The object of Khemal, as we have seen, was one of simple extermination. The reason alleged was one of those shrewd subterfuges used by the Turks to fool Europeans. But not all the unfortunates carried away by the Turks were Greek men. Many thousands of Christian women and girls still remain in their hands to satisfy their lusts or to work as slaves. A report submitted to the League of Nations gives the number as “upward of fifty thousand,” but this seems a very conservative estimate. The United States should sign no treaty with Turkey until these people are given up. Mustapha Khemal made a stupendous blunder when he burned Smyrna and maltreated its inhabitants. Had he used them kindly, irrespective of religion, they would all have rallied loyally around him and he would have shown himself a really great man. Moreover, such a move would have been a splendid triumph for Mohammedanism. CHAPTER XX HISTORIC IMPORTANCE OF THE DESTRUCTION OF SMYRNA The destruction of Smyrna by the Turks was an event of great significance in Church history. At the time of the birth of the Prophet, about A. D. 570, Christianity had covered, in addition to the area known in general to-day as “Europe,” the ancient province of Asia, extending as far east as the Caspian Sea, a broad strip of Syria, and a wide belt of North Africa clear across to the Atlantic Ocean. In A. D. 30, according to Kurtz, historian of the Christian Church, there were five hundred Christians in the world; they had increased to five hundred thousand by A. D. 100, and they numbered thirty million in the year 311. Asia Minor and Africa are famous in the history of the Church as the habitat of many of the most famous Christian fathers and martyrs, such as Polycarp of Smyrna, Tertullian of Carthage, Clement of Alexandria, Chrysostom of Antioch, Origen of Tyre, Cyprian of Carthage and a host of others. Saint Paul was born in Tarsus of Cilicia. In the eighth century, Timotheus sent a band of missionaries from Mesopotamia to convert the Tartars, who went as far as the Caspian Sea, and even penetrated into China, “planting and reviving in those parts a knowledge of the gospel.” The Seven Churches of Revelation were in Asia Minor, and the fact that Smyrna was the last of these, and kept her light burning until 1922, emphasizes the significance, in Church history, of her destruction by the Turks.