462) Mark Prentiss on the Psychology of Turk-Atrocity Stories

The following is a highly important article by Mark Prentiss, the American at Izmir (or "Smyrna"; Prentiss was an industrial engineer and a special representative of the Near East Relief) who laid it on the line as far as who was responsible for the burning. He describes how otherwise honorable "good Christians" were behind false atrocity stories, not necessarily because they were lying... but because their brains had been washed by anti-Turkish propaganda. To wit: . . .


"Until the end of the seventeenth century the 'Ottoman peril' lurked alongside Europe to represent for the whole of Christian civilization a constant danger, and in time European civilization incorporated that peril and its lore, its great events, figures, virtues, and vices, as something woven into the fabric of life."

"From the fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century the Ottoman Empire was almost continuously at war with the Christian Powers of Western Europe. The terror inspired by the Turkish name among all the European peoples was largely responsible for the widely spread popular belief that the Turks were a race of uncivilized barbarians who, wherever they went, left nothing but smoking ruins behind them and stamped out every vestige of civilization. Religious fanaticism, coupled with the fear born of unbroken Turkish military successes, resulted in creating among some detractors of the Turks a state of mind which rendered them for the most part incapable of viewing Turkey and the Turks with an objective
and unbiased eye."

Edward Said, in his scholarly work, "Orientalism"

What I'm going to do here is REVERSE the sequence of "Parts I and II" of Prentiss' article, as I'd like to accentuate this phenomenon of how even apparently conscientious people saw illusions of Turkish swords everywhere. We know some missionaries and Western consuls lied outright with the telling of their pro-Christian tales, but what about the ones who were above lying, even with their religious and racial bigotry? The psychological outlook described below speaks volumes.

This rare article from The Atlantic Monthly (Jan.1924, pp.130-133) is made possible through the good graces of reader M. Mersinoglu. What follows is an analysis of the doubt cast upon Mark Prentiss' integrity.


ACTUALITIES AT SMYRNA

MARK O. PRENTISS, AMERICAN EYEWITNESS, SPEAKS

RECORDED BY JOHN BAKELESS

II

It is impossible to understand the psychology of atrocity stories without being through an experience like ours. The reputation that the Turks have — rightly or wrongly — acquired was known. It was also known that they had marched for three hundred miles through wantonly devastated territory — their territory. Atrocities seemed the natural thing to expect. Then there was the fire, and with Greeks looting, Turkish looting, private murders, men shot while cutting hose, deaths from fire, drowning, and military executions, bodies began to be pretty thick in the streets.

It was too much for a good many men — and not weaklings by any means. They were like children, who fail to distinguish between what they imagine or expect and what they really see. It is possible for an idea lo be so vividly present to the mind that it passes for fact on that ground alone. I was with a naval officer and some of his men in our consulate when a local Y.M.C.A. worker burst in the door. He was in the last stages of collapse, shaking all over and clawing convulsively at his hair — quite incoherent. We tried to quiet him.

'My God, my God, my God!' half a prayer and half an exclamation, was all we could get out of him. We forced him into a chair. When he was calm enough, we questioned him.

'What's the matter?'

'O my God, rny God!'

'Never mind that. What's the matter?'

'Oh, they 're killing them — killing everybody — the Y.M.C.A. Send your men, send your sailors, quick!'

'Who's doing this?'

'The Turks, the Turks. They've stormed the "Y" and got them, and—'

'Did you see it?'

'Yes, with my own eyes. They^re killing them. Hurry, hurry I'

The naval officer quietly moved three fingers on his desk, and three sailors hurried out. I went with them.I had left my kodak and binoculars there an hour before and I wanted them. We ran as fast as we could to the Y.M.C.A., but when we got there we found nothing more dreadful than a few placid Turkish soldiers standing guard over a garage next door, of which they had .just taken possession. Not a soul had been hurt or even threatened. Neither was there the least sign that a struggle had taken place. The usual calm tense quiet reigned.

The same man burst in later with a story that Turkish soldiers had stripped and were violating six Armenian girls; yet when we went to the place he named we found nothing of the sort, — and we went instantly. In each case the man vowed he had seen these events with his own eyes; and he was a perfectly honest, decent chap, but quite out of his head with strain and excitement.


I must have investigated a hundred such stories, without finding one of them true.


I think I must have investigated a hundred such stories, without finding one of them true. A nurse, declaring she had seen the horrible wound, took me to help a woman whose breast was said to have been cut off. I found she had a gash in one arm — nothing more.

