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.
Also,
Sir Valentine Chirol, Harris Foundation lecturer at the University of Chicago in
1924, made this statement (“The Occident and the Orient”, page 58):
“After the Turks had smashed the Greek armies they turned the essentially
Greek city (Smyrna) into an ash heap as proof of their
victory.”
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 (“A short History of the Near East”, page
393): “The Turks drove straight onward to Smyrna, which they took (September
9, 1922) and then burned.”
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 bad 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 the 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
Christians of the city were keeping to their houses in a state 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
well-built 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. Clafun 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.
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