It remains to be said that the remedy was effective. The panic settled away and it is to be hoped that there are few people in any country to-day who do not understand that America’s fund was distributed by its own agents, without molestation or advices from the Turkish or any other government.
I have named this incident, not so much as a direct feature of the work of distribution, nor to elicit sympathy, as to point a characteristic of our people and the customs of the times in which we are living, in the hope that reflection may draw from it some lessons for the future. One cannot fail to see how nearly a misguided enthusiasm, desire for sensational news, vital action without thought or reflection, came to the overthrowing of their entire object, the destruction of all that had been or has since been accomplished for humanity, and the burial of their grand work and hopes in a defeated and disgraceful grave, which, in their confusion, they would never have realized that they had dug for themselves. They are to-day justly proud of their work and the world is proud of them.
CHIEF OF THE DERSIN KOURDS AND HIS THREE SUB-CHIEFS.
(North of Harpoot.)
CHIEF OF THE DERSIN KOURDS.
Our very limited number of assistants made it necessary that each take a separate charge as soon as possible; and the division at Aintab and the hastening of the first division, under Dr. Hubbell, northeastward to Marash, left the northwestern route through Oorfa and Diarbekir, to Messrs. Wistar and Wood; the objective point for all being Harpoot, where they planned to meet at a certain date. Nothing gave me greater joy than to know they would meet our brave and world-honored countrywoman, Miss Shattuck, isolated, surrounded by want and misery, holding her fort alone, and that something from our hands could go to strengthen hers, emptied by the needs of thousands every day. If they might have still gone to Van, and reached our other heroic, capable and accomplished countrywoman, Dr. Grace Kimball, it would have been an added joy. But the way was long, almost to Ararat; the mountains high and the snows deep; and more than all it seemed that the superb management of her own grand work made help there less needed than at many other less fortunate points. It seemed remarkable that the two expeditions separating at Aintab, on the sixth day of April, with no trace of each other between, should have met at Harpoot on April 29, within three hours of each other; and that when the city turned out en masse, with its missionaries in the lead, to meet and welcome Dr. Hubbell and the Red Cross, that far away in the rear, through masses of people from housetop to street, modestly waited the expedition from Oorfa.