It was a British ship which took me from Constantinople to Smyrna,
and it gave me a thrill of patriotic pleasure to get porridge for
breakfast, and ham and eggs with buttered toast.
Apart from the officers and crew, there were few English folk aboard. I
can only remember one--a good-looking and good-humored major, who was
bound for Alexandria in company with a pretty Greek woman who seemed to
be under his chivalrous protection. The other first-class passengers
were Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. On the lower deck were groups of
Italian soldiers who sang and danced continuously, a few Turks, an
old Arab woman in a dirty white robe, who gazed all day long over the
side of the ship as though reading some spell of fate in the lace work
patterns of froth woven by our passage through the dead calm sea, and
families of Israelites lying among their bundles.
It was good to lie on the boat deck in the direct glare of the sun,
pouring its warmth down from a cloudless sky, and to watch with
half-shut eyes the golden glitter of the sea and its change of color
and light from deepest blue to palest green, as the currents crossed
our track and white clouds passed overhead and the sun sank low, as
evening came. Fairy islands, dreamlike and unsubstantial, appeared on
the far horizon, and then seemed to sink below its golden bar. At night
the sky was crowded with stars, shining with a piercing brightness, and
it seemed no wonder then that to each of them the Greeks had given a
name and godlike attributes. They seemed closer to the world than in an
English sky, heaven’s brilliant train, and on this ship in a lonely
sea--no other boat passed us--the company of the stars was friendly and
benign.
From the lower deck came the singing of the Italian soldiers, with
their liquid words and open notes, in which I heard something very old
in the melody of life. The Greeks were singing, too, in a separate
group, softly, to themselves, and with a melancholy cadence. Tiny
sparks of fire, like glow-worms, flitted to and fro on the lower deck.
It was the glow of cigarette ends, as the Italian soldiers danced the
fox trot and the one step. Now and then a match was lighted, and one
saw it held in the hollow of brown hands, illumining a dark Italian
face.
My son and I sat on coils of rope, up on the boat deck, with a Greek
girl with whom we had made friends. She talked and talked, and held us
spellbound by her philosophy of life, her gayety, her bitter wisdom,
her fearlessness and wit. It was a short voyage, and we have never
seen her again, but we shall not forget that laughing Greek girl
who spoke half the languages of Europe, and English perfectly, and
American with such intimate acquaintance that she could sing little
old nigger songs with perfect accent, as it seemed to us. Yet she had
never been in England or America, and had spent nearly all her life in
Constantinople, with brief visits to Greece, and two frightful years in
Russia. She had learnt English, and her negro songs, in the American
College at Constantinople, to which she looked back with adoration,
though she had been a naughty rebel against all its discipline.
As a governess to a German family in Russia, she had learnt another
language--besides Russian, Greek, French, Turkish and English--and had
been thoroughly amused with life, until the Red Revolution broke in
Moscow. Her Germans fled, leaving her alone in their empty flat, and
then she learnt more than ever she had guessed about the cruelties of
life. Her life was saved by her gayety and “cheek,” as she called it.
When a crowd of Red soldiers threatened to slit her throat, she jeered
at them, and then made them roar with laughter by playing comic songs
on the piano and singing them with merry pantomime. That was all right,
but she starved and went in expectation of death month after month.
Her Russian friends, students and intellectuals, were mostly shot or
hanged. She recognized some of them as they hung from lamp-posts in the
streets, and gave us a vivid imitation of how they looked, with their
necks cricked and their tongues hanging out. She became used to that
sort of thing.... After wandering adventures, abominable hardships, in
dirt and rags, she got through at last to Constantinople, and lived for
a time on a Greek gunboat, as one of the crew, wearing one of their
caps and a sailor’s jersey. They saved her from starving to death,
until she was able to get in touch with her family. Now she was going
to Alexandria, as a typist in an English office.
She was tremendously amused with all this experience. She wouldn’t have
missed it for the world. It was the adventure of life, and the great
game. There was nothing in life but that--and what did death matter
after this adventure whenever it came! We spoke of war, and the chance
of world peace, and she scoffed at the chance. War was inevitable--the
greatest adventure of all. Cruelty?--Yes, that was part of the
adventure. Men were heartless, but amusing, even in their cruelties.
