THE EXPANSION AND DEBACLE OF GREECE
None can understand the tragedy that was enacted in Asia Minor in 1922,
none is fitted to pass judgment upon it, none has the right to venture
an opinion on the rôle the Greeks will still play in the settlement
of the Near Eastern question, without having made a serious and
sympathetic attempt to follow the Hellenic national movement through
the century of struggle that culminated in the collapse of the Greek
armies in Asia Minor and the burning of Smyrna in September, 1922. The
legend has grown that Greece is the victim of the imperialistic folly
of her greatest statesman, who involved his people in ambitious dreams
of conquest that were impossible of fulfilment. Admirers of Venizelos,
to refute this legend, have launched another legend. They have tried
to make the world believe that Greece’s disasters and humiliation
are due to a pro-German king, supported by an unscrupulous group of
politicians, who almost ruined his country during the World War through
intrigues with Germany, and whose dramatic return to the throne in
1920 robbed Greece of the advantages Venizelos had secured for her in
the Treaty of Sèvres.
The rival legends are based upon a threefold misapprehension of the
connection between the Greek people and the little Kingdom of Greece,
of the relations of the great powers with the Kingdom of Greece and the
Greek people, and of the significance, internally and internationally,
of the Venizelist movement since 1910.
It has been assumed by most writers that the Kingdom of Greece, as
constituted after the War of Independence, marked the resurrection of
the nation, and was the natural and logical outcome of a struggle for
emancipation. This error came from a confusion of classical Greece with
historic Greece. Up to this day it has not been realized in Occidental
Europe and America that the Greek national movement does not have its
inspiration in the ancient glory of Athens and Sparta, of Corinth and
Thebes. The Peloponnesus and Attica and the coast-lands of the Gulf of
Corinth never formed a united country, inhabited by a people enjoying a
common nationhood.
The Kingdom of Greece, at the tip of the Balkan peninsula, was an
artificial country, brought into being after the War of Independence,
by a compromise of interests and jealousies on the part of Russia,
France, and Great Britain. The dream of the Greeks who raised the
banner of revolt against the Turks was the restoration of the Byzantine
Empire, which endured for a thousand years, and not of the Greece
we study about in school, which never existed as a united country.
National movements are inspired by historic traditions, nurtured by
religion, and grouped around a language. The connection between the
Greek nation of the nineteenth century and ancient pagan Athens and
Sparta is remote. Constantinople and Smyrna have been the _foyers_ of
Hellenism. The leaders in the War of Independence, who started and
directed the revolt against the Turks, came from Epirus, Macedonia, the
islands of the Ægean Sea, and Asia Minor.
The Kingdom of Greece was a makeshift of European diplomacy. The powers
were determined to maintain, in so far as it is humanly possible to do
so, the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. They feared the preponderant
influence, each of the others, in the Near East. Every time a Christian
subject people arose against the Turks, their efforts were directed
toward preventing the success of national movements. They made use of
expedients to bolster up the decaying Ottoman Empire by opposing where
they could, and limiting where they could not successfully oppose, the
separation of Balkan provinces from Turkey. This policy, justified
by the consideration of keeping the peace among themselves, has been
followed in every conference of European statesmen from Vienna in 1815
to Lausanne in 1923. The rising tide of nationalism in the Balkans,
encouraged by the intrigues of single great powers, has been frowned
upon when the great powers came together to adjust their rivalry.
More than Serbians, Rumanians, and Bulgarians, have the Greeks been
victims of this policy. For the triumph of Hellenism would have meant
not simply the detachment of outlying provinces but a blow struck at
the heart of the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks have never had a fair
chance, either by themselves or in alliance with the other Balkan
peoples, to work out their own salvation. At times the great powers
have intervened directly; on other occasions they have aimed to keep
the Balkan peoples weak by setting them against one another. For a
hundred years it has been a game of bullying, bribing, fishing in
troubled waters.
Venizelos was born and won his spurs in Crete under the Ottoman yoke.
