by Lou Ureneck
Now, Kemal was on the edge of success. The mountain pass, called Nif by the Turks and Nymphaion by the Greeks, a place where the nymphs were said to inhabit mountain springs, was a notch between the peaks through which the downward running road switchbacked steeply to Smyrna. (It was this pass through which Theodora and her family had passed after Gritzalia days earlier.) Mustapha Kemal’s army was camped around him. It waited on his command.
The Allies had proposed to mediate an armistice at the Greeks’ request, but Kemal rejected the offer. He said it was pointless; the Greeks had been defeated. He had given the Greek army forty-eight hours to evacuate Anatolia, and Greek units were still hurriedly boarding ships at Chesme, a small port at the end of the long peninsula southwest of Smyrna. The deadline had already passed.
The day before, at Salihli, he had received a message from the Allied high commissioners in Constantinople, sent by way of the French ship Edgar Quintet at Smyrna, proposing a meeting to arrange the peaceful handover of the city. (This was the meeting that Merrill had hoped to attend with the French lieutenant Lafont.) Kemal was contemptuous of the proposal. The city was his to take; there was nothing to negotiate. Nonetheless, he agreed to meet them here, at this mountain parapet, in the headquarters abandoned days earlier by the Greek army and still displaying a portrait of Venizelos. He had sent a message to the Allies but it had been received late, and by now an advance contingent of his cavalry was already entering Smyrna.
CHAPTER 12
Back in Constantinople
On Wednesday, September 6, by which time there were at least two hundred thousand refugees in Smyrna and many tens of thousands more on the beaches along the Aegean and Marmara coasts, Admiral Bristol summoned leaders of the principal American relief and service organizations in Constantinople to the American embassy.
The American relief community in Constantinople was small and tight, and its members knew one another well. They had been meeting weekly at the embassy for almost two years to coordinate relief for the Russian refugees in Constantinople and Armenian orphans in the country’s interior. The group was bound by work, not affection. Both the Missions Board and Near East Relief had attempted to persuade the State Department to remove Bristol as high commissioner.
Among the people in the room were William W. Peet, the senior missionary administrator in Constantinople, and Harold C. Jaquith, managing director of Near East Relief in the Near East. Peet had instigated the campaign to remove Bristol, and Jaquith had banged heads with Bristol over his unsuccessful attempt to suppress reports of the Turkish slaughter of Ottoman Greeks. Jaquith, with his bland face and spectacles, was precisely the sort of “missionary type” that annoyed Bristol—earnest and dedicated to Armenians.
Bristol was openly hostile to the Missions Board for what he called its conversion mentality and the Near East Relief for what he considered its anti-Turkish attitudes and fund-raising propaganda in America.
BOTH THE MISSIONS BOARD and Near East Relief were formidable foes, and Bristol’s ability to survive their campaign demonstrated the strength of his personal determination and Washington connections. The Missions Board had been sending missionaries to Turkey for nearly a century.
The Near East Relief organization had begun with the former American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau. A Jewish American businessman born in Germany and a big fund-raiser for Woodrow Wilson, Morgenthau had come to know the Ottoman leaders personally while serving in Constantinople and was in the country when the worst of the killing took place. His vivid testimony led to American outrage and a hugely successful fund-raising campaign to save the Armenian people. Organized in 1915 under the auspices of the American Committee for Syrian and Armenian Relief, the campaign to save the Armenians was the first broadly based public fund-raising campaign of its type, and it has never been surpassed in its outpouring of public philanthropy.
