Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/198

 of supplies available varied widely, and the treatment of the deportees on the march varied accordingly. The report which Dr. Mark Ward, the Near East Relief worker who was deported from Kharput, made to the British Foreign Office in London as well as to his own Government in Washington, indicates that their sufferings at Kharput were heavy. Dr. Ward in his report laid the blame for their sufferings on Angora. Whether, once other methods had failed to break up the Greek Pontus organization, Angora possessed the means to make deportation a bearable process for the Greeks, is a question which in the lack of conclusive evidence must remain unanswered here. It seems to me more to the point, however, to point out the original guilt of those who landed the Greeks in Asia Minor without the means of protecting them there. The "Pontus" episode is not the first in which Western Powers have permitted the Greeks to expose their own people to danger in the hope that their sufferings will attract Western assistance. There are minorities in every country between Vienna and Bagdad and their exposure to danger constitutes part of the technique of Balkan statecraft. Greek atrocities at Ismid resulted in Osman Agha's reprisals at Marsovan. It is not impossible that that was the purpose with which Greek atrocities along the Marmora shore began. Certainly it is difficult to find any other purpose in the conduct of Greek regular troops. Thus it is that Balkan peoples draw their new frontiers. Thus it has been for a century and thus presumably it will continue to be, as long as the West permits.

It seems to me (and I must add in fairness that