Beginning Again At Ararat

ANSAS CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY

0000103626214

MABEL EVELYN ELLIOTT, M.D.

Beginning Again
at Ararat

By

Mabel Evelyn Elliott, M.D.

Medical Director of Near East Relief

With Introduction

By
John H. FInley

Illustrated

NEW YORK CHICAGO

Fleming H. Revell Company

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

,,/; ".Copyright, 1924, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street

FEB

INTRODUCTION

I HAD the privilege of reading several chapters of
this book in manuscript when on my way by a
small black night-boat from the port of Piraeus to
the island of Scyros. On this beautiful little island,
mentioned by Homer in the Odyssey as a place where
people are never "plagued by sickness/' there are now
gathered two thousand refugee, orphan children from
Asia Minor, Armenians and Anatolian Greeks, in
an orphanage built and maintained by the Near East
Relief.

But in the background of that cheerful, hopeful
refuge amid the Isles of Greece of which poets have
sung since the days of Sappho, there rise the snowy
peaks of venerable Ararat, which have looked down
upon more human woe, probably, than any other
mountain on the face of the earth.

One of the most tragic stories of modern times is
that of the wanderings of a people who for centuries
made their homes in the valleys of the streams that
have their sources in this mountain. The children
whom I saw at Scyros and on the coasts of the main
land of Greece were but as the spray of the great
successive waves of flying refugees that broke upon
all the shores around the JEgean. They have, thanks
to the hospitality of the Greeks and the generosity of
the Americans, the prospect, if this assistance is con-

3

4 INTRODUCTION

tiniied for a few years, of becoming the pillars of the
new republics that are being built upon the ruins of
old empires.

The story which Dr. Elliott has written is an odyssey,
the story of wandering and suffering after a world war,
It is, however, an odyssey that has in it something
which the immortal story of earlier wanderings along
these same shores after the Trojan war, which seemed
a world war, did not have, for there is in the lines
and between the lines, the spirit of Christian charity,
which endureth all things, hopeth all things, is long-
suffering and kind. There are no halls of Circe in this
story, no caves of Calypso. It is an odyssey of human
sympathy and noblest purpose, ministering to homeless
people without even a country.

Ararat is more than the name of a mountain in the
geography of Genesis. It stands in the geography of
Geneva and Lausanne sharply against the background
of Noah and Prometheus, as real and as imposing as
Mont Blanc. A modern geographer has found a sort
of geographical justification for the ancient view that
it was the centre of the earth. Political orologists have
a good reason to look upon it as the centre of the earth's
present-day problems. It stands in what is now the
territory of the new Turkey. It looks across the
Araxes River into Russia, or specifically, into Russian
Armenia, which is all that is left of Armenia. And it
has ? over the head of Little Ararat, a glimpse into
Persia. It is thus at the conjunction of three countries
whose beginning again is of great consequence to civili
zation. For what happens in the lands upon which it

INTRODUCTION 5

looks down, especially Russia and Turkey, is bound
to affect profoundly and permanently the whole
Western world.

The most significant educational effort in that far
region is that upon which Ararat's peaks look down
the Near East Relief Orphanage for children in
Alexandropol, in Russian Armenia. It is the largest
children's city in the world. I stood one day for two
hours and more, with the Armenian Commissioner of
Education and the Commissar of Agriculture, while the
children passed in procession, some so small that they
had to be carried. At the end of the procession came
American tractors, drawing American ploughs, culti
vators and self-binders, a prophecy of the machinery
that is likely to be in use beneath Ararat when these
children become farmers and commissars of the new
Russia. They occupy the extensive barracks, once
filled by Russian soldiers but now put to this better
defensive constructive use.

I take a hopeful view of the landscape from Ararat.
I have travelled in the penumbra of the shadow that is
deep upon the heart of Europe. And everywhere I was
assured that the outer rim, at any rate, is not as dark
as it has been, that things are not as bad as they were,
and that they will be better rather than worse. I have
a confident hope that Ararat is to be the centre of a
new hope for the earth and the seat of a new covenant.
And that hope is largely based upon what I have seen
of the peasantry in all these lands, to whom the early
covenant made with man at Ararat has been renewed:
"While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and

6 INTRODUCTION

summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease."
It is these peasants, in their simple religious faith, who
ever renew the sweet savour that first went up from
Noah's altar, and who in the unceasing labour which is
their prayer, will, if anything can, prevent a curse from
falling again upon the whole earth, worse than that
which Ararat has known in the past. It is in this hope
that I have suggested the title "Beginning Again at
Ararat" to Dr. Elliott for her book.

JOHN H. FINLEY
New York

AN APPRECIATION

FEW, if any, women in the history of humanitarian
work have a record equal to that of Dr. Mabel
Elliott, who has for four years been one of
the most notable members of the American Women's
Hospitals personnel in the Near East. It would have
been unfortunate if one in the midst of such frightful
strain and stress could not have kept any record of
her experiences, Dr. Elliott has now arranged to give
the world a connected narrative of the terrible pages
of history of which she has been so intimate a witness.
She has had four very distinct experiences with a
crescendo of tragedy in their continuity. First, Marash,
in Central Anatolia, her hospital and general medical
relief work for the population when the French troops
were in occupation; the long siege by Turkish troops,
with fear, hunger and disease to combat; and the
final evacuation in midwinter when Dr. Elliott went
out with army and populace. For three days of march
ing through deep snow and intense cold, without food
or water, she shared the cruel hardships of those among
whom she worked. Next, we see her with indomitable
energy establishing the work in Ismid, south of Con
stantinople. A hospital, general medical relief, and a
training school for nurses were in full swing when again
war broke over her head. The Greek occupation
yielded to the Turks, Under fire she calmly continued

7

8 AN APPRECIATION

her work, sent all her Christian young nurses in or
derly evacuation and continued her work now for the
Moslems.

This piece of work done, we see her transferred to
the Trans-Caucasus, where her work was to organize
and direct hospitals for Armenian refugee children
driven out of their country by the Turks. Here Dr.
Elliott had to cope with the results of war on a huge
scale. It was a tremendous piece of organization and
she did it with marvellous executive ability and
scientific skill.

Then, while she was seeking rest and change from
long months and years of strain and toil and danger,
the awful tragedy of Smyrna horrified the world. Again
she was called to service and she hurried back to Con
stantinople and thence plunged into the indescribable
and inconceivable horrors of the Smyrna and Anatolia
evacuations. We think of Florence Nightingale and
her work in that same vicinity: read the annals of the
Crimean war, and in numbers handled, in horrors en
countered, and in heroism of service rendered, surely
our Mabel Elliott of to-day stands peer to that wonder
ful woman of 1854-6* The Medical Women's National
Association honours itself in honouring her. And in the
work of our daughter, the American Women's Hospitals,
we feel that we have a place in the sum of achievement.

GRACE N. KMBAIX
(President, Medical Women's National

Association, 1922-23.)
Poughkeepsie, N. Y.

PREFACE

THE idea of this book, and the making of it, are
not mine alone. Though the material is mine,
gathered in notes and reports and letters dur
ing four busy years, the task of arranging and editing
it has been shared by Mr. Jaquith, Mr. America, Mr.
Jennings, Mr. Morris, Mrs. Lane and many others. To
the San Francisco Call I am indebted for the use of a
story by a staff correspondent. The illustrations are
from photographs by Ella Jane Hardcastle, H. C.
Jaquith, and Stanley Kerr.

To all the friends who have so patiently helped me,
I gratefully give thanks; it is their book as well as
mine; it is our book. Indeed, I feel that it is the work
of all the millions of Americans who sent us out to help
Armenia.

I went to the Near East as the representative of the
American Women's Hospitals, one of the American
institutions that rose out of the war and have grown
during the less dramatic but more terrible years of the
peace. It was at first a war-committee of the National
Medical Women's Association, a committee whose work
was the mobilizing of American medical women for
war service. The committee was one of the many
organizations which worked practically and efficiently
as part of the huge American war-machinery, and was

9

io PREFACE

as little noticed as any indispensable cog that helps to
turn the large impressive wheels.

I went to Marash as one of the women certified and
equipped by this committee, to work for the Near East
Relief. I went to Ismid for the American Women's
Hospitals, with a staff chosen, equipped and paid by
them, to open and manage a hospital for which the
Near East Relief furnished all supplies. Later the
American Women's Hospitals sent me to the Caucasus
to take over, for them, a larger share of the medical
work of the Near East Relief.

This association of the small, specialized organiza
tion with the large general one proved so satisfactory
that before I left the Caucasus my organization., made
entirely by American women and employing only
women in all executive positions, was handling the
whole medical work of the Near East Relief in the
Caucasus, a work involving the care of 40,000 orphan
children, all of whom were at one time patients.

MABEL E. ELLIOTT.

West Palm Beach, Florida.

CONTENTS

I A NEW MOTIVE IN THE

II ASIA THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

III IN THE HEART OF ANATOLIA

IV THE KINGDOM OF LITTLE ARMENIA
V HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY

VI PEACE THAT Is No PEACE .

VII DIARY OF SIEGE OF MARASH .

VIII FLIGHT THROUGH WINTER SNOWS

IX THE AMERICAN LINE RE-FORMS .

X THE NEW FRONT AT ISMID .

XI INTO SOVIET ARMENIA .

XII Miss MACKAYE'S BLUE BABIES .

XIII LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE .

XIV UNDER KAFTERLOO'S TREES .
XV THE HIDDEN LIFE OF VILLAGES .

XVI WELCOME TO THE FORT WORLD .

XVII SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE

XVIII FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT .

XIX BAPTISM AND MASSACRE

XX THE AMERICAN INVASION

XXI CATHEDRAL TOWERS

XXII PEACE BETWEEN THE VILLAGES .

PAGE
13
2O
36
50
62

33

98

115

132

144
162
179
191
213
223
235
244
267
291
306
316
329

ILLUSTRATION'S

FACING

PAGE

Mabel Evelyn Elliott Title

City of Marash from the Hillside . . . . 62

One of the Camel Caravans So

Dr. Elliott and Emaciated Patient .... 80

Transport Difficulties at Ismid 144

Dr. Elliott in Native Yali 144

Largest Orphanage in the World 170

Miss MacKaye's Blue Babies . . . . .188

Twin Peaks of Ararat 268

Father Dadian in His Cell 324

One of the Old Bibles at Berd , 324

A NEW MOTIVE IN THE WORLD

ONE autumn evening the Maxim Gorki on which
we were travelling came into Armenia. The
Maxim Gorki is a train made up of boxcars
and decrepit third-class coaches, which was invented
by the Russian poet when the Revolution made him
a railroad man. We had left Tiflis at noon, and for
six hours we had been creeping southward through
Georgia, looking out at plains dotted with herds of
horses and cattle, at strings of ox-wagons carrying hay
and grain, and at villages peaceful in trees. Clusters
of men hung to the steps of our coaches, stealing free
rides, but last year's hordes of refugees had disap
peared. Georgia was recovering from war and revolu
tion. Even the crisp, mountain air seemed to have in
it energy and hope.

Twilight was falling when our panting engine be
gan to climb the mountainous border of Armenia. In
a little while, as though exhausted, it stopped on the
edge of a wild gorge. Looking across the chasm made
by a furious river, we saw the wreck of a large village,
perhaps a hundred houses, of which not one remained
upright Above it the mountain had been terraced to
its summit. Miles of solidly-built stone walls, still
holding the ledges of earth, spoke mutely of the wealth
of fatimaa labour and life that had gone to make f rait-

14 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

M the grudging mountain side. Nothing was left now
but the stone walls and hundreds of stumps of mur
dered olive trees.

Near the skyline a woman sat alone on a boulder, at
the black doorway of a dugout. She sat motionless,
covered from the crown of her head to the earth by
a white Armenian veil, and her figure was like a mar
ble statue of mourning above the desolation. It ex
pressed all the centuries of Armenia's misery; it
expressed all that, four years earlier, I had known or
felt about the Armenians.

Four years pass swiftly in the Near East. They
bring added knowledge and a changed point of view,
but these come concealed in the rush of immediate
events. Persons who live through a catastrophe, like
an earthquake or a theatre fire, do not know until
a later quiet moment that the world has been changed
for them. Four years in the turmoil of the Near East
are not a catastrophe for an American, but they are
as engrossing in their demands for quick, practical
thought and action. It was not until I saw the white
figure of the woman at the mouth of her cave that I
realized how greatly four years of acquaintance with
Armenians had changed my attitude toward them.

