounded. The indignation of the Italians is easily understandable, but a knowledge of preceding events is necessary to explain the wholly unnecessary bombardment of a Greek island on insufficient data and the killing or the wounding of sixty-five entirely innocent persons. As these latter were killed by cannon, they were not, of course, murdered.

FRANCE AND THE KHEMALISTS

France's participation in the Near Eastern tragedy is well-known. Her motives are not far to seek: A frank, bitter and undiluted hatred of King Constantine and everything connected with him, and suspicion of England's expansion in a region to which France herself has been devoting great attention for many years. French capitalists and the French Government have been investing heavily in Turkey and Gallic propaganda has been pushed by a vast network of Catholic schools officially supported, whose object, in so far as the government's interest is concerned, has been to catch the natives young and make Frenchmen of them. British or other expansion and predominating influence in Turkey has meant the imperiling of the great sums invested and the annulment of years of patient labor.

This invasion of the Ottoman Empire is admirably set forth in a lecture delivered in 1922 by Monsieur Passereau, Director of the French Commercial Bureau of Constantinople, and published in extenso in the Echo de France of Smyrna. Extracts are herewith given:

"To-day one unconsciously associates such places as tonstantinople, Jerusalem, Beirut, Syria and the Lebanon with French influence, and here are in fact presented almost innumerable proofs of the many ways in which the French now exert and have for a long time exercised a vast and benef cial influence from one end of the Orient to the other.

Our schools, our welfare institutions, hospitals, asylums for the aged, homes for the foundlings and orphanages are established in every port in the Levant. In every city of the interior, in all of the important villages, along the entire length of the railways completed or under construction, there are French instructors, people who teach the children our name, our language and our history.

Let us now make a survey of French f nancial interests in the Ottoman Empire and see to what extent French influence has made itseyfelt in this connection. Some of these interests are herewith listed and enlarged upon:

Ottoman Public Debt: France's share of the Public Debt, external and internal, is 250,000,000,000 francs, or 60.31% of the capital of the entire debt. The remainder of the debt is principally divided between England and Germany, the former holding 14.19% and the latter 21.31%;

Turkish Loans: The history of governmental loans in Turkey dates back to the Crimean War. Since that time, France has without cessation, upon every occasion where the public debt was threatened by internal diff culty, intervened either in the form of assistance in reorganization or f nancial subscription;

French Private Enterprises in Turkey: France has approximately 1,100,000,000 francs invested in private concerns in the Ottoman Empire. Her participation in the industrial activities of the Empire aggregates 53.5% of t~ total, as opposed to 13.68% enjoyed by Great Britain and 32.77% by Germany. These organizations embracing activities in the form of banks, railways, ports, electric power plants, telephones, tramways, etc., extend over the entire domain of Turkey and surround the economic life of the Orient with a network of French interests. (Among interests of this sort mentioned by the lecturer are the Imperial Ottoman and other banks, the tobacco monopoly, etc.)

Railways: France has under construction and exploitation 2, 077 kilometres, with an invested capital of 550,238,000 francs, as opposed to Germany's 2,565 kilometres and England's 610. France has 42,210,000 francs invested in mines in Turkey, besides about 80,000,000 in cluays and ports."

In addition, the lecturer gives a list of thirty-nine important miscellaneous enterprises, including industrial, commercial, insurance, shipping and other corporations. It should be remembered that the investments listed above were made in gold.

French sentiments, especially as regards England, are revealed in a work by the French writer, Michel Paillares, entitled Le Khemalism devant les Allies, published in 1922. Monsieur Paillares is one of the editors of the journal L'Eclair of Paris.

The following quotation is from one of the conversations held by Paillares with French officers at Constantinople, showing their strong pro-Turk, anti-Christian and anti-English feelings:

"I am introduced to an officer in command. He is a man an of one piece. He does not mince his words. He is like a man carved out of rock, for he is unmovable in his sympathies and his antipathies. Like the lieutenant of the ¢ Navy whom we have already hearGt but more furiously still, he is the enemy of the Americans, the Greeks, the Jews and - the English.

