While Turkey has suffered but little from general famine or from plagues that have been sweeping in their character, still the missionaries have been compelled to devote much time and strength to the distribution of help to the starving and homeless, owing to oft-repeated political disasters amounting occasionally to open massacres. These began in 1822 at the time of the Greco-Turkish war when in Chios it was reported that fully fifty thousand lives were lost. The next great movement of the kind occurred in the Nestorian mountains when some ten thousand Armenians and Nestorians were said to have been put to death. In 1860 in the Lebanon and at Damascus about the same number of Maronites and Syrians were destroyed by the Turks and Druses. In 1876 occurred the well remembered Bulgarian massacres where some ten thousand Bulgarians were reported to have lost their lives. The last great and concerted movement of this kind occurred, as we all remember, in 1895-96, which extended from Persia to Constantinople and in which it is impossible to state with accuracy how many thousands of Armenians were massacred. The number has been placed at one hundred thousand, though this is undoubtedly too high. In addition to these marked cases of violence and murder, the same process has gone on upon a much smaller scale for the last thirty years, causing terror, distress, and poverty, and calling for comfort and assistance. In the last three instances of general massacres reported above, the missionaries were upon the ground, facing no little of the peril and hardship with the people, and afterwards acted as agents for the distribution of relief to those who were left in abject destitution. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have passed through their hands for this purpose. With this money they have procured and distributed food and clothing to the starving and naked, while many lines of industry were opened to afford means of prolonged self-help. The missionaries in Turkey have taken the lead in the application of principles by which, in the distribution of charity, much more can be accomplished, without impoverishing the recipients, by devising means whereby the aid received can be earned, at least in part. This same principle has been also carried out in the support of the large number of orphans saved from the massacres of 1895. They have purchased and distributed seed for planting when famine conditions had exhausted the supply. In severer cases when their cattle had died or had been taken from them, missionaries have purchased oxen and loaned them to the farmers for putting in their crops. The policy of aid practised at all times has been to help the people to help themselves.