In 1916, Near East Relief, as it came to be called, raised $2.4 million in the United States through public donations; the amount doubled in 1917; and doubled again in 1918. In 1919, when America was in a postwar recession, Near East Relief raised $19,885,000—$3 million in one month. These were enormous figures for the period. By the end of 1921, it had raised about $40 million. With many businessmen and religious leaders on its board, Near East Relief was a fund-raising machine of astonishing success. In 1921, Near East Relief enlisted 48,364 churches and 7,877 fraternal organizations in its appeal. The Brotherhood of Railroad Train Men, the Masons, the Eagles, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and B’nai B’rith participated, as did many others. Twenty Masonic Lodges in Wisconsin adopted fifty orphans. In St. Claire County, Michigan, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Elks, the Ladies Library Association, the Knights of Columbus, and the Christmas Carolers Association donated to a campaign run by the Port Huron Times Herald that adopted thirty-two orphans. The Central Presbyterian Church in Denver donated $5,000; North Reformed Church in Newark, $4,000; First Presbyterian Church, Evanston, Illinois, $3,500; and on and on throughout the country. Yale, Williams, Vassar, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, Johns Hopkins, the universities of Delaware, Wyoming, and Michigan, and many other colleges and universities organized appeals. One hundred factories in New York State donated $1,000 each. The American Federation of Labor solicited its members and sent money. Fourteen state governors were chairmen. Movie celebrities joined the effort. There was a Jackie Coogan chapter in Brooklyn. Children set up lemonade and flower stands on street corners and sent their earnings to feed Armenians. The world had never seen anything like the American response to Armenian suffering. It made America’s reputation for generosity.
THERE WERE STRONG PERSONALITIES in Bristol’s spacious parquet-floored office on that hot and humid September morning but not a lot of trust. The talk was civil, but lines were drawn and well understood.
Nonetheless, cooperation was essential. Bristol had ships and government authority; the relief organizations had food, supplies, and manpower. Bristol knew also that the State Department and millions of Americans were watching. America was anxious about the consequences of the Turkish victories. It was no time for Bristol to make a show of his anti-Greek and -Armenian sentiments or publicly display a callous attitude toward the country’s Christians. (Former ambassador Morgenthau had been quoted in the previous day’s New York Times as favoring a swift Allied and American evacuation of Christian refugees from Anatolia to avoid a massacre.) Bristol would express his concern publicly but had already decided privately on a go-slow strategy—his plan was to gather information at Smyrna and decide on a response later. Only he knew how much later. His real concern was protection of Americans and American property and cultivating Turkish favor. He was not in the business of rescuing and feeding Greek and Armenian refugees.
Bristol saw responsibility for the refugee problem at Smyrna as a problem for the British and Greek governments, and (as the coming weeks would show) he would use every opportunity to deflect the cost and blame in their direction. His plan was to take small steps and allow the situation to unfold without significant American engagement. He was reluctant to commit American resources, public or private, to the job. If the situation worsened, a disaster at Smyrna (he reasoned) would only reflect badly on Britain and Greece, not an unwelcome result from his perspective. (“The Greek is about the worst race in the Near East,” Bristol had written.)
At the meeting in his office, Bristol produced a note he had received the previous day from the British high commissioner in Constantinople, Sir Horace Rumbold. Bristol’s scorn for the note set the meeting’s tone. Marked “urgent,” it urged Bristol to use the American Relief Administration to help the refugees in Smyrna. (It was essentially the same request Horton had sent to the State Department.) The note infuriated Bristol—as almost anything would if it came from Rumbold. Bristol said he considered Rumbold’s note impertinent and he would give it the answer it deserved. (The answer would be sent the next day, and it would drip with sarcasm.) The two men despised each othe
r. Bristol refused to allow U.S. Navy ships to acknowledge the passage of the British high commissioner’s yacht with the traditional manning of the ship’s rails and sailors’ salutes, and he would decline a dinner invitation if Rumbold was seated more prominently than he at the table. Rumbold, for his part, had written to the British foreign secretary that Bristol had “limited intelligence and outlook.” Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon concurred, “We have had abundant proof for nearly two years that he is suspicious, anti-British, stupid and at times malignant.” A British admiral would call him a “snake in the grass.”
The British ambassador in Washington, Auckland Campbell-Geddes, had taken the British complaints to Secretary of State Hughes and requested Bristol’s removal. Hughes, with some urging from Dulles, had rejected the complaints. The episode ended with a note to Bristol that made it clear that the secretary of state was aware of Bristol’s truculent nature. Hughes said it would be “a gratification” if Bristol would establish cordial relations with the British. “I desire you, there, on receipt of my letter to make renewed effort to establish that informal contact with your Allied colleagues which may facilitate the settlement of questions which arise between you and the Allied mission without allowing them to reach an acute issue.”
