A Very Brief History of U.S. Immigration Policy: Oh How Things Have Changed

Immigration today is almost a daily news issue.  It was not always so.  Although the problem is illegal immigration, the main stream media, and liberal supporters of illegal immigration, call it simply "immigration."  It is no accident that they leave the "illegal" out of it.  If you're against illegal immigration, you're branded as "anti-immigrant" or in some cases a "racist."  This is quite a stretch of the truth and, in my opinion, a blatant lie meant to smear, and an ad hominem attack of the worst kind. Watch this video of a debate about illegal immigration between Michelle Malkin and Geraldo Rivera to see what I mean.

Since I'm a legal immigrant, I find these issues quite interesting, to say the least.  Let's step back from any emotional reaction and look at the facts.  It was not until 1924 that the United States began to limit immigration to the United States.  Before that it was open borders.  My own grand-father first came to the United States in 1905 and then returned to Italy in 1911.  After the passing of the "Immigration Act of 1924" limits were instituted on how many immigrants from each country could enter the U.S.  This law discriminated against southern European countries and favored northern European countries.  Northern Europeans were considered more favorably than those "inferior southerners," such as Italians, Greeks or Spaniards.  Today, of course, all we hear is how we should favor immigration without consideration to whether it's legal or illegal.  I don't have a problem with this if we decided, by law, to make the United States an open border country again, but only if the people voted for such a law.

The problem is that those who favor immigration without limits, usually liberals and some Hispanics, want to ignore the existing law.  This a very bad slippery slope.  If we can pick and choose which law we follow, who is to say that any law should be followed?  This is not just a rhetorical question.  I have one simple question for those who favor unlimited immigration:  Why do you not propose to change the law and make it legal?  If there is such great support for open borders why be afraid to put this to the people?

Let me give a personal example.  My parents legally immigrated to Los Angeles in 1956 from Italy.  At that time there were quotas.  My family waited three years before getting permission to immigrate.  Before being approved for immigration the entire family had to go through a thorough medical  and legal exam.  Additionally, each family had to have a sponsor, and have a job waiting for them when they got here.  In 1956 there were no illegal immigrants waiting on street corners looking for work.  As a matter of fact, I don't remember seeing any illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area waiting on street corners well past the 1980s.  Now, I don't have a problem with how the law was structured when my family immigrated, even though I believe that it was discriminatory against Southern Europeans.  I believe that each country has the right to determine their own policies.  Who is to tell country "A" that they should have the law any other way? In most countries in the world, you're arrested if you enter the country illegally.  Try entering Iran, for instance, illegally, or Mexico, for that matter.

Today the left will proclaim that anyone who does not favor illegal immigration like they do is either a racist or anti-immigrant.  This is pure demagoguery of the worst kind.  Disagree but be intellectually honest about it!  This leftist view has even taken over the church.  Just ask Cardinal  Mahoney of Los Angeles or his replacement and they will be for unfettered illegal immigration, even though it is currently illegal.  As I recall, the scriptures say (Matthew 22:21) that you should give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.

Why A Nations's Military is so Important

Show me a nation that is great and I'll show you a nation with a great military.  If you look at all the great nations or empires of the past you will see a common thread:  a great military.  No nation can call itself great without an efficient military.  Let's look as some examples:

1. The United States has been a world power since the late 19th century.  After the defeat of the Spanish in Cuba and the Philippines in 1898 you had the beginning of a new world power.  World War I and II put a definite stamp on it.  There is no stronger power in the world than the United States.  There are many reasons for this, but a strong and efficient military is one of the biggest reasons.
2. Great Britain ruled the world through its empire for two hundred years.  One of its biggest assets was and still is the efficiency and prowess of its military forces.
3. Japan has been a strong nation on the world stage for the last hundred years. Japan's military was feared for its prowess.  They conquered most of China, Malaysia and the Korean peninsula prior to World War I, then they made a fatal mistake:  They dared challenge the strongest military power in the world:  The United States in World War II and were destroyed in the process.
4. Germany lost two world wars in the period of 20 years but no one will laugh at the German military for its efficiency and power.  For a small country, it nearly defeated the rest of the world.  the German military was next to none in efficiency and prowess. German soldiers in World Wars I & II were considered some of the best soldiers in the world.
5. The Ottoman Empire ruled a large part of the world from the Middle East to the borders of Russia to the north and North Africa to the south from the 14th Century to World War I. One of the strongest reason - the Ottomans had one of the best military in the world.

