Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/195

 *ing number of Greeks between Samsun and Trebizond along the Black Sea littoral, and a handful of widely scattered Americans, mostly in the employ of the Near East Relief. The large majority of its population, however, was Turkish and most of the non-Turks were bound to the Turks by their acceptance of Islam. The country, while wholly primitive, was far more single-minded than its capital had been for a century. Its handful of Americans were soon represented at Angora by two members of the Near East Relief's corps, the late Miss Annie T. Allen and Miss Florence Billings. Most of their contact was with Rafet Pasha and, despite the serious delicacy of their position, their relations with Rafet Pasha were generally happy.

The military situation in which the Turks found themselves, was shortly to be simplified by the brief war which Kiazim Karabekr Pasha launched from Erzerum against the Armenian Republic of Erivan. This opened a line of retreat to Trans-Caucasia and Central Asia, and if Kemal, Fevzi and Rafet Pashas had been forced to drop their archives into their kalpaks and flee, a back door would have been available for their escape into the East.

The Pontus project which the Greeks along the Black Sea littoral had launched, was not so simple to handle. The Greek occupation of Smyrna eventually made it necessary to transfer the Third Army from Amasia to the hinterland of Smyrna and the so-called Pontus had to be held with irregulars under the command of the late Osman Agha, the Laz mayor of Kerasund. The crude terrorism he wielded proved to be such an ugly business that