None can understand the tragedy that was enacted in Asia Minor in 1922, none is fitted to pass judgment upon it, none has the right to venture an opinion on the rÔle the Greeks will still play in the settlement of the Near Eastern question, without having made a serious and sympathetic attempt to follow the Hellenic national movement through the century of struggle that culminated in the collapse of the Greek armies in Asia Minor and the burning of Smyrna in September, 1922. The legend has grown that Greece is the victim of the imperialistic folly of her greatest statesman, who involved his people in ambitious dreams of conquest that were impossible of fulfilment. Admirers of Venizelos, to refute this legend, have launched another legend. They have tried to make the world believe that Greece’s disasters and humiliation are due to a pro-German king, supported by an unscrupulous group of politicians, who almost ruined his country during the World War through intrigues with Germany, and whose dramatic return to the throne in 1920 robbed Greece of the advantages Venizelos had secured for her in the Treaty of SÈvres.

The rival legends are based upon a threefold misapprehension of the connection between the Greek people and the little Kingdom of Greece, of the relations of the great powers with the Kingdom of Greece and the Greek people, and of the significance, internally and internationally, of the Venizelist movement since 1910.

It has been assumed by most writers that the Kingdom of Greece, as constituted after the War of Independence, marked the resurrection of the nation, and was the natural and logical outcome of a struggle for emancipation. This error came from a confusion of classical Greece with historic Greece. Up to this day it has not been realized in Occidental Europe and America that the Greek national movement does not have its inspiration in the ancient glory of Athens and Sparta, of Corinth and Thebes. The Peloponnesus and Attica and the coast-lands of the Gulf of Corinth never formed a united country, inhabited by a people enjoying a common nationhood.

The Kingdom of Greece, at the tip of the Balkan peninsula, was an artificial country, brought into being after the War of Independence, by a compromise of interests and jealousies on the part of Russia, France, and Great Britain. The dream of the Greeks who raised the banner of revolt against the Turks was the restoration of the Byzantine Empire, which endured for a thousand years, and not of the Greece we study about in school, which never existed as a united country. National movements are inspired by historic traditions, nurtured by religion, and grouped around a language. The connection between the Greek nation of the nineteenth century and ancient pagan Athens and Sparta is remote. Constantinople and Smyrna have been the foyers of Hellenism. The leaders in the War of Independence, who started and directed the revolt against the Turks, came from Epirus, Macedonia, the islands of the Ægean Sea, and Asia Minor.

The Kingdom of Greece was a makeshift of European diplomacy. The powers were determined to maintain, in so far as it is humanly possible to do so, the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. They feared the preponderant influence, each of the others, in the Near East. Every time a Christian subject people arose against the Turks, their efforts were directed toward preventing the success of national movements. They made use of expedients to bolster up the decaying Ottoman Empire by opposing where they could, and limiting where they could not successfully oppose, the separation of Balkan provinces from Turkey. This policy, justified by the consideration of keeping the peace among themselves, has been followed in every conference of European statesmen from Vienna in 1815 to Lausanne in 1923. The rising tide of nationalism in the Balkans, encouraged by the intrigues of single great powers, has been frowned upon when the great powers came together to adjust their rivalry.

More than Serbians, Rumanians, and Bulgarians, have the Greeks been victims of this policy. For the triumph of Hellenism would have meant not simply the detachment of outlying provinces but a blow struck at the heart of the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks have never had a fair chance, either by themselves or in alliance with the other Balkan peoples, to work out their own salvation. At times the great powers have intervened directly; on other occasions they have aimed to keep the Balkan peoples weak by setting them against one another. For a hundred years it has been a game of bullying, bribing, fishing in troubled waters.