Let's look at some countries who do not have a strong or efficient military.  The military may not be the only reason why a nation is weak but it is one of the biggest reasons.

1. Italy has had a weak military since the unification of the country in 1860.  After 150 years it still has a weak military.  As a descendant of the great Roman Empire which ruled the world for nearly 1500 years, Italy has little to show for it now. The Romans defined military science and tactics.  Most modern militaries still use the Roman Army method of military structure.  Roman military tactics are still studied today in war colleges.  In World War I, the Italian military was less than stellar.  At the battle of Caporetto, Italian forces were defeated and many of them deserted.  A huge embarrassment for the country.  Although they managed to finish the war with their victorious allies, the Italian military failed to impress anyone. In World War II they were inept at best.  The Italian military did show some flair in their conquest of Ethiopia in 1935, but this was a very short lived exception. Today, Italy is not a significant player on the world stage militarily.  
2. France was a big military power starting in the Napoleonic period. Next to Germany, they still have the strongest military in Europe. With the huge cost of fighting World War II and then the Vietnam war which culminated with their loss at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, France began a decline as a military power.  The French fought brilliantly in Vietnam but lost for reasons other than their military efficiency.
3. Greece became a great empire before the Romans because of their military prowess. The Greeks defeated the greatest empire of their day, Persia.  Later on Alexander the Great conquered the known world all the way to India.  For hundreds of years Greece ruled the world.  When Jesus was born, Greek was the spoken language of commerce in the world.  Greece eventually declined.  First the Romans took over from them;  when the Romans declined, Greece was swallowed by the Eastern Roman Empire, otherwise known as the Byzantine Empire.  The Byzantines were conquered by the Muslim Ottoman Turks in 1453 and Greece became part of the Ottoman Empire. Greece finally got its freedom from the Ottomans in 1821.  To this day, Greece is still secondary to Turkish military prowess as evidenced by the 1974 Turkish conquest of the half of Cyprus.  To this day, half of Cyprus is still occupied by the Turks.  In 1922 Greece was defeated by the Turkish Army as it tried to conquer Turkey after the defeat of the Ottoman Turks in World War I.  

A House Divided Cannot Stand: The Struggle Between Islam and Christianity

Islam has been on the march against Christianity since the death of Mohamed in 632 AD.  Two of the main goals of Mohammed's followers were to convert all infidels (non-Muslims), and conquer the world, not only to gain land but to win everybody else to Islam.  The Middle East and North Africa were the first areas to fall to the forces of Islam.  Once North Africa was taken, the Muslims set their sights on Europe.  They started with the conquest of Spain in 711 AD when the governor of Tangiers, Tariq ibn Ziyad landed in Gibraltar with 10,000 troops.  Within months the Muslims had taken most of the Iberian Peninsula.  It was not until the 11th century that the Spaniards started to drive the Muslims back, starting in Northern Spain and pushing south.  The final battle was won in 1492 when the Muslims were completely driven out of Spain by the forces of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

In 740 AD Sicily fell to the forces of Islam after a long struggle with the Byzantine Empire.  The Normans, led by a brilliant military commander, Roger de Houteville, drove out the Muslims from Sicily for good in 1071. De Houteville became Roger I, the first king of Sicily. If you go to the seacoast resort of Cefalù you will find a Cathedral there built by Roger II, the son of Roger I.

The Muslims became dominant, not only in the Middle East, but in Southern Europe. The Ottoman Turks created one of the greatest empires since Rome.  By the 15th century the Ottomans had conquered the eastern Roman Empire in 1453, known then, as the Byzantine Empire (modern day Turkey), with its capital in Constantinople.   Constantinople was then considered the center of Christianity.  The Byzantines made many pleas to fellow Christian nations around them but no one responded to help them. The Republic of Venice promised ships but none ever appeared. One exception was a private army of 7,000 troops led by the brilliant commander, Giovanni Giustiniani who was from Genoa. Giustiniani and his men fought bravely but were overwhelmed by the superior Turkish forces.   Click here for a map of Ottoman Empire at this time.  The Ottoman Empire reached from the Middle East, North Africa, the former Yugoslavia, Greece and the Balkan states.  A fine book on the history of the Byzantine Empire is Lost to the West by Lars Brownworth.

