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 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
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 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 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. 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 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 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 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.