Canberra Times (Australia)
July 27, 2008 Sunday
Final Edition

The story of Smyrna

by ALEV ADIL

Smyrna, the wealthiest of Ottoman cities, embodied that empire’s best
qualities of cosmopolitanism and religious tolerance. The city, now
Izmir in Turkey, boasted some of the most luxurious department stores,
cinemas and opera houses in the world.

"The feminine element from the age of about 13 overdresses like a
professional," a British officer observed in 1918. While Greeks
predominated, the city also housed sizeable Armenian, Jewish, Turkish,
European and American populations. The Levantines were by far the
richest community, with the largest stake in every commercial
activity. They were of British and European descent and had lived in
Smyrna since the reign of George III.

Giles Milton’s Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 is an engrossing account of
the events leading up to the destruction of the city in 1922, based
largely on the previously unpublished letters and diaries of these
Levantine dynasties. The Whitalls, Girauds and Van der Zees led a
charmed existence.

Life was a glittering round of tennis parties, balls, yachting and
picnics accompanied by bouzouki players. Smyrna had been largely
untouched by the tragedies of the Great War.

The city’s Ottoman governor, Rahmi Bey, a genial Anglophile, even
protected the Armenian population from the deportations and massacres
of 1915 and tried to broker a coup d’e{aac}tat with the British. His
affections were not returned.

"For more than five centuries, the presence of the Turk in Europe has
been a source of distraction, intrigue and corruption," Lord Curzon
declared. "Let not this occasion …

be missed of purging the earth of one of its most pestilent roots of
evil."

The victorious Allies gave the Greeks the go-ahead to invade. News of
the occupation of Smyrna in 1919 and of ensuing Greek atrocities
stirred nascent Turkish nationalism and resistance. The failure of the
Greek occupation three years later evoked no great panic. The citizens
of Smyrna, confident that the warships of the Allied fleet would
protect them, were unprepared for the horror unleashed upon them.

Eye-witness accounts of carnage make for stomach-churning reading, but
faith in human nature is restored by Milton’s accounts of the heroism
of individuals like Asa Jennings. An American employee of the YMCA,
his efforts stirred the Allies and the Greek government into rescuing
half a million refugees. Milton’s book celebrates the heroism of
individuals who put lives before ideologies.

Independent Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922. By Giles Milton.

Sceptre. 426pp. $35.