PERSECUTIONS OF THE GREEKS IN TURKEY SINCE THE ...

INTRODUCTION ix
prived about 400,000 Greeks of their homes and property,
and compelled them, naked and stripped of their all,
to seek refuge in Greece. This inhuman persecution,
even the recollection of which inspires horror in all,
proceeded without interruption up to the declaration of
the European War.
The accession of Turkey to the alliance of the Central
Empires and her participation in the war marked
the beginning of the second period of the persecutions
of Hellenism in Turkey, persecutions that were incomparably
fiercer and more effective than the first. This
period definitively reveals those who were morally guilty
of the persecution. Not for a moment did these instigators
relax their evil and powerful influence upon the
executors of the crimes against the Greeks.
The difference between these two periods is great.
During the first there was a general persecution which
might perhaps destroy whole Greek communities, but
which did not bring with it the complete and irretrievable
ruin of the Greek race, since it, at any rate, permitted
those persecuted to save themselves by flight. In
the period dating from the participation of Turkey in
the war, the persecution assailed the very existence of
Hellenism in Turkey.
It is however necessary to call attention to another
difference between these two periods, a difference unfortunately
that reflects upon the attitude of official
Greece. During the first period the official Greek government
appears everywhere and always defending the
Greeks persecuted in Turkey and acting with all its
strength in order to regulate the question of the refugees
so as to save Hellenism in Turkey. During the second
period, however, those directing things in Greece, basing
their much extolled policy of neutrality, in ironical disregard
of the facts, on the fantastic and chimerical hope
of saving Hellenism in Turkey by this policy, stood by,
regarded by those who were ignorant of what was going