Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (15 page)

American public opinion was appalled by this news and it enabled the federal government to justify inching ever closer to declaring war. In mid-February 1917, two months before the rupture actually occurred, George Horton received a secret despatch from Washington, instructing him to destroy all consular documents that might compromise any American or Allied inhabitant of Smyrna.

Horton was also ordered to get as many Americans out of Smyrna as possible without betraying the fact that hostilities were impending. This he managed to achieve, smuggling all but sixty-five Americans out of Paradise and into safe places in Europe. When the rupture in relations finally came – on 20 April – Horton was able to conduct the remaining few nationals out of the country. He had become the only American left in the city.

But he, too, had to pack his bags. He was now an enemy alien and all diplomatic niceties had been superseded by war. He paid a final visit to his old friend Rahmi Bey and found the governor as charming as ever. ‘He informed me that a private [train] compartment had been prepared for me as far as Constantinople, and that I could go ahead and pack my baggage, which would not be inspected by the local authorities.’ Horton and his wife headed first to Berne and then to Rome. Just a few weeks later, Horton was posted to Salonica.

His departure from Smyrna brought to an end the daily chronicle of life in Smyrna during the blackest days of the First World War. There are few accounts describing the city in the final year of the conflict, although prints and letters suggest that life returned to near-normality after the difficult early period. One of the most extraordinary mementoes is a photograph taken in 1917. This was one of the darkest years of the First World War, the year of Passchendaele and stagnation in the mud of Flanders. Yet the photo suggests that a very different story was unfolding in Smyrna. It shows Greeks, Turks, Levantines and Jews assembled in the Smyrna Opera House – all in black tie and tails – for the première performance of Verdi’s
Rigoletto
.

The Levantine diaries reveal that food was abundant in the latter years of the war and no one went short of essential supplies. Many families supplemented their diet by shooting the little game birds that were found in the grounds of their houses. ‘My mother often went round the gardens . . . carrying an air-gun or a “flaubert” – a very small gun – bringing home a string of
beccaficos
, which she cooked for us,’ wrote one of the Whittalls. ‘These most delicious of tiny birds were fried in a pan and almost eaten whole.’

The Levantine memoirs also suggest that life in Bournabat also continued at its unhurried pace. Families still gathered for afternoon tea; the social club remained open to fee-paying subscribers. And the family balls continued to be held in the grounds of the great houses. ‘The balls used to be something unbelievable,’ recalled Eldon Giraud many years later, ‘especially in winter, when parts of the front gardens used to be covered by tents as was the case when Uncle Edward [Whittall] gave a ball and I was taken to see the preparations.’ Young Eldon was amazed by the extravagance. ‘The ponds in front of the house had all been enclosed and floodlit by candles and Chinese lanterns. I have never seen such a sight – or ever will again.’

That ball was to be Edward Whittall’s last. In 1917, the flower-collecting brother of Herbert Octavius breathed his last. He was sixty-six years of age: a young man by Whittall standards, but one whose life had been enriched by his passion for horticulture.

‘I remember his funeral,’ wrote his granddaughter, Mary, ‘even though I was only seven. Not only was the church overflowing with people, but the whole yard was packed with crowds of Greeks, Turks and peasants.’ All had come to pay their last respects to a man who had given them employment – and paid for it out of his own pocket – throughout the last three years of war.

The crowds of workers filed past Edward’s coffin with heavy heart, aware that life was certain to be much more difficult in the future. All had enjoyed working for a man who was in every respect larger than life. Now, they watched in silence as his coffin was interred in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalene, close to the grave of his mother. His memory was to be kept alive in the exquisite gardens that had entranced Gertrude Bell many years earlier and continued to flower throughout the final months of the war.

‘I am lucky enough to remember such things,’ wrote his granddaughter towards the end of her life, ‘and the sweet smell of the tiny clusters of mauve flowers on Libya grass, newly watered, still lingers nostalgically.’

