The Great Fire

by Lou Ureneck

  11After the war ended Evans, United States Policy, 89–107.

  12It was unclear how Wilson’s vision Simon Payaslian, United States Policy toward the Armenian Question and the Armenian Genocide (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 135–136.

  12Four months into the Paris talks Smith, Ionian Vision, 68–88.

  13The Greeks and the Turks were old enemies Alexis Heraclides, “The Essence of the Greek-Turkish Rivalry: National Narrative and Identity,” Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe, London School of Economics, 2011; David Brewer, Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule from the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010).

  14Poorly disciplined and led Victoria Solomonidis, “Greece in Asia Minor: The Greek Administration of the Vilayet of Aidin, 1919–1922.” Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1984, 55.

  14So hostile was “Smyrna and After, Part I,” Naval Review, publication of the Naval Society, London, vol. XI, no. 3, 1923. For an explanation of clashing nationalisms: Resat Kasaba, Greek and Turkish Nationalism in Formation: Western Anatolia 1919–1922, Mediterranean Program Series, European University Institute.

  14The stiff Allied-imposed armistice Halide Edib, The Turkish Ordeal (Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1928), see especially Part I, “In Istamboul.”

  14“Remember Smyrna” Robert Dunn, World Alive: A Personal Story (New York: Crown Publishers, 1956).

  14Quietly, the United States Evans, United States Policy, 236–268.

  14The Europeans went ahead Evans, United States Policy, 269–290.

  15“Two thirds of the Greek deportees …” Major F. D. Yowell, Near East Relief. See letter to Consul Jesse P. Jackson, at Aleppo, April 5, 1922, NA 867.4016/454. Also, supplementary report to the secretary of state, received July 14, 1922. NA 867.3016/575. John Clayton, “Deportations in Asia Minor,” unpublished report for the Chicago Tribune, sent as a cable by Jesse Jackson, American consul in Aleppo, to State Department, July 25, 1922. NA867.4016/618. “Over the mountains south of Harput winds a long road from Diarbekir to Nissibin and the desert. It is a road to Calvary. Along its course, mile after mile are strewn the graves where sleep thousands of Greek exiles. Graves that were first barely scratched in the snow; graves which often contain only the bones from which the vultures have feasted.”

  16Greece prepared for a unilateral withdrawal Solomonides, 103.

  16Soon, Greece’s only real ally, Britain There are numerous turns in the story of Greece’s military campaign in Asia Minor. Venizelos, whose presence at the Paris peace talks had opened the way for the Greek army’s landing at Smyrna, had come to power as prime minister in Greece in 1910. Under his leadership, and through the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, Greece greatly expanded its territory. But with the coming of World War I, a split opened between Greece’s King Constantine and Venizelos over Greece’s role in the big war. Venizelos sought to join the Entente Powers, but the king tilted toward Germany and neutrality. The king dismissed Venizelos, who ultimately formed a provisional government in Salonika with the backing of Britain and France, and Constantine was forced to abdicate in favor of his son Alexander. After the war, Greece remained bitterly divided between the supporters of Venizelos and the monarchy. In 1920, while Greece was engaged in its war with Turkish nationalists in Asia Minor, young King Alexander died from the bite of a pet monkey, triggering a political crisis that led to elections and the shocking defeat of Venizelos. Then, in a moment of self-destructive pique, Greek voters recalled Constantine to Athens as king, creating a backlash among the Allies who despised him for his pro-German attitude before World War I. With Greece’s military fortunes flagging in Turkey, the return of Constantine alienated Britain, which already was having second thoughts about Greece’s ability to prevail in the war. Lloyd George continued to make stirring speeches in favor of Greece right up to the very end, and even after the end, but he was unable to deliver the men or materiel that would have made a difference in the outcome. This is covered masterfully in Smith’s Ionian Vision. For an inside view of the destructive military ramifications of the Greek political shift, see the book by Prince Andrew of Greece, Towards Disaster—The Greek Army in Asia Minor in 1921 (London: John Murray, 1930). Prince Andrew was Constantine’s brother, and he fought with the Greek army at the Battle of Sakaria. He was father to the current Prince Phillip, husband to Queen Elizabeth II. See also: “Morale of the Greek Army,” G-2 Report, STANAV, Sept. 11, 1922, No. 517. MLB.

