Since Germany, however, had her own plans for Asia Minor, naturally the Greeks in this region formed a barrier to Pan-German aspirations. As long as this region remained Greek it formed a natural obstacle to Germany’s road to the Persian Gulf, precisely as did Serbia. Anyone who has read even cursorily the literature of Pan-Germania is familiar with the peculiar German method which German publicists have advocated for dealing with populations that stand in Germany’s way. That is, by deportation. The violent shifting of whole peoples from one part of Europe to another, as though they were so many herds of cattle, has for years been part of the Kaiser’s plans for German expansion. This is the treatment which, since the war began, Germany has applied to Belgium, to Poland, to Serbia, and its most hideous manifestation, as I shall show, has been to Armenia. Acting under Germany’s prompting, Turkey now began to apply this principle of deportation to her Greek subjects in Asia Minor. Three years afterwards the German Admiral Usedom, who had been stationed in the Dardanelles during the bombardment, told me that it was the Germans “who urgently made the suggestion that the Greeks be moved from the sea-shore.” The German motive, Admiral Usedom said, was purely military. Whether Talaat and his associates realised that they were playing the German game I am not sure, but there is no doubt that the Germans were constantly instigating them in this congenial task. The events that followed foreshadowed the policy adopted in the Armenian massacres. The Turkish officials pounced upon the Greeks, herded them in groups and marched them toward the ships. They gave them no time to settle their private affairs, and they took no pains to keep families together. The plan was to transport the Greeks to the wholly Greek islands in the Ægean. Naturally the Greeks rebelled against such treatment, and occasional massacres were the result, especially in Phocaea, where more than fifty people were murdered. The Turks demanded that all foreign establishments in Smyrna dismiss their Greek employés--and replace them with Moslems. Among other American concerns, the Singer Manufacturing Company received such instructions, and though I interceded and obtained sixty days’ delay, ultimately this American concern had to obey the mandate. An official boycott was established against all Christians, not only in Asia Minor, but in Constantinople, but this boycott did not discriminate against the Jews, who have always been more popular with the Turks than have the Christians. The officials particularly requested Jewish merchants to put signs over their doors indicating their nationality and trade--such signs as “Abraham the Jew, tailor,” “Isaac the Jew, shoemaker,” and the like. I looked upon this boycott as illustrating the topsy-turvy national organisation of Turkey, for here we had a nation engaging in a commercial boycott against its own subjects.