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European Witness
Page 3
Professor Davis says in "A Short History of the Near East":
"In August, 1922, apparently with French munitions and French counselors, the Khemalists suddenly attacked the Greek positions in Bithynia. The Greeks were in poor morale, worn out by long campaigning and miserably led. Their army was utterly routed and evacuated Anatolia with almost incredible speed. The Turks drove straight onward to Smyrna, which they took (September 9, 1922) and then burned. The world was again horrified by one of the now standardized Ottoman massacres of conquered populations."
It is to be noted that neither the French nor the Italians permitted the Greek navy to search the ships of their nationals proceeding to Turkish ports, which is in itself a breach of neutrality and can have but one interpretation—that they were carrying arms and supplies to the Khemalists, with the consent and protection of their governments.
For these reasons the battle-ships of the brave and chivalric French, "Protectors of the Christians in the Orient," were obliged to sit quietly among the dead bodies floating in the Bay of Smyrna and watch the massacre going on.
The following typical incident illustrates the perfect harmony prevailing in naval circles in the Harbor of Smyrna resulting from international discords and how punctiliously the amenities were observed: An admiral of a battle-ship had been invited to dine with one of his colleagues. He arrived some minutes late and apologized for the delay, which had been caused by the dead body of a woman getting tangled up in the propeller of his launch.
That lucid and well-informed writer, Doctor Herbert Adams Gibbons, in an article in the "Century Magazine" for October, 1921, gives the best analysis of the French and Italian attitude with regard to the Turks that I have seen anywhere. It can not, of course, be reproduced in extenso here, but a few quotations will be sufficient to show that French support of the Turks was due to fear and jealousy of the British. Says Doctor Gibbons:
"The British regarded Greece as a sort of protectorate, financially and militarily under the control of Great Britain. The scheme was spoiled by the fall of Venizelos and the subsequent defeat of the Greek armies in Asia Minor."
"The Near East had been culturally French since the Crusades. From Saloniki to Beirut, France was determined to reign supreme. Palestine represented the very last concession that it was possible for the French to make. Of course the French did not hope to possess Constantinople, but they were not going to let the British settle themselves on the Bosphorus, as they had done at Gibraltar and Port Said, in Malta and Cyprus. For this would mean British domination of the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, and for British capital and British goods the priority in markets which had been traditionally French."
"I am not conjecturing. The trend of the French press, inspired by the government, leaves no room for doubt as to what is prompting France to send arms and money to Khemal Pasha."
"During the war one of the telling indictments against Germany was her friendship for and alliance with Turkey when the Armenians were being massacred. Germany was held responsible for the massacres on the ground that she could have stopped them had she used her influence with her ally. This was true; but is it not equally true now that France must bear the opprobrium and in a measure the responsibility, of the Armenian and Greek massacres of 1920 and 1921? A French general negotiated with the Nationalists in Cilicia without stipulating, that the massacres should cease. French diplomats have negotiated with the Angora Government of Khemal Pasha, conniving at the massacres of Armenians and Greeks. The sole thought of the Germans during the war was to use the Turks and not run any risk of offending them by protesting against the massacres. This is exactly what the French are doing now."
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