Venizelos was born and won his spurs in Crete under the Ottoman yoke. He was a leader in revolutions, and his first experiences with European diplomacy convinced him that the powers were determined, for the sake of their own interests, to keep his native island under Ottoman sovereignty. He left Crete and entered into the political life of the little kingdom of Greece to make the kingdom a Piedmont for the unification of Hellas. The Venizelist movement from the beginning, therefore, was not interested primarily in the internal affairs of independent Greece. The Venizelists set out to regenerate and strengthen the Kingdom of Greece for the purpose of using Athens as the starting-point in a campaign to emancipate the Greeks still under the Ottoman yoke. It is impossible to call Venizelos an imperialist, who conceived grandiose schemes and wrecked his country trying to put them through. The Kingdom of Greece was not “his country.” Of the 7,000,000 Greeks in the coast-lands and islands of the Ægean, hardly more than a fourth were inhabitants of the kingdom of Greece. The movement to which Venizelos gave his name was a movement to liberate as many as possible of the 5,000,000 Greeks still under Turkish rule, beginning with his own island of Crete.

The ideas of King Constantine and his great premier were radically antagonistic; they could not be reconciled. Constantine accepted joyfully the partial liberation that came through the Balkan wars at the beginning of his reign. But he looked upon his kingdom as a country whose internal interests were paramount. His policy during the war was to steer Greece through difficult years by maintaining neutrality. The policy of Venizelos was to involve Greece in the war on the side of the enemies of Turkey in order that, as a result of their victory (in which he believed implicitly), Greece might be enabled to free as many as possible of the Greeks still under the yoke of Turkey. When the Allies deposed King Constantine in 1917, Venizelos brought Greece into the war to fight for the redemption of the Ottoman Greeks and the completion of the unification of the nation.

At the Peace Conference no representative of a smaller state had a stronger case than Venizelos. In taking territories away from Germany and Austria and Hungary the Conference went back to the Middle Ages to allow historic claims. Ports were taken from the vanquished on ethnological grounds, even when the hinterland was of another character; and where the inhabitants were not of the nationality of the claimant state, ports were taken away on economic grounds, the self-determination argument being justified by the hinterland! In the changes in Europe there could not be adduced the additional argument of Venizelos, that liberation from the vanquished meant security of life and property and a greater degree of prosperity. And yet the Entente Powers, at one in their determination to despoil Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians, hesitated a little about the Bulgarians and a long time about the Turks. In the atmosphere of the Peace Conference none dared say a word in favor of mitigating the harshness and injustice of the terms imposed upon Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians. But a strong current in favor of the Turks set in; and, had there not been the necessity of placating the Serbians to reconcile them to the Italian demands, the Bulgarians would have got off more easily than they did.

Venizelos was an outstanding figure among the statesmen gathered at Paris. He had the ear of Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson. The American President eagerly enlisted his support in drafting and forcing the adoption of the League of Nations Covenant. Orlando, worried to the breaking-point by the Adriatic question, intimated his willingness to meet the Greeks half-way or more in the questions of Epirus and the Dodecanese. Resisting the evident intention to put him off until after Germany and Austria were dealt with, Venizelos succeeded in getting before the Council of Ten and later the Big Four the aspirations of Hellenism.

What little measure of success the Greek premier attained, however, was due to his personal influence and not to affection for Greece, nor to gratitude or confidence. French intrigues against Greece were second only to those of the Italians, who had a natural reason for opposing Greater Greece with as much energy as Greater Serbia. The latter was a more real danger for Italy, as it would bring the Slavs to the Adriatic; but the former was viewed with alarm as a commercial and naval rival in the eastern Mediterranean. Despite the Saloniki revolution and the tardy entrance of Greece into the war, the French were not ready to forgive the so-called massacre of December 1, 1916, when their marines, entering Athens, were greeted by a rain of bullets. Powerful influences at work in British as well as French diplomatic circles, were felt at the Conference, to prevent the despoiling of Turkey at the expense of Greece, for fear of offending Mohammedan sentiment in India and North Africa.