George Horton was saddened by his departure from Smyrna. It had been his home for six years and he was extremely attached to its cosmopolitan social life. Now that he had left, he could only pray that Rahmi Bey – and the city’s spirit of independence – would survive the outcome of the First World War.

That outcome was by no means certain in the spring of 1917. Although the United States had entered the war, the Allied powers knew that it would be many months before the American army was fully mobilised. Russia was meanwhile spiralling into chaos – Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated in March – and there was stagnation on the battlefields of northern France. At a series of secret meetings in London and Paris, generals began asking themselves whether a new front, centred on the strategic Greek port of Salonica, might hold the key to the future of the war.

Horton arrived in Salonica after a roundabout voyage that took him first to Berne and then to Rome. By the time he reached the city he was mentally and physically drained. For months he had been sustained by adrenaline alone and he now suffered a mild breakdown. The British doctor who examined him was alarmed by his condition. ‘[He] informed me that I was overcome by fatigue and would probably never be able to work any more.’

This diagnosis brought Horton sharply back to reality. After a week in bed, he got dressed, discharged himself from the infirmary and headed straight to the consulate. Within a few hours, he was back at his desk.

His recovery was well timed. Greece was in the process of undergoing a momentous political earthquake and it was to have the most serious repercussions for Smyrna. The turmoil had been sparked by the failure of the Gallipoli campaign in the winter of 1915. Once the scale of the disaster became apparent, its architects – among them Winston Churchill – ordered a full-scale evacuation. The shell-shocked survivors were plucked from the sand dunes and transported to Salonica in the hope that they would be able to strike inland in order to protect Serbia from a three-pronged attack by Bulgaria, Germany and Austria.

There was one drawback to this strategy. Greece was still a neutral power and King Constantine remained implacably opposed to joining the Allied war effort. In the face of his intransigence, the British and French followed a time-honoured tradition and simply chose to ignore him. They sailed their battleships into Salonica’s harbour and began landing the first battalions of a force that would eventually number more than 300,000 men. King Constantine fumed and stamped his feet. ‘I will not be treated as if I were a native chieftain,’ he told the British and the French. But he was – and there was very little he could do about it.

By the time the troops were ready for action, it was too late to help Serbia. Austrian and German forces had already swept into Belgrade. Allied commanders in Salonica scratched their heads and wondered what to do with the men under their command. ‘Damn. What the devil have they sent us here for?’ asked the commander of the British Salonica Force. ‘Here I am – and not a word of instructions. What the devil do they want me to do?’

The answer was provided by Venizelos. After harnessing support in Crete and the Greek islands that flanked the coast of Asia Minor, he staged a
coup d’état
and made a triumphant entry into Salonica in October 1916. His first act was to establish a provisional government and a new national army. Within six weeks, Greek battalions were serving under British command.

The British and French bent over backwards to help their new Greek ally, unaware that they were creating terrible problems for the future. It fell to the French intelligence officer, Antoine Scheikevitch, to warn that Venizelos had joined the war for one reason alone: ‘[it would] permit the servants of the Great Idea to count in the decisions of the arbiters of the peace’.

Scheikevitch’s warning fell on deaf ears although hindsight was to prove him right. Venizelos was prepared to commit his forces to fight alongside the Allies, but his gaze was once again turned towards Smyrna and the East.

By the time Horton arrived in Salonica, Greece was in the unhappy position of having two governments: one in Athens, presided over by King Constantine, and the other in Salonica, headed by his arch-rival Venizelos. However, this woeful state of affairs was soon brought to an end by Allied forces. In the summer of 1917, French troops landed at Corinth, prompting the flight of King Constantine. He headed to Switzerland, where he was to spend the rest of the war in exile.

Within days of his departure, the French occupied Athens in the name of the Allied powers. Shortly afterwards, Venizelos made his entrance into the city amidst scenes of unprecedented enthusiasm. One of his first acts was to officially enter the conflict on the side of the Allies.

The arrival of American troops on European soil at long last tipped the military balance in favour of the Allied powers. In London, Paris and Washington, there was a feeling that Germany and her allies could now be defeated.

