Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam

by Augustus Warner Williams; M. Smbat Gabrielean

It was the Medical Missionary at Van, Dr. Grace W. Kimball whose heart was so smitten with anguish at the sight of such suffering that she determined to let the world know what the horrors of Sassoun really were. In the smitten districts at least five thousand were living in the mountains and faring little better than the wild beasts.

They were sustaining life on roots and berries and were almost naked—many wholly so. It is not surprising that this terrible privation should have bred disease, and, when she wrote, fever and other physical troubles were carrying the wretched people off in large numbers. She described the condition of the women and little children as miserable beyond anything she had ever heard of.

This brave Christian woman did not spend the time in lamenting the wretchedness of the people among whom she labored, but set about to find out some practical way of helping them. Food, clothing, and shelter were the three prime necessities. She gathered the adults in about one hundred of the fugitive families, and soon had them employed at making cotton cloth—an industry with which they were already familiar. She supplied the material, and paid the workers for their labor, expending in this way about $100 weekly, which was applied to the relief of the families. By this excellent method, she gave the needed help to many of the sufferers without pauperizing them, and she earned the warmest love and gratitude of the Armenians.

But the market for the product of this labor was soon supplied and the resources of the missionaries were soon exhausted. It was then that she wrote in the anguish of her soul to this country and this was the origin of The Christian Herald Relief Fund which collected and sent many thousand dollars to the centers of massacres and suffering.

Early in October, 1895, Mr. W. W. Howard the commissioner sent by The Christian Herald of New York to relieve the persecuted and hunger smitten peasants of Armenia, set forth on his errand of mercy. In retaliation for his articles on the terrible suffering in Armenia and its cause, the Turkish government resolved to prevent Mr. Howard from entering its dominions. Refused permission to pass through Anatolia he was compelled to go through Russia and Persia, and eventually was prevented by the Turkish officials from crossing the frontier opposite Van, a notification of the order for his exclusion being sent to Mr. Terrell, the American minister at Constantinople, who cabled the fact to this country.

This, however, did not impede the work of the distribution of the relief fund as the money was sent to W. W. Peet, Constantinople, to be distributed by Rev. H. O. Dwight “with special reference to sufferers in the neighborhood of Van.”

The whole country was in fearful peril and Van itself practically in a state of siege, the trees along the streets having been leveled to permit the placing of cannon in position to command the Armenian quarter. A most various phase of the condition was wholesale exile. Thousands of Armenian villagers, unable to endure privation longer, or to see their wives and children starve left their ruined homes and bare fields and poured into the neighboring cities, unsheltered and hungry.

Meanwhile the good work that the missionaries were doing at Van and Bitlis led the Duke of Westminster, Chairman of the British Committee of Relief, and Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador at Constantinople, to designate Messrs. Raynolds and Cole as almoners of their bounty as they were of the gifts from America.

When these gentlemen first reached the desolated region they were greatly hindered in caring for the poor by petty officials, but later on and in view of representations made by the embassies, the opposition ceased, at least outwardly. Men were set at work rebuilding houses and food was distributed to the most needy. It was estimated that $40,000 would be needed to feed upwards of five thousand persons until the next harvest, and a call was sent for further aid from Europe and America. Finally the bitter hate of the Turkish officials prevailed and the distribution of supplies was stopped and Messrs. Cole and Raynolds compelled to return to their homes.

There were one hundred thousand persons in the two hundred towns and villages in one district alone, who were actually starving, and the story of one was the story of all sections. No one not in the actual midst of it could have any comprehension of the extent of the desolation and of the degree of the suffering. Daily rations of bread, amounting to two cents for adults and one cent for children, were delivered to more than one thousand six hundred in one city. Over four thousand suits consisting of shirt and drawers, were made and distributed, three hundred mattresses and four hundred quilts were given. Many were glad of a piece of bagging to put over them. Poor Armenia! Drenched with the blood of her children, her hills and valleys resounding with their shrieks and sighs and moans, she stood the oldest Christian nation in the world—asking for the smallest of small coins to preserve lives that might yet be given the crown of martyrdom—a spectacle for the world.