Page:Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.djvu/76

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50
AMBASSADOR MORGENTHAU'S STORY

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 employees 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 organization of Turkey, for here we had a nation engaging in a commercial boycott against its own subjects.

This procedure against the Greeks not improperly aroused my indignation. I did not have the slightest suspicion at that time that the Germans had instigated these deportations, but I looked upon them merely as an outburst of Turkish ferocity and chauvinism. By this time I knew Talaat well; I saw him nearly every day, and he used to discuss practically every phase of international relations with me. I objected vigorously to his treatment of the Greeks; I told him that it would