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 lying 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 hairbreadth 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
skillfully 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 little 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 was engaged in hospital
work in the Near East. Doctor Elliott’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 Christian 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 proven that
their story in regard to this was not exaggeration, so I have no reason to
believe 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.
ELLIOTT,
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 fire, 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 patrolling 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 the
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 breadwinners 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.
Next: Chapter XX | Previous: Chapter XVIII | Book Contents | Book main page | Back to Top