The Blight of Asia
Today, Horton is most remembered for his 1926 account "The Blight of Asia" relating, among a variety of topics, the Great Fire of Smyrna that ravaged the city of Smyrna starting on 13 September 1922, two days after the Consul general's departure from his post there on 11 September, and that lasted for 4 days.
By the time of publication Horton had resigned his diplomatic commission, and he wrote strictly in the capacity of a private citizen, drawing on his own observations and those of the people he quotes. His account remains as controversial as the fire itself.
His account of the forced exodus of Smyrna's christian inhabitants (Greek and Armenian), by Ottoman Turkish soldiers, chronicles the latter stages of the ethnic cleansing of Asia Minor's native christian population.
Read more about this topic: George Horton
Famous quotes containing the words blight and/or asia:
“There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the “hot bread and sweet cakes;” and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)