American National Red Cross; Red Cross and Red Crescent
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.
[Illustration: CHIEF OF THE DERSIN KOURDS AND HIS THREE SUB-CHIEFS.
(NORTH OF HARPOOT.)]
[Illustration: 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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