Such hysteria in a sound and normal American of about thirty helps to explain the frenzy of fear among the Greek and Armenian refugees. Their terror took the most grotesque and unexpected forms. The American sailors ran a positive risk from the Greeks, who would seize them like drowning men, merely because the sailors wore a uniform that might represent safety. One nearly had his back broken from being pressed down across the mud-guard of a motor beneath an avalanche of terrified Greeks and Armenians, all clamoring to be saved; and the bribes that those simple sailor lads were offered, and contemptuously turned aside, pass belief. One Greek merchant offered $50,000 in American currency, to be paid on the spot, if he was placed on board a destroyer: and there is no doubt that he would gladly have fulfilled his share of the bargain if he had had a chance.

The Turkish authorities had given us permission to evacuate all except men of military age, and some of the latter resorted to the most naive disguises. Big strapping fellows with several days' growth of beard relied on women's garments to save them; and I even saw one patriarch, far beyond the age-limit anyhow, who had donned feminine apparel for safety's sake, in placid indifference to a huge gray beard that flowed down nearly to his waist.

I saw one man of military age, thus disguised, detected by a Turkish officer, who sat his horse, watching the refugees streaming through the gate and on to the pier where the steamers lay to receive them. As they passed, the officer leaned forward suddenly near where I was busy getting the people in, and snatched at the head-dress of what appeared to be a Greek woman. Then he began to tear at the upper part of her clothing.

Once Again: The foregoing was the second part of this article. Below is "Part I," forming the beginning.

Interestingly, Prentiss relates what may have been the first instance on record of cooperation between American and Turkish armed forces.

I

After a few days' tour of investigation among the battlefields of devastated Anatolia, I was back again in Smyrna on September 22. The city, wrecked by the fire, was still filled with homeless people. In the nine days since the fire some 20,000 or 30,000 had been evacuated; but 230,000 remained, and the task of getting them away was baffling.

The chief problem was how to convey the refugees from the city out to the Greek ships, which did not dare to enter what was now a Turkish port and so lay at anchor outside; while the refugees were brought to them on lighters. There were plenty of ships, but not half-a-dozen lighters had been left in Smyrna, and the sea from mid-afternoon till midnight was so choppy that we could not work.

Under these conditions the United States naval authorities placed me in charge of the entire work of evacuation, and the appointment was confirmed by the local relief committee. We made a few calculations. At the rate the work was going, it would take about eighteen months to get all the refugees away, and in far less time than that, exposure, hunger, and disease would have finished every one, even if the Turkish authorities had not insisted on complete evacuation before midnight of the thirtieth.

We appealed to the Turkish captain of the port for permission to bring the ships into harbor and lay them alongside the railroad pier in the northern part of the city. They were Greek ships, mind you, and feeling against the Greeks was bitter, yet the Turkish officer gave consent at once. His only stipulation was that the ships must not fly the Greek flag in the harbor, and that no Greeks or British must come on shore. The Turks even assigned three hundred of their soldiers to help; and with these and as many sailors as the two destroyers could spare, we went to work.

I think it is the first instance on record of cooperation between American and Turkish armed forces. They were an odd contrast. The American boys had a keen, wide-awake Yankee interest in everything around them. The Turks were stolidly intent on the work in hand, nothing else. The 'kidding' of the American boys meant nothing to them, though they were never unfriendly; and the gobs' amicable efforts to learn Turkish met with no remarkable degree of success.

The naval officers at first proposed bringing a destroyer into the harbor and laying it alongside the pier, to prevent the massacre that many, at the bottom of their hearts, half expected; but I protested. The presence of a neutral warship could have done no good and might have irritated the Turks. If everything was quiet, the destroyer was needless. If trouble started, an American naval vessel could not interfere. We took the Turks at their word, trusted them, and never had any reason to regret it.

Of course, Smyrna by that time was full of atrocity stories. Half the buildings were in ruins, in the streets were bodies of men killed while cutting hose, killed in private feuds, executed by the Turks, drowned on the waterfront. I do not pretend that the Turks never did any killing m Smyrna. I know better, for an officer and some soldiers had me up in front of a wall for several of the most uncomfortable minutes I ever lived through, and there was a second or two when I did not expect to live very far through them.