'As for me,' he snaps, 'there is not even room for discussion!' We ought to be completely, absolutely Turkophiles-I will say more, Turko-enthusiasts (Turcomanes.) I love the Mussulmans and I hate their non-Mussulman subjects, who are rubbish. Assure these brave men their independence and their territorial integrity and we shall have in them the most faithful and the most loyal of allies. What do we seek here? A rampart against Russia and British imperialism? The maintenance of our prestige? The free development of our commerce, the expansion of our language? The respect of our schools and colleges? The safeguarding of our f nancial interests? We shall have all that by means of a French-Turkish collaboratisn. We ought no longer to hear the Jeremiads of the Armenians and the Creeks and the Jews. We must no longer play the game, neither of England nor of Russia Russia, although split up by Bolshevism, must always be watched. She has intentions with regard to this country which we must not encourage. But I do not think that she is an immediate danger. It is Creat Britain which, above all, is becoming troublesome. We are, nearly all of us (French off cers) for the Khemalists and against the British and the Greeks."

Though this is the opinion of a single individual, it expresses pretty clearly the general French attitude of mind as shown by French policy since the Armistice. It is evident that the sentiments of this French officer and of his colleagues, for whom he speaks, display a keen note of discord among the Allies, helpful to the Turk even in his gruesome work of massacring Christians.

Professor Davis says in A Short History of the Near East.x

"In August, 1922, apparently with French munitions and French counsellors, the Khemalists suddenly attacked the Creek positions in Bithynia. The Creeks were in poor morale, worn out by long campaigning and miserably led. Their army was utterly routed and evacuated Anatolia with almost incredible speed. The Turks drove straight onward to Smyrna which they took (September 9, 1922) and then burned. The world was again horrified by one of the now standardized Ottoman massacres of conquered populations."

It is to be noted that neither the French nor the Italians permitted the Greek navy to search the ships of their nationals proceeding to Turkish ports, which is in itself a breach of neutrality and can have but one interpretation - that they were carrying arms and supplies to the Khemalists, with the consent and protection of their governments.

For these reasons the battle-ships of the brave and chivalric French, "Protectors of the Christians in the Orient," were obliged to sit quietly among the dead bodies floating in the Bay of Smyrna and watch the massacre going on.

The following typical incident illustrates the perfect harmony prevailing in naval circles in the Harbor of Smyrna resulting from international discords and how punctiliously the amenities were observed: An admiral of a battle-ship had been invited to dine with one of his colleagues. He arrived some minutes late and apologized for the delay, which had been caused by the dead .body of a woman getting tangled up in the propellor of Jlis launch.

That lucid and well-informed writer, Doctor Herbert Adams Gibbons, in an article in the Century Magazine for October, 1921, gives the best analysis of the French and Italian attitude with regard to the Turks that I have seen anywhere. It can not, of course, be reproduced in extenso here, but a few quotations will be sufficient to show that French support of the Turks was due to fear and jealousy of the British. Says Doctor Gibbons:

" The British regarded Greece as a sort of protectorate, f nancially and militarily under the control of Great Britain. The scheme was spoiled by the fall of Venizelos and the subsequent defeat of the Greek armies in Asia Minor.

The Near East had been culturally French since the Crusades. From Saloniki to Beirut, France was determined to reign supreme. Palestine represented the very last concession that it was possible for the French to make. Of course the French did not hope to possess Constantinople, but they were not going to let the British settle themselves on the Bosphorus, as they had done at Gibraltar and Port Said, in Malta and Cyprus. For this would mean British domination of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and for British capital and British goods the priority in markets which had been traditionally French

I am not conjecturing. The trend of the French press, inspired by the government, leaves no room for doubt as to what is prompting France to send arms and money to Khemal Pasha.

During the war one of the telling indictments against Germany was her friendship for and alliance with Turkey when the Armenians were being massacred. Germany was held responsible for the massacres on the ground that she could have stopped them had she used her influence with her ally. This was true; but is it not equally true now that France must bear the opprobrium and in a measure the responsibility, of the Armenian and Greek massacres of 1920 and 1921? A French general negotiated with the Nationalists in Cilicia without stipulating that the mass acres should cease. French diplomats have negotiated with the Angora Government of Khemal Pasha, conniving at the massacres of Khemal Pasha, conniving at the massacres of Armenians and Greeks The sole thought of the Germans during the war was to use the Turks and not run any risk of offending them by protesting against the massacres. This is exactly what the French are doing now."

This is plain talk and-horrible. The question that naturally arises in the mind of any decent American is, what, if anything, was the United States, the great Christian country, the hope of the world and fountain of missionary activities, doing while all this was going on? What influence was she using, what resounding note of protest and horror was she giving utterance to?