He was a leader in revolutions, and his first experiences with European
diplomacy convinced him that the powers were determined, for the sake
of their own interests, to keep his native island under Ottoman
sovereignty. He left Crete and entered into the political life of
the little kingdom of Greece to make the kingdom a Piedmont for the
unification of Hellas. The Venizelist movement from the beginning,
therefore, was not interested primarily in the internal affairs
of independent Greece. The Venizelists set out to regenerate and
strengthen the Kingdom of Greece for the purpose of using Athens as the
starting-point in a campaign to emancipate the Greeks still under the
Ottoman yoke. It is impossible to call Venizelos an imperialist, who
conceived grandiose schemes and wrecked his country trying to put them
through. The Kingdom of Greece was not “his country.” Of the 7,000,000
Greeks in the coast-lands and islands of the Ægean, hardly more than a
fourth were inhabitants of the kingdom of Greece. The movement to which
Venizelos gave his name was a movement to liberate as many as possible
of the 5,000,000 Greeks still under Turkish rule, beginning with his
own island of Crete.
The ideas of King Constantine and his great premier were radically
antagonistic; they could not be reconciled. Constantine accepted
joyfully the partial liberation that came through the Balkan wars at
the beginning of his reign. But he looked upon his kingdom as a country
whose internal interests were paramount. His policy during the war was
to steer Greece through difficult years by maintaining neutrality. The
policy of Venizelos was to involve Greece in the war on the side of the
enemies of Turkey in order that, as a result of their victory (in which
he believed implicitly), Greece might be enabled to free as many as
possible of the Greeks still under the yoke of Turkey. When the Allies
deposed King Constantine in 1917, Venizelos brought Greece into the war
to fight for the redemption of the Ottoman Greeks and the completion of
the unification of the nation.
At the Peace Conference no representative of a smaller state had a
stronger case than Venizelos. In taking territories away from Germany
and Austria and Hungary the Conference went back to the Middle Ages
to allow historic claims. Ports were taken from the vanquished
on ethnological grounds, even when the hinterland was of another
character; and where the inhabitants were not of the nationality of
the claimant state, ports were taken away on economic grounds, the
self-determination argument being justified by the hinterland! In the
changes in Europe there could not be adduced the additional argument of
Venizelos, that liberation from the vanquished meant security of life
and property and a greater degree of prosperity. And yet the Entente
Powers, at one in their determination to despoil Germans, Austrians,
and Hungarians, hesitated a little about the Bulgarians and a long
time about the Turks. In the atmosphere of the Peace Conference none
dared say a word in favor of mitigating the harshness and injustice of
the terms imposed upon Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians. But a strong
current in favor of the Turks set in; and, had there not been the
necessity of placating the Serbians to reconcile them to the Italian
demands, the Bulgarians would have got off more easily than they did.
Venizelos was an outstanding figure among the statesmen gathered at
Paris. He had the ear of Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson. The
American President eagerly enlisted his support in drafting and forcing
the adoption of the League of Nations Covenant. Orlando, worried to
the breaking-point by the Adriatic question, intimated his willingness
to meet the Greeks half-way or more in the questions of Epirus and the
Dodecanese. Resisting the evident intention to put him off until after
Germany and Austria were dealt with, Venizelos succeeded in getting
before the Council of Ten and later the Big Four the aspirations of
Hellenism.
What little measure of success the Greek premier attained, however,
was due to his personal influence and not to affection for Greece,
nor to gratitude or confidence. French intrigues against Greece were
second only to those of the Italians, who had a natural reason for
opposing Greater Greece with as much energy as Greater Serbia. The
latter was a more real danger for Italy, as it would bring the Slavs
to the Adriatic; but the former was viewed with alarm as a commercial
and naval rival in the eastern Mediterranean. Despite the Saloniki
revolution and the tardy entrance of Greece into the war, the French
were not ready to forgive the so-called massacre of December 1, 1916,
when their marines, entering Athens, were greeted by a rain of bullets.
Powerful influences at work in British as well as French diplomatic
circles, were felt at the Conference, to prevent the despoiling of
Turkey at the expense of Greece, for fear of offending Mohammedan
sentiment in India and North Africa.
