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day, were told that their allies had been obliged to take action in their absence to prevent imminent massacres. When Sonnino asked why the Great Powers had not sent their own contingents, Clemenceau claimed that it would be difficult to place them under a Greek general. He assured Sonnino that “today Smyrna belongs to no one; it is not a question of determining the fate of that city, but of carrying out a temporary operation with a well-defined objective.” Clemenceau had in fact temporarily fallen under Venizelos’s spell: “Ulysses,” he told Mordacq, “is only a small man beside him. He is a diplomat of the first rank, very sensible, very well prepared, very shrewd, always knowing what he wants.”11

The afternoon after that fateful decision Lloyd George asked Venizelos for a quick interview before the Council of Four met. Venizelos wrote in his diary that Lloyd George started with a simple question:

LLOYD GEORGE: Do you have troops available?

VENIZELOS: We do. For what purpose?

LLOYD GEORGE: President Wilson, M. Clemenceau and I decided today that you should occupy Smyrna.

VENIZELOS: We are ready.

Venizelos was full of optimism as he met with the Big Three and their military advisers to arrange the details. His troops were ready, the Turks would offer no resistance and the Greek inhabitants of Smyrna would welcome them. Lloyd George and Venizelos agreed that it would be best if French and English troops occupied the forts at the entrance to the harbor and then turned them over to the Greeks. Clemenceau went along, with some reluctance; he was beginning to have cold feet, especially about antagonizing the Italians needlessly. Wilson was torn between his wish to act within the letter of the law and his distaste for the Italians. In the end he supported the occupation, which was scheduled for May 15. “The whole thing,” wrote Henry Wilson, the British military expert, “is mad and bad.”12

In Smyrna itself the mood was tense. Agents of the Greek government had been there since the end of the war, trying to stir up popular enthusiasm for Greek rule. The British and French representatives watched sympathetically, the Italians with hostility. The Turkish minority was deeply uneasy. When news spread that the Greeks were coming, the city erupted with demonstrations. Several thousand Turks banged drums during the night in protest; a much larger number of excited Greeks gathered along the waterfront on the morning of May 15. The Orthodox bishop stood ready to bless the soldiers. The blue-and-white flag of Greece flew everywhere. As the first Greek troops marched into town, the crowds cheered and wept. It was like a holiday, until suddenly a shot was fired by somebody outside a Turkish barracks. Greek soldiers started firing wildly, and when Turkish soldiers stumbled out of the barracks in surrender, the Greeks beat them and prodded them along toward the waterfront with bayonets. The Greek onlookers went wild and joined in. Some thirty Turks died. All over Smyrna mobs sprang up, killing and looting. By the evening, between 300 and 400 Turks and 100 Greeks were dead. The disorder spread out into the surrounding countryside and towns in the following days. 13 It was a disaster for the Greeks and Greek claims, and a foretaste of what was to come.

Throughout Turkey the news of the landings was received with consternation. They seemed to many a first step to the partition of the Turkish parts of the Ottoman empire. “After I learned about the details of the Smyrna occupation,” a woman who was an early supporter of Atatürk remembered, “I hardly opened my mouth on any subject except when it concerned the sacred struggle which was to be.” In Constantinople, crowds marched with black flags. A delegation of upper-class women made an unprecedented call on the British high commissioner. “A slice had been cut,” said their spokeswoman, “from the living body of the Ottoman Empire of which she was a member and by that act a bleeding member.” In his palace, the sultan wept. His ministers talked impotently about making a protest. Atatürk, who happened