The Athens Government grew desperate. Every month the Turks were becoming stronger, and yet it seemed impossible to order the evacuation of Asia Minor. The British Government, and British public opinion in general, encouraged the Greeks but only with words! In July the Greek Government transferred 40,000 of its best troops from Asia Minor to Thrace, and massed them, together with the Thracian army of occupation, near Constantinople. A note was sent to the Entente Governments, demanding permission to occupy Constantinople. It was a grand-stand play, conceived as a supreme effort to avert impending disaster. The Entente Powers refused to accede to the Greek request. At the end of August, realizing that they could not last through another winter in their positions east of the Anatolian Railway, the Greeks prepared to fall back on a line within the limits of the zone defined in the Treaty of Sèvres. The Turks got wind of the plan and attacked at the most vulnerable point in the Greek front, where the railway from Smyrna joined the Anatolian Railway at Afium-Karahissar. Panic started and spread, as panic always does. The Greeks became demoralized and abandoned their strong positions without fighting. They retreated to the Ægean coast, burning towns and villages as they went. Most of the army got away to the Ægean islands and to Thrace. But they lost all their artillery and stores, and left the native Christians and Mohammedan Circassians, who had made common cause with the Greeks, to the mercy of the Turkish Nationalists. The demoralization of the Greek army was not so great as that of the Italian army at Caporetto, and, in numbers of troops affected, no greater than that of the British and French in the last German offensive in France in the spring and early summer of 1918. Had there been reserves to fall back upon, had there been strong allies to come to the rescue, the Greeks could easily have retrieved their fortunes. We must remember this in judging them. But years of facing great odds alone, with no hope of a change, had ended by taking the heart completely out of them. The events of September, 1922, proved to be a greater blow to Hellenism than the fall of Byzantium in 1453 or any other of the vicissitudes suffered by the Greeks in the original Turkish conquest of Asia Minor and the Balkans; for the Turks resolved this time to stamp out Hellenism for good and all. The burning of Smyrna was accompanied by wholesale massacres. The expulsion of the Greeks from Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace followed the signature of an armistice at Mudania on October 10. The negotiations were carried on between the Entente Powers and the Turks. Greece, by her defeat, had been eliminated and was forced to accept the loss of Eastern Thrace in order to secure the armistice.