The withdrawal of the Italians in a huff after Wilson’s sensational
Fiume declaration gave the Greeks an unexpected opportunity to
anticipate the formal decision of the Conference on their claims in
Asia Minor. Lloyd George heard that the Italian Government was planning
to send an expeditionary corps to Smyrna in order that the Peace
Conference might be confronted with a _fait accompli_. He persuaded
Clemenceau and Wilson that the only way of preventing the contemplated
Italian _coup_ would be to have Greece occupy Smyrna and the immediate
hinterland in the name of the Allied and Associated Powers. Venizelos
was summoned suddenly to the Quai d’Orsay, and the proposal was put
before him. Lloyd George urged its acceptance. Venizelos agreed. The
plans were secretly worked out by the British, French, American, and
Greek military advisers.
Greek troops were landed at Smyrna on May 14, 1919, and, after seven
weeks of disorders and some severe fighting, the Greek army was in
possession of the Smyrna region and had extended its occupation along
the railway lines to the limits of the province of Aïdin. The press
was fed with lurid stories of massacres by both Greeks and Turks, for
which, on both sides, there seemed unfortunately to be substantial
foundation. The Greek army asserted that it was fired upon in Smyrna,
and had to retaliate. The soldiers undoubtedly got out of hand. But
order was quickly restored. Most of the atrocities in the province
seemed to have been due to the local native population, Mohammedan and
Christian.
After the occupation of Smyrna a whole year passed before Venizelos
was able to get the Entente Powers to agree upon the terms of peace
to be imposed upon Turkey. In the meantime, as is recorded in the
next chapter, a formidable Turkish Nationalist movement was allowed
to get under way, in the interior of Asia Minor, which added to the
difficulties of the negotiations and began to menace the Greek hold
on Smyrna. The Paris Conference adjourned in November, 1919, without
having adopted a draft for the Turkish treaty. Holders of Turkish
bonds, actual and expectant holders of concessions in Constantinople
and Asia Minor, and British and French officials interested in the
Mohammedan colonies, brought constant pressure to bear to prevent the
partition of the Ottoman Empire. After a brief visit home, Venizelos
was compelled to return to Europe to participate in the continuation
conferences.
Not because they were agreed or believed they had discovered a
satisfactory solution of the Turkish question, but because it was
impossible to delay decisions further, the Entente premiers adopted at
San Remo, in April, 1920, a draft treaty that had been over a year in
the making. The Turkish treaty terms had become a matter of bargaining.
France and Italy assented to the draft, which seemed to favor Great
Britain, because Lloyd George promised to back France in putting the
screws down on Germany both as to disarmament and reparations and to
let Italy settle the Adriatic question by direct negotiations with
Jugoslavia. The Treaty of Sèvres, whose main terms we gave in an
earlier chapter, was signed on August 10, 1920, after much haggling.
The Nationalists had refused to recognize the authority of the
Constantinople Government to enter into a treaty in the name of the
Turkish people, and had for several months been defying both the
Sultan and the Entente Powers. They had attacked the British, who
were occupying and running the Anatolian Railway from Constantinople
to Eski Sheïr, and had driven the British troops back to the Gulf of
Ismid, within sight of Constantinople. In this emergency the Entente
Powers called upon Greece, who was to be the principal beneficiary of
the treaty. In June the Greeks marched northeast from Smyrna and, in
a short campaign, came to the aid of the British. They occupied Brusa
on July 8. The Turkish Nationalists were also defying the Entente in
Thrace. After the victories in Asia Minor, the Greeks moved part of
their army across the Ægean Sea and occupied all of Eastern Thrace.
King Alexander entered Adrianople on July 25.
By the Treaty of Sèvres the Greeks were awarded Smyrna, with a generous
hinterland, and Thrace almost up to the defenses of Constantinople.
Constantinople and the Straits were to enjoy a special status, under
international protection, with only the nominal suzerainty of the
Sultan. Greece was confirmed in possession of all the islands of the
Ægean, except those at the mouth of the Dardanelles. Italy retained
only Rhodes, with the proviso that a plebiscite should be held fifteen
years after the cession of Cyprus by Great Britain to Greece. Since the
British had made no promise to cede Cyprus, however, the main object of
the Greek fight for the Dodecanese was not attained.
