For a year after the Greeks landed at Smyrna on May 15, 1919, they sat in the hinterland of the great port waiting for the Sevres Treaty, while Fevzi Pasha and Rafet Pasha worked like Trojans at Angora. In May, 1920, they threw their screen in front of the Straits, Ismet Pasha making no effort to molest them. In November, 1920, Old Greece finally rid itself of Mr. Venizelos, a wedge was driven between Athens and the Phanar, and the French made Constantine an excuse for disentangling themselves from the Greeks. Royalist officers now took over the front behind Smyrna with no respect for the Allied veto on a drive toward Eski-Shehr and Afium-Karahissar. With these two railway junctions occupied, the Greeks would possess the great semi-circle of railway which runs from Constantinople to Smyrna, and the Turks would be deprived of the interior Angora-Konia line with which they were secretly re-mobilizing and re-equipping their Armies on the Smyrna front. Accordingly in January, 1921, the Royalist Greek command tried its strength from Brussa toward Eski-Shehr and retired without encountering Turkish opposition. The situation was now plain. Eski-Shehr and Afium were theirs whenever they cared to take them. As for Fevzi Pasha and Rafet Pasha at Angora, they had imposed a strict embargo on travellers into the interior of Anatolia and the secrecy they succeeded in preserving was one of their striking successes.
Two months later, in March, 1921, the Royalist Greek command launched its double advance, the Southern Army moving on Afium from Ushak, the Northern Army on Eski-Shehr from Brussa. To