The withdrawal of the Italians in a huff after Wilson’s sensational Fiume declaration gave the Greeks an unexpected opportunity to anticipate the formal decision of the Conference on their claims in Asia Minor. Lloyd George heard that the Italian Government was planning to send an expeditionary corps to Smyrna in order that the Peace Conference might be confronted with a fait accompli. He persuaded Clemenceau and Wilson that the only way of preventing the contemplated Italian coup would be to have Greece occupy Smyrna and the immediate hinterland in the name of the Allied and Associated Powers. Venizelos was summoned suddenly to the Quai d’Orsay, and the proposal was put before him. Lloyd George urged its acceptance. Venizelos agreed. The plans were secretly worked out by the British, French, American, and Greek military advisers.

Greek troops were landed at Smyrna on May 14, 1919, and, after seven weeks of disorders and some severe fighting, the Greek army was in possession of the Smyrna region and had extended its occupation along the railway lines to the limits of the province of AÏdin. The press was fed with lurid stories of massacres by both Greeks and Turks, for which, on both sides, there seemed unfortunately to be substantial foundation. The Greek army asserted that it was fired upon in Smyrna, and had to retaliate. The soldiers undoubtedly got out of hand. But order was quickly restored. Most of the atrocities in the province seemed to have been due to the local native population, Mohammedan and Christian.

After the occupation of Smyrna a whole year passed before Venizelos was able to get the Entente Powers to agree upon the terms of peace to be imposed upon Turkey. In the meantime, as is recorded in the next chapter, a formidable Turkish Nationalist movement was allowed to get under way, in the interior of Asia Minor, which added to the difficulties of the negotiations and began to menace the Greek hold on Smyrna. The Paris Conference adjourned in November, 1919, without having adopted a draft for the Turkish treaty. Holders of Turkish bonds, actual and expectant holders of concessions in Constantinople and Asia Minor, and British and French officials interested in the Mohammedan colonies, brought constant pressure to bear to prevent the partition of the Ottoman Empire. After a brief visit home, Venizelos was compelled to return to Europe to participate in the continuation conferences.

Not because they were agreed or believed they had discovered a satisfactory solution of the Turkish question, but because it was impossible to delay decisions further, the Entente premiers adopted at San Remo, in April, 1920, a draft treaty that had been over a year in the making. The Turkish treaty terms had become a matter of bargaining. France and Italy assented to the draft, which seemed to favor Great Britain, because Lloyd George promised to back France in putting the screws down on Germany both as to disarmament and reparations and to let Italy settle the Adriatic question by direct negotiations with Jugoslavia. The Treaty of SÈvres, whose main terms we gave in an earlier chapter, was signed on August 10, 1920, after much haggling. The Nationalists had refused to recognize the authority of the Constantinople Government to enter into a treaty in the name of the Turkish people, and had for several months been defying both the Sultan and the Entente Powers. They had attacked the British, who were occupying and running the Anatolian Railway from Constantinople to Eski SheÏr, and had driven the British troops back to the Gulf of Ismid, within sight of Constantinople. In this emergency the Entente Powers called upon Greece, who was to be the principal beneficiary of the treaty. In June the Greeks marched northeast from Smyrna and, in a short campaign, came to the aid of the British. They occupied Brusa on July 8. The Turkish Nationalists were also defying the Entente in Thrace. After the victories in Asia Minor, the Greeks moved part of their army across the Ægean Sea and occupied all of Eastern Thrace. King Alexander entered Adrianople on July 25.

By the Treaty of SÈvres the Greeks were awarded Smyrna, with a generous hinterland, and Thrace almost up to the defenses of Constantinople. Constantinople and the Straits were to enjoy a special status, under international protection, with only the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan. Greece was confirmed in possession of all the islands of the Ægean, except those at the mouth of the Dardanelles. Italy retained only Rhodes, with the proviso that a plebiscite should be held fifteen years after the cession of Cyprus by Great Britain to Greece. Since the British had made no promise to cede Cyprus, however, the main object of the Greek fight for the Dodecanese was not attained.