It was no good looking at life seriously, breaking one’s heart over
impossible ideals. It was best to laugh and take things as they came,
and shrug one’s shoulders, whatever happened. It was Life!... So we
talked under the stars.
There was another girl on board who talked to us. She belonged to a
different type and race--a tragic type, and Armenian. She had some
frightful photographs in a satchel which she wore always round her
waist. They were photographs of Turkish atrocities in Asia Minor. There
was one of a Turkish officer sitting on a pile of skulls and smoking a
cigarette. Those skulls had once held the living brains of this girl’s
family and townsfolk at Samsun. She told me of the death march of the
Armenians when the Turks drove them from the coast into the interior.
The women and children had been separated from their men folk, who were
then massacred. Her father and brother had been killed like that. They
passed their bodies on the roadsides. The women and children had been
driven forward until many dropped and died, until all were barefoot and
exhausted to the point of death. Kurdish brigands had robbed them of
the little money they had, and their rings. Some of the younger girls
were carried off. Their screams were heard for a long way. There were
not many who reached the journey’s end.... A terrible tale, told with a
white passion of hate against the Turk, but without tears, and coldly,
so that it made me shiver.
In that ship, sailing under the stars in the Ægean Sea, I learnt more
than I had known about the infernal history of mankind during war and
revolution. I had seen it in the West. These were stories of the East,
unknown and unrecorded, as primitive in their horror as when Assyrians
fought Egyptians, or the Israelites were put to the sword in the time
of Judas Maccabæus.
Our ship put in at Mitylene, and with the Greek girl we explored the
port and walked up the hillside to an old fort built by the Venetians
in the great days when Venice was the strongest sea power in that part
of the world. On the way, the Greek girl chatted to shopkeepers and
peasants in their own tongue, and hers, and then climbed to the top of
the fort, sitting fearlessly on the edge of the wall and looking back
to the sea over which we had traveled, and down to our ship, so small
as we saw it from this height.
In the valley, Greek peasants of better type and stock than those at
Athens, and true descendants of the people whose tools and gods and
jewels they turn up sometimes with their spades, were leading their
sheep and goats. Some of them were singing and the sound rose clear
up the hillside with a tinkling of goat bells and the baaing of the
sheep. Wild flowers were growing in the old walls of the fort, and the
hillside was silvered with daisies. We seemed very close to the blue
canopy of the sky above us, as we sat on the edge of the wall, and in
the warm sunshine, and above that calm, crystal-clear sea, mirroring
our ship, we seemed to be touched by the immortality of the gods, and
to be invested with the beauty of the springtime of the world.
“It would be good to stay here,” said the Greek girl. “We could keep
goats and sing old Greek songs.”
However, presently she was hungry, and scrambled off the wall and said,
“The ship--and supper!”
So we went down to the little port again and rowed away from Mitylene
to the ship which was sounding its siren for our return.
We reached Smyrna next morning, and I, for one, was astonished by the
modern aspect of its sea frontage, upon which the sun poured down.
Beyond the broad quays it swept round the gulf in a wide curve of white
houses, faced with marble and very handsome along the side inhabited, I
was told, by rich Armenian merchants.
“The Turks will never rest till they get Smyrna back,” said the English
major by my side, and his words came as a sharp reminder of the lines
away beyond the hills, where a Greek army lay entrenched against the
Turkish nationalists and Mustapha Kemal. But no shadow of doom crept
through the sunlight that lay glittering upon those white-fronted
houses, nor did I guess that one day, not far ahead, Englishmen, like
myself, looking over the side of this ship, would see the beauty of
that city devoured by an infernal fury of flame, and listen to the
screams of panic-stricken crowds on those broad quaysides, hidden
behind rolling clouds of smoke....
When we landed, in the harbor-master’s pinnace, we found that we had
come on a day of festival among the Greek army of occupation and
the Greek inhabitants of Smyrna. All the ships in the harbor--among
them the very gunboat in which our Greek lady had lived as one
of the crew--were dressed in bunting, and flags were flying from
many buildings. Greek officers, very dandified, in much decorated
uniforms, with highly polished boots, drove along the esplanade in
open carriages, carrying great bouquets, on their way to a review by
the Commander-in-Chief outside the city. Smyrniote girls, Greek and
Armenian, were in fancy frocks and high-heeled shoes tripping gayly
along with young Greek soldiers. Bands were playing as they marched,
and all the air thrilled with the music of trumpets and military pomp.