Various historical events connected with the French pro-Turk, but really anti-English activities, are interesting to the student of diplomatic psychology, and the ease with which peoples can be influenced in their predilections and hatreds by those governing them.

At a critical period of the War, on the Balkan front, the Allies demanded the demobilization of the Greek army, the surrender of half of the Greek fleet and a great part of the Greek artillery. King Constantine, after his successful campaigns in the Balkans, had become an object of almost divine worship to the Greeks, and the Allies were afraid of him. On Dewcember 2, 1916, a party of French Marines marched qnto Athens to take possession of the Greek material demanded. They were fired on by Greek soldiers and a number of French Marines were killed.

This was a most regrettable act on the part of the Greeks, and foolish. It was more foolish to send a few foreign Marines into a capital city to drag off its artillery and expect them to be received with open arms. This unfortunate evett is the basis today of deep-seated hatred of French against Greek. G. F. Abbott, in his work, Greece and the Allies, gives the results of the so-called "Battle of Athens," as follows:

"And so the 'pacifc demonstration' was over, having cost the Greeks four officers and twenty-six men killed andfour officers andffty-one men wounded. The Allied casualties were sixty killed, including six officers, and one hundred and seventy-six wounded."

On April, 10, 1920, the Khemalists treacherously massacred the French garrison at Urfa, killing one hundred and ninety men and wounding about one hundred more, and on October 20, 1921, Franklin Bouillon, in the name of the French Republic signed a separate treaty with the Turks. Immediately after the burning of Smyrna he rushed to the still-smoking city and, seizing Mustapha Khemal in his arms, kissed him.

This kiss of Franklin Bouillon has become historic, and while bearing no resemblance to a certain other famous and sinister caress, deserves to rank with it as one of the two most famous kisses in sacred and profane history.

MASSACRE OF THE FRENCH GARRISON AT URFA

The facts of the massacre of the French garrison at Urfa, obtained from original sources, took place under the following conditions:

The Nationalists had been besieging the small French force in Urfa during the early days of April, 1920, and at length Commander Hauger was compelled to capitulate. On the eighth of April he decided to evacuate the city and did so under the following terms: That all Christians should have ample protection; that the houses occupied by the garrison should not be reoccupied by the Turks until the garrison had left the city; that the graves of the fallen should be respected; that sufficient transport should be supplied to convey their arms, ammunition, etc.xi One officer of the gendarmerie and ten men would accompany them for safe convoy.

These were agreed to by the Mutessarif of Urfa and the commander of the Turkish Nationalist forces, but, notwithstanding this arrangement the French were attacked shortly after they had left the town and nearly annihilated.

A native-born American who chanced to be in Urfa on relief work and who desired to proceed to Aleppo decided to accompany the ill-fated expedition and was an eye-witness of what happened. The following account may be interesting as a chapter of authentic history, never before published:

" We left Urfa at one-thirty am. on Sunday the eleventh of April, 1920, Captain Perraut being with the advance guard, four gendarmes leading the way, in center of column the off cer of gendarmerie, Emir Effendi, who was to accompany us to our destination.

On passing the crest of the hill we observed several gendarmes and we were informed that this was their post. The ascent was very diff cult as the horses were in bad condition owing to lack offood and exercise. The camels delayed us as they were well-laden and climbed very slowly. We halted as usual ten minutes to the hour, the rear guard consisting of one hundred and ffty to one hundred and sixty men, being two kilometers in the rear.

At six am., passing through a ravine on to a straight stretch of road, we were suddenly attackedfrom the rear and both flanks, the enemy having machine guns among them. The f ring commenced before the camels had passed out of the ravine. They were in the bend and halted. Previous to the attack, I had been marching with commander Hauger and fve minutes before the fring commenced was riding on a Red Cross wagon containing two wounded. When the f ring commenced, two wagons which preceded the others, having their horses and mules wounded or killed, were forced to halt. I jumped down, taking cover in a hollow at the roadside and f nding that I was exposed to f re from the hilltops, decided to make my way forward trusting to fnd the Commander who I knew was only two yards in advance.

By this time the attack had taken a formidable form. The ground here formed a basin surrounded by hills and bare of any cover so that the column was forced to go forward to f nd a position of defence, which they didf ve hundred yards ahead. The transport with the above exception, was thus cut off most of the horses by that time being killed. Firing by this time had become extremely heavy, and going forward I joined Commander Hauger and two other officers in a hole in the hillside which had been left by some stone cutters andfrom where he directed operations. We were afterward joined by two other officers and the Turkish offeer of gendarmerie, who was then disarmed, and two interpreters.