The Treaty of SÈvres, had it been maintained, would have been a great step forward in the realization of the Greek dream to revive the Byzantine Empire. What it actually gave Greece was not, however, as much as the Treaties of St.-Germain, Trianon, and Neuilly had given her Balkan allies, Serbia and Rumania. If the awards to Greece were absurdly generous and unjustified and ought not to have been made at the expense of a vanquished nation, what shall we say of the awards to Serbia, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland? If the Treaty of SÈvres had been applied, neither in territory and mineral and other wealth nor in alien population would Greece have received nearly as much as these other smaller states.

Greece’s titles, as recognized by the Treaty of SÈvres, were not only more just but better earned than the titles of the other states under the other treaties. What Greece received she had actually conquered by her own efforts. And if the titles were to prove valid and permanent it would also be by her own efforts. As early as March 6, 1920, Venizelos reported to his Government that no British military support would be available to keep Greeks either in Thrace or Asia Minor, and that no assistance could be expected from France or Italy. If or when the Treaty of SÈvres was signed, the Greeks would have to rely upon themselves to enforce it. On June 15, two months before the Treaty of SÈvres was accepted by the Constantinople Government, Lloyd George again asked Venizelos if he thought Greece could take over the territories in question and defend them from the Nationalists. The Greek premier’s answer was the triumphant march on Brusa and the expulsion of the Nationalists from Thrace.

Two days after the Treaty of SÈvres was signed, an attempt was made to assassinate Venizelos as he was taking the train in Paris to return to Greece. He was in poor physical condition when he got back to Athens and found internal conditions in a very bad state. The head of a Government cannot be away two years on an end and have things run smoothly at home. His subordinates had abused their authority. There was profound dissatisfaction, which was not allayed when the Greek people discovered that the net result of the treaty was the Entente Powers’ permission for Greece to work out her own salvation in Asia Minor. Several classes in the army had already been in active service for eight years. A wave of war weariness swept the country, of which the partizans of the banished Constantine took full advantage. When Venizelos was struggling against these handicaps, which were enough to tax his ability and enthusiasm to the utmost, King Alexander suddenly died. His younger brother Paul refused to return and take the throne. The issue at the General Election thus became a personal one between Constantine and Venizelos. The ex-king’s party won at the polls on November 14, 1920. Venizelos left Greece. On December 19 King Constantine and Queen Sophie, sister of ex-Kaiser Wilhelm, returned to Athens.

Before the return of the King the British, French, and Italian Governments issued a proclamation stating that the recall of King Constantine could only be regarded as ratification by the Greek people of the actions of the King, which had been hostile to the Allies, and that the recall of the King would create an unfavorable situation between Greece and the Entente Powers. After this proclamation a plebiscite was held on December 5. There were a million votes, virtually all in favor of the King.

Great Britain, France, and the United States refused to recognize Constantine.23 Notwithstanding the fearful handicap the return of Constantine imposed upon Greece in her struggle to retain what the Treaty of SÈvres had given her, Constantine persisted in his determination to remain on the throne. Only after the revolution that followed the collapse of the Greek armies in Asia Minor in September, 1922, did Constantine withdraw. Then he abdicated in favor of his oldest son, George, who had recently married Princess Elizabeth of Rumania, and went into exile in Sicily, where he died a few months later.

Speculation as to what would have happened in Greece had Venizelos remained in power is profitless. Therefore, we shall limit ourselves to the story of what actually happened.