The Treaty of Sèvres, had it been maintained, would have been a great
step forward in the realization of the Greek dream to revive the
Byzantine Empire. What it actually gave Greece was not, however, as
much as the Treaties of St.-Germain, Trianon, and Neuilly had given
her Balkan allies, Serbia and Rumania. If the awards to Greece were
absurdly generous and unjustified and ought not to have been made at
the expense of a vanquished nation, what shall we say of the awards to
Serbia, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland? If the Treaty of Sèvres
had been applied, neither in territory and mineral and other wealth nor
in alien population would Greece have received nearly as much as these
other smaller states.
Greece’s titles, as recognized by the Treaty of Sèvres, were not only
more just but better earned than the titles of the other states under
the other treaties. What Greece received she had actually conquered by
her own efforts. And if the titles were to prove valid and permanent
it would also be by her own efforts. As early as March 6, 1920,
Venizelos reported to his Government that no British military support
would be available to keep Greeks either in Thrace or Asia Minor,
and that no assistance could be expected from France or Italy. If or
when the Treaty of Sèvres was signed, the Greeks would have to rely
upon themselves to enforce it. On June 15, two months before the
Treaty of Sèvres was accepted by the Constantinople Government, Lloyd
George again asked Venizelos if he thought Greece could take over
the territories in question and defend them from the Nationalists.
The Greek premier’s answer was the triumphant march on Brusa and the
expulsion of the Nationalists from Thrace.
Two days after the Treaty of Sèvres was signed, an attempt was made to
assassinate Venizelos as he was taking the train in Paris to return
to Greece. He was in poor physical condition when he got back to
Athens and found internal conditions in a very bad state. The head of
a Government cannot be away two years on an end and have things run
smoothly at home. His subordinates had abused their authority. There
was profound dissatisfaction, which was not allayed when the Greek
people discovered that the net result of the treaty was the Entente
Powers’ permission for Greece to work out her own salvation in Asia
Minor. Several classes in the army had already been in active service
for eight years. A wave of war weariness swept the country, of which
the partizans of the banished Constantine took full advantage. When
Venizelos was struggling against these handicaps, which were enough
to tax his ability and enthusiasm to the utmost, King Alexander
suddenly died. His younger brother Paul refused to return and take
the throne. The issue at the General Election thus became a personal
one between Constantine and Venizelos. The ex-king’s party won at the
polls on November 14, 1920. Venizelos left Greece. On December 19 King
Constantine and Queen Sophie, sister of ex-Kaiser Wilhelm, returned to
Athens.
Before the return of the King the British, French, and Italian
Governments issued a proclamation stating that the recall of King
Constantine could only be regarded as ratification by the Greek people
of the actions of the King, which had been hostile to the Allies, and
that the recall of the King would create an unfavorable situation
between Greece and the Entente Powers. After this proclamation a
plebiscite was held on December 5. There were a million votes,
virtually all in favor of the King.
Great Britain, France, and the United States refused to recognize
Constantine.[23] Notwithstanding the fearful handicap the return
of Constantine imposed upon Greece in her struggle to retain what
the Treaty of Sèvres had given her, Constantine persisted in his
determination to remain on the throne. Only after the revolution that
followed the collapse of the Greek armies in Asia Minor in September,
1922, did Constantine withdraw. Then he abdicated in favor of his
oldest son, George, who had recently married Princess Elizabeth of
Rumania, and went into exile in Sicily, where he died a few months
later.
Speculation as to what would have happened in Greece had Venizelos
remained in power is profitless. Therefore, we shall limit ourselves to
the story of what actually happened.
