The Smyrniot lady causing the invasion of Smyrna

Yaşar Ürük, 2013

Domini Elliadi was the daughter of a well-to-do Greek family from Smyrna, born in the later years of the 19th Century. Despite being described as not overtly attractive in her facial features, due to her interest in sports, she had an attractive and well-toned body and more to the point she was very intelligent and quite coquettish. She received a good education from the Greek Evangeliki School. With her strength of character she was able to do things her age peers couldn’t such as club meetings and similar gatherings and through her persuasive speech was able to gather a wide circle of fans. One of these admirers was the pastor at the Buca Anglican Church, (Arthur S.) Hichens. This minister who was also on friendly terms with her family found this lady’s conversations and opinions very interesting and would recount in his letters the details to his brother in Britain.

Pastor Hichens’ brother was the well-known author of the time Robert Smythe Hichens (14.11.1864 - 20.07.1950). The author Hichens who trained both in music and journalism was especially famous for his song lyrics and stories. Hichens who had written eight novels up to that date was influenced by the character of the young girl from Izmir described in considerable detail in those letters and places her as the centrepiece of the novel ‘The Garden of Allah’, he was writing at the time. In fact the name Domini would also be in the novel. This book gets published in 1904 and in a short space of time achieves world success however very few people would know that the female protagonist in the novel wasn’t a figment of the author’s imagination.

Contemporaries of the period describe Izmir / Smyrna as the ‘little Paris’ and was probably the most important city in the Levant. The city had a constant traffic of travellers, businessmen, artists and so on, coming and going. In the same manner, one day in 1912 an important businessman from Britain arrives. Sir Arthur Crosfield (05.04.1865 - 22.09.1938) was known in Britain as the ‘soap king’ was a venture capitalist with considerable wealth. One of the reasons behind this businessman’s visit was to support the work in missionary schools in the region and also submit writings to certain publications on the vein of ‘oppression of Christians of Turkey’. Indeed he would continue with the publication of such articles until the end of the occupation of Izmir. A few days after his arrival, Crosfield is invited to dinner reception given in his honour during which he sees Domini, is immediately struck and falls in love with her.

However young Domini at the time was a close friend with a son of the Giraud family. Indeed close acquaintances considered them to be engaged. However Crosfield was stubbornly determined and despite the twenty year age gap manages to woe the young lady, they return to Britain together and got married a few weeks later. Domini Elliadi a Greek from Smyrna is now Lady Crosfield and joins the high society social circle in London.

Lady Crosfield quickly adapts to this new life-style, joining many social and sportive events and in one of these gatherings meets up with the finance minister of the time Lloyd George (17.01.1863 - 26.03.1945). Despite Lloyd George being two years older than Sir Crosfield, he too is struck by this remarkable woman and also falls in love with her.

Lloyd George has working class roots, trained in law and in the 1885 elections was impressed by the reforms of Chamberlain and joined the Liberal Party. He entered parliament in 1890 and is remembered for his struggle for the official status of the Anglican Church and his vocal opposition to Boer War fought by Britain at the time.

The prime minister of Britain at the time, Henry Campbell - Bannerman resigned in 1908 and in his place Herbert Henry Asquith was appointed who in turn appointed Lloyd George as his finance minister who would introduce the social security based welfare state to Britain. In addition his campaign to curb the powers of the House of Lords results in the reduction of the influence of the British aristocratic classes in politics. However the defeat of the British Fleet in the Dardanelles and Easter uprising in Ireland causes a crisis leading to the resignation of Asquith and in December 1916 Lloyd George becomes prime minister.

With the Paris Conference following the end of the First World War, Lloyd George had a major influence in the thinking of the American president Wilson and the French prime-minister Clemenceau, thus playing a large part in determining the post-war fates of Germany and the Ottoman Empire.

No doubt Lady Crosfield had a role in Lloyd George’s uncompromisingly harsh approach to Turks and in him approving the Greeks occupying Izmir / Smyrna. Lloyd George was a senior politician who had spent most of his life in political circles, missing out on youthful liaisons and was under the spell of Domini from Smyrna whose charms had that effect on many. In the immediate post-war years when the new world order was being laid out, Lloyd George had practically eyes for no one else but Lady Crosfield. But the woman he desired was married and because of his social position the possibility of getting close was almost non-existent. Domini taking advantage of Lloyd George’s interest in her finds a chance to pass on word to him that ‘her greatest wish was to see Smyrna, the city in which she was born and her family lived, free from the Turks and given to its rightful Greek owners’.

Lloyd George in his lovelorn state, thinking such an action would make his dream-woman grateful and following his own anti-Turkish sentiments proceeded to lay the plans in this direction. He sets British foreign policy for the Near-East on the foundation of Greece capturing Western Anatolia and thus creating a Greater Hellenistic state and works to achieve this end. As a result of this, not only he supports Greece invading Izmir on the 15th May 1919, but backs their advance of her armies in Western Anatolia till their defeat. Indeed he is so adamant in this support for his love that he appears to bear the responsibility of the occupation of Izmir alone. During this Turkish war of independence, outside observers of this Asia Minor adventure assumed the key players were the Greek prime minister Elefterios Venizelos and the arms dealer Muğla [town in SW Turkey] born Ottoman subject Basil Zaharoff, were never aware of the secret love of the British premier.

Lloyd George who had achieved his peak of power and popularity with the end of the Great War now began to experience great stresses borne out of a policy of wishing to please the woman he loved. Britain’s Near East policy was met with the disapproval of first Italy, then France. In addition the defeat of the Greek Army in May 1922 and the possibility of the Greek forces having to withdraw from all of Anatolia caused great anxiety with Lloyd George.

Meanwhile the Turkish Government while pursuing its independence war tried in vain to persuade Britain to stop its support of Greece. In this vein, under the auspices of the London Conference that took place between 21 February and 12th March 1921, the negotiations between the Turkish representatives and the commander of the occupying forces in Istanbul, General Harrington, were inconclusive. For this reason the Turkish Government arrived at the conclusion that peace couldn’t be achieved through the British Government by convincing the prime minister, but through the total defeat of the Greek Army.

On the other hand the Greek Government wasn’t very successful in leading its fighting armies. Many decisions were taken which later prove to be mistakes. One of these unwise decisions is on 4th June 1922 the promotion of overall commander General Hacianesti. Indeed a short while later, on the 22nd of August Hacianesti is relieved of his command and in his place the commander in the field General Trikopis is brought. However Trikopis would learn of this promotion from Mustafa Kemal on the 3rd of September 1922 following his capture.

While this novel began to be staged as a musical cabaret in 1946, the same year, it gets translated to Turkish under the title ‘Allah’ın Bahçesi’ [God’s garden] and is printed by İnkılap Kitabevi. In later years, under the same title, a record is produced by the musician Don Henley.

Lady Crosfield, that is Domini Elliadi from Smyrna lived till 1963.

History is full of strange and unexplained coincidences. If Lloyd George had never seen Domini from Smyrna would Greek soldiers later invade that city?

What do you think?

This article was first published in Turkish in the magazine Izmir Tarih ve Toplum [Izmir history and society] issue 1, 2008.