The first glimmer of hope came from an unexpected quarter. In October 1917, General Allenby launched his lightning offensive against Ottoman forces in Gaza, scored a swift victory and pressed on towards Jerusalem. This he also captured, delivering Lloyd George – Britain’s prime minister since 1916 – the ‘Christmas present’ that he had fondly requested. Allenby spent the following spring and summer completing the conquest of Palestine, ably aided by Colonel T. E. Lawrence ‘of Arabia’, until the Ottoman forces were driven back towards Damascus and Aleppo.

The war on the western front was also reaching its denouement. In the summer of 1918, General Ludendorff launched his much vaunted
friedenssturm
[peace offensive] against the British and French forces, hoping to annihilate them before the bulk of the American army was ready for action. His failure to achieve this breakthrough – though it cost many Allied lives – was to spell the end for Germany. The armies of Britain, France and America were quick to launch a counter-attack and at long last penetrated the German front. As Ludendorff’s troops retreated to the Hindenburg Line, the general realised that Germany was a spent force. He informed the Kaiser that he would soon have to seek an armistice.

Events now began moving with extraordinary rapidity. The Italian army had already brought about the disintegration of the Austrian front. Now, the forces at Salonica were also put into action. They had won a victory of sorts a few months earlier when Venizelos’s new Greek army triumphed over the feared Bulgarian 49th Regiment on the Skra di Legen, a wind-blown summit on the frontier of Serbia. By the summer of 1918, the Salonica army was driving northwards with remarkable speed, capturing scores of hitherto impregnable Bulgarian positions.

On 30 September, the war-weary Bulgarians finally capitulated, the first of the Central Powers to do so. It was the news that Lloyd George had long been waiting to hear. At last he knew that his forces could head east towards Turkey, with the hope of knocking out one of Germany’s staunchest allies.

What Lloyd George did not know – and neither did any of his fellow Allied leaders – was that there was a very real possibility of Turkey knocking herself out of the war. Rahmi Bey had known for some time that his country’s defeat was inevitable. Now, he decided to take control of Turkey’s woes – and save the great trading dynasties of Smyrna – by staging a
coup d’état
.

The details of his plot might have remained a secret, had it not been for the fact that a handful of Rahmi’s private papers have survived in the archives of the Foreign Office. They reveal that he hoped to replace the discredited wartime government with one that was fully in accord with the Allied powers.

‘I’ve just returned from Constantinople,’ wrote Rahmi in a private letter at the beginning of October. ‘After having made contact with all the most influential political players, I have worked out all the different ways to bring down the government.’

Rahmi’s most loyal supporters were in Smyrna. They included his deputy, Carabiber Bey, and senior members of the Whittall family. Rahmi intended to give the Whittalls ministerial positions in his post-war government.

As the British cavalry made their final advance towards the Turkish frontier-post at Dedeagatch, Rahmi Bey realised that there was not a moment to lose. His
coup d’état
was set for 10 October and he told his supporters that he was ‘confident of complete success’. All he needed to do was ensure the backing of the British government.

The British first grasped that something extraordinary was afoot on 5 October when Whitehall received a ‘secret and urgent’ telegram from Rahmi Bey. A few days later, government ministers received a second telegram, informing them that Charles Giraud and Carabiber Bey had arrived in Mytilene. They told the British commander that they had been entrusted with a ‘very important mission to [the] Imperial British Minister’.

This news caused a stir in Whitehall. Senior officials wrongly surmised that the delegation had been sent by the Ottoman government with the intention of suing for peace. Giraud and Carabiber were whisked to Athens on a British warship for a meeting with the British minister, Lord Granville, who was expecting news of Turkey’s unconditional surrender. Instead, he found himself discussing Rahmi Bey’s plan to overthrow the Ottoman government. He was handed a letter from Rahmi – written in elegant French – in which the governor reminded the British of his long-standing sympathy for the Allied cause. The letter set out a seven-point peace plan that his government would adhere to as soon as it held power. It included the principal British demand: the freedom of the Straits.