The Ottomans never stopped trying to conquer Europe by military force.  After the defeat of the Byzantine Empire, they set their eyes on the rest of Europe.  Soon, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and the Balkan countries fell to the Ottoman onslaught.  The Ottomans had the best trained, the most efficient, army in the world.  Brutality was their calling card.  The Ottoman Army had two sets of special forces which specialized in brutal tactics and sow fear in their enemies, the Tartars and the Janissaries. They spread fear everywhere they went. These troops fought to the death because they knew that if they failed they would suffer a brutal death themselves at the hands of their leaders.  On approaching a location, they would ask the people to surrender.  If they failed to surrender they would kill every man, woman, child and animal and then burn any city or village to the ground.  After slaughtering the locals, they would cut off the heads of the men and stick them up on poles along the road to sow fear among the rest of the territory who failed to surrender.  This is described in great detail in a book about the Ottoman siege of Vienna of 1683, titled, Enemy at the Gates by Andrew Wheatcroft, Most of what I describe here related to the Ottoman military is from this book.

Enemy at the Gates, chronicles the final siege of Vienna in 1683.  The Ottomans first attempted to conquer Vienna in 1521.  They were driven back and Europe was spared.  Between 1521 and 1683, the Ottomans constantly attacked Europe.  They had many successes and many defeats.  The Ottomans reached as far north as Poland and Russia before being driven back.  By 1683, the Ottomans had Vienna in their eye again.  They figured that if Vienna fell then the rest of Europe would be theirs.  They put all their resources to accomplishing this goal.  At the time Vienna was part of the Habsburg Empire, later called Austria-Hungary Empire. World War I started here, in the Austria-Hungary Empire.

The Ottomans were feared all over Europe.  Their wars were a combination of religious fervor and desire to dominate the world for Islam.  The Christians also saw this as a religious war on them.  Although most Europeans were Christian, they rarely ever cooperated or supported other European Christians under attack by the Muslim Ottomans.  When they did cooperate, as when they created a coalition with the Holy League, Venice, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain and the Papal States for the purpose of stopping the Turks from attacking them.  On October 7, 1571 this coalition defeated an Ottoman fleet at Lepanto, in southern Greece.


The fact that the Christians failed to help each other had disastrous consequences.  The list is endless:  Byzantine Empire defeated in 1453; Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Armenia, to name a few all fell to the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks while their fellow Christians sat on their hands.  The Turks were so confident of success that in 1683 they attempted to conquer Vienna for the second time.  The Habsburg Empire was on their own. After months of a fierce siege, the Ottomans were close to victory when their neighbors, led by the king of Poland, John Sobieski  organized a relief army.  After gathering his forces Sobieski arrived just in time to save the exhausted and nearly beaten Viennese.  Without this help, most of Europe would have been Muslim then, and perhaps today.

The Ottoman army, led by a brilliant military commander, Kara Mustafa, performed incredibly well and the Habsburg troops fought brilliantly with heavy losses, however, they also inflicted very heavy casualties on the Turks.  After the Habsburgs were relieved by the coalition led by the King of Poland the Ottomans were finally defeated.  When the defeated Ottomans returned home, their commander was called in and told he had been condemned to death.  Wheatcroft, describes what happened:  "Kara Mustafa met his death with stoic Ottoman calm, as befitting a Koprulu.  First he removed his rich-trimmed robe, then his turban, then, with practiced ease, his executions flipped the soft cord over his head and tightened it around his neck, pulling steadily with all their strength." After his death they cut off his head. They continued to brutalize his body in detail that I'd rather leave off, because of its gruesomeness.  A man who had dedicated his life and talent to his country and was defeated through no fault of his own was rewarded by being executed like a common criminal.

The Failure to Learn From History

Economics can be complicated but there are plenty of historical data that is easy to follow; a second grader can understand it.  I'm referring to the historical facts about the failure of government spending and tax increases to solve economic troubles such what we're experiencing today.

It is a well-documented fact that all the government spending of the Great Depression of the 1930s failed to do any good.  Case in point:  The unemployment rate in 1932 was 23.6%.  After eight years of massive government spending the unemployment rate was 19%.  The great American economist, Thomas Sowell,  explains what happened in the Great Depression and how government spending had the opposite effect of what was intended.  Watch this four-minute YouTube video.

