Warren G. Harding
Washington, D.C., September 21, 1922
Harding Letter as President about March on Smyrna
TLS

WARREN G. HARDING, Typed Letter Signed, to Harmon O. Acuff, September 21, 1922, Washington, D.C. On "THE WHITE HOUSE" stationery. 1 p., 7" x 8.875". Uneven toning; some soiling on verso; bold, dark signature.

In this brief letter, President Harding thanks Harmon O. Acuff for information regarding Turkish forces in the march on Smyrna. At the time, Acuff was working for the Office of Alien Property Custodian, which had been created in 1917 to "assume control and dispose of enemy-owned property in the United States and its possessions." The office continued after the war within the Department of Justice and ceased to exist in 1934, when its role was transferred to the Alien Property Bureau in the Claims Division of the Department of Justice.

The Turkish capture of Smyrna marked the end of the 1919-1922 Greco-Turkish War and the Turkish War of Independence. Smyrna, on the Aegean coast of the Anatolian peninsula, had been ceded to Greece at the end of World War I, but Turkish forces under the command of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk captured the city in September 1922 and renamed it Izmir. After Greek forces evacuated Smyrna on September 8, the Turkish 5th Cavalry under the command of Major-General Fahrettin Altay marched into the city the following day. Four days later, a massive fire broke out, consuming the city's Armenian and Greek neighborhoods but not damaging Muslim and Jewish portions of the city. Hundreds of thousands of Greek and Armenian refugees fled to the waterfront to escape the fire, and Turkish troops began committing atrocities and massacres against the Greek and Armenian populations. The fall of Smyrna is widely regarded as an act of genocide and a war crime. Winston Churchill said that "for a deliberately planned and methodically executed atrocity, Smyrna must...find few parallels in the history of human crime."

By the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne, all Greek Orthodox inhabitants of the province were deported in an exchange of populations that also involved Muslims in Greece, and the Izmir Province was incorporated into the modern republic of Turkey.

Complete Transcript
September 21, 1922.
My dear Mr. Acuff:
Just a line to thank you for your thoughtfulness in conveying through Mr. Christian the information you sent me concerning the leadership of the Turkish forces in their march on Smyrna. It is important to have this information.
Very truly yours,
Warren g Harding
Mr. Harmon O. Acuff,
c/o The Alien Property Custodian,
Washington, D. C.

Warren G. Harding (1865-1923) was born in Ohio, the oldest of eight children of George Tryon Harding and Phoebe Dickerson. His father was a schoolteacher and doctor, and his mother was a midwife. In 1870, his father purchased a local weekly newspaper, and Warren Harding learned the basics of the newspaper business from him. Harding graduated from Ohio Central College in 1882 and rejoined his family in Marion, Ohio, where he lived for much of his adult life. He purchased a failing newspaper and built it into a successful operation. In 1891, Harding married the young divorcee Florence Kling (1860-1924), and the couple had no children. The stresses of his role as editor and Republican Party loyalist forced him to recuperate at the Battle Creek Sanitorium in Michigan five times between 1889 and 1901. While campaigning for fellow Ohioan William McKinley in 1896, Harding established himself in Ohio Republican circles. In 1899, he won election to the Ohio Senate and served for four years. Harding then won election as lieutenant governor and served from January 1904 to January 1906. In the controversial 1912 Republican National Convention, Harding supported incumbent President William Howard Taft over former President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1914, Harding won election to the U.S. Senate, where he was a careful, conservative Republican. In 1920, he won the Republican nomination for president as a dark-horse candidate and went on to win the general election by a landslide after a front-porch campaign in Marion. Harding's presidency from March 1921 until his death in August 1923 was marked by conservative policies designed to minimize the government's role in the economy, with a major tax cut for the wealthy and greatly increased tariff rates. The Washington Naval Conference led to a naval disarmament program, but the Teapot Dome scandal and other scandals diminished Harding's popularity after his death of a heart attack in San Francisco.

Harmon O. Acuff (1885-1946) was born in Tennessee, the son of a physician and his wife. He served as a 1st lieutenant in the infantry during World War I and served in several campaigns in France. After World War I, he served with Alien Property Custodians in Washington, D.C. for twelve years. He also served as the mayor of Seat Pleasant, Maryland, in 1935. He died in a veterans' hospital in North Carolina and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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7" x 8.875"