  CHAPTER 2: AN INNOCENT ARRIVES

  18In mid-August 1922 Jennings’s biographical details come from a variety of sources: personnel records of the YMCA at KFYA; correspondence of his wife, Amy Jennings, AKJP; Syracuse University Archives; a biographical file including the correspondence of colleagues assembled by MGM Pictures for the making of a short movie about Jennings in the 1940s, which is now in the possession of Turner Properties, Atlanta, Georgia; the records of the Trenton (NY) United Methodist Church; and the archives of the Northern New York Conference of the United Methodist Church.

  19Jennings’s assignment in Smyrna Asa Jennings to Darius Davis, April 8, 1923. KFYA.

  19The YMCA director in Smyrna E. O. Jacob was running the Smyrna YMCA. Jennings had been sent on a short-term contract; Jacob made it clear in a confidential report to higher-ups that he wanted a different person who would work on a longer-term contract. “Administrative Report, Smyrna Young Men’s Christian Association,” July 1922. KFYA.

  19“Jennings has a most attractive personality” Darius. A. Davis to E. O. Jacob, March 29, 1922. KFYA.

  19“I do not despair …” Asa Jennings to his son Asa, June 26, 1924, AJKP.

  21Jennings, then twenty-seven years old The fullest description of Jennings’s medical history appears in a letter written Nov. 25, 1942, by his wife, Amy, to William Schneider of St. Louis, Missouri, who had inquired admiringly about Jennings’s achievements. KFYA.

  22The names along the Quay The basis for street descriptions throughout the book is the Plan de Smyrne, prepared as an insurance map by Ernest Bon in 1913.

  22In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries A rich source of information about Smyrna is A Survey of Some Social Conditions in Smyrna, Asia Minor, May 1921, a manuscript brought to publication in 2009 by Rıfat N Bali, Istanbul: Libra Kitapçılık Ve Yayıncılık.

  Smyrna was a frequent stop for tourists traveling through the Near East in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and numerous letters and travel guides describe the city: John Cam Hobhouse Broughton, Travels in Albania and Other Provinces of Turkey in 1809 & 1810 (London: Murray, 1858); Guide to Greece, the Archipelago, Constantinople, the Coasts of Asia Minor, Crete and Cyprus, with Thirteen Maps and Thirty-three Plans (London: Macmillan, 1908); Handbook for Travellers in Turkey in Asia: Including Constantinople, the Bosphorus, Plain of Troy, Isles of Cyprus, Rhodes, &c., Smyrna, Ephesus, and the Routes to Persia, Bagdad, Moosool, &c. (London: J. Murray, 1878); Guide to Greece, the Archipelago, Constantinople, the Coasts of Asia Minor (Macmillan & Co); Jerome Alfred Hart, A Levantine Logbook (New York: Longmans, Green, 1905); Bilge Criss, American Turkish Encounters: Politics and Culture, 1830–1989 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011); Mansel, Levant: Splendour.

  24The city was also a principal source of Turkish tobacco An encyclopedic description of the American tobacco business at the time appears in the record of the Hearings Before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, Sixty-seventh Congress, First Session, on the Proposed Tariff Act of 1921 (H. R. 7456) 1922: American Valuation. 67th Cong., 1st sess. S. Doc. H. R. 7456. Vol. 7. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1922). See also Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America (New York: Basic, 2007); Howard Cox, The Global Cigarette: Origins and Evolution of British American Tobacco, 1880–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  24Smyrna was home to the Oriental Carpet Antony Wynn, Three Camels to Smyrna: Times of War a
nd Peace in Turkey, Persia, India, Afghanistan & Nepal, 1907–1986: The Story of the Oriental Carpet Manufacturers Company (London: Hali, 2008).

  25The servant staffs For a portrait of the families and lives of Levantine families in Smyrna, see Giles Milton, Paradise Lost Smyrna 1922 (New York: Basic Books, 2010). Also, Mansel, Levant: Splendour.

  25A Greek soldier, evoking the city’s The phrase comes from the memoir of Corporal Stamatis Hadjiyannis, an Ottoman Greek whose family was ejected from Asia Minor in the years immediately before World War I. He enlisted in the Greek army, fought on the Bulgarian front, and after the war ended, traveled with his unit from Salonika to Smyrna in 1919. The memoir is in the possession of his grandson, George Poulemenos, coauthor of A Lexicon of Smyrneika, Izmir Rumcasi Sozlugus, Tarih Vakfi Yurt Kitaplari (2012). A memoir excerpt can be read at http://levantineheritage.com.

