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European Witness
Page 5
The American interests in Smyrna were very important. Besides the omnipresent Standard Oil Company, there were the great McAndrews and Forbes licorice firm with its spacious offices and thousands of employees and laborers, all the principal tobacco companies whose business amounted to millions yearly, the exporters of figs and raisins and carpets, and after the Greek occupation, the importers of agricultural implements and automobiles.
There were important American educational and humanitarian institutions as well as archeological expeditions to Sardis and Colophon. The excavators at Sardis during their last campaign made a notable discovery of thirty gold coins of Croesus, which were taken charge of by me and brought to the United States immediately after the Smyrna disaster. They also, with my aid, succeeded in obtaining the first large consignment of original marbles that has ever been sent to any American museum. These latter were shipped to America for the Metropolitan Museum of New York. All these marbles and coins were, for political reasons, sent back to Constantinople from New York.
I shall permit myself to digress sufficiently at this point to make the observation that I took keener satisfaction in bringing these remarkable antiquities to the United States than in any other single act of my entire consular career. This satisfaction was shared by the late Howard Crosby Butler, who added to my pleasure by his unstinted commendation. Perhaps if this great scholar and courtly gentleman had not died suddenly in Paris, he might have prevented the sacrifice of these treasures to business and political interests—futilely and unreasonably sacrificed.
Among the interesting ancient monuments existing in Smyrna are two aqueducts, which can be seen from the railroad running to Boudja. There is also the so-called "Tomb of Tantalus," the mythical founder of the town. The excellent water supply of the city is still derived from an ancient source known as the "Baths of Diana."
The road from Smyrna to Boudja skirts the beautiful Valley of St. Anne, so named because she is supposed to have been buried there. Through this flows the river known as the Meles, by the banks of which Homer may have composed his great epics.
The civilization of this ancient and beautiful city was essentially Greek. The great mills of Nazli, which before the war supplied an excellent quality of flour not only to Smyrna vilayet, but to the rest of Turkey and even exported to Europe, were founded by a Greek. Of the three hundred and ninety-one factories at Smyrna, three hundred and forty-four were Greek and fourteen Turkish. Statistics of this nature could be multiplied indefinitely.
The two principal native schools—both Greek—were the Homerion, an institution for girls, and the Evangelical School for Boys, the latter under British protection. These were academies of great merit, affording a liberal course of education, and their graduates, many of them successful men and women, are to be found in all parts of the world. The library of the Evangelical School was recognized by scholars as containing a large and invaluable collection of books, manuscripts and inscriptions, many of which can never be replaced.
Among other irreparable losses caused by the fire should be mentioned two very ancient copies of the Bible, one kept in a church in Smyrna, and the other the special charge of a small community of Christians who are said to have fled from Ephesus when that city was sacked by the Turks centuries ago, and to have founded a small village whose sole object was the preservation of this venerable book. This part of the tale should not be finished without reference to the records of the American Consulate. Smyrna was one of the oldest of our foreign offices and contained many dispatches signed by Daniel Webster and others equally famous in our history, besides interesting references to incursions of the Barbary pirates, and an account of the saving of a famous Polish patriot by a small American cruiser, which cleared for action and demanded his release from an Austrian battle-ship. There have been many thrilling and inspiring episodes in the history of our navy where commanders have acted on their own responsibility in behalf of justice and humanity. Such episodes were more frequent before the perfection of the wireless and the submarine telegraph. It is a consolation to reflect that the spirited incident mentioned above occurred in the harbor of Smyrna, to balance, as it were, the history of the locality.
I was engaged before the fire in going through the ancient records and preparing a resume of their contents. Among the treasures of the Consulate were twelve magnificent old wood-prints of the battle of Navarino, giving different stages of the action, with faithful reproductions of the various ships with their names, which, as they were my personal property, I had intended to present to our navy department. I believe that there are no other copies of these prints in existence.
Smyrna is now a mass of ruins and a Turkish village. It should be borne in mind, however, that history repeats itself. Smyrna was rebuilt by Greeks after its destruction by Lydians, and Hellenic civilization again reasserted itself after the ferocity of the Turkish pirates of 1084, and the frightful butcheries of Tamerlane. A great city is the flower of industry and a peaceful and prosperous civilization. When the farmers swarm over the plains and the sailors go down to the sea in ships, then the bazaars and warehouses are built, the banks and the counting-houses and the shops of the cunning artisans. Smyrna will grow great again when a live and progressive Western civilization once more develops in Ionia. History has demonstrated that the Greeks, from their geographical position, their industrial and economic enterprise, and their relative maritime supremacy in the Mediterranean are the people ultimately destined to carry European progress into Asia Minor unless, indeed, Christianity should utterly fail, and with it, the civilization founded upon it. Smyrna is too near Europe for Turkish retrogression and blight to rest there indefinitely. Its fields are too rich and too valuable to the human race to remain permanently in the bands of a sparse population of incompetent shepherds. The question is often asked: "When will the Turks rebuild Smyrna!" Turkish Smyrna was not burned.
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