Karl Dieterich

“ When the powerful tide of Turkish invasion, coming after so many other barbarian inroads, completely submerged Greek culture there, the Hellenic idea which this element represented was so strong that it survived everything. It was in vain that the fierce conquerors, as the tradition states, cut out the tongues of the inhabitants in order to cause this people to unlearn its language ”

“ If we wish to put our programme into operation, we must set ourselves to change the German mind, showing the ruins that its inhumane conceptions have accumulated, and the fall of German power that must result from it. We have to do with fanatics of a peculiar kind, whom only reality can bring to their senses. The Germans are fighting in order to impose their civilization on the world by establishing a domination like that of the Mussulmans, who have slaughtered the Christians in order to assure their happiness in the future life. ”

“ As everywhere, so, too, in Pontus, the Greek, though subjected to harsh slavery, did not lose courage and hope, but by uniting the strength left him and taking courage anew, he endeavored, just in so far as he could, to render his living with his conquerors as endurable as possible, an attempt in which he succeeded by enlisting their sympathy and esteem whenever they made use of him for high positions, or in the arts and trades in which they needed his help. ”

“ So strong is the anti-Turkish feeling in this intensely Hellenic land that a strong movement has recently arisen among her expatriated sons to establish an independent Republic of Pontus. Its mountainous inland districts have been so isolated from the rest of the Greek world and its coast regions have so strongly preserved their individuality that language, blood and national feeling have been maintained in quite a different way from elsewhere in the Greek world. ”

“ Russia lies prostrate, and Germany wishes to reanimate her, but to raise her with a German soul. When she has at her disposal the enormous power of Russia, organized with Prussian efficiency, a more terrible war awaits the world. ”

“ Conquered and reconquered by Asiatic hordes, its wealth ravaged and pillaged many and many times, its cities, towns and villages razed to the ground more than once, and its inhabitants having been subjected again and again to massacres en masse, Asia Minor has been and will naturally continue to be the reservoir, so to speak, of European civilization for the Great East. ”

“ Throughout the Middle Ages the Byzantine-Greek civilization flourished in these lands. It formed the most powerful barrier against the wave of barbarism which threatened to inundate the civilized world. The desperate resistance offered by Hellenism permitted the West, by its contact with Byzantine Hellenism, to acquire those requisite elements which have formed the basis of Western civilization. ”

“ What the Nibelungen is to the Germans, the Chanson de Roland to the French, and Beowulf to the English, that, to the Greeks of the Middle Ages, was the romantic epic of Akritas (i.e., Count) Basilios. Discovered only a few decades ago, though scattered widely, wherever Greek is spoken, in countless fragments of folk-poetry, it is a sort of crystal precipitate in verse of those struggles which the Byzantine Counts were forced to wage against the Saracens on the eastern confines of their realm, in Cappadocia. ”

“ Up to the end of the first millennium of the Christian Era, at a time when the Balkan Peninsula, including Ancient Greece, had long since lost its ancient city-life and culture beneath the inroads and devastations of Goths, Avars and Slavs, Asia Minor was still a populous and blooming land with countless large cities, whose inhabitants combined Hellenistic culture with Christian fervor. ”

“ As soon as the fury of the conqueror was somewhat appeased, and at a time when that part of the Balkan Peninsula where Hellenism first arose and from which later it radiated over the then known world all the brilliance of its beauty was no longer showing any sign of life, the Greeks of Asia Minor founded the first Greek school of modern times, that of Cydonia (Aïvali) . This school produced the first real ecclesiastics, the first genuinely educated men. Smyrna, called by the Turk himself “the infidel city,” because of its preponderant Greek element, followed her example. ”

“ But the cruelty of Germany and of her accomplices has finally roused all the nobler and more generous nations. One after another they have become involved, for their revulsion of feeling at her atrocities is such that it has silenced every other sentiment. ”

“ The Hellenic populations are chiefly concentrated in the provinces of Aïdin and Broussa, where out of a population of approximately 3,000,000 the Greek element is about 1,300,000, the coast regions, however, being inhabited almost purely by Greeks. The non-Greek inhabitants are largely Catholics, Armenians, Turks and Jews. On the coasts of the Black Sea, too, the Greeks are largely in the majority. It is to be noticed that in many villages of this region the inhabitants speak a language closely approaching the ancient Greek, from the point of view of syntax as well as of verb-formation. ”

“ I insist, however, in protesting even against the reasoning based on such an hypothesis.
Whatever may be the practical result that we can expect from the perfidy of our enemies, our feelings revolt against profiting by such treachery. Our cause is so just that it admits of no compromise. ”