Down by the banks of the river, among the two or
three hundred refugees living in shelters of cornstalks,
was my Armenia. There were the haggard, dishevelled
women nursing their babies; there were the young
girls with dark, passionate eyes and thick masses of
hair; there were the ragged boys* There, too, was
the triumphant survival of home. For home persists,

A NEW MOTIVE IN THE WORLD 15

endures, continues indomitably to survive, like life
itself. Women who have lost husbands and brothers
and the weakest of their children, who have lost all
their treasures of linens and carpets and clothing, who
have no food, no shelter, and one would think no
hope, will still keep some semblance of home. Five
thousand sick and dirty refugees huddled in a roped-
off street will divide the cobblestones into tiniest fam
ily-spaces, and sweep, and lay neatly in order their
precious rags, their one tin can, their handful of fire.
So in the cornstalk village in the gorge there were the
small cooking-fires, the covered deep pit for baking
bread, the carefully folded rags of beds, the piles of
rocks arranged as a cradle for the baby.

Life was going on there, as everywhere. If sorrow
were a part of it, so were all other human emotions.
The girls comb their thick hair and tie a bit of scarlet
rag in it; they have a smile for the young man who
passes while they are bringing water from the river, a
brimming Standard Oil can replacing the accustomed
graceful jar on their shoulders. The mothers gossip
while they nurse their babies; depend upon it, there
are scandal and triumph, envy and neighbourliness in
that village of refugees. One family has a sheep; that
means wool for the distaff, riches. Another has a bit
of meat for the evening soup; stolen, perhaps. After
supper the mothers will tell the children folk-tales that
were old when Rome was a place on the banks of the
Tiber where wild animals came to drink.

Yes, the Armenians are more and less than Chris
tian martyrs* They are human beings. For some

16 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

years they have been wards of the American people.
But they are like a ward in a distant boarding-school;
the reports that come back to America do not express
their living reality, their faults and their mirth, their
stupidities and their hopes, their bewilderments and
their flashes of nobility.

Perhaps no American will ever fully understand the
Armenian people. Three hundred years of pioneer
life and almost unbroken peace have produced us.
Three thousand years of war and hate and mixing of
bloods in the maelstrom where East and West meet
have produced the Armenian.

We are a practical people; our Christianity becomes
morals and ethics. The Armenians are a primitive and
poetic people; their Christianity is still the mingled
mysticism and superstition of their native East.

We were born free, and have made for ourselves the
chains of a social sense. For fifteen centuries the
Armenians have been a subject people, and their in
dividualism is restrained only by patriarchal traditions
and the rule of alien conquerors.

No two peoples of the same family of human races
could be more different than the American and the
Armenian. The bond between them is unique in his
tory the purely humanitarian interest of one nation
in another.

Since the time of Adam, such a thing has not been
known. All peoples have always been enemies, active
or potential. The interest of a people in its neigh
bours has been simple; they could be robbed, enslaved,
or killed. This principle endured when war became

A NEW MOTIVE IN THE WORLD 17

more subtle, being fought with treaties and commerce
as well as with stones and clubs and guns. It is a
principle still accepted as the rule. But, to-day, the
rule has exceptions. One of them is the relation of
America to the Armenians. We see America, with
nothing to gain, with no intention of annexing land, of
finding cheap labour or seizing concessions, acting as
though Armenians were not an alien people, but mem
bers of her own family.

This is not a movement of governments, but of
peoples. There is probably not an American to whom
the idea of Armenia is not familiar, scarcely an Ameri
can child who has not given up the delight of candy to
send a nickle or a dime to some unknown Armenian
child. There is no Armenian who does not know that
the American flag means help in trouble and safety in
danger. The two peoples are separated physically by
the bulk of the world, and mentally by the ages of
experience since the white races began their migration
from their unknown birthplace. But they are united
by a new reality between peoples, the idea of human
solidarity and mutual service.

This is a young motive in the world, and one must
admit that, as yet, it is a weakling. Americans are not
ministering angels, any more than Armenians are stain
less martyrs. We are all human beings, and a pair
of over-tight shoes or a day of hunger will submerge
for a time the spirit of Christian brotherhood in the
best of us. The important thing is that the Cou6
formula does express a truth, "Every day, in every
way, we are getting better and better." Yet we are

i8 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

doing it so very slowly that I would not rely on that
truth to set a broken bone or stop a smallpox epidemic.
But surely if slowly the great masses of us do begin
to feel that sense of human brotherhood which Christ
taught. To me this strange new thing in international
relationships, the bond between American and Arme
nian, is one proof of it. Perhaps, after a few millen
niums, the increasing goodness of humanity may be
strong enough to heal for ever the world's war-wounds.

The Maxim Gorki went on, carrying the packed car
loads of us further into the night that covered the
mountain ranges and high plateaus of Armenia.
Candles were lighted in boxcars and coaches, sheets
of the thin Armenian bread torn and divided among
eager hands. The snow-chilled mountain air came
through broken windows and made the candles flutter.
Mothers wrapped their sleepy children in rags of
shawls. From one of the boxcars ahead a fragment
of an old Armenian cradle-song came back to us:

Sleep, my baby, lying in your cradle;
I have wept very much, you need not weep.
The blind cranes fly crying over our country,
And I have wept very much; you need not weep.
In the black forest the wind is mourning,
Mourning for bodies the wild dogs devour.
Don't weep, my baby, I have wept very much*
Far in the desert the camels are kneeling,
The caravan carries away all our sorrows.
I have wept long enough; you need not weep.

The veiled woman whom we had left behind on the
mountain side was probably at that moment singing

A NEW MOTIVE IN THE WORLD 19

the same song to her own drowsy children. She was
not what she had seemed, a statue of sorrow in deso
lation; she was as human as all the other Armenians
whose faces and voices and stories came crowding into
our memories. I wished that the people at home who
had sent us to the Near East to help the Armenians
could know them as we know them more as neigh
bours, and less as symbols. That wish is the mother
of this book, through which I hope to share with Ameri
cans at home the experiences of an American in
Armenia.

II

ASIA THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

IN Scutari, immediately after the Armistice, there
was a Rescue Home for Armenian girls who, by
order of the conquering British, had been released
from imprisonment in Turkish harems. Scutari is the
large Asiatic suburb of Constantinople, known to us as
the place where Florence Nightingale, during the
Crimean war, established the tradition which is the
foundation of the Red Cross and of modern nursing.
Crossing the Bosphorus to Scutari, on a dingy ferry
boat crowded with strangely clothed men and women
chattering all the tongues of the Near East, one sees
only the uninteresting walls of wooden houses, the
oblong brusqueness of Selemie Barracks, and the tall
monument to Florence Nightingale. The domes and
hills and minarets of Constantinople are left behind
in Europe. Scutari is in Asia, but it appears less
Asiatic than the city of which it is a suburb. Yet it
was in Scutari, in the antiseptic cleanliness of a mod
ern operating room, that I was given my first glimpse
of Asia the real Asia, beneath its outward colour.

There were a hundred and fifty girls in the Rescue
Home, which was one of the many shelters receiving
the girls escaping from the Turks. The Near East
Relief had established the home, and ray first work

20

ASIA THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE 21

after I reached Constantinople was the examination
and medical treatment of these girls.

They were all from the best class of Armenian
homes; carefully reared, well educated, charming girls,
much like a group of young American college women.
They were products of the American Mission colleges
in Turkey, and many of them had studied in European
universities. Nearly all of them spoke French or
English. Among the thousands of girls who had come
out into the world again, from behind the guarded
gates and latticed windows of Turkish homes, these
had been distinguished by their evident personal quali
ties. The Scutari Rescue Home was for girls of this
type, who, when they had somewhat recovered from
their experiences, could use their exceptional equip
ment in making new lives for themselves.

You must see them as I remember them, passing,
one by one, through my consultation room; gentle, well-
bred girls, with brushed hair and shining finger nails,
who spoke in low voices and wore with instinctive taste
their borrowed clothes. None of them had discussed
with any one her experiences during the war. For the
first time their reticence was disturbed, necessarily, by
professional questions, and when they had begun to
speak it was as though they could not stop. The whole
story poured from them.

The things that I heard were unbelievable. A doctor
sees more deeply into the abysses of human society
than any other person except a priest, but I knew only
America* This was Asia^ strange, bestial, incompre
hensible. It was my first personal encounter with such

22 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

things the things that human beings can do, care
lessly, without rancour, laughing, to other human be
ings. It was incredible, too, that these girls could have
seen and endured them, and survived to sit there telling
of them. The stories did not vary greatly; the variety
was in the revealed temperament of the girls. Some sat
quietly, with folded hands, talking on and on in a low
voice, growing whiter and whiter until there was no
blood in their lips. Others became excited, little by
little lost their self-control, and ended screaming and
sobbing.

It was better for them to pour out this bitterness
that had been so long dammed behind their silence, and
I did not stop them. I sat in the little, white room and
listened, while the hucksters cried their wares up and
down the narrow, cobbled street under the windows
and the sunshine moved across the white walls, until
at times the whole thing became as unreal as night
mare.

"I was twelve years old, I was with my mother.
They drove us with whips, and we had no water. It
was very hot and many of us died because there was
no water. They drove us with whips, I do not know
how many days and nights and weeks, until we came
to the Arabian desert. My sisters and the little baby
died on the way. We went through a town, I do not
know its name. The streets were full of dead all cut
to pieces. There were heads and arms and legs and
blood oh, blood I"

"There, there/' I would say. "You are safe now*
Don't"

ASIA THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE 23

"They drove us over them. I keep dreaming about
that. We came to a place on the desert, a hollow place
in the sand, with hills all around it. There were thou
sands of us there, many, many thousands, all women,
and girl-children. They herded us like sheep into the
hollow. Then it was dark, and we heard firing all
around us. We said, ( The killing has begun.' We
thought they had got tired of driving us. All night
we waited for them my mother and I we waited for
them to reach us. But they did not come, and in the
morning when we looked around, no one was killed,
No one was killed at all.

"They had not been killing us. They had been
signalling to the wild tribes that we were there. The
Kurds carne later in the morning, in the daylight; the
Kurds and many other kinds of men from the desert.
They came over the hills and rode down and began
killing us. All day long they were killing; you see
there were so many of us. All that they did not think
they could sell, they killed. They kept on killing all
night, and in the morning in the morning they killed
my mother."

It was all an old story to Americans who had been
longer than I in 'the Near East the story of the
deportations that were being carried out in Turkey
while we in America were watching the battle-line in
France. Every one knows now all that can be printed
about it. Still it cannot be comprehended by a West
ern mind. More than a million human beings driven
from their homes as casually as cattle from pens, their
men and boys killed, the women and girls driven in

24 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

long criss-crossing caravans all over Turkey, dying,
scattered in terrible days of massacre, meeting mothers
and sisters again hundreds of miles away, torn from
them once more, sold to slave dealers, escaping, helped
by kindly Turks, captured by Kurds and re-sold the
magnitude and fantastic quality of it make it seem un
real We cannot grasp it, for there is no reason in it;
the facts those girls told were like revelations of the
mind of a madman.

We read of wholesale massacre ordered by a govern
ment, and whatever our horror, our minds picture some
thing like an orderly butchery. But there was no or
ganization, no orderliness, in Turkey; all the passions
and policies and hatreds of millions of human beings
were turned loose, unrestrained.

This one girl remains distinctly in my mind because
she was the only one in the Home who had lost her
sensitiveness. Her manner was bold, almost callous,
and one could not wonder at it, remembering that she
was only twelve years old when the Kurds took her*
The story went on, in a matter-of-fact voice* She
had apparently been valued because of her youth and
hardihood. They had held her for a higher price,
while other girls were sold. She had escaped. For a
year she had lived through a phantasmagoria of adven
ture, always captured, always escaping. She had got
a knife and killed with it. She had been wounded,
beaten, hunted through hills and underbrush. "There
were some days I do not remember; my mind stopped.
I would find myself a long way from where I had been,

ASIA THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE 25

and say, 'Where arn I?' " Many times, driven by
starvation to Turkish houses, she had been taken in
and treated kindly. But always, sooner or later, the
idea of profit came into Turkish eyes, and she saw it
and escaped, wrenching bars from windows and drop
ping from walls. In the end, the Vali, governor of
the province, heard of her and sent to demand her
from the Turkish family that was giving her shelter.
She escaped once more, and the gendarmes caught her.

