akritas
08-31-2007, 02:27 PM
A British eye-witness described the refugee trains as 'a wonderful sight: passengers standing all along the footplates and others swarming on the roof. In the carriages the passengers were so crowded that dead bodies were passed out at stations on their way to Smyrna.' After the refugees came those parts of the army which did not bypass the city:
Then the defeated, dusty, ragged Greek soldiers began to arrive, looking straight ahead, like men walking in their sleep.... In a never ending stream they poured through the town toward the point on the coast to which the Greek fleet had withdrawn. Silently as ghosts they went, looking neither to the right nor the left. From time to time some soldier, his strength entirely spent, collapsed on the sidewalk, or by a door.... And now at last we heard that the Turks were moving on the town.
http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/1776/163zk4.jpg
Throughout 7 September the milling people on the front continued to press for a place on the boats which sailed for Chios and Mitylene. Army headquarters was still issuing passes to soldiers and their families to sail on requisitioned boats; but the system of allocation was breaking down.
Throughout the night in the darkness of the streets (the foreign company which operated the street lights had cut off the supply of light after a brush with Stergiadis) the sound of oxcarts and soldiers trudging through the outskirts could be heard.
The Metropolitan Archbishop Chrysostom had been busy comforting and helping to feed and shelter his flock, seeking aid from the allied representatives, writing to those such as the Ecumenical Patriarch who might help.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4e/Hrisostomos.jpg
Now on 7 September he wrote to Venizelos, his last letter, heavy with the sense of the impending destruction of a part of the living tissue of Hellenism:
Dear friend and brother, Eleftherios Venizelos,
The great moment for a great gesture by you has come. Hellenism in Asia Minor, the Greek state and the entire Greek Nation are descending now to a Hell from which no power will be able to raise them up and save them.
For this unimaginable catastrophe it is of course your political and personal enemies who bear the blame; but you too bear a great weight of responsibility for two of your actions.
First because you sent to Asia Minor as High Commissioner an utterly deranged egotist. Secondly because before you had completed your work and put the crown and seal on the unimaginably fine and magnificent creation you had built up, the establishment of the foundations of the most glorious Byzantine Empire, you had the unfortunate and guilty inspiration to order elections on the very eve of your entry to Constantinople and the occupation of it by the Greek army in the implementation of the Treaty of Scvres - now alas for ever destroyed.
But what is done is done!
There is still time though, if not to save the Treaty of Sevres, at least to save the whole Greek Nation from destruction through the loss not only of Asia Minor but also of Thrace and perhaps even Macedonia.... I have judged it necessary above all out of the flames of catastrophe in which the Greek people of Asia Minor are suffering - and it is a real question whether when Your Excellency reads this letter of mine we shall still be alive, destined as we are - who knows for sacrifice and martyrdom by the inscrutable decrees of divine providence - to direct this last appeal to you....
If in order to save Greece you judged it your duty to initiate the revolutionary movement of Salonika, do not hesitate now to initiate a hundred such movements in order to save the whole of Hellenism everywhere and especially that of Asia Minor and Thrace, which nourishes such a religious adoration for you....
It is not necessary for this Hellenism and these territories with Constantinople to be united with Greece, because that dream has been removed from us for at least a hundred years, but hasten to raise your powerful voice so that these territories may be made an autonomous Eastern Christian state, even under the sovereignty of the Sultan, with your noble self as High Commissioner.
[Michael Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, pages 302-303]
http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/6143/158tk9.jpg
http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/412/160no0.jpg
Then the defeated, dusty, ragged Greek soldiers began to arrive, looking straight ahead, like men walking in their sleep.... In a never ending stream they poured through the town toward the point on the coast to which the Greek fleet had withdrawn. Silently as ghosts they went, looking neither to the right nor the left. From time to time some soldier, his strength entirely spent, collapsed on the sidewalk, or by a door.... And now at last we heard that the Turks were moving on the town.
http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/1776/163zk4.jpg
Throughout 7 September the milling people on the front continued to press for a place on the boats which sailed for Chios and Mitylene. Army headquarters was still issuing passes to soldiers and their families to sail on requisitioned boats; but the system of allocation was breaking down.
Throughout the night in the darkness of the streets (the foreign company which operated the street lights had cut off the supply of light after a brush with Stergiadis) the sound of oxcarts and soldiers trudging through the outskirts could be heard.
The Metropolitan Archbishop Chrysostom had been busy comforting and helping to feed and shelter his flock, seeking aid from the allied representatives, writing to those such as the Ecumenical Patriarch who might help.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4e/Hrisostomos.jpg
Now on 7 September he wrote to Venizelos, his last letter, heavy with the sense of the impending destruction of a part of the living tissue of Hellenism:
Dear friend and brother, Eleftherios Venizelos,
The great moment for a great gesture by you has come. Hellenism in Asia Minor, the Greek state and the entire Greek Nation are descending now to a Hell from which no power will be able to raise them up and save them.
For this unimaginable catastrophe it is of course your political and personal enemies who bear the blame; but you too bear a great weight of responsibility for two of your actions.
First because you sent to Asia Minor as High Commissioner an utterly deranged egotist. Secondly because before you had completed your work and put the crown and seal on the unimaginably fine and magnificent creation you had built up, the establishment of the foundations of the most glorious Byzantine Empire, you had the unfortunate and guilty inspiration to order elections on the very eve of your entry to Constantinople and the occupation of it by the Greek army in the implementation of the Treaty of Scvres - now alas for ever destroyed.
But what is done is done!
There is still time though, if not to save the Treaty of Sevres, at least to save the whole Greek Nation from destruction through the loss not only of Asia Minor but also of Thrace and perhaps even Macedonia.... I have judged it necessary above all out of the flames of catastrophe in which the Greek people of Asia Minor are suffering - and it is a real question whether when Your Excellency reads this letter of mine we shall still be alive, destined as we are - who knows for sacrifice and martyrdom by the inscrutable decrees of divine providence - to direct this last appeal to you....
If in order to save Greece you judged it your duty to initiate the revolutionary movement of Salonika, do not hesitate now to initiate a hundred such movements in order to save the whole of Hellenism everywhere and especially that of Asia Minor and Thrace, which nourishes such a religious adoration for you....
It is not necessary for this Hellenism and these territories with Constantinople to be united with Greece, because that dream has been removed from us for at least a hundred years, but hasten to raise your powerful voice so that these territories may be made an autonomous Eastern Christian state, even under the sovereignty of the Sultan, with your noble self as High Commissioner.
[Michael Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, pages 302-303]
http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/6143/158tk9.jpg
http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/412/160no0.jpg