Adventures in Journalism

by Philip Gibbs

In that ship, sailing under the stars in the Ægean Sea, I learnt more than I had known about the infernal history of mankind during war and revolution. I had seen it in the West. These were stories of the East, unknown and unrecorded, as primitive in their horror as when Assyrians fought Egyptians, or the Israelites were put to the sword in the time of Judas Maccabæus.

Our ship put in at Mitylene, and with the Greek girl we explored the port and walked up the hillside to an old fort built by the Venetians in the great days when Venice was the strongest sea power in that part of the world. On the way, the Greek girl chatted to shopkeepers and peasants in their own tongue, and hers, and then climbed to the top of the fort, sitting fearlessly on the edge of the wall and looking back to the sea over which we had traveled, and down to our ship, so small as we saw it from this height.

In the valley, Greek peasants of better type and stock than those at Athens, and true descendants of the people whose tools and gods and jewels they turn up sometimes with their spades, were leading their sheep and goats. Some of them were singing and the sound rose clear up the hillside with a tinkling of goat bells and the baaing of the sheep. Wild flowers were growing in the old walls of the fort, and the hillside was silvered with daisies. We seemed very close to the blue canopy of the sky above us, as we sat on the edge of the wall, and in the warm sunshine, and above that calm, crystal-clear sea, mirroring our ship, we seemed to be touched by the immortality of the gods, and to be invested with the beauty of the springtime of the world.

“It would be good to stay here,” said the Greek girl. “We could keep goats and sing old Greek songs.”

However, presently she was hungry, and scrambled off the wall and said, “The ship—and supper!”

So we went down to the little port again and rowed away from Mitylene to the ship which was sounding its siren for our return.

We reached Smyrna next morning, and I, for one, was astonished by the modern aspect of its sea frontage, upon which the sun poured down. Beyond the broad quays it swept round the gulf in a wide curve of white houses, faced with marble and very handsome along the side inhabited, I was told, by rich Armenian merchants.

“The Turks will never rest till they get Smyrna back,” said the English major by my side, and his words came as a sharp reminder of the lines away beyond the hills, where a Greek army lay entrenched against the Turkish nationalists and Mustapha Kemal. But no shadow of doom crept through the sunlight that lay glittering upon those white-fronted houses, nor did I guess that one day, not far ahead, Englishmen, like myself, looking over the side of this ship, would see the beauty of that city devoured by an infernal fury of flame, and listen to the screams of panic-stricken crowds on those broad quaysides, hidden behind rolling clouds of smoke....

When we landed, in the harbor-master’s pinnace, we found that we had come on a day of festival among the Greek army of occupation and the Greek inhabitants of Smyrna. All the ships in the harbor—among them the very gunboat in which our Greek lady had lived as one of the crew—were dressed in bunting, and flags were flying from many buildings. Greek officers, very dandified, in much decorated uniforms, with highly polished boots, drove along the esplanade in open carriages, carrying great bouquets, on their way to a review by the Commander-in-Chief outside the city. Smyrniote girls, Greek and Armenian, were in fancy frocks and high-heeled shoes tripping gayly along with young Greek soldiers. Bands were playing as they marched, and all the air thrilled with the music of trumpets and military pomp. Few Turks were visible among those Christian inhabitants. They were mostly dockside laborers and porters, wearing the red fez of Islam.

It was the English major who told me of the horror that had happened here when the Greeks first landed. They had rowed off from their transports in boats, and a crowd of these Turkish porters had helped to draw the boats up to the quayside. All the Christian population was on the front, waving handkerchiefs from windows and balconies. Ladies of the American Red Cross were looking at the scene from the balcony of the Grand Hotel Splendid Palace—what a name! There was no sign of hostility from the Turks, but suddenly the Greek soldiers seemed to go mad, and started bayoneting the Turks who had helped them to land. In view of all the women and children who had assembled to greet them with delirious joy, they murdered those defenseless men and flung their bodies into the sea. It was a crime for which many poor innocents were to pay when the Turkish irregulars came into Smyrna with the madness of victory after the destruction of the Greek army by Mustapha Kemal and his Nationalist troops. Well, that grim secret of fate lay hidden in the future when Tony and I booked rooms at the Grand Hotel Splendid Palace and entertained our little Greek lady to breakfast, and then at midday waved towels out of the bedroom window in answer to her signals from the ship which took her on her way to Alexandria and another adventure of life. The English major brought a bucket to the upper deck, as we could see distinctly and wrung a towel over it as a sign of tears. We made the countersign....