Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (25 page)

It may have been chaotic but at least it was also consistent. Lloyd George contacted Venizelos and asked him to spare a division of troops for the protection of Constantinople. In return, he gave his Greek compatriot the green light to deploy his forces out from Smyrna.

The Greek advance was rapid, decisive and brilliantly executed. One corps pushed due east and halted only when it reached the town of Alashehir, more than a hundred miles from the city. A parallel advance up the Maeander Valley extended Greek control far to the south. A third corps drove northwards, crossing tortuous mountain paths until it reached the Sea of Marmara. The Greek cavalry penetrated even further east and scored the notable success of capturing Bursa, the first capital of the Ottoman state. By the time that military operations were brought to a halt, the army had created a buffer zone that extended some 200 miles around Smyrna.

The Greek army had excelled itself, defeating the nationalist forces in every encounter. There was horror and outrage when news of their offensive reached Angora. The platform of the Grand National Assembly was draped in black as a token of mourning.

There was a similar despondency among Turks in Constantinople. The efficiency of the Greek advance convinced the sultan and his grand vizier that they had no option but to agree to unconditional terms for a conclusive peace. The treaty that they signed was based on the draconian terms drafted by the Allies at the Italian town of San Remo four months earlier. Smyrna and all of its extended hinterland was officially awarded to Greece. Although Turkey was to retain nominal sovereignty of this zone, there was to be a plebiscite after five years that would decide whether or not it should be permanently annexed to Greece. Few doubted the results of such a vote.

Smyrna was not the only loss. Kurdistan in the east was to become autonomous and Armenia an independent state. The Straits were internationalised, and the French and Italians divided up the whole of southern Turkey into spheres of influence. Thrace was awarded to Greece. So, too, were most of the islands of the Aegean. Although Constantinople was to remain the country’s capital, the rump of the nation was now far away in the hinterlands of Anatolia.

The grand vizier appended his signature to the treaty in August 1920, signalling his government’s consent to its terms, but the nationalists in Angora refused to recognise its validity. ‘[It] was,’ wrote Halide Edib, ‘like fresh fuel thrown onto the smouldering fire of hatred which the Western world had provoked by its conduct in Turkey.’

The French president, Raymond Poincaré, noted wryly that it was apposite for the treaty to be signed in Sèvres, home to fragile porcelain. ‘It, too, is a fragile object,’ he said. ‘Perhaps a shattered vase.’

But one man was jubilant with the signing of the treaty. Venizelos was experiencing his finest hour. After a few weeks of military action, he had achieved his long-cherished goal of reconquering the lands of Ancient Greece and Byzantium. The Megali Idea had become a reality and Smyrna’s status was enshrined in international law.

Lloyd George also felt vindicated, reminding his colleagues that, under his leadership, Britain had backed a winning horse. Alone among senior politicians in London, Winston Churchill foresaw that war was now an inevitability. ‘At last, peace with Turkey,’ he wrote. ‘And to ratify it, war with Turkey. However, so far as the Great Allies were concerned, the war was to be fought by proxy. Wars when fought by great nations are often very dangerous for the proxy.’

They were to prove very dangerous for Smyrna as well.

The dramatic events unfolding in eastern Anatolia seemed a far remove from Bournabat. Life had returned to the careless pleasures of the pre-war years and the Levantine merchant princes – most of whom had been implacably opposed to the Greek occupation – were forced to concede that Stergiadis had performed a miracle.

Herbert Octavius swallowed his pride and made a very public U-turn, offering the Greek governor his full and public endorsement. In a letter to
The Times
, he wrote: ‘I feel it impossible . . . as one of the oldest British residents in Smyrna . . . not to bear testimony from my own personal knowledge, to the correct and impartial behaviour of the present Greek civil authorities and especially of Mr Stergiades.’ He added that the most tangible sign of Stergiadis’s even-handedness was the fact that he was despised by the local Greeks. ‘[They] are furious with him,’ he wrote, ‘for what they call his unbearable partiality for the Turks.’