About nine a.m., the rear guard were heard and the f ring became very heavy. We were shortly joined by the officer who had been in charge of them, who gave us a thrilling account of what had happened; they had been ambushed in a gulley, very few escaping.

From a hill to the north, we observed the Turkish Nationalist flag Shortly after this several Kurds were seen coming over the hills, apparently a tribe. At ten o'clock or thereabouts, Commander Hauger held a conference and decided to surrender.

A t this time the line was broken to the east, the transport was lost and the rear guard cut up and many wounded were coming in. He then told the off cer of the gendarmerie to go out with a flag of truce.

As we had several Armenians with us who needed protection, I suggested that I might accompany him. To this he agreed, and taking my interpreter carrying the American flag, myself carrying the white flag with the gendarme in the center, we proceeded toward the enemy's position. We were f red on continually. On reaching the destroyed transport column, we came upon a large body of troops and asked for their commander. We were mformed that they were withoud one, being irregular troops, ' Chetas, etc. '

I then instructed the offeer of the gendarmerie to send off messengers to stop the f re and this was accomplished about ten twenty am. A few minutes afterward a mob of Kurds rushed from the hills toward the French postitions, and the battle recommenced. Seeing that it was impossible to do anything as they refused the truce, I told the offeer of gendarmerie to ride to Urfa, a distance of about nine miles, to inform the Mutessarif of what had happened and to bring carriages for the wounded and this he did.

Here I witnessed the killing of wounded and the killing of men, who were surrendering their arms. To this, there are many witnesses, including Lieutenant Deloir, who at present is a prisoner in Urfa I demanded a guard of gendarmes who had by this time arrived to accompany me to Urfa We proceeded, encircling a hill and striking the road at a natural cistern where we were able to get water. The off cer commanding the gendarmes of Urfa arrived and gave me a further guard of six men, instructing them to get to the city as soon as possible, the tribesmen showing great hostility. We proceeded by a circuitous route through a ravine, arriving in Urfa about two thirty p.m., having walked for twelve hours, and bringing with me a Syrian, Jacob, who had been working at the Swiss mission at Urfa

I was unable to save any Armenians as they were not to be seen.

Note: the prisoners, some ffty, are in hospital and perhaps another ffty are in prison. There may be more, but at present it is impossible to say as there is a possible chance that some may still be with the Kurds. The off cial report of the Mutessarif says that they buried one hundred and ninety, and one hundred in hospital and prison brings the number to roughly three hundred, whereas the garrison when en route numbered more than four hundred.

Sundry notes: Lieutenant Deloir, before mentioned, was stripped by Turkish regular cavalry and rescued in a nude condition by Kurds who found him some time afterward and who fed him and brought him to Urfa The Syrian Yakub, whom I brought back with me and who was trying to escape to Aleppo is now in Urfa The Armenians have not been heard of.

When crossing the battle-f eld, I observed a company of Turkish infantry regulars and the machine section with mule transport proceeding toward the French positions. They were, perhaps, a little late unless there had been action in the hill-tops and were going forward to continue to f ght.

The attack took place in the hills west of Urfa about nine miles from town and two miles from junction of Arab Punar, and Seroudj roads."

The above story is given precisely as received by me, without alteration, even of punctuation. The characteristic features of this incident are:

The breaking of the agreement, the use of so-called "irregulars" by the Turkish authorities to escape responsibility and the presence of regulars in case of need; the killing of the wounded and of those giving up their arms.

There were present in Urfa during the siege Mrs. Richard Mansfield, widow of the famous actor; Mr. G. Woodward, accountant of the Near East Relief; and Mary Carolina Holmes, a heroic American lady who wrote a boolc on her experiences, entitled Between the Lines in Asia Minor, published by the Fleming H. Revell Company.

The part played by Italy and France which so greatly Kcontributed to the extermination of the Christian population of Turkey, and the fearful events at Smyrna, are well summed up by George Abbott in the work above referred to, in the following words:

"France, who since the Armistice had displayed a keen jealousy of England's place in a part of the world in which she claims special rights, presently concluded a separate agreement with Turkey-an example in which she was followed by Italy-and gave the Turks her moral and material support against the Greeks; while England, while refusing to reverse her policy in favor of their enemies, contented herself with giving the Greeks only a Platonic encouragement, which they were unwise enough to take for more than it was worth."