"You might as well give up/ 7 they said. "What can
you do against the Vali? This whole province is in
his hand; he will have you in the end. Better give up
now, while he feels kindly toward you."

So she surrendered. They took her to the Vali's
house. "Then," she said with a long sigh, "for the
first time I knew peace."

The Vali had been kind to her. She had had rest,
and good food, and cleanliness. Having given up the
struggle, she was no longer afraid. Every one was
kind to her. "The Vali's wife loved me like a mother,
and he loved me like a lover." Did she love him?
"I? But I am Christian. And I love nobody. What
did they leave me to love when they killed the last
of my family?"

When I told her that in a few months she would be
a mother, she said, with a laugh like a snarl, "Very
well I will send it to its father."

Then there was another girl, whose story had a
touch of the incredibly fantastic. With eyelids closed,
she was the most beautiful girl I have seen among a

26 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

people renowned for feminine beauty. Her features
were like those preserved for us from antiquity by the
chisels of great artists; her skin was like that of a
child, and her body was a rhythm of line. But when
she opened her eyes, it became painful to look at her.
One eyeball swung outward in its socket so grotesquely
that one thought of a gargoyle.

Her story was the usual one; during the deportations
she had been sold into a Turkish house. There she
had been rebellious, violent, incorrigible. She had
upset the whole household, and beatings had not sub
dued her. "Then they said that they had had no
peace since I came; I must have an evil eye, and they
would fix it," she said. "My eyes were perfectly
straight then, but they took me to a hospital and had
this done to me," and she pointed to the crooked eye.

I did not believe it. I had grown as accustomed
to hearing of monstrous things as I shall ever be, but
this was incredible. When a knife or a hot iron would
have served the purpose, why resort to an infinitely
delicate surgical operation? It is a question I cannot
answer; a question whose answer is so deep in Turk
ish character that only a Turk could answer it- For
I examined the eye, and saw beyond doubt that the
story was true. The microscopic scars were there, in
the minute muscles of the eye. Some finely trained
and skilful Turkish surgeon had used his training at
the operating table to make this girl hideous. He had
done this, while hundreds of Turkish soldiers, wounded
in fighting for their country, were dying for lack of
surgical help.

ASIA THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE 27

The girl whose revelation of Armenia went deepest
was a graduate of European schools and spoke French
and German as well as English. These accomplish
ments and her beauty had saved her from the deporta
tions. After her father and brothers were killed, while
the women and girls were being driven from the city,
she had been selected with others to stay behind. She
managed to keep one younger sister with her. More
than a hundred girls were crowded into the Armenian
church, and groups of officers and influential Turks
continually came to choose wives from among them.
During the first afternoon she perceived that one of
these Turks looked at her for some time. He seemed
kinder, more sympathetic, than the others.

He went away without speaking to her, but the next
day he returned and said to her, "Come." She asked
If she might bring her sister, and he said, "Yes." She
went with him to his house, which was a large and
beautiful one, with extensive gardens. She was given
her own rooms and servants. From the very first he
was always considerate and kind to her and to her
little sister. He married her by Moslem ceremony.
She was his only wife.

She repeated that he was always good to her, and
like a father to the little sister. He gave them beau
tiful clothes and many jewels; he was thoughtful of
their comfort and sensitive to their feelings. She lived
with him for three years, and they had a child. He
was in Constantinople when she heard of the Armi
stice.

At this point In her story she stopped, and I thought

28 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

it ended. She had been sitting very quietly, growing
whiter as she talked, and the only gesture she made
was when she said, "No, wait. I want to tell you."

When she heard of the Armistice she took off all the
jewels and clothes he had given her, and put on the
garments she had worn to his house and kept laid
away. She left her baby with its nurse, took her sister,
and went to Constantinople, straight to the patriarch
of the Armenian church. She told him that she wanted
to see her husband. The husband was sent for, and
she said to him, "The war is ended now, and I am
leaving you. I will never see you again."

He pleaded with her to come back to him. He said
that he loved her and could not live without her, that
he would never take another wife into his house. He
promised even to give up his faith and become a Chris
tian if she would come back to him. He begged her
not to leave their child without a mother.

She sat quietly telling me this, with tears running
down her white cheeks, and I said to her, "You love
your husband."

"Yes," she said.

"But you love Mm ; you say he loves you and is
kind to you, he has your baby why do you not go
back to him?"

She looked at me with astonishment in her miserable
eyes, and said, "But he is a Turk."

He was a Turk, her baby was a Turk, and she was
Armenian. She felt that her love for them was a sin,
and that in going back to them she would be denying
Christ. She could not do it,

ASIA THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE 29

In this story, as she told it, I began faintly to per
ceive the meaning of religion to the Armenian. This
Eastern meaning of religion is alien to us. It is not
so much a guide in living, as life itself. It is dearer
even than earthly life or hope of heaven; it goes deeper
than the individual. It is the life of a race, the memo
ries and traditions of generations of ancestors, and the
immortality of a people on earth.

Without being consciously aware of it, these people
know that to give up their God is to betray, not only
their own souls, but their people. Their belief in
their God is the force that has held the Armenians
together as a people through fifteen centuries of living
mingled with other conquering races; the Armenian
Church is the one remnant of their state that has
survived. At home we say glibly, "In the East, re
ligion is nationality," but our minds skim the surface
of the words' meaning. Neither religion nor nation
ality is to us what it is to the Armenian. Let America
be conquered and held in subjection by a yellow race
that worships strange gods, and after many centuries
our descendants will know the Armenian meaning of
nationality-religion, and American girls will know why
this Armenian girl could not go back to the husband
and baby she loved.

Many Armenian girls, of course, did remain in
Turkish households. Of the thousands who dis
appeared into the seclusion of the high-walled gardens
only a few hundreds came out. This absorption of
white, Christian women into the families of the Mon
golian conqueror began six centuries ago and has never

30 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

stopped. During those centuries the high-cheek-boned,
slant-eyed, yellow-skinned invader has changed into
the straight-eyed, smooth-cheeked, olive-tinted Turkish
type of to-day. How much has the blood of the con
quered and despised Armenian contributed to this
change? It is an interesting question, which cannot
be answered, for in a Turkish household the Christian
woman becomes nominally Moslem, and her children
inherit nationality from their father. Abdul Hamid,
called the Red Sultan because of his bloody massacres
of Christians, was the son of an Armenian slave, but
this did not prevent his being a Turk and a Sultan.

This lofty ignoring of biology does not in the least
hinder biology's pursuance of its own laws, but their
working is hidden and their aim defeated. Beyond
doubt only the obstinacies of religious creeds have pre
vented the Turk from being absorbed, in name as he
has largely been in fact, by the greater numbers of the
races he has conquered. For six centuries the Turk
has maintained his precarious power over the innumer
able peoples of Asia Minor and the Balkans solely by
force of arms and by keeping alive the old hatreds be
tween the subject races. During those centuries the
blood of the conquered peoples has been mixed with the
Mongolian to produce the Turk of to-day; a race sepa
rate from the others not by blood but by religion.
Meanwhile the conquered peoples themselves have re
mained nearly as pure in blood, and as distinct from
each other, as they were a thousand years ago*

Only common blood and a common ancestral ex*

ASIA THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE 31

perience enable human beings fully to understand each
other, I think. There were always incomprehensions
between me and the girls in the Scutari Home, gaps
in our mutual understanding that could be bridged only
by blind sympathy. Reasons for the organized Ameri
can effort to help them were not very clear to the
girls; neither organization nor impersonal social service
were part of their experience. As for me, I could hear
their stories only objectively; I had not yet seen mas
sacre or slavery, and I could not remember to take
for granted, as these girls did, that slavery and mas
sacre are part of the normal scheme of things, like
thunderstorms.

These girls, however, told more vividly than any
mass of figures or political statements the immediate
background of the Turkey into which we were going.
In their little personal stories appeared the whole
gigantic chaos of interior Turkey during the Great
War; the conflicting ambitions and policies and char
acters of beys and pashas, the wandering bands of
Kurds and other nomads, the stern figures of German
officers more brutal, often, than the Turks, but mak
ing little islands of Western discipline in a sea of
anarchy and the small heroic struggles of American
missionaries.

There were girls from Van, who unconsciously re
vealed, in their story of Armenian delight in Turkish
defeats and pitiful joy in the Russian army's coming,
the basis for the Turks' charge that they were
traitors, and the reason for the deportations. These
girls had been caught in the massacres and driven from

32 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

their province, even while the Armenians of Van, in
trenched in their quarter, were fighting the Turks until
the Russian armies came. There was a girl from
Mosul, who knew of the Assyrian-Kurdish war within
the war. There was a girl from Marash, who had
heard of the heroic revolt and defense of Zeitoun by
the Armenian mountaineers.

Strange as these stories were, in their taking for
granted a mingling of patriarchal laws and anarchy as
foreign to our life as some story of conditions on Mars,
there was in them a vague resemblance to something
once heard or dreamed, which evaded my efforts to
place it. It came to me suddenly one evening when
a Bible fell open at an unaccustomed place and my
eyes fell on the words, "And Jonathan smote the garri
son of the Philistines that was in Geba, and the Philis
tines heard of it."

It was a shock to realize that the Old Testament is
not a record of the far past, as it seems to us from our
reading of it in comfortable living rooms on Sunday
evenings; it was a shock to realize that here, in Asia
Minor, it has never ceased to be living reality, that
the peoples are living here to-day as they lived through
the centuries after the Israelities came from Egypt to
conquer the land. "For the children of Ammon and
Moab stood up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir,
utterly to destroy and slay them, and when they had
made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, every one
helped to destroy another."

Exactly as, without thinking of it or questioning it,
we take for granted an orderly organization of society^

ASIA THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE 33

with its mixing of many races in our cities and on our
unguarded farms, arrival of letters, ringing of the tele
phone, church services of many creeds on peaceful Sun
day mornings, so do these people of Asia Minor take
for granted a world of religious and racial hatreds,
little and big wars, massacres, deportations the same
world in which the Lost Tribes of Israel disappeared,
the same- in which the Jews were driven captive to
Babylon.

One girl was telling how she had been given the
alternative of death or becoming a Moslem. "I would
have said the words ; I was so terribly frightened. Oh ?
I would never, never stop really being Christian! But
I was so tired and so afraid and I had been beaten so,
and they were killing others there was so much blood
and screaming. I thought God would perhaps forgive
me if I said the words, not meaning them, and I would
always pray secretly to Him as long as I lived. But
I couldn't, when I remembered my mother.

"I'd lost my mother a long time before. It was
when they were driving us through the pass in the
Karajah hills, all among the rocks they began killing
us not the Turks, but some other men who came
down from the hills* And somehow, I don't know how,
I lost my mother. Afterward I could not find her any
where. Always when we met or passed other Armen
ians I asked if they had seen my mother. I never
saw her again, But once, a long time afterward, when
we were being driven south toward Aleppo, we passed
some of our people who were being driven north. The

34 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

soldiers would not let us stop, but as we went past we
called to each other. A woman answered me, and said
she had seen my mother, going West. My mother sent
me this word, 'Do not deny Christ. If you deny Him,
I will deny you.' It was the only word I had from my
mother. So I could not say the Moslem words, though
I tried to."

Strangely, some disturbance had occurred, and in
the confusion she had been included among the girls
who had repeated the fatal words. She had survived,
without disobeying her mother's command. "I can
tell her that when I see her/' she said.

"You have heard from her, then? You know where
she is?"

"No. Of course she may be dead. But she was very
strong. If she lived I will meet her some day and tell
her."

She was making no effort to find her mother indeed,
there was no effort she could have made but her man
ner was confident. And four years later, on the wharf
in Piraus, the harbor of Athens, I heard a sudden
wild shriek. "My mother! My mother!" It was this
girl, now a refugee from Smyrna, recognizing a woman
on the crowded deck of a refugee-transport from the
Black Sea- Once more they were both refugees; once
more the hundred thousands of Armenians were adrift,
and chance had brought these two together again.

The developments of these four years were unimagi
nable when she was in the Rescue Home in Scutari.
The Armistice had just been signed; the Peace of Ver
sailles and the Treaty of Sevres were in the making.