Stiff by State Department standards, the note brought absolutely no change in Bristol. He knew that he had prevailed in the dustup, and the British were unlikely to appeal for his removal a second time. He continued on his unpleasant way.
Bristol’s position as chairman and titular head of the Red Cross in Constantinople strengthened his ability to ration American engagement at Smyrna. He formed the American Relief Committee for Smyrna in his office under the auspices of the Constantinople branch of the American Red Cross, and specifically the Constantinople Relief Committee, a subcommittee of the local Red Cross, which he also led. He engineered relief-effort hierarchy to give him full control at every juncture. He cabled the Red Cross in Washington for $50,000 and made it clear that he was sending the message in code so that the British (as he said) would not learn of it and conclude that they could rely on the Americans to pay the cost of the refugee relief.
He told the group in his office that he planned to send a relief team to Smyrna by destroyer the next day, Thursday, or after he had received word from Lieutenant Merrill about conditions in the city. This gave him room for further delay. He actually waited until Friday to send the ship. They discussed who should go, and the meeting broke up.
THE NEXT DAY, THURSDAY, September 7, Bristol met with Hamid Bey, the nationalist representative in Constantinople and one of Bristol’s two key nationalist contacts since Bristol had arrived in Turkey. The other was Halide Edib, the nationalists’ chief propagandist. A corporal in the nationalist army, she was, at this moment, moving with Kemal toward Smyrna. Hamid Bey struck Ernest Hemingway, who interviewed him some weeks later for the Toronto Star, as a crook. He was, Hemingway wrote, “big and bulky,” with wing collars, a gray mustache, and a porcupine haircut. Hamid Bey operated as Kemal’s foreign minister in Constantinople, and he and Bristol often met at the embassy. Always exceedingly polite to the admiral, Hamid Bey had begun the meeting with copious apologies for his tardiness. On this occasion, Bristol instructed his guest, one of the most sly and powerful men in intrigue-filled Constantinople, on the importance of Turkish good conduct. The nationalists, Bristol told him, had an opportunity “to reassure the world generally that they desired to properly protect minorities in the country.” Hamid Bey was his usual agreeable self to the admiral.
Satisfied that his advice was welcomed, Bristol had an additional suggestion for Hamid Bey. Bristol said he had learned from a nationalist leader in Ankara of the Greek army’s atrocities. Why not let a newspaper correspondent travel to those towns and villages destroyed by the Greek army in its retreat? It would be a public-relations masterstroke. Stories of Greek atrocities would improve the Turkish image and help Bristol undermine support for the Armenians and Greeks and their advocates in the United States. Hamid Bey listened carefully, obviously interested. Bristol said he just happened to have a correspondent in mind—Charles Sweeny of the New York World.
Sweeny was a fascinating figure, an original of the sort that eventually becomes a caricature: a journalist and soldier of fortune with a charismatic personality that appealed especially to those who liked their heroes mysterious and a little dangerous. As a young man, he had been booted from West Point and fought as a mercenary in the Mexican and Venezuelan revolutions. In 1914, to get into the big war, he had enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, and he won France’s Legion of Honor for wounds received at Champagne. He had joined the American Expeditionary Force when the United States entered the war. Afterward, he worked as a reporter in the Paris bureau of the New York World. Tall, hawk nosed, and ruddy faced, Sweeny had traveled to Constantinople to cover the Greek-Turkish war. Young Hemingway was an admirer in Paris, and the two became lifelong friends; Sweeny served as a model and mentor for Hemingway in his life and fiction. Many years later, Sweeny, in his eighties, would walk as a pallbearer at Hemingway’s funeral. Bristol also fell under Sweeny’s spell and invited him on the outings he often arranged on weekends with navy officers and their wives.
