The one bright incident in the terrible story is the
narrative of the great devotion and skill with which the officers and crews of the Allied and American warships at Smyrna succeeded in rescuing practically the whole of the European colony from this fiery furnace. The crews of the destroyers engaged in the work of rescue say that it was the most ghastly experience of their lives to listen to the imploring cries of the Greek women and children, whose massed numbers made It impossible to find room for them all. Another eye-witness speaks of the dazed and hungry refugees, so exhausted that they had lost even the capacity for fear, who "sat herded together, often in the way of the flames, and, if ordered to move, did so with an almost animal docility, their eyes only expressing their despair and fatigue." The congestion of these homeless and starving refugees on the barren stones of the burnt-out sea front is described as getting worse daily. There is no exaggeration in Mr. Ward Price's assertion that the Messina earthquake and the San Francisco fire were merciful in comparison to the bitterness of human suffering that exists to-day at Smyrna—. a consequence of Greek ambition and Turkish apathy.
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