ASIA THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE 35

Americans, knowing no better, thought that the war
was ended. Turkey was beaten helpless at the feet
of Western conquerors. English officers walked the
streets of Constantinople with that air of rulers of
earth which they have perhaps acquired from ruling
so much of it. The Turks moved quickly aside to let
them pass. When the English spoke, Turkey obeyed.
The English had said that Christian girls must be re
leased; they were released. When there was a rumour
that a Christian girl was in a Turkish house. Allied
soldiers walked through the ancient sanctities of the
harem as though Turkish customs were tissue paper.
The Allies were lords of all the debris of ancient
peoples and civilizations, from the Mediterranean to
the Black Sea and the Caspian. The only question
was the ratio in which they would divide the spoils,
and that was to be decided at their conference tables.
Meantime the Arabs were relying on England's
promise of their freedom when they had helped to de
feat Turkey, and dreaming happily of the Arab king
dom of Syria which had been promised to France;
the Kurds were claiming independence and killing the
Assyrians, remnant of the people who had oppressed
the Kurds thirty centuries ago; in the north the
Armenian Republic was rising, aflame with President
Wilson's Fourteen Points, and claiming the old boun
daries of Caucasian Armenia in payment for services
to the Allies during the war; and a handful of English
policed the swarming populations, held Mesopotamia,
Syria and Cilicia, and controlled the Bagdad railway
which would take us across Turkey to Marash.

Ill

IN THE HEART OF ANATOLIA

ETE In April, 1919, a special train left the little
station of Haidar Pasha on the shores of the
Bosphorus, and began its journey toward
Aleppo. This train was made up of ten boxcars, seven
containing medical supplies. In the other three, with
beds, blankets, trunks and food supplies, rode Dr.
Lambert and I, accompanied by four American
nurses.

This journey eastward across Turkey was as primi
tive in manner, and in its way as adventurous, as the
journey of the American pioneers toward the West.
Each morning we knew no more than they at what
point we would arrive before darkness overtook us, and
although the invisible power of the British protected
the thin line of rails beneath us from the nomad tribes
that prey on caravans, at every stop we had to be
watchful that none of the boxcars of supplies were
stolen by local Turkish railroad men.

A Turkish engineer in a fez was at the throttle of
the little engine, a Turkish fireman worked beside him.
The station-masters and the ragged porters were
Turks. But at each station the British Empire was
represented by one smartly-uniformed, lonely English
man, who hailed us with pitiful delight in seeing again

16

IN THE HEART OF ANATOLIA 37

white faces and hearing once more his own language.
Simply by their air of being predestined rulers of all
dark-skinned peoples, this thin string of Englishmen
was holding the Bagdad railway, a cause and a prize
of the Great War.

All one day we ran through beautifully wooded
mountains, a country not unlike the Alleghanies. We
picnicked on the floor of the boxcar,, spreading cold
food on a packing case and making tea over an alcohol
stove. At night, making up our army cots, we slept,
with the mountain air flowing through the half-open
doors.

The forests were left behind next day, when we
turned from the sea at Ismid and struck into the in
terior of Turkey. The mountains retreated to the
very edge of the world. Around us" spread the barren
plains of Asia Minor, a land that looked as though it
had been uninhabited since the creation of the earth.
All the civilizations known to man from the beginning
of memory to the fall of the Arabian Empire have
flowed across these plains, and ebbed from them, leav
ing only bare earth under an empty sky.

The dominion of the Ottoman Turks, that nomad
band of Mongolian warriors who overthrew the Arabian
Empire, has not been civilization. It has built no
roads, no irrigation systems; it has developed neither
its peoples nor its natural resources. The Turks were
a flying wedge of fighters that captured the capitals
of the countries they invaded. For six hundred years
they have held these capitals against the will of their
subject populations, and against the attacks of Europe.

38 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

When, with the beginning of the machine age in the
West, these attacks ceased to be military and became
industrial and commercial, the Turk's defense against
them was to close the doors of his empire against all
Western development. Unskilled himself in industrial
and commercial arts, unable had he wished to de
velop Turkey for the Turks, he knew very well that
Europeans, if allowed to enter, would develop it for
the Europeans. He preferred to keep it undeveloped.
He preferred handwork to machinework, caravans to
railroads, leisurely drinking of coffee in his cafes to
the energetic, vigorous and exhausting life of the West.
He rested content with the will of Allah.

Sitting in the door of the crawling boxcar, my feet
dangling over the threshold and my eyes contemplat
ing the barren land, I remembered the passionate words
of a young Moslem, rebelling against that contentment.
"We must not submit any longer to the will of Allah I"
he had said. "Civilization is man's rebellion against
God. What! should I go unclothed, because God
caused me to be born naked? God made me naked,
but I will not leave myself as God made me; I will
clothe myself. That is rebellion against God; that
is civilization. God makes the rivers and the moun
tains as they are, but man stands up and says that
he does not like God's work. Man remakes the moun
tains, cuts them down, drives tunnels through them,
digs minerals from them. God makes the rivers to
run to the sea, but man stands up and says ? l l can
make the rivers run better than God made them run.
I can make them water my fields.' That is civiliza-

IN THE HEART OF ANATOLIA 59

tion rebellion against the ways of God. That is what
my country needs. 3 '

He had expressed, I thought, both the Eastern idea
of God, which is so alien to our conception of Him, and
the ambition of Young Turkey, which had risen too
late and been too feeble to save the Turk. Ambitious
Young Turkey had appeared only after European Im
perialism had used the discontent of the Christian
peoples in the Turkish Empire as a tool with which
to cut away the western edges of Turkey. After
Greece had been freed, the Sultans had known no way
to dispose of the danger of Christian populations in
Turkey save by slaughtering them. This naive and
horrible policy had only been seized upon as another
weapon of European Imperialism, The Sultan mas
sacred the restless Bulgarians; and Europe freed Bul
garia. After Bulgaria, Herzegovina, Croatia and
Bosnia had been cut from the Turkish Empire and set
up as small dependencies of the Great Powers of
Europe, the Young Turk had risen with this cry of
"rebellion against Allah, 77 this declaration that Turkey
must civilize herself in order to save herself. But his
effort came too late. Imperialist Germany wanted her
expansion in the East the Berlin-Bagdad railway;
Tsarist Russia wanted Constantinople; the British Em
pire^ ver y iif e was threatened by a cutting of the sea-
route to India, and in this part of the world the Great
War was the struggle of these Powers for the bones
of Turkey.

That war had been fought, and now we were riding
across Turkey in a boxcar on the Bagdad railway;

40 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

six Americans and seven boxcars of supplies, a small
part of the American effort to save the helpless peoples
of the world from the consequences of their govern
ments' imperialistic policies. The war was over, and
won. England held the Bagdad railway, and Syria,
and Mesopotamia, and Cilicia; the Allies were in Con
stantinople. Europe had conquered, I thought as we
were all thinking in those days and the six-century-
old dominion of the barbarian Turk over this fertile
yet desolate land was ended. British and French would
develop the country, there would be railways, mines,
oil-wells, factories, modern farms, automobiles, tele
phones; and these millions of dark-skinned peoples
would be working for London and Paris.

The train stopped at a little station-; Americans
jumped from either side of it to keep the seven box
cars under their eyes. Scattered beside the track,
Kurds and Turks and Chetas looked at us with enig
matic eyes under black eyebrows and swathed turbans;
their broad, coloured sashes were arsenals of revolvers
and knives; their garments, all of bright colours, fell
about them in picturesque folds. There was something
disturbing, something old and relentless and fierce and
suave, in their gaze at us* It made me feel my pro
fessional sense of the necessity of dominating a situa
tion that threatens to be difficult. It was nothing; it
passed in a second, with the sound of a boyish English
voice saying, "How do you do? I say, it's jolly good
to see you P

Poor lonely boy, carrying the dignity and weight of
Empire on his slim shoulders, day and night, before all

IN THE HEART OF ANATOLIA $i

those watching eyes! And certainly it was good to
see him, to hear his clipped English words, and to feel
that England was here England bringing peace, and
work, and safety at last for the Christian peoples of
Turkey.

Always, at every station, the lone Britisher came
hastening to us, to look at us with eyes hungry for the
sight of white faces, to ask innumerable hurried ques
tions, to offer everything that could be imagined to
make us more comfortable, tQ clutch at the very last
second of our time, and to stand saluting us as the
train pulled out, leaving him on the platform sur
rounded by a few tumble-down mud huts and the
barren plain.

On the third day we came to Eski Cherher, the city
to which the Turkish government prepared to move
when it expected the Allies to take the Dardanelles.
It is a typical city of interior Turkey, a magnified
village, where perhaps 40,000 people live in mud- walled
houses hidden in courtyards. Water runs in gutters in
the middle of the crooked, narrow streets, serving im
partially as sewer, water-supply, wash-tub, and pad
dling place for ducks. Flocks of sheep clatter hoofs
on the cobbles; here and there a milch goat is tied to
the post of an open shop-front, where a Turk sits
cross-legged, making the cigarettes or fezzes or wooden
saddles that he sells. The streets of the bazaar are
choked with jabbering, gesticulating crowds of men,
dirty, ragged and picturesque; the few women are mov
ing swathes of black cloth. One never sees a Moslem
woman's face after leaving the sea-coast of Turkey.

42 BEGINNING AGAIN "AT "ARARAT

Meerschaum is mined near Eski Cherher, and in the
market place we saw quantities of it, worked into ciga
rette holders, pipe-bowls and ornaments.

Thence we were carried off to tea in the British
officers' mess. We hesitated about going, fearing that
our train would be sent on without us, but our four
hosts laughed away the idea. "We're the masters
here," said they. "Your train won't move until we
say the word."

We were persuaded, and the crowds opened respect
ful lanes before the British uniforms. Yet there was
something ominous even in their alacrity, and I thought
and laughed at the thought of wild animals moving
docilely to obey the orders of the trainer's whip.

Tea was perfectly served by native servants in the
officers' quarters, with English cake and Damascus
sweets, and at our every suggestion of leaving our
hosts reiterated their assurance that the train would
await their pleasure. When at length, regretfully, we
tore ourselves away, two of the officers announced that
urgent business called them down the line, and sent
orders to have their car attached to our train. When
we reached the station this had been done, and all the
next day the atmosphere of our boxcar was that of a
pleasant English week-end.

Five days from Constantinople, we arrived in Konia.
Only this fragment of the name Icomum remains of
the city that the Romans built on the old Roman-
Arabian road for nineteen hundred years ago Rome
was fighting the same fight that Europe is waging to
day, for possession of trade-routes to the East, Konia

IN THE HEART OF ANATOLIA $$

is now tumble-down, filthy, picturesque, crowded and
disease-ridden, like all Turkish interior cities; it is
renowned as the centre of the sects of dancing and
whirling dervishes. Here we were surprised to find
a large number of Italian soldiers; stationed there, no
one knew why. At least, if the Italians knew the
reason for their swift dispatch through Ismid to Konia,
they had not communicated it to Americans or Eng
lish. Some secret move on the diplomatic chessboard
had flung them from Italy to this wretched spot, and
here they stayed, until some months later they as mys
teriously and unceremoniously departed. Italy had
been checkmated, then, in her clutch at Asia Minor,
and the Greek pawn had been moved into Smyrna.

In Konia we met Miss Cushman, that remarkable
American woman who, all through the war, doggedly
stayed in Konia, with all the Allied consulates left in
her care, as well as the work of the Mission Boards
and the management of the American Hospital. Here,
too, appeared once more that magic of the American
woman's home-making ability, surprisingly revealed
by the war and the peace. American women are the
only women in the world who, far from home, in primi
tive countries, without any familiar materials, set to
work with whatever they can lay hand upon, and make
a home. Somehow they curtain windows, create
couches and tables and chairs from packing-cases,
make leather cushions of sheeps' skins, table covers of
peasant's petticoats; then they set a flowering almond
branch in a pottery jar and there, triumphantly, is an
American living-room, tasteful, charming, comfortable.

44 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

In every language of Europe and Asia, men marvel
at this.

Not the least remarkable among such American
homes created by relief workers in strange countries
is that of Miss Cushman of Konia, who made it while
doing the work of six men in an enemy country during
the war. Here we rested over night, with luxury of
warm water in which to wash and a motionless bed in
which to sleep, and a dinner such as we had not eaten
since leaving America. Our imperishable memory of
Konia is Miss Cushman's hot biscuits. We are still
wondering how she got the baking-powder.

The next day I was sitting in the boxcar watching
the interminable waves of sand go slowly by, when I
happened to glance backward down the tracks, and saw
a great lake stretching into the distance and lapping
lazy curls of waves upon its shore. Five minutes
earlier we had passed that way, and 1 had gazed on
empty land, where now the lake lay ruffling and
sparkling in the sun. For an hour it followed beside
the track ; while I watched its metallic flashes and blue
reflections of the sky, and then its unreality was gone
as mysteriously as it had come.

