PERSECUTIONS OF THE GREEKS IN TURKEY SINCE THE ...

PERSECUTIONS OF THE GREEKS 61
they have been settled. A large number of refugees
are scattered in Baloukeser, Sousourlouk, Kepsout, Sindirli
and in other Turkish villages. Many starving and
half-naked women are begging for bread and money;
their ragged clothing, which they are compelled to hold
tightly together to prevent its slipping off from their
shoulders, barely covers their skeleton bodies. I seem
to see a picture of Dante's Inferno, for he, while
traversing* the Inferno, saw ghosts with only skin and
bones. What he saw in imagination, one can actually
see here. A few days ago a woman outside the station
of Baloukeser died of starvation. Her little hungry children
who thought that their mother was asleep, were
trying to wake her up and crying and begging for bread.
" The condition of the refugees of Prokonnesos is
becoming, from day to day, more horrible. Being turned
out of the stables of the Turks where they store away
their straw, they are now living in the open air. With
tears they beg for shelter and bread, and instead of it
conversion to Mohammedanism and dishonor are held out
before them.
" Hunger, the heat of the sun and the dampness of the
night take daily toll of these unfortunate refugees.
Within the last few days 50 refugees have died at Ivrik
and every day more are dying, some being buried without
religious rites."
Another report from Artaki transmitted in a communication
of the Greek Legation at Constantinople,
No. 884, dated March 4, 1916 (Ministerial Archives,
No. 14205) states as follows:
" The condition of the unfortunate refugees is indescribably
desperate. Not having anything to sell in
order to buy bread, women, old people and children,
naked and barefooted, wander about the fields in order
to gather grass for food. Others from morning until
evening, braving the cold and damp, search along the
whole shore, not excluding even the mouths of the sewers,