Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/168

 Kemal rode up into the hills behind Samsun. Under the blue skies of an Anatolian spring, he made his way from village to village. He reached Sivas where Colonel Rafet Bey was in command of the skeleton Third Army, simultaneously with a rumor that Great Britain had given Smyrna to the Greeks and that the greatest sea-port of Asia Minor had been the scene of massacres by Greek troops. Telegrams to Angora where a British control officer was receiving munitions surrendered under the Mudros armistice, brought a prompt denial. But the rumor grew. What purported to be stories of the massacres and of the flight of Turkish civilians from Greek soldiers in the hinterland of Smyrna, accompanied it. The British control officer at Angora denied it again, emphasizing the fact that the armistice had been signed by the British Government and no Greek occupation of Smyrna was possible without British consent. But a telegram soon reached Sivas from the Ottoman War Office in Constantinople, announcing that Smyrna had been occupied by the Greeks and that Admiral Calthorpe had supervised the occupation. British control officers along the railways fled to Constantinople at once and most of them were fortunate enough to reach their destination.

Meanwhile, Rauf Bey had reached Smyrna on May 13. On May 14, Admiral Calthorpe entered the bay with an Allied naval squadron from Constantinople. The Allied control officers ashore were ordered to disarm the Ottoman garrison and confine it to its barracks. At 6:30 o'clock in the evening, Admiral Calthorpe announced that the city would be occupied by Allied troops the next