That night the setting sun turned the sand to gold
'and spread a wash of pure rose across the sky, 00 the
edge of the golden sands three camels moved slowly,
black silhouettes against the rosy light.

We woke in the Taurus mountains, to see mountain

peaks toweriBg above us and to hear the roar of water-

IN THE HEART OF ANATOLIA 45

falls in gorges. The train crawled snake-like in and
out of folds of mountain sides, and halted with clutch
ing of brakes at the edge of chasms. There was a scent
of pine and snow in the air. The black mouth of the
Taurus tunnel waited a long time for us, and at length
we plunged into its darkness.

This tunnel, the second longest in the world, had
just been completed; our train was one of the first to
go through it. Germany had begun it before the
war; Turkey had finished it during the war, using Eng
lish prisoners as directors and foremen. It was the new
gate to Cilicia. Formerly, passengers had been obliged
to leave the train and to climb on foot or on mules,
over the Taurus Pass and through the Cilician gates,
to descend to another train waiting on the other side.
We could remain in our boxcar, blinded by the arti
ficial night, and tantalized now and then by a glimpse
of daylight and magnificent gorge and waterfall, seen
so rapidly in the flashing-past of a stone archway that
we did not so much see them as remember an impres
sion left on optic nerves. Then in a moment the dark
ness had gone, the train had stopped, and there were
English uniforms once more, and eager impatient voices
saying, "Come along! Come along! We want to take
you for a drivel"

Again we protested that we could not leave the train,
again our protests fell baffled against the wall of British
lordliness, "Come along! My word, the train will
wait until we tell it to go! "and we were bundled into
a seven-passenger car and whirled away on the most
magnificent drive we had ever known, up through the

46 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

gigantic gorge of Taurus Pass. Waterfalls roared
downward to join the roaring stream, cliffs towered
overhead, and with every curve of the looping road,
vista after vista opened before us. It was an hour
of perfection, a summit of delight very rarely reached.
Then the purring car brought us again to the train
which, true enough, had patiently waited and our
hosts deposited us once more in the boxcar.

The next stop was at Adana, where the train must
be divided. Our engine could pull only five cars up
the steep grade beyond the city, and Dr. Lambert left
us here, taking on the first half of the train and leav
ing the second half in my charge, to bring on when
the engine should return for it. At Adana there was a
large camp of Hindoo soldiers, and our train had hardly
stopped when a British officer was hailing it and asking
if there were a doctor on board. "One of my best men
is most frightfully ill, would you be so good as to look
at him?"

With some concealed trepidation I walked through
the camp, saluted by tall, grave Hindoos, and entered
the tent in which the patient was lying. I anticipated
objections to a woman doctor, but the big Hindoo was
quite docile and dumbly grateful for help. He was
prostrated in the exhaustion of malaria, one of the
devastating scourges of these countries. I examined
and prescribed for him, while his large eyes looked at
me and at the officer with a pleading like the clutch of
a frightened child's hand. The officer spoke to him In
his own language, and outside the tent was almost un-

IN THE HEART OF ANATOLIA 47

English in his expressions of gratitude, pressing upon
us gifts of English jams and a side of bacon.

That evening, for our entertainment, he commanded
his Arab orderly to dance for us. A bonfire was built
beside the boxcar, and we sat in a row in the open door,
while the Arab, playing a weird, stringed instrument,
sang desert songs and danced the slow, graceful
Arabian dances in the firelight until the late moon came
over the mountain-tops.

Adana is the usual Turkish city, in a desolate miser
able country of treeless, black mountains. Near East
Relief work had begun there, and the American Mis
sion schools that had lived through the war were re
viving. In Adana we were as near to Marash as we
would be in Aleppo, but there was no way of getting
our supplies across the mountain ranges. So for three
more days our train crawled onward through the
mountains, and now that responsibility for the supplies
rested on me, I got out at every stop to make sure
that the five cars were still with us. So I must have
descended at Islahai, the little station which is only
seventy-five miles from Marash. But it made no im
pression on my mind, and I was far from suspecting
that Islahai would one day mean the difference between
life and death to me.

Near East Relief work was also started at Aleppo,
which was crowded as we then thought, little antici
pating how much more crowded it would become with
Armenian refugees who had saved nothing but their
lives from the war and deportations. They were pour-

48 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

ing back now ? by the tens of thousands, to their former
homes, and it was to help them live until they were
settled and working again that we had come to Cilicia.
After two days in Aleppo, checking our supplies and
arranging for them to follow us, we began the last stage
of our journey in an automobile; a hundred and fifty
miles to Marash, in the heart of the Hittite country.

f

It was a beautiful spring day, the air still snow-
cooled, and thousands of little flowers blossoming in
the hollows. The road, many centuries old, wound
around mountain sides and ran through green valleys
and in and out of flat-roofed villages where innumer
able dogs assailed our whirling wheels. All along the
way the refugees were coming in, returning patiently
on foot, with bundles on their backs, to their old homes
in the villages and in Marash.

Late in the afternoon the city appeared before us,
white and green amid blossoming trees, climbing a
mountain side. Below it was spread its wide valley of
ricefields, and from the midst of it rose the old citadel
that has seen with the same indifference the sprouting
and the harvest of so many centuries of rice and the
rise and fall of so many empires.

Our car ran into the market place, beneath the cov
ered Oriental bazaars of age-rotted wood and moulder
ing stone, where all goods and foods and colours are
jumbled together in the darkness, and bargaining goes
on in scores of languages while claw-like hands finger
the heaps of merchandise. We ran into these bazaars,
and could go no f urther ? for the excited crowds came

IN THE HEART OF ANATOLIA 49

surging down upon us, a sea of bright dark eyes and
turbans and dangling, gilded coins and blue bead
charms, and an outcry of voices. What new wonder
was this? they cried, pushing and struggling to get a
better view of us and our automobile, while bracelets
and necklaces chimed together, and children screamed
and women clutched veils tighter across their faces and
shrieked shrill comments, aoid our chauffeur vainly
honked the horn.

This was our welcome to Marash, where our arrival
spread an excitement and wonder only equalled by
the sensation at the entrance of the English, two weeks
earlier.

IV
THE KINGDOM OF LITTLE ARMENIA

WE were in the heart of Cilicia, whose moun
tain peaks and fertile valleys have been a
stronghold and a prize of war since the days
when the Hittites reigned here. High on the crags of
the Taurus range still stand the old castle forts built
by many races of men_, besieged and stormed and
burned and rebuilt again through succeeding genera
tions, and in the inaccessible recesses of wild gorges
live fragments of all the peoples whose empires have
risen and fallen since the centuries before history
began. A debris of races, mixed together but never
mingling, a clashing of innumerable prides and hatreds
whose very origins are forgotten; scores of hands
clutching, and obstinately clinging to the hope of re
gaining an old dominion over all the others. Not
least among these dogged claims to a revival of former
power was that of the Armenians, whose empire in
Cilicia was ended only yesterday, as the mountains
and these people count time*

The Empire of Great Armenia rose in prehistoric
times at the foot of Mount Ararat in the Caucasus*
The long story of its waxing and waning power, Its
conflicts with peoples whose names are lost, and with
Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians and Mace-

THE KINGDOM OF LITTLE ARMENIA 51

donians, ended in the fourth century when Great
Armenia crumbled and disappeared under combined
attacks of the Byzantine Empire and the Persians.
Only a few independent princes remained, in strong
holds among the mountains, and the last of these were
engulfed when the great wave of Mongolian peoples
swept down upon Europe in the eleventh century. The
Huns and Tartars, winning battle after battle against
the Byzantine Greeks, occupied the whole of the
Caucasus.

It was then that several Armenian princes fled from
the Caucasian ranges southward, to attack the old
castle forts on the defiant peaks of the Taurus ranges.
Having captured several of these, they appealed to the
Byzantine Empire for recognition, and the Greek em
perors of Constantinople confirmed them in their new
possessions. From these strongholds they successfully
resisted the continued invasions of the Tartars, and
established the royal dynasty of Little Armenia in
Cilicia.

Here the first Crusaders from Europe found them
installed, strongly fortified, and courageously beating
back the persistent waves of the Mongolian advance.
The mailed knights of France had hardly disembarked
on the shores of Cilicia, when they were welcomed by
Constantin, King of Little Armenia, who had hastened
down from his mountain stronghold to offer hospitality
to friendly warriors from unknown lands. His hardy
mountaineers, assembled behind him, greeted with their
rallying war-cries the ranks of fighting peasants from
Europe, and the two forces camped together, while in

52 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

the tent of Constantin the Prankish knights, seated on
royal rugs, were served with interminable courses of
wild game and Armenian delicacies, washed down with
floods of good Armenian wine.

Valiantly aided by their new allies, the Crusaders
won battle after battle against the pagan Mongolians,
and when winter brought a truce to fighting, and famine
became the enemy, long trains of pack-donkeys wound
down the trails of the Taurus ranges, bringing bread
and meat and wine, gifts from the Armenians which
saved the lives of the tottering, skeleton Crusaders.
In gratitude, King Constantin was given the title of
Baron of France, and until his death he fought ably
by the side of the French chevaliers.

His title was inherited by his son, who confirmed the
Armenian alliance with the Crusaders, now become
kings of Palestine. Fighting unaided, the Armenians
so disastrously defeated the Mongolians amid the
gorges of the Taurus that Armenians still sing of the
rivers which that day ran red with Turkish blood.
After this victory, the Armenians hastened to the aid
of the French of Antioch, who were desperately strug
gling against the Arabian Moslem invasion from Syria,
and when this war had been won, both Armenians and
French turned against the Byzantine Greek Empire,

But this established policy of alliance with the
French, faithfully followed by successive kings who
bore the title of King of Armenia and Baron of France,
led at length to the eclipse of their kingdom. Vic
torious Byzantine armies so devastated Armenia that
famine forced King Leon to surrender, and he was

THE KINGDOM OF LITTLE ARMENIA 53

taken to Constantinople where as was usual when
kings were captured he died in a dungeon. The
Byzantine Empire became master of Little Armenia.

But it remained master only until King Leon's son
Theodore, who was held as a hostage in Constanti
nople, could grow to manhood. Then, in 1143, he
escaped from the Byzantine court, and in the rags of
a beggar made his way into the Taurus mountains,
where safely in an Armenian village, he disclosed his
identity. The Armenian mountaineers rose as one man
to fight for him, and before the fury of their onslaught
the Byzantine Empire was defeated; the Greeks fled
from the mountains, and the kingdom of Little Ar
menia held them once more.

Constantinople, however, still held Cilicia's valleys
and seaports, thus cutting off Armenia's communication
with her allies, the French kings of Palestine. King
after king of Armenia continued the war for seaports
and valleys; thirty years of desperate fighting, of sally
ing from the safety of the mountains to battle on the
plains, of defeats and undaunted fresh attacks, at last
won for Little Armenia again the whole of Cilicia.

Peace with the Byzantine Greek Empire, and the
accompanying free intercourse with the French, might
have made In the Taurus another golden age of
Armenia, had there not been an outbreak of religious
wars. A difference of opinion as to the exact nature
of Christ's divinity before His baptism by John the
Baptist began afresh the murderous war between
Armenian Gregorian Christian and Byzantine Greek
Orthodox Christian, and in the midst of this war

54 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT
Saladin, King of the Moslem Arabs, besieged and took
Jerusalem.

Jerusalem had fallen, and Europe poured forth a new
Crusade against the infidel, led this time by Frederick
of Germany. Again the disembarking Crusaders were
met by welcoming emissaries from the Armenian court,
bearing gifts and asking for their master the royal
crown of a vassal. Frederick granted the request, but
King Leon had barely received the message that he
was now King of Armenia, Baron of France, Baron of
Germany, when it was followed by news that the Em
peror Frederick had been drowned. Undiscouraged by
this calamity, Leon hastened to send diplomats from
his court to the courts of the Pope and of Henry the
Fourth, asking confirmation of his new title. The
enterprise succeeded, and Conrad, Archbishop of May-
ence, travelled in person all the way to the court of
Armenia to bestow upon Leon the royal crown.

