It is worth noticing that the German essayist describes in a vivid manner the vitality and the potentialities of the Hellenic population of Asia Minor, and, unlike the ruling class of Germany and many of his compatriots, he speaks favorably of the Greek populations of Anatolia.
Dr. Dieterich, referring to the persecution of the Greeks, says erroneously that these “systematic persecutions,” as he admits them to be, began with the spring of 1914 (see [p. 19]), while, as a matter of fact, they commenced on the very day that the Young Turks consolidated their power (1908–1909), when, in spite of their much heralded formula of “equality, justice and fraternity,” they designed and instituted a well-organized method for the annihilation of the Christian populations, the Adana massacres of the Armenians in April, 1909, being the precursors of all the subsequent horrors.
Nor did these would-be “reformers,” or “constitutionalists,” conceal their plans for the Turkification of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire, for they openly resorted either to forced conversions to Mohammedanism or to the annihilation of those who seemed unlikely to submit to be “Ottomanized.” Thus, as early as September, 1908, one of the moving spirits of the Committee of Union and Progress, namely, Dr. Nazim, during his visit to Smyrna, at a social gathering held in the house of a British subject, spoke freely about this matter.[5]
The Young Turks having thus initiated, under the very eyes of Europe, a systematic extermination of the Armenians,—whom the bloody hand of Abdul Hamid had not completely destroyed,—turned their attention to the “more dangerous Greeks.”
It was this plan for the destruction of the Christian nations that, in 1912, brought together the Balkan States, who saw that under the new régime in Turkey the peoples of these various nationalities would gradually be annihilated, if they did not take some preventive steps. The result was the war of these States against Turkey, the complete defeat of the latter and the freeing from the Turkish yoke of hundreds of thousands of people. As a further consequence of this war, there began on the part of Turkey a wholesale expulsion of the Greek population from the coast of Asia Minor simply because the neighboring islands of the Ægean had been incorporated with the Greek Kingdom. Up to the declaration of the present world war hundreds of thousands of Greeks were expelled from Turkey, having been, at the same time, deprived by the Turks of all their movable and immovable property. All these unfortunate people took refuge in Greece and gave no little embarrassment to the Greek Government.[6]
It is therefore incorrect to say, as the German writer alleges, that the persecutions of the Greeks began with the outbreak of the present war ([p. 19]).
The difference, however, between the ante-bellum persecutions and those perpetrated subsequently is this, that while in the former cases the Greeks were expelled from their native country and were deprived only of their wealth and their property generally, in the latter not only were they compelled to abandon everything they owned, but they also perished through untold hardships and starvation. (See details about the tragical condition of the Greeks in Publication No. 3 of the American-Hellenic Society cited above.)
Nor did the Turks in carrying out this cruel work care whether Greece was friendly or unfriendly to Turkey. As a matter of fact, these persecutions were in full swing during the “régime of Constantine” (see dates in Persecutions of the Greeks, etc.) when that potentate was in close relationship not only with the Germans, but also with the Bulgarians and the Turks, and consequently the persecutions of the Greeks had nothing to do with the alleged projected territorial compensations to Greece; besides, Turkey was assured by Germany that Constantine, who then had the upper hand in Greece, would under no circumstances attack Turkey.
Therefore it is not correct to say, as the German writer asserts, that one of the reasons for these persecutions was the promise made to Greece by the Entente Powers in 1915 of territorial concessions in Asia Minor (see [p. 19]).
An indication that even such an evidently impartial writer as Dr. Dieterich cannot divest himself of the German point of view is his statement that in the struggle for life the Greeks were on the offensive, while the Turks were on the defensive (see [p. 19]). This, in plain words, means that it suffices for a nation to be intelligent, active, frugal, moral (as he too acknowledges the Greeks to be, [p. 50]), in order to acquire the odium of carrying on an offensive struggle if another nation living side by side with it happens to be stupid, fatalist, immoral and incapable of holding its ground in the struggle for life.