American National Red Cross; Red Cross and Red Crescent
I had asked permission and escort for two caravans from Alexandretta,
but had learned later from them that they would unite and go together to
Aintab, in company with the Rev. Dr. Fuller, of that city, who requires
no introduction to the missionary or religious world. At this junction
Mr. Gargiulo, of the legation, came to me in great haste (he having been
sent for by the Sublime Porte) to know where our expeditions were. They
had provided for two and could only get trace of one; where was the
other? Please get definite information and let them know at once. I had
served on too many battlefields not to understand what this meant. I
knew our men were in danger somewhere and some one was trying to protect
them, and sent back the fullest information that there was but one
expedition out, and waited. Two days later came the news of the massacre
at Killis by the Circassians. Killis lay directly in their track,
unknown to them, and the Turkish troops had unexpectedly come up and
taken them on. I can perhaps, at this distant date, give no more correct
note of this, and the condition of things as found, than by an extract
from a letter written by me at the time to our world's friend and mine,
Frances Willard. We were at this moment securing the medical expedition
for Marash and Zeitoun:
Dear Frances Willard: ... May I also send a message by you to our
people, to your people and my people; in the name of your God and my
God, ask them not to be discouraged in the good work they have
undertaken. My heart would grow faint and words fail, were I to
attempt to tell them the woes and the needs of these Christian
martyrs. But what need to tell? They already know what words can
say--alone, bereft, forsaken, sick and heartbroken, without food,
raiment or shelter, on the snow-piled mountain sides and along the
smoking valleys they wander and linger and perish. What more should
I say to our people, but to show them the picture of what they
themselves have already done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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