On January 4, 1921, in the absence of all Liberal or Venizelist
members, King Constantine opened the newly elected Chamber of Deputies
and stated that the war in Asia Minor would continue. As a matter
of fact, the Greeks could not have withdrawn; and at the same time,
in order not to withdraw, they had to go forward. On January 10,
the Greeks advanced over the mountains to Biledjik on the Anatolian
Railway, cutting off Angora from the Bosphorus. In a conference at
London on March 9, the Athens Government rejected a proposal of the
British and French Governments to modify the Treaty of Sèvres by the
Greek evacuation of Asia Minor in return for Turkish Nationalist assent
to the cession of Thrace to Greece. A new offensive was launched on
March 23, which succeeded in giving the Greeks possession of two
important junction-points of the Anatolian Railway, Afium-Karahissar
and Eski Sheïr, which they were afterward compelled to abandon. In the
early part of July, however, they returned to the attack, reoccupied
the ground lost in the spring, and won decisive victories at Kutahia
and Eski Sheïr. Encouraged by these victories, the Greek General Staff
made the mistake of believing that it was possible to march on to
Angora and put an end to Turkish resistance. The offensive was renewed
in the middle of August, was carried along the Sakaria River nearly to
Angora, but could not be maintained on the last lap of a march that had
cost them dear. The Greeks retreated to positions east of the Anatolian
Railway and dug themselves in for the winter in strong natural
positions.
Several efforts were made to mediate between Greece and Turkey by
the Supreme Council, the League of Nations, and the Conference of
Ambassadors. The last proposal, formulated in March, 1922, was
virtually the same as that of March, 1921, i. e., that the Turks should
have Asia Minor, while the Greeks should keep Thrace. In recognition
of the growing power of the Turkish Nationalists, the Entente
Powers offered modifications in the Sèvres provisions concerning
Constantinople and the Straits that would salve the pride of the Turks
and leave them nominal masters in their own house. The Turks were also
offered membership in the League of Nations.
The successive efforts of the Entente Powers to bring about a peaceful
liquidation of the Greek venture in Asia Minor by a voluntary revision
of the Treaty of Sèvres proved that the San Remo agreement of 1920
had failed, and that the victorious powers, unable to arrive at an
understanding, preferred to sacrifice the aspirations of Hellenism
and to allow the Turks to go unpunished rather than risk seeing one
of themselves best the others in a division of the Turkish spoils.
Other factors also entered into the Near Eastern question to make it
as complicated in 1922 as it had always been. The rôle of Russia at
Angora was disquieting. The Turkish Nationalists were menacing Great
Britain and France in Mesopotamia and Syria. London was suspected by
Paris and Rome of planning to use the Greeks as agents to hold Western
Asia Minor and the Straits in the interest of the mistress of the
seas. French statesmen felt that backing the Turks might prove to be
an excellent means of keeping the British in line to continue putting
the screws down on Germany. In vain the Greek Government protested that
the Treaty of Sèvres was an integral part of the Paris settlement and
as sacred as the other treaties. Had not the Greeks acted in good faith
in going into Asia Minor at the request of the great powers? Could
they be expected to withdraw and leave the Anatolian Christians, the
Circassians, and the anti-Kemalist Turks, who had coöperated in the
occupation, at the mercy of the Angora Nationalists?
From a purely military point of view the Greeks were in an excellent
position in Asia Minor. Behind most of their front lay railway lines.
They had had a year in which to fortify their front and organize lines
of communication. The Turks had not molested them. They had been able
to pick out the strongest natural defenses. But they had no money. The
boycott of the Constantine Government prevented them from contracting
loans or obtaining large credits for supplies abroad. They knew that
France and Italy had made treaties with the Turks and were supplying
them with artillery and munitions. They knew, too, that Soviet Russia
was giving substantial aid to their enemies. France and Italy did
not allow the Greeks to establish an effective blockade of the coast
of Asia Minor. The blockade rules which the French and Italians had
proclaimed in the Mediterranean, when they were fighting Turkey, and
had imposed upon Greek commerce, were declared intolerable when Greece
tried to use them to prevent the Turks from receiving war materials.
The Athens Government grew desperate. Every month the Turks were
becoming stronger, and yet it seemed impossible to order the evacuation
of Asia Minor. The British Government, and British public opinion in
general, encouraged the Greeks but only with words! In July the Greek
Government transferred 40,000 of its best troops from Asia Minor to
Thrace, and massed them, together with the Thracian army of occupation,
near Constantinople. A note was sent to the Entente Governments,
demanding permission to occupy Constantinople. It was a grand-stand
play, conceived as a supreme effort to avert impending disaster. The
Entente Powers refused to accede to the Greek request.