On January 4, 1921, in the absence of all Liberal or Venizelist members, King Constantine opened the newly elected Chamber of Deputies and stated that the war in Asia Minor would continue. As a matter of fact, the Greeks could not have withdrawn; and at the same time, in order not to withdraw, they had to go forward. On January 10, the Greeks advanced over the mountains to Biledjik on the Anatolian Railway, cutting off Angora from the Bosphorus. In a conference at London on March 9, the Athens Government rejected a proposal of the British and French Governments to modify the Treaty of SÈvres by the Greek evacuation of Asia Minor in return for Turkish Nationalist assent to the cession of Thrace to Greece. A new offensive was launched on March 23, which succeeded in giving the Greeks possession of two important junction-points of the Anatolian Railway, Afium-Karahissar and Eski SheÏr, which they were afterward compelled to abandon. In the early part of July, however, they returned to the attack, reoccupied the ground lost in the spring, and won decisive victories at Kutahia and Eski SheÏr. Encouraged by these victories, the Greek General Staff made the mistake of believing that it was possible to march on to Angora and put an end to Turkish resistance. The offensive was renewed in the middle of August, was carried along the Sakaria River nearly to Angora, but could not be maintained on the last lap of a march that had cost them dear. The Greeks retreated to positions east of the Anatolian Railway and dug themselves in for the winter in strong natural positions. Several efforts were made to mediate between Greece and Turkey by the Supreme Council, the League of Nations, and the Conference of Ambassadors. The last proposal, formulated in March, 1922, was virtually the same as that of March, 1921, i.e., that the Turks should have Asia Minor, while the Greeks should keep Thrace. In recognition of the growing power of the Turkish Nationalists, the Entente Powers offered modifications in the SÈvres provisions concerning Constantinople and the Straits that would salve the pride of the Turks and leave them nominal masters in their own house. The Turks were also offered membership in the League of Nations.

The successive efforts of the Entente Powers to bring about a peaceful liquidation of the Greek venture in Asia Minor by a voluntary revision of the Treaty of SÈvres proved that the San Remo agreement of 1920 had failed, and that the victorious powers, unable to arrive at an understanding, preferred to sacrifice the aspirations of Hellenism and to allow the Turks to go unpunished rather than risk seeing one of themselves best the others in a division of the Turkish spoils. Other factors also entered into the Near Eastern question to make it as complicated in 1922 as it had always been. The rÔle of Russia at Angora was disquieting. The Turkish Nationalists were menacing Great Britain and France in Mesopotamia and Syria. London was suspected by Paris and Rome of planning to use the Greeks as agents to hold Western Asia Minor and the Straits in the interest of the mistress of the seas. French statesmen felt that backing the Turks might prove to be an excellent means of keeping the British in line to continue putting the screws down on Germany. In vain the Greek Government protested that the Treaty of SÈvres was an integral part of the Paris settlement and as sacred as the other treaties. Had not the Greeks acted in good faith in going into Asia Minor at the request of the great powers? Could they be expected to withdraw and leave the Anatolian Christians, the Circassians, and the anti-Kemalist Turks, who had coÖperated in the occupation, at the mercy of the Angora Nationalists?

From a purely military point of view the Greeks were in an excellent position in Asia Minor. Behind most of their front lay railway lines. They had had a year in which to fortify their front and organize lines of communication. The Turks had not molested them. They had been able to pick out the strongest natural defenses. But they had no money. The boycott of the Constantine Government prevented them from contracting loans or obtaining large credits for supplies abroad. They knew that France and Italy had made treaties with the Turks and were supplying them with artillery and munitions. They knew, too, that Soviet Russia was giving substantial aid to their enemies. France and Italy did not allow the Greeks to establish an effective blockade of the coast of Asia Minor. The blockade rules which the French and Italians had proclaimed in the Mediterranean, when they were fighting Turkey, and had imposed upon Greek commerce, were declared intolerable when Greece tried to use them to prevent the Turks from receiving war materials.

The Athens Government grew desperate. Every month the Turks were becoming stronger, and yet it seemed impossible to order the evacuation of Asia Minor. The British Government, and British public opinion in general, encouraged the Greeks but only with words! In July the Greek Government transferred 40,000 of its best troops from Asia Minor to Thrace, and massed them, together with the Thracian army of occupation, near Constantinople. A note was sent to the Entente Governments, demanding permission to occupy Constantinople. It was a grand-stand play, conceived as a supreme effort to avert impending disaster. The Entente Powers refused to accede to the Greek request.