  25The first two missionaries Hilton Obenzinger, “Holy Land Narrative and American Covenant: Levi Parsons, Pliny Fisk and the Palestine Mission,” Religion & Literature 35, no. 2/3 (2003): 241–267.

  26Pliny and Fisk were the vanguard There are many compelling memoirs by American missionaries who served in Turkey during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They include Grace H. Knapp, Grisell M. McLaren, and Myrtle O. Shane, The Tragedy of Bitlis (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1919); Bertha B. Morley, Marsovan 1915: The Diaries of Bertha B. Morley, ed. Hilmar Kaiser (Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 2000); William Wheelock Peet and Louise Jenison Peet, No Less Honor (Chattanooga, TN: Priv. Print., 1939); Cyrus Hamlin, My Life and Times (Boston: Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Co.,1831); and Joseph Kingsbury Greene, Leavening the Levant (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1916).

  27Ernest Otto Jacob, who In a letter to his brother C. V. Hibbard, associate general secretary for the International Committee of YMCA, Darrel O. Hibbard, who worked for the YMCA in Athens, discusses Jacob’s difficult nature and indicates that Jacob had conflicts with other YMCA members in Smyrna and his previous assignment. “He has quarreled with every man he has had sent to Smyrna. Jennings the last one seems to have been too much for him according to all reports.” Oct. 8, 1922. KFYA.

  CHAPTER 3: THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  29On the morning of August 26, 1922 This chapter and the subsequent chapter on Kemal are deeply indebted to the two major biographies in English of Mustapha Kemal: Patrick Balfour Kinross, Atatürk: A Biography of Mustafa Kemal, Father of Modern Turkey (New York: Quill/Morrow, 1992); and Andrew Mango, Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey (Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 2000). Also see Hanns Froembgen, Kemal Ataturk; a Biography. Translated by Kenneth Kirkness (New York: Hillman-Curl, 1937). Also, Smith in Ionian Vision on the Greek response to the attacks.

  30Among the poets Mango, Atatürk, 37.

  30“well-trained superior waiter” Robert Steed Dunn, World Alive: A Personal Story (New York: Crown, 1956).

  31Only weeks earlier, British officers Caffrey to State Dept., July 22, 1922. NA 767.68/313. “Fighting Qualities of Greek Troops,” Intelligence Report, STANAV, Oct 2, 1920, No. 190. MLB.

  34Nowhere had his courage Kinross, Atatürk, 87–112; Mango, Atatürk, 156–158.

  34“Greeks and Turks alike fought …” The passage is taken from H. C. Armstrong, Gray Wolf, Mustafa Kemal: An Intimate Study of a Dictator (New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1933). Courtenay was a British officer serving in Turkey.

  34The Greeks had one friend See Smith’s Ionian Vision, “Winter Disenchantment” chapter. See also I. A. Rose, Conservatism and Foreign Policy during the Lloyd George Coalition, 1918–1922 (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 228–234.

  Lloyd George in the House of Commons August 4, 1922 (Hansard Vol 157): “It is remarkable that she (Greece) has been able to accomplish what she has. She has maintained an army, and a large army. I am told there are men who have not been home to see their families for 12 years in Greece—peasants drawn from the soil—and they are prepared still to go on for the liberation of the men of their race. They have made financial sacrifices which are almost incredible… . A people who have done that are worthy of consideration at the hands of any country, and therefore I earnestly trust that, whatever happen, we shall see that the Christian populations of Asia Minor are adequately protected against a repetition of such horrible incidents as have disgraced the annals of that land.” See also: “The result of Mr. Lloyd George’s Speech on the Near East Question,” G-2 Report, STANAV, August 25, 1922. “The speech … was received by all Greeks as a positive assurance of strong British support for their cause …” Then in October, Lloyd George in the House of Commons: “I am not going into the question of who was responsible in Smyrna. I am not going to discuss whether the Greeks provoked the Turks or the Turks the Greeks. It is enough for me to call attention to the fact that since 1914 the Turks, according to official testimony we have received have slaughtered in cold blood a million and a half of Armenians, men, women and children, and five hundred thousand Greeks without any provocation at all.”

  CHAPTER 4: GEORGE HORTON, POET-CONSUL

  36At the end of August George Horton, The Blight of Asia: An Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers; with a True Story of the Burning of Smyrna (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926), 117.

  36He had pulled men V. G. Balabanian to Horton, July 25, 1919: “Your happy return to Smyrna gives us the opportunity of expressing our best thanks for your paternal protection in favor of five of our comrades who were condemned to death by the court martial of Smyrna in July 1915 without any plausible accusation against them.” The letter is quoted in Nancy Horton’s unfinished biography of GH. GHP.

