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TURKEY : THE BLIGHT OF ASIA

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FIRST DISQUIETING RUMORS

    MY WIFE and I were at Sevdikeuy, a Greek village a few miles south of Smyrna on the Ottoman railway, when the news that the Greek army was meeting with serious reverses arrived. These rumors were not believed at first, but they grew more and more insistent, throwing the population into an agony of fear.

    At last the report became a certainty. The official news was received that the Greek army had suffered a terrible and irretrievable defeat and that nothing now prevented the Turks from descending to the coast. The population began to leave, a few at first, then more and more until the flight developed into a veritable panic.

    The town was fast filling with refugees from the interior. The majority of these refugees were small farmers who had lived on properties that had descended from father to son for many generations. Their forebears had settled in Asia Minor before the Turks had begun to develop into a nation. They were children of the soil, able to live and care for themselves in their little houses and on their few acres, each family with its cow, its donkey and its goat. They were even producing tobacco, figs, seedless raisins and other products for export. They were expert in the cultivation and manipulation of the better qualities of cigarette tobacco and the priceless raisins, of which latter Asia Minor produces the best quality in the world. This valuable farmer element, the very backbone of the prosperity of Asia Minor, had again been reduced to beggary and thrown upon American charity. They were arriving by thousands in Smyrna and all along the seacoast. They were filling all the churches, schools and the yards of the Y. M. and Y. W. C. A. and the American mission schools. They were sleeping in the streets. Many were getting away during those first days on steamers and sailing craft. The caiques in the harbor, loaded with refugees and their effects, were a picturesque sight. For the man whose heart has not suffered atrophy as a result of the Great War, the spectacle of great numbers of helpless little children was particularly moving. Unfortunately, atrophy of the human heart has been one of the most noticeable phenomena of the great Armageddon. Doctor Esther Lovejoy, of New York, already referred to, used an expression with regard to certain Americans, who were present during the scenes of suffering and outrage. "Their minds did not seem to register." Had she said "hearts," she would have been nearer the truth. The refugees carried with them as much of their belongings as their strength permitted and one often saw a little child sitting on top of a great bundle of bedding, the whole supported on the shoulders of some man or woman stumbling along.

    In normal times the sick are not seen, as they are in the houses lying in bed for the most part. In ease of a great fire or panic one is surprised at the number of sick or disabled thus brought to light. Many of the refugees were carrying sick upon their shoulders. I remember especially one old gray-haired woman stumbling through the streets of Smyrna with an emaciated feverish son astride her neck. He was taller than the mother, his legs almost touching the ground.

    Then the defeated, dusty, ragged Greek soldiers began to arrive, looking straight ahead, like men walking in their sleep. Great numbers—the more fortunate—were sitting on ancient Assyrian carts, descendants of the very primitive vehicles used in the time of Nebuchadnezzar.

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