Smyrna is now a mass of ruins and a Turkish village. It should be borne in mind, however, that history repeats itself. Smyrna was rebuilt by Greeks after its destruction by Lydians, and Hellenic civilization again reasserted itself after the ferocity of the Turkish pirates of 1084, and the frightful butcheries of Tamerlane. A great city is the flower of industry and a peaceful and prosperous civilization. When the farmers swarm over the plains and the sailors go down to the sea in ships, then the bazaars and warehouses are built, the banks and the counting-houses and the shops of the cunning artisans. Smyrna will grow great again when a live and progressive Western civilization once more develops in Ionia. History has demonstrated that the Greeks, from their geographical position, their industrial and economic enterprise, and their relative maritime supremacy in the Mediterranean are the people ultimately destined to carry European progress into Asia Minor unless, indeed, Christianity should utterly fail, and with it, the civilization founded upon it. Smyrna is too near Europe for Turkish retrogression and blight to rest there indefinitely. Its fields are too rich and too valuable to the human race to remain permanently in the hands of a sparse population of incompetent shepherds. The question is often asked: “When will the Turks rebuild Smyrna?” Turkish Smyrna was not burned. CHAPTER XIV THE DESTRUCTION OF SMYRNA (September, 1922) The last act in the fearful drama of the extermination of Christianity in the Byzantine Empire was the burning of Smyrna by the troops of Mustapha Khemal. The murder of the Armenian race had been practically consummated during the years 1915-1916, and the prosperous and populous Greek colonies, with the exception of Smyrna itself, had been ferociously destroyed. The idea has been widely circulated, and seems to be gaining credence, that the Turk has changed his nature overnight. The destruction of Smyrna happened, however, in 1922, and no act ever perpetrated by the Turkish race in all its bloodstained history, has been characterized by more brutal and lustful features, nor more productive of the worst forms of human sufferings inflicted on the defenseless and unarmed. It was a fittingly lurid and Satanic finale to the whole dreadful tragedy. The uncertainty which at one time existed in the public mind as to the question, “Who burned Smyrna?” seems to be pretty well dispelled. All statements that tend to throw doubt on the matter can be traced to suspicious and interested sources. The careful and impartial historian, William Stearns Davis, to whom reference has already been made in this work, says: “The Turks drove straight onward to Smyrna, which they took (September 9, 1922) and then burned.”[7]