  38“The three big kinema …” “Smyrna’s Last Days. A Manchester Man’s Experiences,” Manchester Guardian, Sept. 9, 1922, as quoted in Lysimachos Oeconomos, The Martyrdom of Smyrna and Eastern Christendom: A File of Overwhelming Evidence, Denouncing the Misdeeds of the Turks in Asia Minor and Showing Their Responsibility for the Horrors of Smyrna (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1922).

  38The first, on August 30 Horton to State Department, August 30, 1922. NA 767.68/265.

  38“My opinion is that the situation …” Horton to State Dept. NA 767.68/276.

  39Horton had been a consul Geoge Horton, Recollections Grave and Gay (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1927).

  39Horton’s first aspiration The details of Horton’s early life come from an unpublished biography of him by his daughter Nancy Horton, as well as an unpublished memoir, collected in the GHP now at Georgetown University. (In my review of the materials, they were held by Miss Horton’s attorney at his office in Washington, D.C.)

  41Two years earlier, a group Mango, Atatürk, 76–77.

  42Horton watched Horton, Blight of Asia, 27–40.

  42Nearly thirty thousand Armenian and Assyrian Christians Merrill D. Peterson, “Starving Armenians”: America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1930 and After (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004), 28–29; “Brooklyn Man Saw Missionaries Shot,” New York Times, May 2, 1909.

  43By September 3, it had taken Utkan Kocatürk, Atatürk Ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Tarihi Kronolojisi: 1918–1938 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1983).

  44The Asia Minor Defense League Smith, Ionian Vision, 238, 239; Solomonidis, “Greece in Asia Minor,” 229; Also, testimony in a trial in 1923 in which tobacco companies sought payment for losses. Rev. Dobbs Testimony, Day 8 49-53 (Trial summary), Smyrna Conflagration, 13th–16th September, 1922: In the High Court of Justice, King’s Bench Division, and Court of Appeal: American Tobacco Company Incorporated v. Guardian Assurance Company Ltd., and Socieìteì Anonyme Des Tabacs D’Orient Et D’Outre Mer v. Alliance Assurance Company Ltd… . 1-December … 1924 and 22nd April to 1st May, 1925 (London: Printed by Wyman, Privately Printed) and Prince Andrew, Towards Disaster, ff.

  43He also encouraged his friend Interviews with Vassily Skoulakis at his home in Athens, August 2011. Born in Smyrna, Mr. Skoulakis was a fr
iend and an employee of Onassis (traffic director of Olympic Airlines) and traveled with him on his return to Smyrna. Nicholas Gage, Greek Fire—The story of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis (New York: Knopf, 2000), 114–128.

  44He wrote letters on consulate stationery Interviews with Nancy Horton at her home in Athens, August 2011.

  44He tried without success “Barry Domvile His Diary,” Sept. 4, 1922, Royal Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

  CHAPTER 5: GARABED HATCHERIAN

  45Dr. Hatcherian’s diary stands alone as a sustained and detailed narrative of events in Smyrna by a resident of the city. Its importance as an insight into lives of Smyrniots before and after the fire would be difficult to exaggerate. The area that had been occupied by his neighborhood, as described in the diary, is now contained within the Izmir fairgrounds.

  CHAPTER 6: ADMIRAL BRISTOL, AMERICAN POTENTATE

  48In Constantinople, Rear Admiral Mark Bristol Bristol kept a “War Diary,” a daily record of his activities. The diary is collected in the Mark Lambert Bristol Papers at the Library of Congress.

  48The city was crowded, noisy The description of Constantinople draws on several sources including the sociological study of the city by Clarence R. Johnson, Constantinople To-day or, The Pathfinder Survey of Constantinople: A Study in Oriental Social Life (New York: Macmillan, 1922). John Dos Passos provided a vivid description his travel book, Orient Express (New York and London: Harper & Bros., 1927). Dos Passos’s book was based on his trip to the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus, and the Middle East during the latter half of 1921. “Out of Turkish Coffee Cups,” the first six sections of “Constant’ July 1921,” appeared in the New York Tribune, October 2, 1921. Robert Shenk, ed., Playships of the World: The Naval Diaries of Admiral Dan Gallery, 1920–1924 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008), ff. The Russian Refugees, Constantinople Scrapbooks, 1921–1923, Charles Claflin Davis Digital Collection, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA.