Book - The Martyrdom of Smyrna and Eastern Christendom - FREE online

The following book is available for FREE on Archives.org

-----

THE MARTYRDOM OF SMYRNA AND EASTERN CHRISTENDOM; 

A File of Overwhelming Evidence, Denouncing the Misdeeds of the Turks in Asia Minor and showing their Responsibility for the Horrors of Smyrna

Compiled and Prefaced by

Dr. Lysimachos Oeconomos

First published in 1922

-----

From the PREFACE

Towards the middle of September last, news of an unprecedented horror, wired from the Levant, set the horizons on fire all over the world.  Christian Smyrna was ablaze !  The city had been entered by the Turks on Saturday morning, September 9th, and, only a few days later, on Wednesday afternoon, September 13th, after she had been given up meanwhile to looting, violation and massacre, Giaour Izmir was carried over to the stake of an unprecedented Martyrdom !  She burnt entirely in her beauty and strength, and the scene of her flames springing forth into the skies effaced the classical remembrance of the fires of Troy and Rome.

This formidable brazier, wrought out by a criminal and destructive imagination, was but the culmination of several other crushing measures, adopted with a view to annihilating in Asia Minor whatever bore a Christian or Greek character.

Think of the wholesale massacres and deportations of a martyred Christendom !  Think of the horrors which are evoked by such words as "refugees" and "deportees."

Why should people leave the place where they are settled: the fields from which they gain their living; the sweet homes in which they were brought u and managed to live in, with such a degree of happiness as they could under such a wicked administration as the Turkish one has ever been?  Why should they abandon all their property, go penniless abroad, and act the part of beggars?  Why should they undergo exile and misery?  And why should they prefer to become, through hunger, emaciated to such an extent as to be practically but living skeletons ?

Obviously it must be dreadful, it must be of an indescribable horror, that from which they strive to get away.

The coming of the Turks - do you realise what the coming of the Turks means?  It amounts to the abduction and violation of your wives and daughters, to the murder of your male children, to the utter ruination of your crops and property, to your homes - your sweet homes - being set on fire, and then, after you have been compelled to look upon all these personal misfortunes, they torture you, they kill you, and leave your corpse a prey to the dogs !

So much for the horros from which the refugees are seeking to flee away.

But what pen could depict the sufferings of the deportees ?

READ THE ENTIRE ONLINE BOOK AVAILABLE FOR FREE FROM ARCHIVES.COM