GEORGE HORTON: AN AMERICAN WITNESS IN SMYRNA
By James L. Marketos
GREEK NEWS, New York
Oct 16 2006
Posted on Monday, October 16 @ 12:00:57 EDT by greek_news
Exactly eighty-four years ago yesterday (September 13, 1922), a
massive fire broke out in the Armenian quarter of Smyrna (modern-day
Izmir). Ever since, controversy has raged over who started the fire,
whether it was an intentional act of genocide, and how many people were
killed. Estimates range from one or two thousand to over 100,000. There
is no dispute, however, that this was the 20th centuryʼs first
holocaust.
In 1922, Smyrna was a large and important commercial port on the Asia
Minor coast. Its population was about 400,000. Roughly 43% were Turkish
Muslims, 45% were Greek and Armenian Christians, 6% were Jews, and 5%
were foreigners. The Greek and Armenian Christians had deep roots in
Smyrna going back countless generations. Many owned successful and
long-established businesses. Others were professionals, artisans,
or educators. They had a thriving cultural life.
The fire raged for four days. A strong breeze drove the flames away
from the Turkish quarter and toward the waterfront, and with it
the cityʼs horrified Greeks and Armenians. The fire eventually
consumed all of the city except the Turkish quarter.
By late afternoon of the 13th, the fire had pinned thousands of victims
on the harborside quay, where they had fled hoping to finds means of
escape. On the narrow quay they found themselves trapped between the
raging fire at their backs and the deep harbor in front.
There they were subjected to unspeakable atrocities while the
uncontrollable fire burned itself out. And over the following weeks
and months, more perished from starvation and exposure while waiting
to be evacuated.
Tragically, the entire scene was witnessed by representatives of
the Allied Powers. They had pledged themselves to neutrality at the
Paris Peace Conference following World War I, and so they watched from
warships anchored about 250 yards offshore. All vessels that had been
tied up along the quay (including the U.S. destroyer Litchfield) had
to move off due to the intense heat of the fire. The foreign crews
evacuated their respective nationals from any danger in Smyrna and
plucked from the sea as many victims as could swim out to the ships.
At night, the foreign vessels drowned out the terrible screams coming
from the quay with band music and tried to keep rapes and murders to
a minimum with occasional sweeps of their powerful searchlights.
Some Turkish apologists contend that resentful, demoralized retreating
Greek army troops started the fire. Others contend that Armenians,
some disguised as Turkish soldiers, started the fire. They also
question why Turks would want to burn such a rich city.
By contrast, the Greek and Armenian version of events is that regular
Turkish army soldiers started the fire by spreading and igniting
petroleum in houses and other locations, and that the numbers
that perished are at the higher end of the estimates. This version
also contends that Turkish nationalist troops rampaged through the
city before and during the fire, assaulting, looting, and killing
Christians. The Greek and Armenian case is persuasively supported by
the testimony of an American eyewitness:
George Horton.
Biographical Information Horton was a literary man. He was a scholar
of both Greek and Latin.
He translated Sappho. He wrote a guide for the interpretation of
Scripture. He wrote several novels and was a renowned journalist in
Chicago, a member of what was called the "Chicago Renaissance."
He was also a professional diplomat who loved Greece. He became U.S.
Consul in Athens in 1893, where he actively promoted the revival of the
Olympic Games and inspired the U.S. teamʼs participation. He wrote
a lyrical visitorʼs guide to Athens and composed a reflective
description of a few monthsʼ stay in Argolis. And he married
Catherine Sacopoulo, a Greek American woman.
He served twice as U.S. Consul in Athens (1893-1898; 1905-1906). He
also served in Thessaloniki (1910-1911) and then in Smyrna up to the
U.S.ʼs break-off of diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire
(1911-1917) in World War I. He served again as consul in Smyrna
after the war (1919-1922) and remained in Smyrna until after the
fire began on September 13, 1922, spending the last hours before his
evacuation signing passes for those entitled to American protection
and transportation to Piraeus.
Today, George Horton is best remembered for his book about the events
leading up to and during the fire. The book was published in 1926,
and its title, The Blight of Asia, unabashedly refers to the abominable
behavior of the Turks. By the time of publication Horton had resigned
his diplomatic commission, and he wrote strictly in the capacity of
a private citizen, drawing on his own observations and those of the
people he quotes. In these remarks, I draw mostly on Hortonʼs
book, but also informative is the long cable he wrote to the State
Department from the Athens consulate two weeks after the fire.
