MACEDONIAN REFUGEES FLEEING TO CONSTANTINOPLE.
Our investigations have been confined chiefly to the cities, where several hundreds or thousands of refugees are gathered, but we have also looked into the condition of a dozen or more villages and have found that in general the villagers have been kind to the refugees and have given them food and shelter, and have lent them clothing and bedding; but in some places the villagers have thrust the refugees into stables and broken-down hovels, with little or no clothing and bedding, and just enough food to keep body and soul together. In some instances the unfortunate, defenceless women and girls have been forced into prostitution.
The Constantinople Chapter of the American Red Cross has established relief work in Konia and Broussa along the lines indicated above. In Konia a systematic canvass of the city and surrounding villages has been made, and bedding and clothing distributed according to need; in many cases eight or ten people were found sharing one quilt, and women and children walking about the frozen streets with bare feet. For people in the city we distributed tickets having the articles they were to receive indicated on them, and the distribution was made on the mission premises. The government, however, forbade us to carry on independent work and insisted that all articles for distribution must be handed over to them; we were unwilling to accept this condition, so work was stopped for the time being. In Broussa an effort has been made to get the people into more sanitary quarters than they now occupy; we found many places where eight, ten and even twelve people were packed into a tiny mud-floored room about ten feet square, damp and dismal, and with one or two of the family sick—in one case three people, one with ulcers and two with dysentery, reposing under one small and filthy quilt. Not only must these people be gotten speedily into more healthy surroundings, but some sort of sanitary supervision must be established over the quarters to which they are to be removed. It is our expectation to open one or more soup kitchens and inaugurate some medical work.
We have turned over the city of Eski-Shehir to the Germans, who promise to attend to its needs and to those of the surrounding region. We hope through the above arrangements to get into direct touch with more than half the refugees in Asia Minor, and trust that where our work is unable to reach them other helpers may come forward to tide them over this first difficult winter.
Activities of the Red Crescent Society
The Turkish Red Crescent Society has come forward so nobly during the present war that it has delighted observers by the depth and force of its vitality. A national institution of humanitarian aims, it had been recognized as such in the Geneva Conference of 1864—but though it had worked efficiently in the Russian and Turco-Greek wars of the last century, it is only lately, through the impulsion given to it some years ago by Mrs. Rifaat Pasha, wife of the present Turkish Ambassador in Paris, that its more modern organization and increased capital have brought it to the front, able to compete in usefulness and resource with the Red Cross Societies in other countries.
The society is managed by a Central Committee, composed of 30 members, subject to the approval of a president and to the occasional control of the government. At present His Excellency Hussein Hilmi Pasha, Ottoman Ambassador in Vienna, is president of the Red Crescent.
At the beginning of the Turco-Balkan war the Red Crescent Committee founded three hospitals for the wounded—one numbering over 600 beds—in the capital of the Empire, and several in the provinces, notably at Salonica, Adrianople, Uskub, Loule-Bourgas, etc., appointing well-equipped staffs of nurses and doctors. The necessary surgical instruments and medical supplies were procured from abroad, and recently ambulances were ordered from South Bend, Indiana. Four transportable hospitals of 100 beds each were received from England, and following the example set by European nations in such cases, the Red Crescent established field kitchens in the principal camps, which supplied the harrassed soldiers with soup and bread.
When the cholera broke out among the hapless troops, and they were sent back to Constantinople for treatment, the society organized three more new hospitals in the choleraic centers of Hademkeny, San-Stefano, etc., and as the sick soon filled to overflowing the epidemic wards hastily founded in the capital, the Red Crescent had the mosques of the city opened to the sufferers and supplied them with food, linen and medical care. It is computed that about 3,000 soldiers were supported in these improvised hospitals between the beginning of October and the end of November, 1912, and in this heavy task the Red Crescent was assisted by its branch missions of Hindoustan, Egypt and England, who took their full share of the heavy nursing and relief work. Besides the hospitals thus run, the Red Crescent sent Lt. 7500 in cash to the military sanitary authorities of Constantinople, as well as very numerous suits of clothing, articles of bedding and medicinal supplies.