In Constantinople, Sweeny, then forty years old, was working not only for Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the New York World—he was employed as a spy for the French government, and he had been busy collecting information on Basil Zaharoff, whom the French wished to disparage both for his support of the Greeks in the current war and for his connections to the Germans in the last. Sweeny probably had been the source of Bristol’s information about Zaharoff, which had found its way back to Washington as an intelligence report. The British, Turks, and French all had a good bead on Sweeny. He lived in a way that drew attention; he switched hotels several times a week, and he could be found wandering in the most dangerous sections of Constantinople, where (as the British observed) he would meet French intelligence officers. The only people who seemed unaware of the full range of Sweeny’s activities were the Americans, namely Bristol and his intelligence staff. Sweeny’s pro-Turkish reporting and his military background endeared him to Bristol, and while Bristol may have thought he was using Sweeny, it was more like the reverse. A newspaper reporter who doubles as a spy can do worse than to have an American admiral interceding on his behalf.
After proposing stories about Greek atrocities to Hamid Bey, Bristol met the same day with Sweeny and told him of the arrangements he was seeking to make for him with the nationalists, to which Sweeny gave his enthusiastic approval.
Finally on Friday, two days after the relief meeting in Bristol’s office, the people selected to travel to Smyrna assembled on the destroyer USS Lawrence. They were Harold Jaquith of Near East Relief; Charles Claflin Davis of the American Red Cross; and Dr. Wilfred Post and two nurses, Sara Corning and Agnes Evon. Davis, a tall, stout, and gentle man, was a prominent Bostonian who had left his law practice to drive a Red Cross ambulance in France and had remained with the Red Cross to manage relief for the Russian refugees in Constantinople. As the group was departing, Bristol told Davis not to make any commitments in Smyrna without checking with him first and to keep matters in Smyrna in perspective, warning him “that under such circumstances people were a bit hysterical and the situation always seemed worse than it would turn out to be.” Bristol recorded in his diary, “I told him that he thoroughly understood my policy and therefore I would leave it in his hands to carry out that policy and to keep me informed in every way.”
A sixth member joined the group aboard the USS Lawrence—Mark O. Prentiss, who had attached himself to Near East Relief but whose real career had been as a publicist in New York. Prentiss was a peculiar character, a kind of gray-flannel flimflam man with a talent for inventing and inflating his résumé and insinuating himself into situations where he saw personal gain. He had been an early member of the Council on Foreign Relations but had been pushed out of the organization, apparently for quest
ionable bills he had submitted. He had shown up in Constantinople in August and introduced himself to Bristol as an efficiency expert who had come to Turkey to observe the operations of Near East Relief. Prentiss, incredibly, would end up filing stories to The New York Times and other prominent publications that provided Americans with some of the most influential and ultimately distorted coverage of the Smyrna catastrophe. Before the year was out, he even would be implicated in a murder involving a jealous lover in Italy.
Bristol added one more person to the trip—his naval chief of staff, Captain Hepburn. It was an unusual step that did not bring any additional aid or expertise to the mission but was a public demonstration of Bristol’s concern for the refugees. It was empty symbolism but good PR. He emphasized the point time and again in the press coverage—he took the situation in Smyrna so seriously that he had sent his naval chief of staff. The ship slipped its mooring in the swift Bosporus current in the late afternoon of Friday, September 8, and steamed toward Smyrna “at an economical speed.”
CHAPTER 13
Captain Hepburn’s Dilemma
The USS Lawrence entered the Gulf of Smyrna early Saturday morning, September 9, its upward sweeping bow slicing through the blue-green water. Hepburn noted the numerous small sailboats and shabby coastal steamers that were overburdened with passengers and headed toward the sea. Some of the steamers pulled lines of small barges piled high with ragged pyramids of people and luggage. There were also numerous caiques, the small boats without keels, pointed at both ends and rigged with lateen sails, that were common to ports of the eastern Mediterranean. They skimmed on the sea’s surface like dry leaves with upturned edges, and the big bow waves of the Lawrence set them rolling.
Ahead was the city and the dense dark mass of refugees lining the waterfront, and to the south, along the coastal road, Hepburn, squinting into the bright morning sun that was rising behind the city, discerned a long thin line of Greek cavalry moving like a scraggly centipede over the green-and-brown stubbled landscape. The men, mounted on horses and camels, were headed toward Chesme, where Greek merchant ships were picking up remnants of the Greek army. The Greek line was two and a half miles long, and the boom of Greek naval artillery reverberated over the water as a Greek battleship several miles distant covered the army’s retreat.