Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/239

 August 11, Fethy Bey left London for Rome, stopping in Paris long enough to wire the news of his reception in London to Angora. The solution of the Smyrna deadlock was now committed to Fevzi Pasha.

At dawn on August 26, Ismet Pasha attacked the Greek position before Afium -Karahissar. The secrecy which had marked the re-mobilization and re-equipment of the Turkish Armies throughout, had been maintained to the last and Ismet Pasha found the Greeks wholly unprepared. They abandoned Afium and Kutahia and endeavored to stand on September 1 before Ushak, but on September 2, Turkish cavalry drove into Ushak through and over the Greeks, swept up General Tricoupis and his entire staff, and escaped to their own lines. The rest was easy. The distance from Ushak to Smyrna is 160 miles, but the Greeks covered it in eight days, abandoning everything but their rifles, living off the country and stopping only long enough to wreak their last revenge on the villages through which they fled. On September 5, they began streaming into Smyrna and nothing speaks more highly of Fevzi Pasha's staff work than the fact that all branches of his Army succeeded in keeping pace with them. On September 9, advance Turkish units entered Smyrna. Meanwhile, a secondary attack in the north had been launched against Biledjik on August 30, the Greeks evacuated Eski-Shehr on September 2 and by September 12, their stragglers were crossing from Mudania and Panderma to Eastern Thrace.

From the back hills of Java to the country towns of the United States, the Turkish re-occupation of