In a Wall Street Journal article of November 21, 2010 economists Stephen Moore and Richard Vedder describe the results of their study of what happens when there is a tax increase.  Most people believe this will solve the problem of deficits, or at least help.  What Vedder and Moore found was that from World War II to 2009 (a 66-year span), for every additional dollar increase in taxes, government spends $1.17.  Does raising taxes solve the problem?  No.  The answer has to be reducing out of control spending.  Why do we fail to learn from history?  Again, I'll go to one of my favorite philosophers, George Santayana:  "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it."  Case closed.

The Rape of Japanese Americans in World War II

World War II stands out as an example of man's inhumanity to man as no conflict in human history.  There are too many to describe here but here are a few examples that stand out:  The murder of over six million Jews by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis; The Rape of Nan king, China by the Japanese Army; the Soviet Dictator,  Josef Stalin's  murder of over 1.2 million of his own citizens during the "Great Purge" of 1936-38.  In the siege of Stalingrad, the German Sixth Army was destroyed by the Russian Army and Hitler's refusal to see the futility of the operation.  When his Field Marshal, Friedrich Paulus, relayed the hopelessness of his situation Hitler refused to let him withdraw, thus leaving over 500, 000 soldiers to die, either in battle, from the brutal winter weather (many froze to death) or capture.  The Soviets captured over 100,000 German soldiers, all but 6,000 lived to return home.

In the United States, one of the most tragic and appalling act was the forced internment of over 100,000 Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast of the United Sates.  After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt ordered the arrest and deportation, to what can only be described as concentration camps, of all American citizens or resident aliens of Japanese ancestry.  What makes this a most despicable act is the fact that this was done with no proof of any threat by these innocent people. No due process, no trial.  Their only crime was to be of Japanese ancestry.

Just imagine, if you will, you're an African-American, for instance,  the U.S. is attacked by an African country and all African-Americans are arrested and driven to prisons surrounded by soldiers. Would you say that this was a rational thing to do?

Did any Americans who were not Japanese complain?  There is no record of any demonstrations in support of the Japanese Americans.  In fact, a hysteria of hate toward the "Japs" was unleashed on innocent and loyal Americans.  Today, we're attacked by radical Muslims and the President will not even call them what they are:  terrorists.  This was the insanity of what President Roosevelt did.

Now, you might ask, how did the courts react to this insane act by President Roosevelt?  Good question.  Read the U.S. Supreme court case of Korematsu vs. The United States:  The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling sided with President Roosevelt.  This heinous act was "constitutional." 

Now, you might think that this act by an American President would diminish his status in history.  You would be wrong.  Roosevelt is still revered to this day as the ideal Democrat.  Some survivors of this era still call themselves "Roosevelt Democrats." Some even regard Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of the greatest presidents of all time. No one ever mentions the rape of the Japanese Americans by FDR whenever they speak of him.  Historical amnesia is rampant; especially among the left. It was not until 1988 when President Ronald Reagan apologized for this most heinous act.

To add insult to injury the Japanese Americans lost most of their property, personal and real estate.  Some, very few, were successful in getting neighbors to look after their farm, for instance, but the majority, lost everything, farms, houses, personal belongings.  At the end of the war the U.S. Government made a feeble attempt to reimburse these people but very few got very much.

A few years ago, David Ono, a news anchor for the local news at KABC Channel 7 in Los Angeles presented a compelling documentary on one concentration camp, Heart Mountain, outside of Cody, Wyoming.  Click here to check it out.  This is great film-making.

Land Transfers that Defy Reason

Have you ever wondered what the Russians were thinking when they decided to sell Alaska to the United States for two cents an acre in 1867?  Or how about the Louisiana Purchase, 828,000 square miles for $11.2 million in 1803?  The Louisiana Purchase, equalled about 23% of the entire United States; a land area that stretched from present day Louisiana in the south to Canada to the north.  Suffice it to say that this exchange was practically a free land exchange.  These represent some of the largest land transfers of all time.

 In Europe there are also some mystifying transfers as well.  In 1860, at the time of the unification of Italy, the Italian government, based in Sardinia, with Torino as its capital, ceded an entire Italian province of Savoia (Savoy) to France in exchange for military support for a military campaign in Lombardy.  To put in in modern-day terms, let's say that the United States ceded San Diego County to Mexico in exchange for support in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  What would you think of our leaders?  Exactly!  That is the same rage I feel for the incompetent leaders of the Italy of 1860, led by the inept Camillo Benso di Cavour.  In researching this I believe that one of the reasons the Italian government made this deal was due to the inner conflict between the Italian leaders of the time and the charismatic leader of his day, Giuseppe Garibaldi, one of the best military commander since Julius Caesar.  Garibaldi was from Nizza, present day Nice.  This was a way to stick it to Garibaldi, to give away his home town to the French.  This has to be one of the most pathetic action ever undertaken in history.  Garibaldi was, perhaps singly, responsible to the unification of Italy.  Rather than thank the great Garibaldi, they insulted him by giving up his home town, along with the entire province where it stood.

