Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/197

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reason of the fact that any move against it would be disseminated in the Black Books of the Oecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople as evidence of "persecution of the Christians." Believing that one of the organization's centers was a body of Greek students which called itself the Pontus Literary Society in the American college at Marsovan, Angora requested Dr. George E. White, president of the college, to suppress the Society. Possibly forgetting that the country was in a state of war and nowhere more bitterly so than in Marsovan, Dr. White refused to suppress the Society. Angora thereupon suppressed the college, deporting its American teaching staff to the coast whence they were removed to Constantinople. A number of Greeks were then arrested in Marsovan on evidence which Angora believed indicated their activity in the Greek organization; they were removed to Angora, placed on trial before a military court under a charge of treason in time of war, convicted and hung. But the tumult in the so-called Pontus still continued. Greek and Turkish irregulars burned each other's villages and ambushed each other in the fields. This sort of thing dragged along until 1922, when Angora, having failed to break up the Greek organization, deported into the interior the entire Greek population along the Black Sea, men, women and children alike.

Once these deportations had been ordered at Angora, their execution was of necessity left to the local police chiefs and the manner of their execution varied with the temper of the local police chiefs and the amount of supplies available in each province. Both the police chiefs and the amounts