The American Red Cross Bulletin (Vol. IV, No. 3, July 1909) - American National Red Cross

Two special departments will be noted in the Bulletin, one of the Relief Column and First Aid and the other on Tuberculosis, lines of work along which our Red Cross has plans for large and earnest development.

The Red Cross is needed. It is a blessing in many ways to the peoples of the world. It brings them closer together in the days of trouble and teaches them that nations, like men, are brothers. In America our Red Cross should aim to make itself one of the strongest and most helpful in this brotherhood of nations.

HON. LLOYD W. BOWERS

MASSACRES IN ASIATIC TURKEY

The spirit of unrest was seething in Turkey and the old antagonism that from the time of the crusades has existed between the cross and the crescent was ready to break out into action. On the 10th of April, at Adana, a town in Eastern Turkey, not far west of Alexandretta, an Armenian and a Turk were killed. This kindled into life the flames of hatred and on the 14th they burst forth in ferocious massacres. The Moslems being in the majority the Armenians suffered terribly. Throughout that part of the country it is estimated that some twenty-five thousand persons have been massacred during this reign of terror. Their houses and shops were pillaged and burned, and those who escaped fled in terror for their lives. The Government, in the person of the Vali, was either unable or unwilling to put a stop to this appalling destruction of human life and property. Once started the scenes of horror were repeated in town after town in the eastern provinces. At Tarsus several hundred Armenian houses were burned and in the yard of the American College were sheltered and protected 4,000 refugees. At Antioch, forty miles south of Alexandretta, the Armenian population of 7,000 was nearly annihilated. Kurds, Arabs and Circassians besieged the small Armenian villages, pillaging and burning the houses, killing the men and carrying the women into captivity. At Adana and Tarsus 15,000 and at Mersina 5,000 refugees were in dire distress and need while many more women and children escaped from the villages and were hiding in the mountains. The atrocities perpetrated reduced the people to a state of terror and despair. If some small village of Armenians succeeded in resisting the besiegers its inhabitants were soon reduced to the verge of starvation. Mr. Kennedy, an American missionary, secured some 450 Turkish soldiers and went to the relief of Deurtyul, an Armenian village of 10,000 inhabitants, on the coast, which was being besieged by hordes of Kurds and Circassians. The water supply having been cut off, the people were dependent upon the rain that fell, the children drinking from the water that collected in the footprints of animals. Frantic appeals for help and protection came down from scores of villages and the foreign consuls at Aleppo cabled to their Governments word of the great distress of thousands of refugees.