The other major land transfer also happened in Italy, the sale by the Genoese in 1764 of the Island of Corsica to France.  Can you imagine, in today's terms, if all of the sudden the United States said, hey we don't need Hawaii anymore, let's sell it to Japan.  Land deals such as these are bizarre in the least and criminal at the most.  This year Italy celebrates its 150th anniversary as a united country.  These land deals will haunt them forever.

Paradise Lost

 Most of us have heard of the World War II Nazi holocaust,  and many have heard of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 during World War I (WW I), but who has heard of the holocaust that occurred in  Smyrna in September, 1922, committed by the Turks - four years after the end of WW I?  Why we have not heard about it is a good question.   Paradise Lost - Smyrna 1922, the Destruction of a Christian City in the Islamic World, by Giles Milton,  is one of the most compelling history books of the century.  The book was published by Basic Books in 2008.  Brilliantly written, documented and researched, it tells the heart wrenching and most astounding story ever told - a story that will shock the reader with the brutal genocide by Turkish forces immediately after  WW I.  Man's inhumanity to man is the best example of what happened in Smyrna in September 1922.  The Turkish holocaust is only one of the astounding stories that comes alive in every page; the other example is how the Allied forces watched people being butchered in front of them and they not only refused to intervene but passively let it happen. 

Smyrna, one of the seven Biblical cities of the New Testament, was a majority Christian city that had prospered in the Muslim world of the Ottomans; it was the jewel of Asia Minor, very successful and prosperous. Its inhabitants were unlike the rest of the Ottoman world, mainly of European stock, British, Levantines, Greeks, Italians, Jews and Armenians.  Most of these people's roots went back to the Byzantine period.  Smyrna was the Hong Kong of its day.  Many of the top citizens were successful businessmen who hired hundreds of thousands of Turks to work their factories.  A port city as cosmopolitan as Paris or London with a great night life, culture, music and the arts; an oasis in a sea of Islam.

After the Ottoman Turks were defeated in WW I the European powers could not decide what to do with the defeated Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey.  They finally decided that they would let Greece send troops to occupy Smyrna which they did in  May 1919.  After landing troops in Smyrna, the Greek soldiers, along with the majority Greek population of Smyrna, started celebrating as if they had just won the lottery.  As they're marching through the city a shot is heard.  The Greek troops go crazy and proceed to murder about 500 citizens, mostly Turks, as they shoot randomly all over the place.  It was believed that the shot was an intentional provocation by an Italian military officer stationed in Smyrna.  It is later discovered that the Italian government had supplied arms to the Turks.   After securing Smyrna the Greek Army moved to occupy a large part of the interior of Turkey.  Initially, they had many successes, but as they stretched their forces out deeper and deeper they suffered setbacks when their rear supply lines were successfully attacked by the Turks. Milton describes how the Greek soldiers committed atrocities as they rampaged through a large swath of Turkey.  When a Greek commander was questioned as to why his soldiers were committing atrocities he responded that he liked the idea.

The Greek occupation of Turkey was condemned to failure from the beginning.  They had no hope of success.  After fighting wars since 1912, the Greeks were near collapse, physically and financially.  Additionally, they were led by incompetent civilian and military leaders.  Their defeat was a foregone conclusion.  The Greeks called their adventure in Turkey, the "Megali Idea," the great idea to re-establish a Greek empire.  The British mistakenly saw them as the up and coming power in the Mediterranean.  The French and the Italians, perhaps jealous of the Greeks, stabbed them in the back by supplying the Turks with weapons and sabotaging the Greeks whenever possible. It was the most pathetic picture.  All the Turks, led by the future founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk, had to do was bide their time; which they did to perfection.  Besides being a brilliant military commander and a charismatic leader, Kemal was a shrewd politician as well; he played the allies like a violin.  Milton describes Kemal as a heroic figure.

