The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1918, Page 28

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98 The Lutheran Pioneer.

district of Adana and Konia, who are in great need
of help; former Consul Jackson asserts that 120,000
dependent persons in Aleppo and vicinity have no
other resource for bread than the relief coming from
America, and that, once this relief stops, these people
will disappear from the face of the earth. Mr. Wil-
liam T. Ellis writes in the Sunday-school Times:
“In Erivan I was early overcome by the stupendous
fact that I did not have to look for stories; literally
every one of these Armenian survivors has a story,
a tale of tragedy, any of which would be worth a
column if told to an American newspaper by the
original narrator. May I transcribe mere sugges-

Armenians Driven from Home.

tions of a few of the narratives we heard, hot from
the lips of the actors themselves?

“Out of a household of thirty-seven a little girl
of thirteen years and six others escaped alive, only
one of the survivors being a man, who is not now
in the village. (By way of explanation let us say

that in the East the old patriarchal system of three _
- generations living under one roof still obtains.)

_ “Here is an interesting family of five children,
boy twins of twelve, with two younger brothers and
one sister. ‘Their father was killed at Sassoun. For
an entire year these little ones lived in the moun-

_ tains, subsisting on berries and roots. How trivial
_ besides theirs seems the nursery tale of the ‘Babes

in the Wood? When Russia captured the city of

y Mush, they entered, having seen and heard the

battle, and so made their way, within the Russian
lines, to this distant spot.

“Of a family of seven, one old woman and a
young boy alone escaped, wounded, and lived for
seven months among friendly Kurds; for some
Kurds and Turks did protect Christians in the
days of the great tribulation.

“A girl of eight years from Bitlis draws near,
holding the hand of a pathetic baby, who had been
orphaned by the Kurds. The narrator is the only
member of a family of eight. Her father was
killed by the ‘Turks, and her mother died in bitter
captivity. Her only sister, too, was carried off by
the Moslems. Now the brave
lassie is trying to care for the
wee cousin, who is her only
living kin.

“This woman from Mush
saw a sight that would sear
memory. For three days, from
a place of concealment, she
watched the killing of the

city’s Armenian men. And
before her eyes the surviving
women and children were

herded into houses, kerosene
poured upon’ them, and the
torch applied.”

The children have become
so emaciated and worn that it
is not an easy thing to get
‘a smile from them. It will
be hard for us to imagine chil-
dren who have forgotten how
to smile! Three children,
quite young, were found on
‘a treats in Jaffa extremely weary and hungry. When
questioned about their home, they explained that
both father and mother had recently died in Jeru-
salem, and that they had set out to the sea. The
forty-five miles of road through hills and valleys
in this war zone they had traversed by themselves,
and on foot.

We-may get some idea of the appalling catas-
trophe that has overtaken this people when we learn
that of 100,000 refugees in one province fully 20,000
are fatherless children. A consul writes: “I was
eating a piece, of melon, and was paying little at-
tention to the people around me. I tossed aside the
rind, when instantly a man pounced upon it like
a hungry wolf. He chewed on it for a few mo-
ments, and he, in turn, tossed it aside. Another

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