The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1922-12-07
A Timely Editorial
The Great Greek Exodus

From the Philadelphia Public
Ledger.
The allies have bowed their
faces in the dust of the Near East.
When the Turks forced the Chris
tian nations at the Lausanne con-
ference to approve and condone the
perpetual exile of 100000 Greeks
from their homelands in Eastern
Thrace and Asia Minor the humilia-
ton of Great Britain, France and
Italy was completed. Briton,
Frenchman and Italian sat silent as
Venizelos, pleading in the name of
the discredited Greek nation and
Greece of Yesterday, protested in
vain against this Exchange Of pop
ulation" that the Turks so calmly
demand.
In the Christian era there has
been nothing like this Turkish de-
mand that every Greek in Turkey
shall go back to Greece and every
Turk in Greece shall be sent back
to Turkey. The Kemalists demand
that 100000 Turks in Greek terri
tory shall be sent back to take the
places Of the 100000 Greeks who
are to be driven out Of Constantine
pie and the hundreds Of thousands
that are being forced out of East
ern .Thrace and Asia Minor at the
point of the Moslem bayonet.
No Greek or other member of a
"Christian minority" will be left in
the new Turkey if Angora has its
way. After the Greeks. the other
"minorities" must go, where, the
Turk cares not. He has all but de-
stroyed the Armenian people. In
1914 there were 100000 Greeks
in Asia Minor. During the war
100000 Of them got out. Between
1918 and 1920 100000 more es-
capped. This year about 100000 of
them were swept out ahead of the
Turk armies as they came down on
Smyrna.
Those left must go out by De-
cember Is, or, as lsmet Pasha has
signified, they may die by massa-
ere. 1t is 60 or die. The will of
Angora is that there shall be this
vast reshuffling Of populations and
the once powerful allies sit silent
ly by.
while Athens is dipping her
hands in the blood of her leaders
and captains and is degrading and
deporting her former great men. a
New Islam and revived Turk state
are taking over, with finality and
completeness, lands that have been
Greek by race, tradition and Gull
ture since Homer sang his songs in
the dawn Of history. Iona was the
cradle in the vests civilization.
Tomorrow it will be all Turk, all
Islam, all Asiatic.
Sword and exile have almost
completed their work in Armenia
and are finishing in Asia Minor.
Greek and Armenian, old peoples
and cultured peoples when the Turk
was a hairy nomad in Central Asia,
must go. lie 4 uIh Will Sct dioiiS
without them in the future. His
racial and religious toierances are
at an end. Exile and the sword
will give him racial and political
solidarity.
A century from today this action
of the Turk may have quieted the
Levant. History, will tell. Now,
one of the gravest problems of the
old world is what to do with the
million Greeks who are about to be
thrown, starving and broken. into
Europe. The Greeks are hopeless.
They cannot deal with the 100000
who are in Constantinople, to say
nothing Of those in Eastern Thrace
and out of Iona.
The usual suggestion that they be
sent to America has been made.
The skies Of the east Mediterranean
are one vast tent Of misery and ter
ror. America will help feed the
victims and relieve their misery.
She pities these unfortunates who
are the political and religious sacri-
fees of many centuries, but Amer
lea does not want and cannot as
simulate them. Brought here they
would be our problem. They be-
long to Europe and to the world.