Immediately after the capture of Smyrna, Kemal Pasha addressed a
grandiloquent proclamation to " the Turkish nation," in which he claimed that the Greek army in Asia Minor had been completely annihilated. This claim is evidently justified in the sense that it has ceased to exist as a fighting force. It does not seem likely, however, that the number of actual battle casualties was very great. Eye-witnesses describe the cause of the Greek collapse as " a general strike on the part of the rank and file," caused partly by distrust of the higher command and partly by the very ill-advised fashion in which the troops had been told that they were fighting for a lost cause. Those who were engaged in the last months of the campaign in France will easily find a parallel in the behaviour of many— though, of course, not all—of the German units. It is asking too much of human nature to expect the hommes seneuels moyena of whom any army is mainly composed to risk their lives boldly when they know that their self-sacrifice cannot change a fail accompli.