THE BRITISH CONTRIBUTION

Unfortunately, I am restrained from writing many interesting facts connected with a history of this kind; some of the things that came to my knowledge in my official capacity. To the honor of Great Britain, however, I believe that there were moments when she came within a hair's breadth of living up to her best traditions. What prevented her at the critical moment, I have never learned.

At any rate, the British contribution to the Smyrna horror did not consist in active aid of the Turks, neither did she furnish them with arms of munitions. But, though she was largely responsible for the landing of the Greeks in Asia Minor, and the latter were defending her interests, she afforded them no aid, but gave them fallacious encouragement which led them to their doom. As far as England was concerned, Greece was the victim of British internal politics which seized upon the government's policy in the Near East as an object for attack. If Lloyd George was pro-Greek, his political opponents became -ipso facto- rabid pro-Turk. If the Hellenic soldiers were mere tools of the British, as both the Italians and French believed, then it certainly was not "playing the game" to desert them in their extremity; and this desertion carries a graver responsibility with it, inasmuch as it made possible the fearful catastrophe of Smyrna and its hinterland.

TURKISH INTERPRETATION OF AMERICA'S ATTITUDE

Of our American responsibility for the destruction of the Christians of the Near East, I write with great hesitation and sorrow and must confine myself to the statement of certain universally known facts.

The days and months leading up to the fearful events at Smyrna were noisy with the Chester concession and pro-Turk propaganda. The enthusiastic pro-Turk articles in the press of the two Chesters-father and son- are still fresh in the public memory. Other pro-Turk and anti-Christian writers were busy, some among them doubtless earning their daily bread. The Turks were in funds. They had been busy picking the bones of the Christians and had laid their hands on great sums.

The shrewd Europeanized group of Turks who inhabit Constantinople overdid themselves in the courtesies and hospitality which they lavished on foreign diplomats. This sort of Oriental is the most plausible and fascinating man in the world. The educated hanum, also, is extremely charming, and has a seductive grace that is hardly granted to her alien sisters. If a few of them take off their veils and show their lovely faces in Constantinople, they have little difficulty in persuading diplomats that they are emancipated and that polygamy is a thing of the past among Mohammedans; that the Greeks burned Smyrna, that a million and a half Christians practically committed suicide and were not actually massacred, or anything else they wish.

What can one do but believe when he is taken back to the days of Haroun-al-Raschid, and floats off to a palace perfumed with roses of Cashmere on an enchanted carpet?

Our representative at Constantinople, Admiral Mark L. Bristol, is an extremely attractive personality: honest, brave, generous, with frank and winning manners. By the sheer magnetism of his genial and engaging character he gathers about himself, wherever he is, a school of admirers and disciples who ardently defend the admiral and everything that he thinks and does.

The naval officers who came to Smyrna at the Consulate's request were typical of the American naval officer in general, high-type intelligent gentlemen, of an efficiency that may be described as well-nigh perfect. They were under certain orders at Smyrna which it was incumbent upon them to carry out. They accomplished all their duties there thoroughly and correctly and performed prodigies after the fire in saving refugees.

I was somewhat puzzled, however, when an American lady at Smyrna informed me that one of the officers had told her that he was "pro-Turk." Another, a commander, made the same remark at Athens, at luncheon, during one of the trips which the destroyers were making back and forth between that city and Smyrna.

While stopping at the Army and Navy Club in Washington in 1922, I asked a naval officer of high rank if it was true that he was pro-Turk, and he replied:

" Yes, I am, because I was brought up as a boy to the belief that the Turks were always chasing Greeks and Armenians around with a knife. Well, I have been over there to Constantinople several times and I have neverseen anything of the kind, so I have come to the conclusion that it is all buncombe."

This is all right. Every man is entitled to his opinions, no matter on what evidence or process of reasoning founded. My surprise was due to the fact that I had thought that the officers who came to Smyrna were under orders to be neutral.

I was sitting in the ward room of one of our destroyers moored in the harbor of Smyrna. At a moment when the massacre had begun to assume alarming proportions, a newspaper correspondent, a passenger on the same naval unit, entered the room, opened his typewriter and began to write. When he had finished about half a page, he read it carefully, took it out of the machine, and said: "I can't send this stuff. It'll queer me at Constantinople. I must get busy on Greek atrocities." I have often wondered what he meant. I was sitting quite close to him and heard him very distinctly.