After the defeat of the Greek Army, the Turks advanced toward Smyrna.  They advanced as the defeated Greek soldiers moved on their own as best they could to reach Smyrna where they hoped to get on ships which would rescue them.  Milton is at his best in telling the story of what happened once the Turks arrived in Smyrna.  The Turkish Army, which included many irregulars called "chettes," were on their own and each soldier did whatever he wanted to whomever he encountered. Most soldiers acted like gangs of thugs on a rampage.  They began by robbing and raping young women.  They would force their way into a house, steal valuables, money and whatever they wanted and rape the women.  After raping the women they would kill them and dismember their bodies.  Milton is more descriptive, but to save the reader revulsion, I'll be less descriptive.  It was as worse as you could imagine it.

At other instances, armed Turkish soldiers would stop people on the street and demand all they had; if someone had nothing the person was tortured and killed.  In one instance, a man who had nothing for them to steal was hacked to death in front of the others.  As Milton describes it, the troops were completely undisciplined and without leaders.  Whether this was by design is not stated, but my impression is that this was by design.  The Turkish leaders basically told them to do whatever they wanted.

When the Turkish military commander of Smyrna, General Noureddin finally appears on the scene, he calls for a meeting with the leader of the Greek church, Metropolitan Chrysostom.  The meeting lasts less than a few minutes.  The General turns the bishop over to the mob outside and tells them to do whatever they want with him.  The mob proceeds to hack him to death.

After a month of pillaging and killing at will, the Turks set the city on fire by bringing in barrels of gasoline, spreading it everywhere and lighting it.  The city, with the exception of the Turkish quarter, is set ablaze.  Over 500,000 screaming Christians fled to the waterfront desperate to escape.  Professor M.H. Dobkin in his book on the Smyrna genocide describes how the European powers watched from  their ships in the Smyrna harbor: "While a flotilla of twenty-seven Allied warships - including three American destroyers - looked on, the Turks indulged in an orgy of pillage, rape and slaughter; which the Western powers condoned - eager to protect their oil and trade interests in Turkey - through their silence and by their refusal to intervene. Turkish forces then set fire to the legendary city and totally destroyed it. A massive cover-up followed, by tacit agreement of the Western Allies, who had defeated Turkey and Germany during World War I. By 1923, Smyrna 's demise was all but expunged from historical memory."

No one would offer a hand.  All requests were coldly turned down by the Europeans and Americans.  As the fire got bigger and closer to the waterfront the mass of humanity could go nowhere else, they were trapped by the Turks who refused to let them escape.  No food or water was allowed to the desperate people who, by now were hysterical.  Many were driven mad and they jumped into the ocean where they drowned.  Milton describes how the bay of Smyrna was filled with bodies; yet all those warships just stood there as if nothing was happening.

There is a heroic story in the book which gives some hope for the human condition.  Milton describes the heroic exploits of a Methodist preacher from New York, Asa Jennings.  A short, diminutive man with a large face, he arrived in Smyrna determined to do all he could to save as many as he could.  In one occasion he boarded an Italian ship and confronted the captain.  He asked for people to be let on board; the captain refused, saying he had orders not to intervene.  Refusing to take no for an answer he then went to the Italian Consul in Smyrna and confronted him.  He was able to get the Italian Consul to give the ship's captain permission to take on refugees which he did.  Later on Jennings goes to the nearby Greek Island of Mytilene.  He confronted the cowering remnant of the Greek fleet and convinced them that they need to go to Smyrna to save their fellow Greeks (most of the refugees were Greeks).  Over 20 empty ships were sitting in the harbor doing nothing.

The Greek Navy was hesitant to go back to Smyrna, fearing a Turkish attack.  Jennings tricked them by saying that the American ships there would protect them, although he had no approval of this.  The Greeks gave in and appointed Jennings as an Admiral and gave him command of about 20  Greek ships.  Jennings orders all ships to head to Smyrna to rescue the desperate people who would otherwise perish within days.  Through his efforts, over 300,000 people were rescued from the waterfront.  One man, on his own, did what the Allied powers, including the Americans, should have done, yet they watched a Christian city being raped and destroyed.

Smyrna, the jewel of Asia Minor, the Paris of the near east was completely burned to the ground.  It is estimated that over 100,000 Christians were slaughtered by the Turks in Smyrna; all civilians, all innocent people living in their homes as they and their forefathers had for centuries.  160,000 were deported into the interior by the Turks, most died from exhaustion on the way and many other were shot dead at the whim of their captors.  All of this happened while representatives of all the European powers watched.  How can this have happened?