It happened in this way, I had come suddenly on a group of Turkish soldiery with loot in their hands. As I had been making photographs wherever I liked, ever since the Turks came in, I very foolishly photographed these men, too. It was an all-but-fatal blunder. Their officer ran at me, seized me by the shoulder, pushed me against a wall, beckoned to some of the men, and stepped back.

It was instantly apparent that an impromptu execution was about to be staged with me as the hero of the occasion. I spoke no Turkish, they no English, and my status as a neutral interested solely in relief was a little difficult to convey in sign language. How were they to know that Kemal and I had parted a few days before on the best of terms?

I did the first thing that came Into my head — a foolish bit of bravado, no doubt, but one that served its purpose. Tearing open my blouse, as if to bare my breast to their bullets, I saluted with dramatic impressiveness — and then turned swiftly to the officer and made signs that I wanted to take his picture. In my turn I thrust him up to the wall and made ready to snap him, taking as much time in posing him and getting him ready as I could.

The dazzling idiocy of it was too much for the Turks. This wasn't the proper behavior for an executee at all, and they forgot all about their execution. (Heaven knows I didn't want to remind them of it.) First the officer was photographed; then he wrote his name and regiment in Turkish, so that I could send him a print. Then I spent a good many minutes posing the entire outfit. I took my time and arranged an impressive array—a month later I learned I had taken all three exposures on one film — yes, I was rattled and I admit it.

Next the officer pulled a much-crushed package of dates from his blouse and gravely offered some to me. It was the breaking of bread, which in the east constitutes an inviolable bond. I made haste to accept, privately heaving sighs of relief. The men, too, now brought me bits of food. One held out a chunk of bread. As I clumsily endeavored to break off a piece, he jerked a murderous-looking knife from his boot, and for the first time in my life I felt seasick. 'Heavens.' I thought, 'is it beginning again?' But he merely cut off a bit of the bread and gravely handed it to me.

They showed me their arms, like so many children displaying their toys, and I admired them volubly — in sign language. One man handed me a two-foot knife, and I drew an appreciative forefinger down its edge, wagging my head admiringly as I contemplated its sharpness. "For Greek?' I enquired— 'No—for E-e-engleesh!' grunted the proud owner, by way of declaring the feeling of the whole Army.

We spent the rest of the afternoon together, and parted the best of friends. I never saw them again, but I took care to send the officer his photograph. It seemed only good manners — and, besides, I liked him. I treasure my own copy of his portrait. It has a poignant personal interest.

I saw one Greek prisoner shot, with my own eyes. He was being led along by his guards when he suddenly broke away, fell flat in the street, clutched the wheel of a motor-truck, and lay there screaming. His guard first prodded him with the rifle-butt, then struck him, in an effort to make the man get up and go on. No use. The Greek was simply crazy with fright, and the Turkish soldier shot him where he lay screaming. Yet once I saw Kiazim Pasha shout from the window of his headquarters and have two soldiers brought before him. He had glanced out and seen them beating a prisoner.

I feel sure there were both looting and killing in the bazaars on the streets down which the occupying army marched. The pillaged shops, with bodies here and there among them, were the best evidence of what had happened. There was too much of it to hold the chettes and the irregular armed bands who accompanied the Turkish army alone responsible. What had happened was clear enough. Soldiers had gone into the little shops,— you could have put the contents of any one on a wagon, — where they helped themselves to anything that caught their fancy; and any specially rebellious Greek or Armenian proprietor who protested was knocked over the head, shot, or bayoneted.

Some of the looting I saw myself. One soldier passed me in full uniform, carrying a chandelier adorned with innumerable prisms. What he wanted with it or how he expected to carry it along on the next march, I don't know, but it was unquestionably loot. I saw another man with three dozen canes and umbrellas, and I took a photograph of a line of automobiles and camels, which Turkish officers had loaded with silks and calicoes and other goods. I also saw a Greek priest carrying a sewing-machine; but as he was a refugee, it may have been his own property. Thousands of soldiers and civilians were carrying everything you can imagine — sometimes loot — sometimes salvage — sometimes 'just picked up.'

A Note on Prentiss' Reliability

By now, we can expect as a certainty that Armenian and Greek forces are so determined to push their propagandistic views, they will stop at nothing to say anything and everything to cast doubt on the real facts. Mark Prentiss has also been a victim of this traditional discrediting campaign.

But here there appears to be some cause. On Sept. 18, 1922, the New York Times carried an article beginning with: "RELIEF MAN TELLS TRAGEDY; Mark O. Prentiss Cables Account of Sacking and Firing of City."