Bournabat was particularly lively in the months that followed the Greek occupation. The Bournabat Club had always been popular with young bachelors. Now, an influx of Greek officers led to long nights of revelry and high jinks. ‘There are many tales about the “doings” in that club,’ wrote Eldon Giraud, almost all of which involved lashings of alcohol and girls with loose morals. Eldon recalled one particularly drunken night when old John Wood ‘had to be taken home in the Greek weekly paper . . . minus his trousers’. Exactly how he lost them remains a mystery, but no one censured him for his conduct. After the uncertainty of the war years, there was a feeling among the younger men that outlandish behaviour was acceptable, even though it was frowned upon by the elderly great-aunts.

The Greeks established their own Officers’ Club in a spectacular eighteenth-century mansion in Bournabat. It had once been the home of an American consul serving in Smyrna; now, the club began serving sumptuous dinners to the Levantines living in the vicinity and became a centre for many social activities.

‘Balls and parties were [held there] for adults,’ wrote one of the Whittalls. She also recalled that the club served high tea to children to the accompaniment of a string quartet.

There were parties and balls once more in the villas of Bournabat. Herbert Octavius hosted one memorable soirée in the Big House for the sailors of the British squadron that lay at anchor in Smyrna harbour. The Royal Navy reciprocated by inviting all the Levantine merchants and their families to an evening aboard their ships.

The Greek soldiers based in Bournabat participated in the partying with as much enthusiasm as their Levantine friends, seeking out the company of the local Greek girls who were far more coquettish than those at home in Greece.

‘By our doorstep,’ recalled Herbert Octavius’s niece,

Writing many years later, she noted that, ‘though treated as a joke at the time, these divided loyalties were, later on in the campaign, to cause disunity in the Greek army.’ Yet the idea that there were troubles on the horizon seemed unthinkable to the inhabitants of Smyrna. ‘The export season was just beginning,’ she wrote, ‘warehouses were filling up, figs and raisins were being packed for the European markets. All was well.’

The stability brought about by Stergiadis’s administration enabled many of the popular leisure activities – curtailed by war – to begin again. There was horse racing at the Boudja racetrack and shooting once again took place on the Nymph Dagh. The Levantine families were also informed that their yachts and yawls were being released by the authorities.

For Edmund Giraud, this was the moment he had awaited for six long years. His beloved motor cruiser,
Helen May
, had been confiscated by the Turkish government in the winter of 1914. Now, at long last, she was handed back to him. Having been allowed to rot during the war years, she was in a terrible state. ‘[She] was returned to me stripped of her motor and every article of metal,’ wrote Edmund. ‘She was just a bit of wood without motor, tanks, parts, propeller shaft, skeg or metal anywhere about her.’

He was dismayed at her unseaworthy condition. ‘I loved this little ship and her return to me in such a state greatly pained me. I was dismayed to find, on enquiry, that her replacement would have amounted to well over three times her original cost.’ After seeking advice from the local boatbuilders, Thornycrofts, he decided to pay for her to be restored.

It was money well spent, for Edmund was once again able to spend the weekends at his Long Island summer house, which he had not visited since 1914. ‘[The island] was quite deserted,’ he wrote, ‘my house being much the worse for five years of neglect.’ He sent over a team of builders and cleaners to repair damage caused by storms and rain. Edmund was pleased to note that several of the Greek villagers, who had left after the violent events of 1914, were encouraged by his presence and began to trickle home.

The restoration of his property took time and it was not until the summer of 1921 that the work was at last complete. New furniture was despatched from Bournabat and the family headed to Long Island for the long summer vacation in July of that year.

Long before the work was complete, Edmund and his chums were once again undertaking yachting expeditions in the bay of Smyrna, with occasional forays up and down the Aegean coastline. The Greek coastal villages had sprung back to life with the return of the refugees and now became a popular destination for the Levantine yachting parties. Many of the Levantines who were not fortunate enough to possess their own summer houses rented shoreside villas in which to spend the long weekends.

