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 CHAPTER VII

SMYRNA—GOD'S WORK—THE EXQUISITE SUNSET—MAN'S WORK—WAR

I take daily walks in Smyrna, with one of the Vali's officers, chiefly among the ruins. The European part of the town (save for a few houses on the quay and a few hospitals, schools, and churches) has simply ceased to exist. The empty "shells" of what were once fine streets are a great danger to passers-by and must all be blasted.

When I told my guide that from the deck of the Pierre Loti the town showed scarcely a sign of fire, he promptly led me—for eight hours—through the most horrible débris! Instructed to treat me with great respect, he marched steadily ahead with all the gravity of a funeral mute. He had been told, moreover, to reconstruct, as it were, the whole city for my information, and he was obviously determined to overlook no detail. He pointed out exactly how the fire had been planned, and why it had broken out too soon. Passing the Stores, he laid a finger upon the very spots marked by grenades that Greeks and Armenians had thrown. There was a grim disgust and disdain in his last comment: "And all this funniness is supposed to have been done by us!"—a strange use of the word funinness.

On another occasion, resting a moment among the ruins of what had once been an altar, watching the poor Turkish natives as they raked the débris for firewood, we were suddenly surrounded by a most dismal procession of limping cats and dogs, thin as boards, crying with hunger and pain, homeless, maimed, and with none to claim them or cherish their shrunken limbs.