I haven't read the article, but Prentiss is quoted as such, according to an activist Armenian:

"Many of us personally saw—and are ready to affirm the statement—Turkish soldiers often directed by officers throwing petroleum in the streets and houses. Vice-Consul Barnes watched a Turkish officer leisurely fire the Custom House and the Passport Bureau while at least fifty Turkish soldiers stood by. Major Davis saw Turkish soldiers throwing oil in many houses. The Navy patrol reported seeing a complete horseshoe of fires started by the Turks around the American school."

Now note in each of the instances, Prentiss reported the stories of others... and not himself: Barnes, Davis and the Navy patrol. The Navy patrol appears to have witnessed only fires, which is different than speculating who started the fires.

(The major must be, as George Horton described him in The Blight of Asia, " C. Clafun Davis, Chairman of the Disaster Relief Committee of the Red Cross, Constantinople Chapter.")

The pseudonymous Armenian author of this material claims, "But after being instructed by his superiors, he changed his version and stated that he saw no petroleum being poured." No source is offered, regarding "being instructed." How could there be? What went on between Prentiss and his superiors, if anything, can only be a matter of speculation. (And Prentiss never claimed to personally witness petroleum being poured, as the Armenian is falsely stating.)

Remember: Prentiss was a special representative for the Near East Relief... I repeat, that was the Near East Relief, whose whole purpose was to protect and care for Armenians... and these "superiors" of the Near East Relief were going to be the last people to instruct Prentiss to lie for the Turks.

(Assuming Prentiss would have been unethical enough to lie because someone had told him to. The article you have read above gives a good picture of his character.)

It's one thing for someone to have his arm twisted by a superior and asked to deliberately lie, if we entertain that unfounded notion for the moment. It's quite another to prepare a detailed report, as Prentiss has done (see link below), and one evidently never meant to be publicized, that was deliberately and meticulously falsified.

Prentiss' chief source was the fire chief of the city (1910-1922), an Austrian, Paul Grescovich (at times Grescovitch), who had no reason to protect the Turks. Obviously, Prentiss did not put words in Grescovich's mouth.

Marjorie Housepian Dobkin

Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, in her propagandistic book ("Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City") too often cited as a definitive work on the matter, dug up other references from the fire department accusing the Turks. One such witness was a fireman named Katzaros. Who are we going to believe, the firemen of Greek and Armenian descent, or the fire chief who had no reason to lie? (There was a court case in 1924, and the plaintiff's lawyer complained of the flimsiness of the evidence, provided mainly from "only that of a small number of persons who by race and nationality were bitterly hostile to the Turks.")

The pseudonymous Armenian author tells us Prentiss provided another account days later, presumably in The New York Times: "The burning of Smyrna will rank as the world's greatest tragedy, and it is likely historians will divide the responsibility. The Greek action in arming civilians, together with prolonged and extensive sniping, exasperated the Turks beyond their officers' control. The officers exerted an effort to maintain order and establish a record for peaceful occupation."

As a matter of fact, Prentiss appears to have been a primary correspondent for The New York Times on "Smyrna," writing four more articles after the first one from the 18th, on September 20 ("Our Missionary Work Is Not Desired"), 24, 25, and 27. He went on with a few more articles relating to Turkey in the next several months.

For example, in a Nov. 12 article not written by Prentiss but one where he was the subject, we are told "Mark O. Prentiss, special representative of the American Near East Relief" was "sent by headquarters to make a survey of the work..."

So his bosses supposedly reprimanded him, according to the Armenian "made up" story, and yet they trusted him enough to summarize what was happening. Now, remember, we were told Prentiss was under instructions to make the Turks look nice. Here's how Prentiss complied almost a couple of months afterwards: "Only Immediate Evacuation Can Avert Massacre. ALLIES AT TURKS' MERCY 'Will Be Forced Out' of Capital if They Fight—8,000 Victims Marked for Death."

Yes, Mark Prentiss sure sounded "pro-Turk," all right.

Do you see what's happening here? Missionary-minded, Western influenced Mark Prentiss first arrived (on Sept. 8), and he brought with him impressions of the Terrible Turk. The Westerners of the Sept. 18 account told him Terrible Turk stories which Mark Prentiss readily accepted.