Few Turks were visible among those Christian inhabitants. They were
mostly dockside laborers and porters, wearing the red fez of Islam.
It was the English major who told me of the horror that had happened
here when the Greeks first landed. They had rowed off from their
transports in boats, and a crowd of these Turkish porters had helped
to draw the boats up to the quayside. All the Christian population was
on the front, waving handkerchiefs from windows and balconies. Ladies
of the American Red Cross were looking at the scene from the balcony
of the Grand Hotel Splendid Palace--what a name! There was no sign of
hostility from the Turks, but suddenly the Greek soldiers seemed to go
mad, and started bayoneting the Turks who had helped them to land. In
view of all the women and children who had assembled to greet them
with delirious joy, they murdered those defenseless men and flung their
bodies into the sea. It was a crime for which many poor innocents were
to pay when the Turkish irregulars came into Smyrna with the madness
of victory after the destruction of the Greek army by Mustapha Kemal
and his Nationalist troops. Well, that grim secret of fate lay hidden
in the future when Tony and I booked rooms at the Grand Hotel Splendid
Palace and entertained our little Greek lady to breakfast, and then at
midday waved towels out of the bedroom window in answer to her signals
from the ship which took her on her way to Alexandria and another
adventure of life. The English major brought a bucket to the upper
deck, as we could see distinctly and wrung a towel over it as a sign of
tears. We made the countersign....
The sea front of Smyrna, with its modern marble-fronted houses, masked
an older and more romantic city, as we found in many walks in all its
quarters. It masked the Turkish squalor of little streets of wooden
shops and booths where crowds of Turkish women, more closely veiled
than those in Constantinople, bargained for silks and slippers and
household goods. In the old markets at the end of Frank Street, now
a heap of cindered ruins, we sauntered through the narrow passages
with vaulted roofs where old Turks sat cross-legged in their alcoves,
selling carpets from Ouchak and Angora, dried raisins and vegetables,
strips of colored silk for Turkish dresses, Sofrali linen, Manissa
cotton, German-made hardware, and all manner of rubbish from the East
and West, drenched in the aroma of spices, moist sugar, oil, and camels.
I was anxious, as a journalist, to get the latest information about the
military situation away to the back of Smyrna, and for that purpose
called upon the British Military Mission, represented by a General
Hamilton and his staff. A charming and courteous man, he was obviously
embarrassed by my visit, not knowing how much to tell me of a situation
which was extremely delicate in a political as well as a military way.
He decided to tell me nothing, and I did not press him, seeing his
trouble.
I obtained all the information I wanted, and even more than I bargained
for, from the Greek authorities. The fact that I represented _The
Daily Chronicle_, known for its pro-Greek sympathies and for its
official connection with Lloyd George’s Government, gave me an almost
embarrassing importance. No sooner had I revealed my journalistic
mission than I received a visit from a Greek staff officer--Lieutenant
Casimatis--who put the entire city of Smyrna at my feet, as it were,
and as one small token of my right to fulfill the slightest wish, sent
round a powerful military car with two tall soldiers, under orders
to obey my commands. Tony was pleased with this attention and other
courtesies that were showered upon us. It was he, rather than myself,
who interviewed the Commander-in-Chief of the Greek army, and received
the salutes of its soldiers as we drove up magnificently to General
Headquarters.
A military band was playing outside--selections from “Patience,” by
some strange chance--and in the antechamber of the General’s room Greek
staff officers, waisted, highly polished, scented, swaggered in and
out. The Commander-in-Chief was a very fat old gentleman, uncomfortable
in his tight belt, and perspiring freely on that hot day. The windows
of his room were open, and the merry music floated in, and the scent of
flowers, and of the warm sea. “He received us most politely,” as poor
Fragson used to sing in one of my brother’s plays, and with his fat
fingers moving about a big map, explained the military situation. It
was excellent, he said. The Greek army was splendid, in training and
_morale_, and longing to advance against the Turk, who was utterly
demoralized. Those poor Turkish peasants, forcibly enlisted by Mustapha
Kemal, wanted nothing but leave to go home. The Greek advance would
be a parade--the Commander-in-Chief, speaking in French, repeated his
words with relish and pride--“a parade, sir!” Unfortunately, he said,
Greece was hampered by differences among the Allies. The French were
certainly intriguing with the Turkish Nationalists of Angora--supplying
them with arms and ammunition! The Italians were no better, and very
jealous of Greek claims in Asia Minor. Greece had trust, however, in
the noble friendship of England, in the sympathy and aid of that great
statesman, Mr. Lloyd George.... The Greek army would astonish the world.