At the end of August, realizing that they could not last through another winter in their positions east of the Anatolian Railway, the Greeks prepared to fall back on a line within the limits of the zone defined in the Treaty of SÈvres. The Turks got wind of the plan and attacked at the most vulnerable point in the Greek front, where the railway from Smyrna joined the Anatolian Railway at Afium-Karahissar. Panic started and spread, as panic always does. The Greeks became demoralized and abandoned their strong positions without fighting. They retreated to the Ægean coast, burning towns and villages as they went. Most of the army got away to the Ægean islands and to Thrace. But they lost all their artillery and stores, and left the native Christians and Mohammedan Circassians, who had made common cause with the Greeks, to the mercy of the Turkish Nationalists. The demoralization of the Greek army was not so great as that of the Italian army at Caporetto, and, in numbers of troops affected, no greater than that of the British and French in the last German offensive in France in the spring and early summer of 1918. Had there been reserves to fall back upon, had there been strong allies to come to the rescue, the Greeks could easily have retrieved their fortunes. We must remember this in judging them. But years of facing great odds alone, with no hope of a change, had ended by taking the heart completely out of them.

The events of September, 1922, proved to be a greater blow to Hellenism than the fall of Byzantium in 1453 or any other of the vicissitudes suffered by the Greeks in the original Turkish conquest of Asia Minor and the Balkans; for the Turks resolved this time to stamp out Hellenism for good and all. The burning of Smyrna was accompanied by wholesale massacres. The expulsion of the Greeks from Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace followed the signature of an armistice at Mudania on October 10. The negotiations were carried on between the Entente Powers and the Turks. Greece, by her defeat, had been eliminated and was forced to accept the loss of Eastern Thrace in order to secure the armistice.

Before the Mudania Conference, when it was learned that the Entente Powers had sent a note to Kemal Pasha, leader of the Turkish Nationalists, offering to restore Eastern Thrace to Turkey as one of the conditions of peace, a revolution broke out among the Greek soldiers who had found refuge on the island of Mytilene. The troops demanded that they be escorted to Athens. Under the joint leadership of Colonels Gonatas and Plastiras, they arrived in Greece on September 26, forced the abdication of Constantine, and accepted Crown Prince George as King, on condition that he promise to regard his father’s abdication as final and to place the Government in the hands of the revolutionary committee they had formed. The first act of the revolutionaries was the arrest of former premiers and ministers whom they regarded as responsible for the Asia Minor disasters. These, they asserted, would be tried for high treason. The new masters of Greece declared that they would not give up Eastern Thrace. Only on this condition, however, could they secure the intervention of Venizelos, who knew the futility of attempting to renew the war and further indispose the Entente Powers.

After the evacuation of Eastern Thrace in October, Venizelos consented to represent Greece at the new peace conference, which was to open at Lausanne on November 20. The evacuation of Adrianople, which began on October 15, created immediate difficulties for the new Government. Had it not made the revolution for the avowed purpose of saving Thrace? Martial law had to be proclaimed. Then, to appease popular excitement, the revolutionary leaders began the investigation of the causes of the disaster. A committee reported on November 8 that all the anti-Venizelist Governments, from 1915 to 1922, were guilty of high treason because they had alienated the sympathies of the Entente Powers during the World War and since, because they had blindly supported Constantine, because they had neglected to comply with the requests and demands of the Entente Powers in regard to Asia Minor, because they had concealed from the people the successive warnings as to the impracticability of holding their foothold in Asia Minor, and because they had permitted an occult government to exist in Greece under Prince Nicholas, in defiance of the constitution. Another brother of the ex-king, Prince Andrew, was arrested on the charge that he was immediately responsible for the recent disaster. The report demanded that six ex-premiers and ex-ministers, Admiral Goudas, and General Hadjianestis, commander-in-chief of the Greek army in Asia Minor, be tried for high treason before a special court martial.