After he did his own investigating, he realized there was a lot more to the goings-on than typical Terrible Turk savagery. (He already had clues before Sept. 18, as revealed through discussions with Fire Chief Grescovich. It probably took him a while to sort through the conflicting information, preferring at first to accept the atrocity accounts that fulfilled his own pre-existing prejudices. When he kept seeing firsthand how unreliable the atrocity accounts were, as he related in the article on this page, he had no honorable choice but to slowly come around.) And Prentiss had the integrity to report the facts. He realized in order to get at the truth, one needed to scratch beneath the surface... anathema to Turcophobic genocide and "Smyrna fire" advocates.

(Prentiss provides another clue regarding his evolution, in his above account: "After a few days' tour of investigation among the battlefields of devastated Anatolia, I was back again in Smyrna on September 22." That means he was learning about the real state of affairs after the Sept. 18 Times account appeared, further discovering the Greeks and Armenians were not the angels he very likely had always been told, and his ingrained prejudices must have slowly been melting away. This is the same process Arnold Toynbee went through... the reason why Housepian indicated in her book that she dismissed Toynbee, because he had the gall to do an "about face," and concentrated instead on the hateful religious fanatic, George Horton.)

The Armenian author reported that Prentiss deliberately changed the "entire American version of the events," sending his story to Bristol, in "a form of a manuscript to be published in Jan. 11, 1923" (this is the Prentiss account from the link at bottom of page; but the Armenian appears to be "speculating" once again about the "to be published" claim. From the available facts, we can only conclude this account was written privately, and was never published anywhere, and was likely never intended to be publicized. The significance of the Jan. 11 date is that was the date the manuscript was sent to Bristol for his perusal as a U.S. official, not as a date of publication; furthermore, the implication that Bristol served as a "publishing house" or even a "writer's agent" is absurd. The reason why this report is known at all is that It was likely discovered among the Bristol Papers in the Library of Congress, sitting for years, unknown to the world. (Until some researcher came upon it... just like with "Actualities at Smyrna" above, which I had never heard of before.) Especially if this "internal" account was never published, then it could obviously not have been written for propagandistic purposes); the Armenian ridicules the part where "Armenians were in Turkish military uniforms, burning their own quarter."

But Prentiss did not make that up. Alexander MacLachlan, the missionary president of International College in "Smyrna" pinned the blame on Armenian terrorists, dressed in Turkish uniforms; they were apparently hoping to bring Western intervention. (MacLachlan had no reason to stretch truth for the Turks, not only because he was a missionary, but because he was almost killed by the Turks, during the events of the fire.)

Now it won't do for missionaries or missionary-minded individuals to go contrary to Hai Tahd, the Armenian cause, since missionaries are supposed to be the friends of Armenians. When even missionaries deviate, it's up to Armenians to come up with speculative reasons as to why they must be "deliberately lying."


Allen Dulles

For example, Housepian wrote in her book that "Allen Dulles, unable to officially refute the charges head-on, was driven to seek personal testimonials," because a book called The Great Betrayal (pinning part of the blame on the "Smyrna disaster" on "American economic imperialism" and Admiral Mark Bristol) made people, prone to accept anti-Turkish propaganda at face value, angry. Housepian lists villains such as "zealous volunteer, a Mr. William T. Ellis," Asa Jennings and Prentiss himself who snapped to command, by way of writing letters to editors.


Asa Jennings

(Asa Jennings was a Methodist minister and assistant YMCA director whom Housepian had painted heroically earlier, having saved many Greek refugees. This outside page gives the account.)

In other words, these people were going to be perfectly willing to falsify the facts, because someone merely asked them to. (Is that what you would do? Even if a government representative waved the flag in your face, unless perhaps if it was a matter of life and death for the nation... would you?)

Pro-Armenians must learn that just because bending the truth comes so easily for them, not everyone is going to suffer from the same affliction.

Prentiss' articles speak for themselves; for example, the one above was written well after his duties had been performed, more than a year after the fire, and he was safely back home. There was absolutely no reason for Mark Prentiss to have written "Actualities at Smyrna," other than wishing to report the facts... and there is no sugarcoating, either. Prentiss did not shy away from exposing the times the Turks committed offenses. The only thing Prentiss is "guilty" of is revising his views, as better information came along... which is the duty of all honorable people.

As a footnote, Prentiss is described as the "chief organizer of the National Crime Commission and author of many articles on crime prevention," in an Oct. 24, 1930 New York Times story, where he was reported to have caught a burglar in his own Manhattan home. (Prentiss might have learned something from the Turks, having cowed the crook with "a sword.")


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http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/Prentiss-Atrocity.htm

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