The fact that eastern Anatolia had erupted into violence did not impinge on the way in which they lived their lives. Neither did the news that Mustafa Kemal’s nationalist resistance movement was growing in strength with every day that passed. Everyone in Smyrna was looking west, towards Greece, and to the Allied warships at anchor in the bay. They turned a blind eye to everything that was happening in the hinterlands of the country.

Besides, families like the Whittalls were adamant that they had nothing to fear. Constantinople was in British hands, Smyrna was controlled by the Greeks and Turkey itself was now being carved up by the victorious Allied powers. Few were in any doubt that Kemal’s nationalists would soon be snuffed out, either by Allied forces, the Greek army or whilst fighting among themselves.

Mid-morning on Monday, 15 November 1920, Lloyd George was handed a telegram that brought the worst possible news. The unthinkable had happened – a political earthquake so unexpected that the implications had not yet been fully understood. In the previous day’s Greek general election, Venizelos had been trounced at the polls.

It was an upset that no one, not even Venizelos’s critics, had ever imagined. His supporters had spent much of the previous day traipsing from party to party in anticipation of a victorious landslide. They had woken up to discover that there had indeed been a landslide – but that they had been on the wrong end of it.

The cause of the upset was a tall, fair-haired figure with soft blue eyes and a quizzical smile. King Constantine, living in exile since 1917, had become the rallying cry for the opposition. Aware that they had no hope of defeating Venizelos on his foreign policy – for the Megali Idea was extremely popular – opposition politicians championed the cause of the king. He was held up as the embodiment of liberalism and democracy, both of which had suffered under the towering and often tyrannical personality of Venizelos.

In backing Constantine, they also had one eye on the history books. A Constantine had founded Constantinople and a Constantine had lost the city to the Turks in 1453. Popular ballads and folk songs had long prophesied that a third Constantine would re-enter the city at the head of a reconquering Christian army.

Much to the surprise of the opposition, their election strategy struck a chord with the electorate. They turned out in droves to vote for the return of Constantine, ousting Venizelos and his government from office. When the election result became known, these same people poured into the streets to celebrate their unexpected victory. ‘From morning to night, enormous crowds paraded the streets and organised demonstrations in favour of Constantine,’ wrote Chivers Davis, an expatriate Englishman living in Athens. ‘In the Rue du Stade and Place de la Concorde, every shop that could produce photographs of the ex-King and ex-Queen Sophie did a roaring trade, and in front of practically every shop the pictures of Venizelos, which had adorned it for the past week, were replaced by that of Constantine.’

Chivers Davis was one of the first to realise the scale and consequences of the defeat. ‘It was a disaster,’ he wrote, ‘absolute, complete and practically incredible. Even the opposition was amazed.’ Not only was it a personal catastrophe for Venizelos, it also had serious consequences for the future of the Big Idea. Greece was dependent on Britain to guarantee its empire in Anatolia, but Britain was unlikely to continue supplying Greece with arms and loans once King Constantine, a reviled figure in England, returned to claim his throne.

The fall of Venizelos left senior politicians in London reeling, none more so than Lloyd George. ‘I happened to be with Mr Lloyd George in the Cabinet Room at the time the telegram announcing the results of the Greek election . . . arrived,’ wrote Winston Churchill. ‘He was very much shocked and still more puzzled. But with his natural buoyancy, and hardened by the experiences we had all passed through in the Great War, he contented himself with remarking, “Now I am the only one [of the war leaders] left.”’

Many of Lloyd George’s generals hoped that the return of King Constantine would spell an end to his pro-Greek policy. ‘[He] will find that he has backed the wrong horse,’ scribbled Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson into his diary. ‘The fall of Venizelos is a great defeat for Lloyd George, as he had put his shirt on the old Greek.’