THE MIRACLE
A True Story		 Go to the initial page.

example and teachings of Mohammed as opposed to the teachings and life of Christ, is one of the dark forces at work in the world which are combining to destroy modern civilization. The killing off and extermination of progressive Christian populations and its substitution by Mohammedanism, is a slump in those regions in the world's progress back to the days of Abraham.

   I have the honor also to point out to the Department that all massacres on a large scale perpetrated by Turks, and the history of the Turkish empire is largely a history of massacres, are always ordered by higher authorities. Anyone who believes that the forces of Mustapha Kemal got out of hand at Smyrna and that he controlled them as soon as he could, knows nothing about the history of Turkey or events in the Near East. I believe also if the Allied fleets in Smyrna harbor, the French, Italians, British and Americans, had emphatically told Mustapha Kemal that there must be no massacring, none would have taken place. If they told him today that he must cease carrying off the men between eighteen and forty-five into the interior, he would stop, but when he sees the great powers of the world sitting by in security on their battleships watching his fearful procedures, he is emboldened to greated and still greater excesses. The sight of a massacre going on under the eyes of the great powers of Europe and with their seemingly tacit consent, is one that I hope never to see again.

   I believe that when the real truth is known of what happened in Smyrna and what has been happening in the Near East, all decent people in Europe and the United States will feel as I do.

September 26, 1922


   Since writing the above, I have been informed that the three Entente powers have sent a note to Mustapha Kemal announcing that, with their consent, his armies will be allowed to occupy Constantinople and Thrace. The panic, which this announcement must necessarily cause among the native Christians and even European inhabitants of Constanti-nople, has, I am sure, commenced. The Department is better qualified to know what is going on in Constantinople than I am here but I hazard this assertion as a certainty without definite information. The native Christians do well to leave, such of them as can get away, for even if measures are taken to prevent a savage massacre on the arrival of the Kemalist troops, the life of the Christians will be intolerable and unsafe and massacres will surely be perpetrated from time to time in the future. Long observation has convinced me that the Turk is incapable of governing Christian populations. Such may have thrived under the old Turk in a general way, despite the numberless massacres which are a



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Leonidas Koumakis
THE MIRACLE
A True Story


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