“ The Greeks, 3,000 to 4,000 in number, are constantly forcing the Turks, who are settled in the old walled town and are about equal to them in number, further into the background, and in commerce they completely control the field. Lastly, Budrum, a Turkish settlement on the site of the ancient Halicarnassus and still inhabited by about 3,000 Turks, has become Hellenized in proportion as the growing importance of the place as a center of export for southwest Asia Minor—the ancient Caria—has been appreciated by the Greeks. ”

“ As to the numbers of the Greek inhabitants of the interior of Asia Minor, only an indirect estimate can be made. The whole number of all the Greeks in the interior of the two provinces of Brussa and Aïdin, exclusive of the inhabitants of the coast regions, even twenty years ago, amounted to 200,000, i.e., less than half as many as in the coast regions. About 100,000 of these lived in places with a population of more than 5,000, so that about 100,000 were scattered among the villages and towns. The distribution of this interior population is very uneven. ”

“ The richer the community is, therefore, the more easily does it obtain the permission, and since the Greek communities of the coast of Asia Minor have always been, for the most part, very rich, they were able to proceed to establish their own schools at an early date. The oldest are those in Smyrna, Aïvali and Chesme, and those that first came into existence were not common schools but higher institutions of learning, corresponding to the development of the times and the aristocratic character of the Greek merchants. ”

“ These numbers show that the people are loyally devoted to their language, their traditions and their religion, for the tremendous sacrifices to which they subject themselves for the sake of the maintenance of Hellenic culture evidence the tenacity with which they cling to their national sentiments. ”

“ Dieterich evidently misunderstands the conditions in which the Greek populations have been living in Asia Minor and trying to promote or revive their national ideals. As a matter of fact, all the existing Greek schools in Asia Minor,—which is also the case with the Greek educational institutions in every part of Turkey,—have been established and supported by the Greek communities themselves, and if, at times, they have received outside financial aid, this was due to the generosity of14 persons who were natives of the country, who had emigrated to foreign lands and acquired wealth abroad. ”

“ It is a remarkable phenomenon that beneath these smoldering ruins civilization was not entirely destroyed, for in spite of the slowly burning fire Hellenism continued to exist, and toward the close of the 18th century began to show clear signs of that vitality and vigor which blossomed forth so quickly in the following century, and, in our own time, have produced such far-reaching results. ”

“ Even the church is held so sacred by the Greeks only because she has been the bearer of national ideals in the times of slavery and has, at the same time, been a powerful political organ of administration, forming the only means in Turkey of putting through the national demands for schools.44 The relation of church and school is therefore, in the Greek Orient, quite different from that in Catholic or even Protestant Christian lands. ”

“ The graduates of these schools formed the nucleus from which the idea of the Greek renaissance sprang forth. From this source have come the men that have sacrificed their lives and their fortunes in order that Hellenic culture, which seemed forever to have disappeared, might again be revived. ”

“ That our ideals have conquered the greater part of the world, creating strong bonds of solidarity between the peoples who are impregnated with them, permitting us to face with confidence the creation of the league of nations which will assure to the world an era of happiness in freedom through law. ”

“ There was thus started, in Asia Minor, a defensive struggle on the part of the Turks that was just as sharply defined as the offensive which this Greek element had for a long time been actually carrying on against the Turks of this region; with this difference, however, that the Turkish defensive has only recently acquired sufficient strength to make its action felt, while 20 the Greek offensive has for decades been quietly at work getting the upper hand economically, culturally and nationally in that land where they once ruled for a period of more than a thousand years. ”

“ While, in the Balkans, the cities appear as the supporting centers, the bulwarks, of the Greeks against the Slav inundation, forming a base of operations for winning back the open country that had become Slav, in Asia Minor not only the country regions but the towns as well fell into the hands of the conquerors, evidently because the Turks were better trained soldiers and more familiar with the art of besieging towns than were the Slavs, who were accustomed only to campaigns in the open. ”

“ This view, which, as we have seen, does not hold even in the coast regions, is, however, absolutely false and is only to be explained as arising from the impressions of superficial travelers who have rarely penetrated into the remoter regions with a predominantly rural population. Anyone who has, for example, visited the larger Greek islands of the Asiatic coast, like Mitylene, Chios, Samos and Rhodes, knows that these dense populations live in great measure from grape and fruit-raising or from silk culture, and only in a very small degree from trade. ”

“ Farming plays no very large part, simply because of the lack of arable land. Since now, as we have said, these very islands for something like fifty years have become very densely populated or even in part overpopulated (as, for instance, Samos) , there have been periodical emigrations of the island peasants, in considerable numbers, over to the mainland, where they have, in particular, settled in the fruitful valleys of the Mæander and the Hermos in the western parts of Asia Minor and in that of the Sangarios, farther north. ”

“ But to admit in our circle of nations one who flees from the enemy camp against which we are fighting because his part in the booty is not that which his appetite has fixed, is impossible. In fact, such an act would constitute the negation of the principles for which we are fighting. ”