Thus recognized, Leon was safe from Byzantine at
tack. The declining Byzantine Empire, besieged on
all sides and crumbling beneath the blows of Moslems
and pagans, dared not offend the Christian Powers of
Europe. They were themselves formidable enemies of
the harassed Byzantine empire, but at least they were
enemies of its Moslem and pagan enemies. Constanti
nople therefore hastened to send to Leon another royal
diadem, and to point out that allegiance to the Byzan
tine Empire was wiser than fidelity to European
princes, who were farther away. Leon did not refuse
to listen, nor to accept this second crown, and the
envoys returned to Constantinople bearing princely

THE KINGDOM OF LITTLE ARMENIA 55

gifts, but not the slightest yielding of Armenia's inde
pendence.

The history of little states that rise when an empire
falls, is always a kaleidoscope. Time turns it rapidly,
and the pieces continually fall into new patterns. The
Armenian kingdom was such a little state, created by
a few Armenian princes who maintained their freedom
after their own empire was destroyed. Now the Byzan
tine Empire was disintegrating, and all the nations of
that time tried to seize bits of it. The Crusaders came
to fight for Christ, and remained to fight for them
selves. The French, who had been received as allies
by the Armenians, grew strong enough to attack them,
and did so. Year by year, as the kaleidoscope turns,
Armenia appears defending herself against the French,
against the Byzantine Greeks, against the Arabs,
against the Mongolians.

Leon died, and his little daughter Isabel, sixteen
years old, became Queen of Armenia. Immediately
the French kings of Palestine attacked her, but her
nobles fought so well that the French were defeated,
and fell back upon diplomacy. Philip of Antioch mar
ried Isabel, but his plan of thus annexing Armenia was
combated by the Armenian nobles, who threw him into
prison, where he died.

An Armenian noble became Isabel's second husband,
and under their reign Little Armenia reached the zenith
of her glory. Her ports were important centres of com
merce both from East and West, and her caravan
routes ran far into Persia, India and Arabia.

The Armenian court was all that was etegant and

S 6 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

gallant, in the very latest Paris mode. Satins and silks
and lace frills decked the courtiers, who doffed their
plumed hats and managed their swords with all the
grace of France. The language of the Franks replaced
the sturdier accents of their own tongue, which was
relegated to peasants, to mountaineers and to the serv
ants in the courtyards of the castles. The royal de
crees were based upon those of France, and even the
Armenian clergy imported into their own Church many
of the rites of French Christendom, while the grace
ful, if light, morals and manners of Christian-Arabian
chivalry were the fashion of the day. Feudal institu
tions were established, and as the division between the
nobles and their sturdy mountain tribesmen became
more marked, the feudal law of Antioch was made the
law of Little Armenia.

At the same time, Armenian literature and art re
vived from the decline into which it had fallen in the
seventh century. Innumerable poets, historians and
theological writers appeared in the monasteries. Many
of them wrote in French, especially those who produced
semi-historical tales, such as The Marvellous History
of the Great Khan. This age in Armenian letters is
second only to that of the Golden Age, which had
ended six centuries earlier.

All these glories were brief. Little Armenia^ isolated
and obstinately independent as the Armenians have
always been, could not overcome single-handed the
fresh invasions of pagan Turks and Mongols who
threw themselves upon her in 1244 AJX The terrible
warriors from the steppes of North-eastern Asia were

THE KINGDOM OF LITTLE ARMENIA 57

ravaging Persia and the Caucasus and irresistibly flood
ing south-westward.

Little Armenia chose the better part of valour, and
made an alliance with the Mongols when they crossed
the Euphrates to attack Moslem Syria, The Arabs
were defeated, and Little Armenia was given as her
share of the spoils a part of Syria. The King of
Armenia was received with every honour at the court
of the Great Khan of the Mongols, and with reciprocal
courtesy the two monarchs discussed the relative merits
of Christianity, the religion of Armenia, and polythe
istic paganism, which was the religion of the Mon
golians.

But this alliance, and its triumphant advance toward
the shores of Egypt, roused the Egyptians to defense.
They raided Armenia, and although they were de
feated, they captured and made off with the king's
son. This Prince-Royal was ransomed only by the
yielding of a part of Syria to Egypt, and such was
the king's grief at this loss and disgrace that he re
nounced his throne and retired to a monastery. The
ransomed prince reigned in his stead, but from their
foothold in Syria the Egyptians so successfully at
tacked him that, although the Great Khan sent re
inforcements to aid him, the Armenians were driven
back across the Euphrates.

History endlessly repeats itself. The Armenians had
received the French as friends, had succoured and sup
ported them, only to see them attack her in her moment
of weakness* Now, while the victorious Egyptians
were driving the French out of Asia, Armenia's Mon-

58 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

golian allies, who had been on the verge of becoming
Christians, suddenly embraced the Moslem faith and
allied themselves with the Egyptians against Armenia.

The remainder of Little Armenia's story is chapter
after chapter of desperate intrigue and fighting to save
herself from inevitable ruin. Attacked by both Mon
gols and Egyptians, the last kings made despairing
efforts to save their country by appeals to Constanti
nople and to the Christian princes of Europe. In
numerable romances might be written of those times.

Leon, the last king, married Marie, a niece of the
Byzantine Emperor. Attended by her ladies, this
young princess came in a camel caravan all the way
from Constantinople to the castle of Armenia's king,
in the Taurus mountains. But the very festival of her
marriage and coronation was interrupted by news that
the Egyptians were disembarking troops in Cilicia.
These forces were so overpowering that King Leon was
obliged to buy peace from the Sultan with an enormous
sum of gold. The Egyptians retreated, but the danger
of a second attack was so threatening that Leon sent
ambassadors to Europe to ask for help from the Chris
tian princes.

Hearing that he had done this, the Sultan despatched
a new army, which the Armenians fought desperately
but unavailingly. The Egyptians occupied the whole
of Armenia, and Leon fled into the heart of the moun
tains, leaving his queen in their castle-stronghold, with
her two small children.

Years passed, and no word came from him. He was
thought to be dead, when one day Prince Otto of

THE KINGDOM OF LITTLE ARMENIA 59

Brunswick appeared before the castle gates with a
force of men-at-arms, come to rescue Armenia and inci
dentally to rule it. A marriage was arranged between
him and Queen Marie, but on the eve of the wedding
a band of Armenian mountaineers appeared, and at
their head was Leon, ^ing of Armenia, in the costume
of a mountain chief.

This startling reappearance, of course, prevented the
marriage, and Otto of Brunswick departed unwed and
uncrowned. Immediately the castle was besieged by
fresh Egyptian armies who had come to attack Otto
and remained to besiege Leon. The siege continued,
with daily battles, during nine months, and in the end
Leon was forced to surrender the castle and the rem
nants of the garrison, who were dying more rapidly of
hunger than of wounds.

Leon and Marie and their children were taken cap
tive to Jerusalem, where the Queen and her daughter
were immured in the Convent of St. Jacques. Their
tombs may still be seen there. Leon and his son, the
prince, were taken to Cairo and lay for six years in
dungeons. The King of Castile at last effected their
release, and Leon travelled to Spain to thank his pro
tector, while the young Prince went to Venice, and
completely disappeared. To this day no trace of him
has ever been found. Leon remained at the court of
Spain, until he had perhaps exhausted his welcome,
when he went to Paris. The King of France granted
him a pension suitable to his rank as Baron of France,
and he lived in Paris until he died and was buried in
Saint Denis.

6o BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Little Armenia had ceased to exist. Only the empty
title of king remained, and the Armenian people. The
title passed downward through generations of Euro
pean noble families, changing from one to another^as
branches became extinct, until it became a possession
of the House of Savoy, whose heir is still technically
King of Little Armenia.

The people continued to live under the successive
dominations of Egyptians, Arabs, and Turks, and they
are still living in the mountain passes of the Taurus

range.

It was a fragment of these people, the Armenian
mountaineers of Zeitoun, in their impregnable, natural
fortress near Marash, who in 1915 rose against their
Turkish masters, and for three years fought such
battles and resisted such sieges as their ancestors had
known when King Leon reigned. The narrow moun
tain pass that they held against both Turks and Ger
mans was another Thermopylae, in the year 1917.
Only German siege artillery defeated them at last,
and even then they did not surrender, but, driven from
the cliffs by the terrific shelling, five thousand of them
fought their way out of the mountains and across
Cilicia to the seacoast There for ten days they held
out against the Turks, while a Red Cross flag that they
had made, appealed to the empty seas for help. A
French warship saw them at last, and carried the sur
vivors, numbering three thousand, to refugee camps
in Egypt, while the Germans who had captured several
of their leaders, solemnly executed them in Marash,

Such was the history, and such the people, of the

THE KINGDOM OF LITTLE ARMENIA 61

Armenia that centred around Marash when we went
into it. These three thousand were part of the stream
of refugees pouring back to their wrecked homes, under
the protection of the Allied flags.

Hardy and courageous and ignorant as they were
when Leon reigned, they still preserved, like Kurds
and Assyrians and many other remnants of ancient
empires hidden amid the mountains, the customs and
manners and traditions of their long-past glorious days.
Centuries had passed like years over their heads, leav
ing them unchanged, and still they thought of their
kingdom as a reality, and of the future as promising
them a revival of their old liberty and power.

HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY

MY first duty in Marash was the taking over of
the German missionary hospital. All Ger
man subjects in Turkey had been ordered to
leave; the British had taken the hospital and given it
to us.

It was painful to take it from the nurse who had put
twenty-one years of her life into it. She was a plain,
good woman, grown stout with middle-age, a smooth
line of graying hair beneath her nurse's cap- Through
the war she had stuck to her post, fighting increasing
disease with her dwindling stock of drugs and sup
plies; the pitifully empty shelves of pharmacy and
storeroom, the careful darns in sheets and towels,
showed how hard she had struggled.

She had left Germany as a young woman; her
whole life had gone into this medical missionary work
among Kurds and Turks and Armenians, and her Idea
of Germany had been made by twenty years of remem
bering her girlhood there. Now she was told that Ger
many was defeated, that she must give up her hospital
and leave Turkey. She could not believe the news,
Germany, her country, defeated? Her hospital, the
work of twenty years, her home, taken from her? She
went about the corridors and wards in a daze, packed

I

o

'

I

HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY 63

her few personal belongings, and left, a figure of mute
tragedy that was hard to forget.

The hospital was a three-story building of stone,
standing in a large compound with a fountain and
trees. In the higher part of Marash, it commanded
from its windows a view of the flat roofs and fruit
trees spreading down the slope below us, then the val
ley's bright, velvety green of ricefields, and the stupen
dous mountains.

The hospital was meticulously clean, though bare of
supplies. I inherited a good Armenian staff, nurses,
pharmacist and surgeon. When storerooms and phar
macy were filled with our goods, we set about enclos
ing the porches to make more wards, and opened a
clinic. In a few weeks our minds had adjusted them
selves to the strange colors of Marash, and life became
the usual, always interesting, routine of medical work.

News of our clinic went like a wind through the
mountains. Marash is the end of the one hundred and
fifty-mile-long wagon road that goes to the railway; be
yond Marash the mountain trails are often impassable
even on horseback. Yet it was from these mountains
that our patients came, and the clinic had not been
open a week when in the early mornings we looked
from our windows to see a mass of strange peoples be
sieging its door.

There were the Kurds, tall men and handsome
women in strange high head-dresses, who, even when
so ill that my American would have been unable to
walk, carried themselves with the dignity and pride of
royalty. There were the Armenians of Zeitoun, with

64 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

rifles on their backs and sashes bristling with more
weapons than seven hands could use; these came from
the mountain stronghold to which they had returned
from Egypt. There were always numbers of Turkish
women, covered with thick folds of black cloth.

As summer grew hotter my little Armenian inter
preter, Aznive, always picked out these Turkish women
and sent them in to me first. Until they were called
they would sit in the terrific heat, smothering under the
thick folds that covered their faces so that no breath of
air could reach them. In my office, one eye peeped out
to see that no man was there, then, with a great breath
of relief, the heavy veil went back and the white face
streaming with sweat appeared. Often I wondered
that they did not faint in the streets.

Then, as they answered my questions, there ap
peared all the amazing medical barbarities committed
on these helpless women by superstitious midwives
and neighbours as ignorant as they burnings, fright
ful operations ; doses of urine, dances of the dying,
driving out of the demons of delirium by pounding of
pans in the sickroom. Even the slightest medical
knowledge in Turkey would save every year millen
niums of torture of women,

They were so pitifully grateful for help that often
there were tears in my eyes, and a hundred times a
day I felt myself unworthy to be receiving the thanks
that really belonged to the women of America who had
sent me to Marash. In a few weeks I knew* by heart
the Turkish phrases meaning^ "I kiss your hands and
your feet; I am well."

HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY 65

After the Turkish women came the women of the
mountains. "Where do you come from?" I would
ask, when a costume more rich in colour and stranger
in line than usual appeared in the open door. Always
they answered, "Nine hours. 7 ' "Eleven hours." Never
the name of their people or their village., always the
distance in time. For so many hours, sometimes almost
dying, they climbed up and down the mountain trails
to reach the miracle of medical help. Often women
were brought in clinging to the bent back of husband
or brother, or carried in a blanket by two sons.

Adding to the colour of the hospital, there was the
lower floor kept by the British. In it Captain Ainslee,
the medical officer, had his wards of Hindoo and Sikh
soldiers, the famous Hodson's Horse from India. Late
at night when all the place was still, and only the
night nurses were on duty in the darkened wards,
the convalescents from this lower floor came out to
bathe in the fountain, and their ghostly figures were
seen in the moonlight, splashing with silent stealth in
the round pool under the trees.

But human beings are infinitely adaptable; long be
fore the summer heat had reached its greatest these
things were commonplaces, and living went om in
Marash as everywhere, with little personal attachments
and antagonisms, teatable gossip, horseback rides in
the evenings. There was a constant sniping at the
British soldiers and occasionally one was brought in
wounded; now and then the marketplace was sur
rounded and raided for Turkish arms, or in the night

66 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

detachments went from house to house, searching for
concealed weapons, "cleaning up the quarter." But
these became commonplace, too. As the ricefields grew
greener, blossoms gave way to fruit on the trees, and
the sunlight burned more fiercely on flat roofs and
scorching cobbles, the event of our days became after
noon tea on our cool, upper porch.

The British officers came, and the Americans of the
Near East Relief and the Mission Board. There were
the three nurses, Miss Shultz, Miss Morgan, Mrs.
Power, Dr. and Mrs. Wilson, Miss Dougherty, Mr.
Kerr and Mr. Snyder of the Near East Relief; Miss
Blakely and Miss Leid of the Mission Board, which
was maintaining in Marash an orphanage and a Rescue
Home for Armenian girls. Sometime during the sum
mer Dr. Crathern of the YJMC.A. arrived. So many
of our own people, with the Armenians who soon be
came our friends, made up a little group which, with
the pouring of tea and exchange of news and mirth,
gave almost an illusion of home*

On days when we had no guests, there was always
Dr. Artine, and many and animated were our discus
sions across the teacups. Dr. Artine, the Armenian
surgeon of our hospital, had quickly won our respect
and friendship. Trained in the American medical
school in Beirut, with post-graduate work in Ger
many, he was a surgeon whose skill touched genius; he
was also a cultured and gentle man, intelligent, widely
read, humorous. His house in Marash, kept by his
two sisters, was not only a beautiful home, but a

HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY 67

veritable museum of rare and marvellous things ; for
he was a connoisseur of rugs, Eastern paintings, and
porcelains.

The one thing on which we could not agree at all
was the Armenian question.

"No. No, I cannot believe that this is the end,"
he would say. "The real things that are happening
one can't see. There is something going on " I can
see him yet, sitting there, thoughtfully stirring his tea.
"We should be armed."

That was absurd, I thought. I said gently, "But the
British are disarming the Turks."

"Yes. Yes. But " He would set down the cup
and become passionate in his earnestness. "Remember
our history. You aren't an Armenian, how can you
understand? It has been the same thing for fifteen
hundred years, the same thing, repeated again and
again. We were caught between the Parthian Empire
and the Roman. We were between them; we could
not make an alliance with either without being attacked
by the other. The Persians massacred us, trampling
thousands to death with elephants. The Romans made
us pay tribute, and when we defeated Herod, we had
to make peace with a stronger Roman governor. The
Armenian Empire was crushed and divided between
Persia and Rome, and we have been a subject-people
ever since. We would have vanished from the earth
a thousand years ago, had it not been for our Church.

"That is why I belong to our Gregorian Church. As
an educated man, a modern man, of course, I know
that our Church has its faults. But the Church is

68 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Armenia, Armenia is the Church. I have no sympathy
with Armenians who leave it. As Armenians, it is out
duty to stay in our Church, to give it ail we have^of
modern knowledge, to keep it a living and growing
thing, the heart of our nation. But this is a digres
sion.

"What I am saying is, that the history of the
Armenian people is a history of being caught between
stronger nations and killed in their conflicts. That
was what happened to Great Armenia, that was what
destroyed the Little Armenian kingdom, here in these
mountains. Even when we were no longer free, we
were still used as weapons by foreign imperialists. For
half a century we have been pretexts, used by the poli
ticians of Europe and Russia as weapons against
Turkey.

"Russia did not want to save the Christians in
Turkey; she wanted Constantinople. That was the
Tsar's reason for claiming the right to protect Tur
key's Christian subjects. Austria, Germany, France,
England do you think they freed the Balkan States,
one by one, because they loved the Christian popula
tions, or because they were fighting each other for the
route to the East? Serbia was a Christian nation, and
Serbia freed herself from the Turk. But what started
the Great War? The struggle between Christian Aus
tria and Christian Russia for possession of Christian
Serbia; because Serbia was another step on that road
toward the East that all Europe was contending for.

"You keep asking me to rely on the promises of the
Allies. But we Armenians all the Christian subjects

HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY 69

of Turkey have relied on too many promises in the
past. What happened to us a hundred years ago?
When the Russian armies moved southward to Kars
and Erzeroum, the Armenians welcomed them with
tears of joy ; as brothers and deliverers. The Arme
nians fought with the Russians against Turkey. Then
Russia signed a treaty of peace with Turkey, the Peace
of Adrianople; the Russian armies retreated to their
new lines, and the Armenians of Van and Kars and
Erzeroum who did not escape were massacred by the
Turks.

"You keep telling me that now we are safe, that
now we are under the protection of the Christian
Powers of Europe. But Russia was a Christian Power;
Russia made the Sultans acknowledge her right to pro
tect Armenians in Turkey. Still, she did not protect
Armenians in Russia. She despoiled our Church, im
poverished our people, denied them civil rights, re
fused them education, and when they struggled for
religious liberty it was Christian Russia that organized
the Tartar massacres of Armenians in Russia. Russia
used us as a tool, to help her penetrate further into
Turkey, toward Constantinople. It was the only use
she had for us.

"Still, we do keep relying on the Christian Powers,
we do continue to believe their promises. In 1914?
when Russia moved southward again, all the northern
Turkish provinces, full of Armenians, welcomed the
Russian armies. AH over Turkey, wherever they could
get arms, Cie Armenians rose to fight for the Allies
as they did in Van as they did here in Zeitoun. Our

70 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

payment for that was the deportations, and the mas
sacresall that abominable and hideous suffering

"The Turks are cruel, they are barbarians. They
have always oppressed and robbed us. But they did
not begin to massacre us until they were driven into
a panic by fear of Europe. Europe encourages us,
teaches us to hope for freedom, arms us to fight for it
and for Europe and it is on us that the Turks take
their revenge. And still we believe, we hope, we walk
into the trap "

I used to become impatient with him. All these
things were in the past, I said. Why could he not
forget the past, and look forward into the future?
The war was won; the Allies were in Turkey. Ar
menia had been promised freedom and a national home,
and the Allies kept their promises. The time had come
to forget old sufferings and to begin to build.

"The Sultan has signed the treaty of Sfevres, but the
Turks in Angora haven't/' he replied gently.

There was an afternoon when I quite lost all pa
tience, and said, "Nonsense 1 Can't you realize that
the British Army is here? Look at it, look at the flags.
Can't you understand that all you have been talking
about is ended, finished, past? The Allies have won
the war, Turkey is beaten. There are the British guns
themselves, before your eyes. There are the British
soldiers, riding in the streets. There is the machine-
gun trained on the Vali's house. How can a Turk lift
a finger? There is nothing to fear. All those old
nightmares are ended. Do try to realize that it Is
really true."

HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY 71

It seemed to me that he had been so long accus
tomed to bloodshed and terror among his people that
he could not free his mind from their shadows he
could not realize that they were no longer realities, I
sincerely regretted this, for he was a man of excep
tional character and ability, a leader among the Ar
menian people, and my friend. When he could free
himself from these forebodings and throw himself
wholly into constructive work in the new Armenia, he
would be a tremendous power.

There were afternoons when we talked only of his
hope that Cilicia would be decided upon as the national
home of Armenia. There was, of course, no doubt in
my mind that they would be given some territory of
their own; it had been promised to them. Dr. Artine,
himself a native of Cilicia, naturally hoped that Cilicia
would be chosen, and when he gave his mind wholly
to the dream of what could be made of these moun
tains and fertile valleys as a home for free Armenia
his dark eyes kindled, his short enthusiastic sentences
showed his extraordinary grasp of commercial and in
dustrial facts, and his whole being radiated energy and
happiness.

The whole Armenian populations of Marash, Har-
poot, Aintab and their tributary villages had been
driven away and scattered and killed, during the de
portations. Those who lived had wandered through
Mesopotamia, Arabia, Palestine, even into Egypt*
Many thousands of them had lived in refugee camps
on the banks of the Suez Canal. Only when the Brit-

72 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

ish armies went into Turkey did they dare to return
to their abandoned and wrecked homes.

About twenty-five thousand of them had returned to
Marash before the end of the summer. Americans
were feeding them, clothing them, fighting the epi
demics among them ; helping them to establish order
again in their lives. They were a most thrifty, pa
tient, industrious people; the rapidity with which they
established themselves and became able to exist with
out accepting charity was remarkable. As I grew to
know them better, going into their homes and re
ceiving them in mine, I found many friends among
them.

There was Mrs. Solakion, the wife of the Armenian
Protestant pastor, a charming young woman who spoke
English as well as we did. She and her husband were
both graduates of American missionary schools. They
were a happy young couple, devoted to each other,
and their two little children, with pretty manners and
sturdy young bodies dressed in the dainty clothes she
made for them, reminded us of American youngsters
at home. Mrs. Solakion was expecting the birth of a
third child, and all summer long she was singing at her
work of making over the older babies' clothes for the
new one. Often in the evenings she and her husband
went for a walk, and stopped for a moment to call on
us. I can see them yet, coming across the compound
under the trees, her dark hair combed back from her
fine forehead and curling about her ears, and her young
husband in his ministerial coat and collar, so proud of
her and so careful of her.

HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY 73

Then there was the family of Varton, our buyer.
Varton was a serious, industrious man, tall and digni
fied in middle age, a prudent business man, devoted to
his family. The German hospital had saved them from
the deportations; for twenty-five years he had been
buyer of local supplies for the hospital, earning a
modest salary. He lived in a comfortable house on
our street, where his wife sewed and mended under
the trees in the courtyard, and in the evenings he
worked a bit in the garden. Thriftily they had saved,
during these twenty-five years, enough capital to buy
the house, and later a small amount toward the pur
chase of a farm, to which they wished to retire for a
peaceful, old age. Their children were grown, two
daughters married, a son established in business, only
one daughter left at home. Varton and his wife had
decided that, by selling the house, they could buy the
farm, and they used to drive out into the country to
look at this piece or that, offered for sale, and to weigh
carefully the various advantages of each.

By spring, Varton told me, they would have de
cided, and bought; we must look for another buyer.
He would be sorry to leave the hospital, he said, look
ing at it with the affection that comes from working
so long in one place. "But a man earns his right to
a comfortable old age, Dr. Elliott, and my wife and
I, we're getting along in years now. If ever we are
going to enjoy that farm, we had better begin soon.
Twenty-six years we have thought about having the
farm, now I think we are going to have it. I always
liked a farm. So if you decide who will take my

74 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

place here ; I can have Mm with me awhile, and show
him the work, before I go."

Within the walls of the hospital, too, we made many
friends, none the less really friends because of the
necessary formality between doctor and nurse, em
ployer and employed. I became as fond of Aznive,
my interpreter, as of a younger sister. She was a
quaint, little person, not pretty, but charming, and de
voted to us and to her work. Her brother, Luther,
was our assistant pharmacist, and it was pretty to see
her affection for him, "the man of the family," she
said proudly, all her other brothers and their father
having been killed in the deportations. Their mother,
who lived in the town, used to come to see them, and
then Aznive had little airs of modern efficiency, and
became, for the admiring eyes of her mother, quite a
different person from the timid little one who was
always so eager to run errands and to anticipate
wishes.