So the old gentleman talked, and I listened politely, and asked
questions, and kept my doubts to myself. There was not a British
officer I had met anywhere, except General Hamilton in Smyrna, who had
a good word to say for the fighting qualities of Greek soldiers. There
was not one I had met who believed that they could hold Smyrna for more
than a year or two, until the Turks reorganized.
It was Lieutenant Casimatis who introduced us to the
Commander-in-Chief, and he devoted himself to the task of presenting us
to all the people of importance in Smyrna, and taking us to schools,
hospitals, museums, and other institutions which would prove to us the
benevolence and high culture of Greek rulers in Asia Minor. He was a
cheery, stout little man, speaking English, which he had learnt in
India, and almost bursting with good nature and the desire to pump us
with Greek propaganda.
He took us to the Greek Metropolitan at Smyrna, a black-bearded,
broad-shouldered, loud-laughing, excitable Bishop of the Orthodox
Church, wearing the high black hat and long black robe of his priestly
office, but reminding us of one of those Princes of the Church in
the Middle Ages who led their armies to battle and sometimes wielded
a battleax in the name of the Lord. “An old ruffian,” I heard him
called by an English merchant of Bournabat, whose sympathies, however,
were decidedly pro-Turk. A picture representing the martyrdom of St.
Polycarp at Smyrna, in the early days of the Christian era, adorned
the wall opposite his desk, and he waved his hand toward it and spoke
of the martyrdom of the Christian people, not so long ago as that, but
only a year or two ago, when they were driven from the coast, as that
Armenian girl had told me. “The spirit of St. Polycarp,” he said, in
barbarous French, “animates the Greek Christians to-day, and nothing
would give me greater joy than to die for the faith as he did.” I have
never heard whether this pious wish was fulfilled. It seems to me
probable.
For a long time he talked of the sufferings of the Greeks and
Armenians, calling upon various men in the room--his secretaries and
priests--to bear witness to the truth of his tales. Presently, with
some ceremony, servants came round with silver trays laden with glasses
of iced water and some little plates containing a white glutinous
substance. As the guest of ceremony, it was my privilege to be served
first, which did not give me the chance of watching what others might
do. I took a spoonful of the white substance, and swallowed it, hoping
for the best. But it was the worst that I had done. I discovered
afterward that it was a resinous stuff called _mastica_, something
in the nature of chewing gum. The mouthful I had swallowed had a
most disturbing effect upon my system, and even the Metropolitan was
alarmed. My son Tony, served second, was in the same trouble.
In the Greek schools of Smyrna all the scholars were kept in during the
luncheon hour, while we went from class to class inspecting their work
and making polite bows and speeches to the teachers. The scholars,
ranging from all ages of childhood, did not seem to bear us any grudge
for their long wait for lunch, and we were much impressed by their
discipline, their pretty manners, their beautiful eyes. Tony felt like
the Prince of Wales, and was conscious of the “glad eyes” of the older
girls.... When Smyrna was reported to be a city of fire and massacre, I
thought with dreadful pity of those little ones.
We touched with our very hands the spirit of this ancient race in
the time of its glory, when we went into the museum and handled the
pottery, the gods, the household ornaments, the memorials--found by
peasants with their picks not far below the soil--of that time when
Homer was born (it is claimed) in this city of the Ægean, when the
Ionians held it, when Lysimachus made it great and beautiful, until it
was one of the most prosperous ports in the world, crowded with Greek
and Roman and Syrian ships trading between the West and East.