Let us briefly review the situation which enabled the Turks in the year of our Lord, 1922, to complete the extinction of Christianity in the Near East: The Germans were, as long as they lasted, the active allies of the Turks, and during this period nearly a million Armenians and many thousands of Greeks perished; after the Armistice and during the period which led up to the destruction of Smyrna and the accompanying massacre, the French and Italians were allies of the Turk, and furnished him moral and material support; the British gave no aid to the Greeks, but contented themselves with publishing an account of the dreadful events that had been taking place in the Ottoman Empire; the Americans gained the reputation of being pro-Turk, true friends, who would ultimately, on account of this friendship, be given the permission to put through great schemes which would result in the development of the Ottoman Empire and, incidentally,fill certain American pocketbooks. The Turks confidently believed that commercial avarice would prevent us from interfering with their savagery, or even strongly condemning it.

Never in the world had the Turk so good an opportunity to glut his lust for Christian blood without fear of interference or criticism.

The first Lausanne Conference closed, after reaching no agreement, on February 7, 1923, and the second opened on April twenty-third of the same year. On April tenth, still of the same year, the National Assembly at Angora ratified the Chester Concession. As the terms of this concession conflicted sharply with British and French interests, the date of its ratification is highly suggestive.

This concession is dead now, and there was never enough in it to cause a serious row between the United States and any European power. The State Department has denied the official support of this scheme and must be believed. This, however, has not prevented a general conviction in Turkey that it was a project under the especial protection of the American Government. Such a belief is very easy to create in Turkey, where even the Mission Schools are popularly supposed to be government institutions. [

At any rate, it is not probable that great sums of American capital will flow into Turkey under present conditions. Whatever public sentiment may be, or whatever apathy may exist as to the fate of some millions of our fellow creatures, who howl annoyingly when they are massacred or if their families are torn apart, or if they are robbed of homes, capital is cautious; it does not believe in railroads built in a country of ruined cities, nor does it connect massacre with prosperity and progress.

And in all this tangle of conflicting interests, during which the Turk continued massacring, the thoughtful observer is impressed with one thing-the clearness of John Bull's vision and the directness and tenacity of his purpose; he knew what he wanted and he took it. There are copious oil wells at Maidan i Naftun, from which the oil is piped down to Mukamra, not far from Basra, on the Persian Gulf, where the British landed early in the war. There are rich oil fields at Mousul. General Townsend was on his way there when the Turks stopped him at Kut el Mara, but that did not stop Cousin John. He is at Mousul now and the Turks would have liked to give Mousul to Admiral Chester and the others. No wonder the State Department says that it kept out of that.

THE REVEREND RALPH HARLOW ON THE

LAUSANNETREATY

In proof of the statement that many eminent followers of Christ are not in entire sympathy with certain missionaries in their policy with regard to the Turks, I am quoting again from the Reverend Ralph Harlow. The following extracts are from an article and two letters written by him. The article appeared in the Outlook of October 25, 1922, and in it, among other things, the author describes an interview with the late Theodore Roosevelt:

"At that time, I had just returned from Asia Minor where I had witnessed the fearful deportations on the Bagdad Railroad, and could give him first-hand information of the awful atrocities going on. He asked me a number of questions, continually shaking his head and saying, 'terrible, terrible, terrible.'

Then with a tense expression on his face, he said, 'Mr. Harlow, the greatest regret that I have as I look back on my administration is the fact that when the awful Adana massacre occurred, this government did not take steps against the outrage on civilization!"'

A further quotation from the same article indicates that the men on destroyers did not fully share the pro-Turk sentiments of their officers:

"I have just listened to the contents of a letter sent by one of our boys on an American destroyer at Smyrna He tells of having to stand by while the brutal Turkish soldiers seized beautiful Christian girls and tore them screaming from their mothers and outraged them right on the public quay of Smyrna. He saw these brutal soldiers shooting down helpless women with children in their arms, unarmed men beaten to death by the butts of these Turkish soldiery. And then he tells of the anguish that he felt because the orders of our government were such that he had to stand by, helpless, before such atrocities."