“ Thus, throughout the centuries, by a process of colonization that was forwarded now by peaceful means and again by war, Hellenism forced its way steadily eastward, and on the basis of the older indigenous population a new sphere for Greek colonization was opened up which developed its own peculiar cultural strength only after the passing away of the ancient Greek civilization, in Christian, that is, and Byzantine times. ”

“ Here, too, therefore, the cities which are more or less decidedly Greek in their population lie along the main railroad lines, though they are not quite so strongly Greek as those in the province of Aïdin; for we are here in the very heart of Turkey, and its greatest city Brussa, which more than all the other cities of this region has preserved its Turkish character more purely. ”

“ Let us endeavor to see beyond the limits of the present. Let us rise to meet the emergency. The responsibility of our rulers is tremendous, but they are endowed with the necessary ability to rise to these heights. ”

“ The number of pupils in each Greek school therefore averaged 60, while those in the Turkish schools averaged only 20, a disproportion which is to be explained by the fact that the Mohammedan schools are almost exclusively poorly attended mosque-schools, while the Greek schools are community-schools that are very well attended. The religious character of the Turkish educational system is just as prejudicial to the Turks as the nationalistic tendency of the Greek schools is beneficial to the Greeks. ”

“ We cannot help admiring the heroism of little Belgium, which stood out so boldly against the outrageous demand of a militaristic power that had resolved to trample upon morality, and to violate justice. ”

“ The chief exporting harbor of northwest Asia Minor is, however, Aïvali, newly built in the third decade of the 19th century on the site of an older Greek settlement named Cydonia, a name which, like Aïvali, means “quince.” It is an almost unique example, on Asia Minor soil, of a large, purely Greek and practically self-governing community, with 25,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, a yearly export business of ten to twelve million francs and a shipping of over 3,000 vessels. It has thoroughly modern business institutions as well as a Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture and an Agricultural Bank. ”

“ Although up to this time it is impossible to speak of a Hellenizing of the great interior cities of western Asia Minor, since these are (thus being quite different from the coast cities) very far from succumbing, either numerically or culturally, to the Greek invasion—the number of Greeks is the largest in Manissa—yet, if one looks into the matter narrowly, he gains the impression that in the interior the Hellenizing influence comes from the smaller towns. ”

“ The German dream of dominion from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf has naturally attracted the attention of the world to Asia Minor, a country which has been for centuries in a dormant condition on account of its subjection to a moribund state. ”

“ The Greek population of these two districts can therefore serve to bring clearly before us the Asia Minor Greeks of the Middle Ages, in their physical as well as their linguistic character.
Before proceeding further I must state that these peoples, like those of the Balkan Peninsula, must already have acquired their present physical stamp in the early Middle Ages, at any rate, before the Seljuk-Turkish conquest, for the modified, ethnically but slightly distinguished type of the western Anatolian peasant population is not characteristic of these Greeks. ”

“ Wide-awake, lively, playfully sly and always interesting, they are here the tavern-keepers, the grocers, the boatmen. These are the three trades that most of the Greeks of the poor class prefer, just as the profession of lawyer and that of physician are particularly popular among the Greeks of the well-to-do class. ”

“ In other towns, such, for example, as Bergama, Magnesia, Milas, Soyut, the number of the Greek pupils almost equals that of the Turkish, and in most of them the number is more than half as large as that of the Turkish pupils, even in that stronghold of Mohammedanism, Brussa, where there are something like 2,500 Greeks, as compared with 5,000 Turkish pupils, although the Greeks comprise here only ten per cent of the population. ”

“ The Seljuks, who were bent chiefly on gaining new27 pasturing grounds, seem to have drawn the Greek population closer to themselves and to have made them of some service, instead of attempting to drive them out by force. This is proven by the accounts of voluntary or forced submission to the conquerors, into which the inhabitants were driven by the unsound agrarian conditions in Asia Minor, which were characterized by an ever-growing tendency toward larger and larger estates, a tendency against which, even in the 10th century, the clear-sighted emperors had vainly enacted the strictest laws. ”

“ This idealistic element is rooted in a very strong national feeling, which has been nourished by the recollection of a great intellectual past and which finds its finest and most effectual expression in the fostering of Greek schools. This desire for schooling is implanted in the Greek nature from the times of late antiquity, and though it often savors rather strongly of scholasticism, it has prevented the Greeks from losing their national consciousness, as have the Jews and, to a certain degree, Armenians. ”

“ The political unrest in the Near East which preceded the present world war and accompanied its beginnings has turned attention once more to the existence of the Greek element in the population of Asia Minor. ”

“ The vivid description of Hellenism in Asia Minor given by the German author, and corroborated by numerous other writers and travelers, shows the important rôle that the Hellenic element is destined to play if that unfortunate country is ever favored with the blessings of good government. ”