Lieutenant Casimatis took us to his little home away on a lonely road
beyond the Turkish quarter, and we spent an evening with his family,
a handsome wife and three beautiful children who sang little songs to
us in French and Greek. The poor lady was nervous. Some shadow of fear
was upon her because of that Turkish army beyond the Greek trenches. I
hope with all my heart she escaped from Smyrna with her babes before
the horror happened.... I drank to the welfare of Greece in the sweet
resinous wine which Lieutenant Casimatis poured out for us. It was a
sincere wish, but at the back of my mind was some foreboding.
We drove out one day to Boudja and Bournabat, past the slopes of Mount
Pagus and away in the hills. Turkish peasants riding on donkeys or in
ox wagons jogged along the dusty tracks. We passed Turkish cemeteries
with tombstones leaning at every angle below tall, black cypress
trees, and looking back, saw the brown roofs of Smyrna below, as in a
panorama under the hot sun which made the gulf like molten metal.
In the country we lost touch with the Western world. It was Asia,
with the smell and color and silence of the East. A camel caravan
moved slowly in the valley, like a picture in “The Arabian Nights.”
But at Boudja, and later at Bournabat, we were astonished to see
English-looking girls in English summer frocks, carrying tennis
racquets, and appearing as though they had just left Surbiton. These
two villages were inhabited by British merchants who had been long
settled there as traders in Oriental carpets, spices, raisins, dates,
and the merchandise of the East. We called on one of them at Bournabat,
and I rubbed my eyes when, with Asia Minor at the gate, we drove up
to a house that might have been transplanted from Clapham Park in the
early Victorian period, when Cubitt was building for a rich middle
class.
The house was furnished like that, except for some bearskins and
hunting trophies, and the two old ladies and one old gentleman who gave
us tea might have been transported on a magic carpet from a tea party
in the time of the Newcomes. We had toasted muffins, and the stouter of
the two old ladies (who wore a little lace cap and sat stiffly against
an antimacassar, in a chintz-covered chair) asked whether we would take
one or two lumps of sugar with our tea. Tony, who was beginning to feel
an exile from civilization, beamed with happiness at this English life
again.
The old gentleman had been the greatest trader in Asia Minor, and in
his younger days had hunted with Turkish peasants in the mountains. He
loved the Turk still, though he deplored the cruelties they had done
to the Christian populations in the war. For the Greeks he had pity,
and dreadful forebodings. He knew something of what was happening
behind the Turkish lines, with Mustapha Kemal. There would be no peace
until they had Smyrna back again. The Greeks had claimed too much.
Venizelos had lost his head. Lloyd George--The old man sighed, and fell
into a gloomy silence. “I’m afraid of the future,” he said, presently.
“Nobody will listen to my advice. The Greeks think I am pro-Turk. What
I want is a just peace, and above all peace. This is only an armed
truce.” He told me many things about the situation which filled me with
uneasiness. I promised to see him again, but after a few days we left
Smyrna for Athens.
We traveled in a little steam yacht which had once been Vanderbilt’s
and now was a Greek passenger ship, called _Polikos_. It was crowded
with Greek officers, in elegant uniforms, and very martial-looking
until a certain hour of the evening. The passage began in a wonderful
calm, and after darkness there were groups of singing folk of different
nationalities, as on that other ship, but presently a terrific storm
broke upon us, and the singing ceased, and the _Polikos_ was a ship of
sick and sorry people.
Tony and I crept to our bunks in a big crowded cabin, and the Greek
officers in the other bunks were frightfully and outrageously ill.
Early next morning their martial appearance had gone and they were the
disheveled wrecks of men. Tony, with extreme heroism, staggered to the
saloon and ordered ham and eggs, but thought better of it before they
came, and took to his bunk again, below mine which I, less brave, had
never left. We were glad to reach Athens without shipwreck.
We had a week of joy there, in dazzling sunshine, and wandered about
the ruins of the Acropolis and touched old stones with reverence, and
sipped rose-tinted ices in the King’s Gardens, and saw Greek boys
throwing the discus in the very arena where the games were played
in the Golden Age, and tried to remember odd scraps of classical
knowledge, to recall the beauty of the Gods and the wisdom of the
poets. All that need not be told, but it was as pro-Greeks that we
returned to England, and with memories which made us understand more
sharply the tragedy of that defeat when the Cross went down before the
Crescent, and the horror happened in Smyrna, and all the world held its
breath when Constantinople was threatened with the same fate.