Horton wanted his book to make four main points.
First, he wanted to illustrate that the catastrophic events in Smyrna
were merely "the closing act in a consistent program of exterminating
Christianity throughout the length and breadth of the old Byzantine
Empire."
Second, he wanted to establish that the Smyrna fire was started by
regular Turkish army troops with, as he put it "fixed purpose, with
system, and with painstaking minute details."
Third, he wanted to emphasize that the Allied Powers shamefully
elevated their selfish political and economic interests over the
plight of the beleaguered Christian populations of Asia Minor, thereby
allowing the Smyrna catastrophe to unfold without any effective
resistance and, as he said, "without even a word of protest by any
civilized government." And fourth, he wanted to illustrate that pious
western Christians were deluded in thinking they were making missionary
headway in the Muslim world. I will address only the first two points.
Historical Background To understand these two points, we first need to
review briefly the key events in Asia Minor in the period leading up to
1922. In World War I, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany. Horton,
you will recall, was at his consular post in Smyrna during the war
until 1917.
After the war, the victorious Allies gathered at Versailles to
formulate peace terms. Among the Peace Commissionʼs thorniest
tasks was partitioning the defeated Ottoman Empire.
Greece entered the war late, but sided with the eventually victorious
Allies. At the Peace Conference, Greeceʼs prime minister,
Eleutherios Venizelos, lobbied hard for the annexation to Greece of
Eastern Thrace, Constantinople, and a large territory along the Asia
Minor coast. In all of these areas there were large populations of
indigenous Greek Christians engaged mostly in commerce and agriculture.
In May 1919, the Supreme Council of the Paris Peace Commission
endorsed the Greek armyʼs landing at Smyrna and the establishment
of a Greek administrative zone. From Smyrna, the Greek army pushed
eastward into Anatolia, the Turkish heartland, successfully expanding
the Greek zone; and Greeceʼs claims not only to this zone but
also to Eastern Thrace were ratified by the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres,
which the Great Powers imposed on the humbled Ottoman Empire.
There remained, however, the problem of a rising Turkish nationalist
movement in Anatolia led by a charismatic former Ottoman army officer,
Mustafa Kemal, whose military strength the Great Powers and Greece
dangerously underestimated. The result was the rout of Greeceʼs
over-stretched, war-weary army by Kemal near Afyonkarahisar on August
30, after which Kemalʼs nationalist troops began a relentless
advance toward Smyrna. Before them they drove the remnants of the
Greek army and hordes of frightened Christian farmers and villagers.
According to Horton, news of the Kemalist advances began reaching
Smyrna soon after the Greek defeat and produced immediate panic among
the Christian population. Their panic was completely understandable,
he said, as he had predicted in a consular dispatch that if the
Greek Army retreated in Asia Minor it would be followed by the entire
Christian population. His prediction was based on his nearly thirty
years of consular service and, as he put it, on "some things which
all men who have had long residence in this country absolutely know."
First, the city filled with refugees from the interior, mostly
small farmers, who were lodged in the churches, schools, and other
public institutions. Many got away in the first days on steamers and
sailboats. "Then," says Horton, the defeated, dusty, ragged Greeks
soldiers began to arrive, looking straight ahead, like men walking
in their sleep. . . .
In a never-ending stream they poured through the town toward the
point on the coast to which the Greek fleet had withdrawn. Silently
as ghosts they went, looking neither to the right nor the left. From
time to time some soldier, his strength entirely spent, collapsed on
the sidewalk or by a door.
Then they learned that the Turkish army was moving on the city. The
Turkish cavalry units arrived on the morning of September 9, filing
along the quay toward their barracks at the Konak (the Turkish
administrative headquarters building) at the other end of the city.
In the evening of the same day, the looting and killing began in the
Armenian quarter. The following morning, Americans began to report
seeing corpses lying in the streets in the interior of the city.
Horton himself saw Turkish civilians armed with shotguns watching
the windows of Christian houses ready to shoot at any head that
might appear.
The shooting continued in the Christian quarters the night of September
10. Throngs of frightened people were begging to be let into various
American institutions. After the Armenian quarter had been thoroughly
sacked for nearly four days, the fire erupted in the Armenian quarter.
**** A lecture by James L. Marketos at the AHI Noon Forum, on September
14, 2006
To be continued
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