At the end of August, realizing that they could not last through
another winter in their positions east of the Anatolian Railway, the
Greeks prepared to fall back on a line within the limits of the zone
defined in the Treaty of Sèvres. The Turks got wind of the plan and
attacked at the most vulnerable point in the Greek front, where the
railway from Smyrna joined the Anatolian Railway at Afium-Karahissar.
Panic started and spread, as panic always does. The Greeks became
demoralized and abandoned their strong positions without fighting. They
retreated to the Ægean coast, burning towns and villages as they went.
Most of the army got away to the Ægean islands and to Thrace. But they
lost all their artillery and stores, and left the native Christians and
Mohammedan Circassians, who had made common cause with the Greeks, to
the mercy of the Turkish Nationalists. The demoralization of the Greek
army was not so great as that of the Italian army at Caporetto, and,
in numbers of troops affected, no greater than that of the British and
French in the last German offensive in France in the spring and early
summer of 1918. Had there been reserves to fall back upon, had there
been strong allies to come to the rescue, the Greeks could easily have
retrieved their fortunes. We must remember this in judging them. But
years of facing great odds alone, with no hope of a change, had ended
by taking the heart completely out of them.
The events of September, 1922, proved to be a greater blow to
Hellenism than the fall of Byzantium in 1453 or any other of the
vicissitudes suffered by the Greeks in the original Turkish conquest of
Asia Minor and the Balkans; for the Turks resolved this time to stamp
out Hellenism for good and all. The burning of Smyrna was accompanied
by wholesale massacres. The expulsion of the Greeks from Asia Minor
and Eastern Thrace followed the signature of an armistice at Mudania
on October 10. The negotiations were carried on between the Entente
Powers and the Turks. Greece, by her defeat, had been eliminated and
was forced to accept the loss of Eastern Thrace in order to secure the
armistice.
Before the Mudania Conference, when it was learned that the Entente
Powers had sent a note to Kemal Pasha, leader of the Turkish
Nationalists, offering to restore Eastern Thrace to Turkey as one
of the conditions of peace, a revolution broke out among the Greek
soldiers who had found refuge on the island of Mytilene. The troops
demanded that they be escorted to Athens. Under the joint leadership of
Colonels Gonatas and Plastiras, they arrived in Greece on September 26,
forced the abdication of Constantine, and accepted Crown Prince George
as King, on condition that he promise to regard his father’s abdication
as final and to place the Government in the hands of the revolutionary
committee they had formed. The first act of the revolutionaries was
the arrest of former premiers and ministers whom they regarded as
responsible for the Asia Minor disasters. These, they asserted, would
be tried for high treason. The new masters of Greece declared that they
would not give up Eastern Thrace. Only on this condition, however,
could they secure the intervention of Venizelos, who knew the futility
of attempting to renew the war and further indispose the Entente Powers.
After the evacuation of Eastern Thrace in October, Venizelos consented
to represent Greece at the new peace conference, which was to open at
Lausanne on November 20. The evacuation of Adrianople, which began on
October 15, created immediate difficulties for the new Government.
Had it not made the revolution for the avowed purpose of saving
Thrace? Martial law had to be proclaimed. Then, to appease popular
excitement, the revolutionary leaders began the investigation of the
causes of the disaster. A committee reported on November 8 that all the
anti-Venizelist Governments, from 1915 to 1922, were guilty of high
treason because they had alienated the sympathies of the Entente Powers
during the World War and since, because they had blindly supported
Constantine, because they had neglected to comply with the requests
and demands of the Entente Powers in regard to Asia Minor, because
they had concealed from the people the successive warnings as to the
impracticability of holding their foothold in Asia Minor, and because
they had permitted an occult government to exist in Greece under
Prince Nicholas, in defiance of the constitution. Another brother of
the ex-king, Prince Andrew, was arrested on the charge that he was
immediately responsible for the recent disaster. The report demanded
that six ex-premiers and ex-ministers, Admiral Goudas, and General
Hadjianestis, commander-in-chief of the Greek army in Asia Minor, be
tried for high treason before a special court martial.
