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European Witness
WHERE AND WHEN THE FIRES WERE LIGHTED
Page 3
The writer of this letter is neither Armenian nor Greek and is a person of the highest repute. I do not agree with the reason stated in it for the burning of Smyrna.
The torch was applied to that ill-fated city and it was all systematically burned by the soldiers of Mustapha Khemal in order to exterminate Christianity in Asia Minor and to render it impossible for the Christians to return.
By the time the Turkish soldiers had set fire to Smyrna, September 13, 1922, I had succeeded in getting hold of practically all of my colony (about three hundred in number) most of them naturalized citizens. These, together with their families and relatives were huddled in the Theatre de Smyrne, on the quay, owned by a naturalized American citizen. Just across the road was the harbor where the American cruiser, the Simpson, was moored, ready to take them off. There was a guard of bluejackets with a machine-gun inside the theater.
Soon after the conflagration took on serious proportions, I went up on the terrace of the Consulate to look. The spectacle was one of vast dark clouds of smoke, arising from a wide area, for the fire had been started simultaneously in many places.
As it was evident that the time was fast approaching when it would be necessary to evacuate the colony, I was kept very busy during those few remaining lurid hours in signing passes for such as were entitled to American protection and transportation to Piraeus.
The flames consumed the Armenian quarter with such appalling rapidity as to make it certain that the Turks were augmenting them with inflammable fluids. Bluejackets sent to the scene reported that they saw Turkish soldiers throwing rags soaked in petroleum into Armenian houses.
The buildings of Smyrna were much more inflammable than they appeared at a casual glance. The city had suffered in times past from earthquakes and the stone and plaster walls contained a skeleton of wooden beams and timbers to prevent their being easily shaken down. When a wall became very hot from a contiguous fire these wooden timbers caught inside the plaster and the masonry crumbled. As the conflagration spread and swept on down toward the quay where were the beautiful and well-built offices and warehouses of the great foreign merchants and the residences of the rich Levantines, Greeks and Armenians, the people poured in a rapidly increasing flood to the waterfront, old, young, women, children, sick and well. Those who were unable to walk were carried on stretchers, or on the shoulders of relatives.
The aged Doctor Arghyropoulos, long a well-known figure on the streets of Smyrna, being ill, was brought down on a stretcher to the quay where he died.
The last Miltonic touch was now added to a scene of vast, unparalleled horror and human suffering. These thousands were crowded on a narrow street between the burning city and the deep waters of the bay.
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