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European Witness
CONCLUSION
THE outstanding facts in the preceding narrative are the following:
1. Smyrna was burned by the Turks, as the concluding, at present, act in a consistent policy that has been shaping Moslem history and expansion for centuries, and especially Turkish history since the coming to power of the Young Turks, as displayed in the "Turkifying" murders, tortures and persecutions in Macedonia that led to the First Balkan War (1912); the killing and driving from their homes of the Greeks of Asia Minor during the period just preceding the outbreak of the World War and the destruction of their flourishing villages, (as described by the Frenchman Manciet, writing of the scenes at Phocaea); the deportation of Greeks, men, women and children in the midwinter of 1916, from the Black Sea region, forcing them to walk in the inclement weather till many thousands perished (as mentioned by Dana K. Getchell, in his letter given above); the doing to death of between eight hundred thousand and a million Armenians in 1915-16; the burning of Smyrna and the massacre of thousands of its inhabitants in 1922.
2. Smyrna was burned by Turkish soldiers at a time when they were in full and complete possession of the city, and the fires were applied first in the Armenian quarter, in which the Turks had been plundering, murdering and raping for several days and where no Armenian was to be found, with the possible exception of such survivors as might be hiding in cellars.
3. Credible non-Greek or non-Armenian witnesses testified to the manner of the burning of Smyrna.
4. A Turkish soldier poured petroleum, or petroleum mixed with gasoline, in the street before the American consular building, causing the fire to be led up to and communicated to the building and endangering the lives of those within.
5. The burning of Smyrna and the massacre and abuse of its Christian inhabitants in the year of our Lord, 1922, was made possible through the mutual jealousies and conflicting commercial interests of certain Christian powers, and the actual aid, moral and material, furnished by some of them to the Turks.
6. The Turks committed their fearful acts against the Christians and humanity in general in the full conviction that they would meet with no opposition nor even criticism from the United States. They were led to this belief by a loud pro-Turk and anti-Christian propaganda carried on in the American press by certain concession hunters, and other interested writers.
7. No Gladstonian note of horror, protest or revulsion has as yet issued from any official American source, though the Turks have surpassed anything that Gladstone ever dreamed of.
8. The Turks can not regain the confidence and respect of the civilized world until they repent sincerely of their crimes and make all restitution in their power.
9. Concealing such deeds as have been recounted in these chapters or misrepresenting them with the purpose of obtaining material advantages or saving property, reveals a low state of morality, consistent with the spirit of this commercial age.
10. One of the many reasons why Mohammedanism is outstripping Christianity in the latter’s ancient birthplace and territory, and in general wherever the two religions meet face to face, is that Christ has been unworthily followed by the people who are sending out the missionaries.
11. Church people in America should become aware of the fact that American missionaries in Turkey can not convert Turks, nor conduct religious exercises at which Turks are present and that the schools in the Ottoman Empire are now being conducted on that basis; and that, if they should convert any Turks, the latter would be killed, and the missionaries and their buildings be in danger of attack.
But the chief lesson of these pages is the growing feebleness of Christianity—divided, insincere, permeated with materialism; undermined and befuddled, in much of its old sturdy and childlike credence, by modern scientific discovery.
Whoever has attended, as I have done at the city of Washington, a general meeting of missionaries, can not have failed to be impressed with the devotion, enthusiasm and spiritual fervor of those noble men and women who carry the beautiful doctrines of Christ to heathen lands. I saw them and heard them soon after my return from the Near East and the Smyrna horror, and I could scarcely refrain from rising to my feet and crying:
"Come borne and save us, before it is everlastingly too late!"
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