Greek statesmen, including Premier Krokidas, who had consented to serve
under the revolutionary Government, begged that before the sentence
was announced there be granted right of appeal to a National Assembly,
which was to be elected in the near future. Krokidas resigned when
the plea was rejected. On November 25 Colonel Gonatas, unable to get
a civilian to take the office, assumed the premiership himself. Three
days later former Premiers Gounaris, Stratos, and Protopapadakis,
former Foreign Minister Baltazzi, former War Minister Theotokis, and
General Hadjianestis were condemned to death and fined sums amounting
to the confiscation of their private fortunes. A few hours later
they were shot. Prince Andrew escaped the death sentence; but he was
banished after military degradation.
The execution of the former ministers aroused a storm of protest in
Greece and abroad. The British minister left Athens, and the Greek
minister at Washington cabled his resignation. But Colonel Plastiras,
Chief of the Revolutionary Committee, not only assumed responsibility,
in the name of the committee, for what had happened, but declared that
all persons, civilian and military, connected with the Asia Minor
disaster would be brought to trial. He denied the charge that the court
martial was not a proper means of decreeing punishment. He announced,
moreover, that the General Election would be indefinitely postponed.
It was feared that the political executions, coming at the beginning
of the Lausanne Conference, would increase the already unfavorable
international situation of Greece. But Venizelos stuck at his task,
fought hard to save what he could, and through both periods of the
conference, lasting weary months, he watched for every opportunity to
profit by the resentment aroused among all the Entente delegates by the
unreasonableness and insolence of the Turks. Other patriotic Greeks
abroad, following the example of Venizelos, accepted and supported,
even where they could not defend, the Revolutionary Committee. They
felt that the debacle of Hellenism would be rendered complete if there
were a new outbreak of civil war in their unhappy country. There had
been too much of political strife during the years of miraculous
expansion.
The two preoccupations of Greece in 1923 have been the care of refugees
and the reorganization and strengthening of the army.
The refugee problem became acute immediately after the retreat.
Hundreds of thousands of Greeks, Circassians, and Armenians, and
a large number of non-Kemalist Turks fled pell-mell to the coast,
overcrowded Chios, Mytilene, and Samos, and flowed over to Athens and
Saloniki in a never ceasing stream. To these were added refugees from
Thrace. Then came the Christians expelled from the Black Sea littoral.
The Turks had retained, and deported into the interior for labor
battalions, the able-bodied men and boys. The Greek refugee situation
developed much the same as the earlier Armenian problem--countless
thousands of women, children, and old people, incapable of earning
their own living, even were there a chance to do so.
As virtually all the Christian population of Asia Minor and Thrace had
fled or had been exiled, Greece within a few weeks saw her population
increased by between 1,200,000 and 1,300,000 wholly dependent
immigrants, bringing disease with their poverty. They came at the
beginning of winter. All needed shelter, food, clothing, bedding, and
medical attention. The problem was appalling, and it still threatens to
overwhelm Greece in the summer of 1923. There is little hope of these
refugees’ being able to return to their homes. How can a country, not
self-supporting, bankrupt, and without credit abroad, take care of a
20 per cent increase in its population, not of able-bodied men, but of
dependents? Charity, notably that administered by the Near East Relief,
has kept the refugees from starving and freezing. It cannot continue
indefinitely, however, and very many Greeks believe that salvation lies
in a new test at arms with the Turks. They are by no means convinced of
the military superiority of the Angora Nationalists, unless they are
helped, as they were last time, from the outside. The Greeks still have
their fleet, which gives them mastery of the sea. If not interfered
with, they can blockade the Turks.
The lesson of the protracted and fruitless negotiations at Lausanne
seems to be that force alone counts for anything in international
relations. Throughout the discussions the attitude of the Turks
was that of defiance, and only military threats brought them to a
compromise. The best argument Venizelos had was the fact that 150,000
Greeks were still under arms, most of them in Western Thrace, with
their morale restored, and ready to try again. This prevented the Turks
from prodding him too hard, and this alone made the Entente Powers
willing to consider that, despite the debacle of 1922, there might
still be a promising future for Hellenism, and some profit to be had
for friends of the Greeks.