Greek statesmen, including Premier Krokidas, who had consented to serve under the revolutionary Government, begged that before the sentence was announced there be granted right of appeal to a National Assembly, which was to be elected in the near future. Krokidas resigned when the plea was rejected. On November 25 Colonel Gonatas, unable to get a civilian to take the office, assumed the premiership himself. Three days later former Premiers Gounaris, Stratos, and Protopapadakis, former Foreign Minister Baltazzi, former War Minister Theotokis, and General Hadjianestis were condemned to death and fined sums amounting to the confiscation of their private fortunes. A few hours later they were shot. Prince Andrew escaped the death sentence; but he was banished after military degradation.

The execution of the former ministers aroused a storm of protest in Greece and abroad. The British minister left Athens, and the Greek minister at Washington cabled his resignation. But Colonel Plastiras, Chief of the Revolutionary Committee, not only assumed responsibility, in the name of the committee, for what had happened, but declared that all persons, civilian and military, connected with the Asia Minor disaster would be brought to trial. He denied the charge that the court martial was not a proper means of decreeing punishment. He announced, moreover, that the General Election would be indefinitely postponed.

It was feared that the political executions, coming at the beginning of the Lausanne Conference, would increase the already unfavorable international situation of Greece. But Venizelos stuck at his task, fought hard to save what he could, and through both periods of the conference, lasting weary months, he watched for every opportunity to profit by the resentment aroused among all the Entente delegates by the unreasonableness and insolence of the Turks. Other patriotic Greeks abroad, following the example of Venizelos, accepted and supported, even where they could not defend, the Revolutionary Committee. They felt that the debacle of Hellenism would be rendered complete if there were a new outbreak of civil war in their unhappy country. There had been too much of political strife during the years of miraculous expansion.

The two preoccupations of Greece in 1923 have been the care of refugees and the reorganization and strengthening of the army.

The refugee problem became acute immediately after the retreat. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks, Circassians, and Armenians, and a large number of non-Kemalist Turks fled pell-mell to the coast, overcrowded Chios, Mytilene, and Samos, and flowed over to Athens and Saloniki in a never ceasing stream. To these were added refugees from Thrace. Then came the Christians expelled from the Black Sea littoral. The Turks had retained, and deported into the interior for labor battalions, the able-bodied men and boys. The Greek refugee situation developed much the same as the earlier Armenian problem—countless thousands of women, children, and old people, incapable of earning their own living, even were there a chance to do so.

As virtually all the Christian population of Asia Minor and Thrace had fled or had been exiled, Greece within a few weeks saw her population increased by between 1,200,000 and 1,300,000 wholly dependent immigrants, bringing disease with their poverty. They came at the beginning of winter. All needed shelter, food, clothing, bedding, and medical attention. The problem was appalling, and it still threatens to overwhelm Greece in the summer of 1923. There is little hope of these refugees’ being able to return to their homes. How can a country, not self-supporting, bankrupt, and without credit abroad, take care of a 20 per cent increase in its population, not of able-bodied men, but of dependents? Charity, notably that administered by the Near East Relief, has kept the refugees from starving and freezing. It cannot continue indefinitely, however, and very many Greeks believe that salvation lies in a new test at arms with the Turks. They are by no means convinced of the military superiority of the Angora Nationalists, unless they are helped, as they were last time, from the outside. The Greeks still have their fleet, which gives them mastery of the sea. If not interfered with, they can blockade the Turks.

The lesson of the protracted and fruitless negotiations at Lausanne seems to be that force alone counts for anything in international relations. Throughout the discussions the attitude of the Turks was that of defiance, and only military threats brought them to a compromise. The best argument Venizelos had was the fact that 150,000 Greeks were still under arms, most of them in Western Thrace, with their morale restored, and ready to try again. This prevented the Turks from prodding him too hard, and this alone made the Entente Powers willing to consider that, despite the debacle of 1922, there might still be a promising future for Hellenism, and some profit to be had for friends of the Greeks.