I have been told that many such letters were written by our navy boys at Smyrna to relatives and friends in the United States. In a letter to me, Mr. Harlow says that he believes it to be his duty to tell the truth about affairs in the Near East, and he continues:

"Doctor MacLachlan and Reed demanded my resignation and said that I 'endangered the college.' I resigned. I have been made to feel that I ought to keep still, but justice seems to me greater than buildings and institutions. At the time of the Lausanne Conference and after, I claimed that our American Board (of Foreign Missions) ought to have stood four square against the wretched treaty. Dr. Barton did not like the openness of my criticisms and I lost a position as Board Secretary through his opposition to me."

The second letter referred to gives Mr. Harlow's *opinion of the Lausanne Treaty and is addressed to the Reverend Doctor Barton, Foreign Secretary of the American Board of Foreign Missions. As some of the missionaries who are desirous of saving the remnants of their installations in Turkey have come out in favor of the treaty, Mr. Harlow's opinion on the subject, and his reasons, may be of interest:

"At the time of the Conference, and following it, I was asked to discuss the situation in numerous addresses, so that I read up carefully everything I could get, which would throw light on the subject. All the evidence goes to show that the men who wbnt to Lausanne were influenced from the very f rst in an their decisions to protect the oil interests, which featured largely behind the scenes in the Conference discussions. That those interests were so strong as to overshadow the humanitarian and missionary interests I have accepted without question, until I read your paragraph.

I turn now to some of my sources of information, for which you ask. Unfortunately, most of my material on this subject is in my files at Northampton, but I have with me references which will perhaps indicate why I have associated oil with blood in connection with Lausanne. I would refer you to the following articles and I might name numerous others:

'American Blood and Oil,' Literary Digest, December 30, 1922; 'Oil and Glory at Lausanne,' Literary Digest, July 28, 1923; 'Blind Forces at Lausanne,' Asia, April, 1923; 'Britain's Mesopotamian Burden and Oil,' Literary Digest, December 15, 1922; 'Issues at Lausanne,' Living Age, January, 6, 1923; 'Lausanne and its Antecedents, ' Fortnightly Review, January, 1923; ' Uncle sSam Mixing in the Turkish Broil,' Literary Digest, pecember 23, 1922; 'The Tragedy of Lausanne,' Association Men, March or April, 1923; 'The World Race for Oil,' Literary Digest, January 20, 1923.

If you win take the time and trouble, as I have, to read even these few articles, and the Literary Digest quotes from many other sources, you will find that the main theme is that the humanitarian interests at Lausanne were sold out, because of oil interests, and that the missionary interests got nowhere.

A regular off cial of the Standard Oil came to Lausanne before the Conference opened. Lewis Heck, who was in the business in Constantinople came to Lausanne as a member of the American delegation.xii

'Young MacDowell, who had many railroad concessions in Turkey which dovetailed into the Chester concessions, was in Heck's Constantinople office. Heck knows Turkey welL I will be willing to defend the thesis that the entire course of events, which made the Lausanne Treaty possible, was determined by the ambitions of the commercial oil interests, and that, in this race for Turkish favors, the Americans led the way."'

Mr. Harlow quotes many editorials and articles in the American and British press, the general tenor of which can be gleaned from one or two examples:

"Lausanne was all that an International Conference ought not to be. It was the sacrifice of all human and humanitarian questions to expediency." New York Journal of Commerce, July, 1923.

"Mosul and freedom to give us a chance in the scramble for oil has been the object of all the negotiations, but the United States might be better occupied to-day than looking after the interests of oil kings. Peace and civilization may be talked about in public, but in private there is talk of oil, because territories where the future concessionaires will be at pains to insure their rights, are at stake." New York Times.

"Although America would accept no humane responsibility in the Near East, saying that it must be free from troubles and depravities of the Old World, America's blood boils over the burning question of oil. When the word 'oil' is mentioned, the recluse bursts from its retirement upon the instant. America has no concern with Asia Minor while the Turk butchers his Christian subjects by the hundreds of thousands." Pall Mall Gazette.

i Professor Davis' Short History of the Near East.

ii Published by the Anglo-Hellenic League, No 49.

iii 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.

iv 1. 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 preach 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.

v 2. A teacher in the secondary Turkish school attached to a mosque.

vi Short History of the Near East, page 393.

vii The Occident and the Orient, page 58.

viii September 20 1922.

ix The entire report can be found in the Gibraltar Diocesan Gazette, No. 2, vol. 6, November, 1922.

x Page 393

xi Their own transport being sadly depleted.

xii Lewis Heck had been closely associated with the Chester interests, and Admiral Chester's son was also at Lausanne.- R. H.