A characteristic of the Armenians which to me was
always beautiful, was their affection and reverence for
their mothers. Often one of my girls, as clever and
pretty and smartly dressed as any American girl, would
ask me to visit her home. She would like me to meet
her mother, she would say. With the tenderest of
pride, she would take me into some primitive,
Armenian house and present me to an old, toothless
woman wearing Armenian veils and bracelets and a
charm against the evil eye, and sitting on the floor
by the ashes of a fire* The girl would say, "My

HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY 75

mother/' as though she were a princess speaking of a
queen. I often thought that, in similar positions, few
American girls can be so unconsciously fine.

Always in a hospital there are little human dramas
of relationships between the nurses a My twelve Ar
menian girls were as many strong characters, merry
or morose, impulsive or reserved; they had but one
common characteristic devotion to their work. They
had been trained in American mission schools, and they
were a group of nurses as conscientious as one could
find in an American hospital.

Between two of them there was a curious friendship.
Both were named Mary, and to distinguish them they
were called Big Mary and Little Mary.

Big Mary was a hearty, energetic, outspoken girl,
large-handed and heavy-footed, and stout in her uni
form. Wherever she went good humour followed a
trail of quick retorts and blunt jokes. Her face was
lighted by a broad grin, and one came upon her un
expectedly to find her cap over one ear and a practical
joke on the point of exploding. She was like a sturdy
advance guard, for a long time protecting Little Mary
from our observation.

There was something so fragile and elusive about
Little Mary that one had the feeling of never quite
grasping her. Slender, light-footed, silent, she went
about the wards and slipped up and down the stairs
without a sound; we would hardly have known of her
being there had her work not been done swiftly and
perfectly. Cornered, she looked out from a delicately
pointed face through dark eyes so large that they were

76 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

startling, and then dropped long-lashed white lids over
them. She said, "Yes, Dr. Elliott/' "No, Dr. Elliott/'
and her white apron stirred to rapid breathing. Re
leased, she was gone instantly.

But one saw her, when she thought herself unob
served, talking to Big Mary. Then she was laughing,
animated, with gestures of slender hands, flashing of
eyes, a flush on the delicately modelled cheeks. Not
another girl in the hospital could win from Little
Mary any more response than we, but to Big Mary she
was another person. For a long time we wondered
at this strange attachment between the two girls, one
so obviously from a much higher social station than the
other.

Then one day I stepped to my office door, and saw
a tableau which vanished so quickly that I almost
doubted my eyes. A Turk, the husband of a patient
whose baby had been born that morning, was approach
ing the office. Around the turn in the corridor, walking
toward him, came Little Mary with a tray. His glance
fell on her, and Big Mary stepped between them, catch
ing the edge of the tray. My nerves had felt a dis
tinct, unreasoning shock; but there before my eyes
was the scene, entirely commonplace. I stepped back
into the office, and noticed that the Turk glanced back
over his shoulder as he came In.

The incident might have meant nothing at all But
at the next opportunity I asked Big Mary about it,
and she poured out the story. At the time of the
deportations, Little Mary had been living with her
people in the city. This Turk had seen her, and had

HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY 77

given orders that when the deportations started she
was to be brought to his house. In some way that I
forget, Big Mary heard of this, and sent a warning to
the other girl. Not only a warning, for Big Mary
had also sent word that if Little Mary could manage
to escape and reach the hospital, she would take her
in, and hide her under the protection of the German
missionaries.

Little Mary had stained her face and hands, smeared
her face with dirt, dressed herself in rags, and walk
ing bent over a cane like an old woman, she had evaded
the Turkish soldier set to watch the line of departing
women and to bring her back. Big Mary had been
watching for her all night, and just before morning
Little Mary reached the hospital gates and Big Mary
let her in. Ever since that time she had been living
in the hospital, unknown to the Turks.

"He asked me, after he left you," said Big Mary,
"if that wasn't Little Mary he had seen in the cor
ridor? I told him of course it wasn't; Little Mary
had been deported. He said it was a mystery what
had become of her; his man had followed the
Armenians for miles and looked at every one, and
swore that she was not among them after they left
Marash. He said that even now he would pay a great
deal to find her."

Having told so much, Big Mary further confided that
a certain young Armenian of good family was very
much in love with the girl. He had seen her several
times when he had called at the hospital to see Dr.
Artine. He desired to marry her, but his parents would

78 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

not allow Mm to take for a wife a dowerless girl who
worked in a hospital. They had chosen another girl
for him, but he refused to marry any one but Little
Mary.

I inquired as to what Little Mary thought of this.
Big Mary replied that she did not say, though she
had been seen looking at the young man in a way which
could not be called discouraging. Still, no girl would
be willing to marry into a family that did not want
her. If the parents could be brought to ask for her,
Big Mary thought that she would not refuse them.
Perhaps they might, some day, send to ask me for her.
Meantime, until the Turk's wife left the hospital, could
Little Mary be assigned to duties that would prevent
the danger of their meeting?

In view of the girPs natural feeling, it was a reason
able request, and the change was made. Furthering
the romance did not seem part of our duties, however,
and from occasional news of it volunteered by Big
Mary, it appeared that it was not progressing. The
young man's parents were obstinate, and marriage was,
of course, impossible if they would not ask for her*
Often, when I saw Little Mary flitting noiselessly down
the stairs or through a ward, I wondered at the ad
venture and romance concealed beneath her prim uni
form. None of her family had ever come back from
the deportations, she was quite alone save for Big
Mary, and I would have liked to befriend her. But
Big Mary was all sfie wanted.

The summer went past It is not necessary to say

HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY 79

that we all worked as hard as human beings can; the
crowded daily clinics, the wards, the operating room,
and all the details of their management, filled the days
and interrupted the nights. The good executive, in
medical work as in any other, should have little more
to do than the engineer in an electric plant who merely
sits listening to the humming of the smoothly running
dynamos. Only emergencies should require that he
work. But work in Marash was almost entirely emer
gencies.

There was, for instance, the constant problem of
transportation. Our supplies were coming over one-
hundred and fifty miles of mountain roads. For a
time the British thought of opening the road to Islahai,
the railroad station only seventy-five miles away, and
prices in Marash dropped sixty-six per cent merely be
cause of the rumour. But the road to Islahai was im
possible. We must continue to haul from Aleppo,
through Aintab.

Half-way between Aintab and Marash a little, Brit
ish military camp guarded the bridge over the Oxu
River. This bridge was so light that a heavy truck
was not allowed to go over it. Our goods came by
truck from Aleppo to the British camp, where they
were unloaded; then from Marash a little truck con
stantly ran back and forth, bringing them across the
bridge and on to us. Working as hard as it might and
Mr. Snyder drove it sometimes night and day this
little truck could do little more than keep the Ameri
cans of the Near East Relief supplied with the goods
used up in the work. Winter was coming, when we

8o BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

would be snowed in for months, unable to communi
cate at all with the outside world, and we could not
get into the warehouses the reserve stores we would
need.

This problem worried us for months. We tried
every expedient to hasten the transport, and made
many improvements, but that bridge remained an ap
parently immovable obstacle until one night, lying
awake, I thought of camels. A good transport camel
can carry half a ton. The problem was solved save
for the getting together of our caravan, bargaining with
camel-drivers and guarding the packs while in transit
and by the first of August the huge, vicious camels,
bedizened with velvet and chenille and blue bead neck
laces and chiming carefully tuned bells, were travelling
to and fro under the American flag, and kneeling with
grunts to be unloaded beside our warehouse doors.
We would have our goods in before the passes were
choked with snow.

The days went by. Babies were born in the ma
ternity ward. The sick recovered, were convalescent,
were discharged, and their places filled by that constant
river of misery which flows from the everyday world
into a hospital.

There was the shock and grief of terrible news one
morning. Two Americans had been killed on the road
from Aleppo. We had not known them; they were
Mr. Perry and Mr. Johnson, young men from America
coming to help Dr. Crathern start a Y.M.C.A, centre,
We, in Marash, had been expecting them ? welcome
newcomers just from home, and they were bringing

ONE OP THE CAMEL CARAVANS

By August the huge, vicious animals, bedizened with velvet and chiming carefully
tuned bells, were travelling to and fro under the American flag.

DOCTOR ELLIOTT AND EMACIATED PATIENT

The medical wdrlc at first was such work as may be done on a battlefield,
orphanage was a hospital, every child a patient. (See Page 177.)

Every

HOSPITAL ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY 81

in a moving picture outfit. We felt about that expec
tation of moving pictures as the adult feels about the
toys he buys for the children at Christmas time. Of
course the pictures were for the people of Marash, but
it had been a year since we had been able to see a
moving picture, and we would not pass the opportunity
with the indifference we had once shown toward it.
These two young men and the moving pictures were
expected to arrive one evening; their rooms had been
prepared for them and extra plates set on the dinner
table. They would perhaps bring mail, too. At least,
fresh news of America, which was so far away.

Instead, word came that their bodies had been found
riddled with bullets, in the wreck of their car with the
dead chauffeur. The moving picture outfit had been
torn to pieces and scattered for half a mile along the
road. Their boxes had been broken open, their clothes
taken. There was nothing else to tell the story of what
had happened to them, as they came driving up the
curving mountain road toward Marash.

No one knew who had committed this murder. It
may have been done by Turkish brigands, for the sake
of the few garments that were stolen. It may have
been done in a burst of hate against British officers,
by Turks who saw no difference between the British
flag and the American. We knew only the fact which
struck cold on our hearts, that these two Americans
had come to Marash in the spirit of Christ, to give
what they had to the dark peoples, and that they had
been killed by men who did not know who they were.

The little light they brought had been extinguished

82 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

by the darkness of Turkey. Somewhere in the moun
tains their murderers were dividing their garments,
and still asking each other, no doubt, what kind of
weapon that moving picture machine could have been.
They had killed two of us, as they had torn that ma
chine to pieces, without understanding what they had
destroyed.

VI
PEACE THAT IS NO PEACE

THE days went by. Dr. Artine operated in the
mornings, and in the afternoons still wavered
between hope and doubt for the promised
new Armenia. Aznive's charming gentle ways grew
daily dearer to us. Little Mary went about with a
demure air added to her shyness; it was noticeable
that the young man of whom Big Mary had told us
was calling more and more frequently at the hospital,
under various pretexts. Mrs. Solakion was splendidly
well, and showed us the layette, completed. Varton
and his wife had chosen their farm, and were conclud
ing the long bargaining of its purchase and the sale
of their house.

In September, Miss Morgan and I went on a two
weeks' leave. Returning, we were met in Aleppo with
news that the British were withdrawing from Cilicia.
Captain Ainslee, also returning from leave, had re
ceived a message to wait in Aleppo; his personal be
longings were being brought out with the troops who
would reach Aleppo next day.

This was a thunderclap. Two weeks earlier the
British in Marash had been building stables and pre
paring quarters for the winter. The British occupa
tion had seemed to every one to be as permanent as

83

84 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

the mountains. Now, without notice, they were leav
ing. Cilicia had been given to France by treaty with
England, early in the Great War; now the French
were to hold it. But how, in less than two weeks,
could the transfer have safely been made? And why
were the British withdrawing so suddenly, without
notice, without time for the French to establish them
selves and take command of the situation?

Rumours flew in Aleppo as wildly as leaves before a
storm. Charges and countercharges were made; it
was said the French accused the British of attempting
to hold Cilicia permanently, regardless of the treaty;
it was said that the British, forced to relinquish it,
were intentionally doing so in such a manner that the
French could not hold it. It was said that the French
had sold arms to Angora; it was said that the British
were arming the Turks in Marash. Everything was
said that could be said or imagined. Nobody, of
course, knew the truth. Probably only a very few
diplomats, safe in Paris and London, do know the
truth. The one hard fact was that the British were
withdrawing.

The advice of both Americans and English in Aleppo
was unanimous: "Don't go back to Marash, Don't
leave the railroad." A British officer who was my
friend went so far as to say that if I were his sister
he would keep me out of Marash by force. He said
this while the automobile waited, for naturally there
could be no question of our abandoning the hospital,

Once more Miss Morgan and I set out on the long
road to Marash. It was autumn now; a hint of ap~

PEACE THAT IS NO PEACE 85

preaching winter in the air seemed to reflect the colour
of our thoughts. At Aintab we met the British troops,
coming out. The long line, smart in uniform and the
gleam of groomed horses, came down the road. On
a low hill Colonel Rowecroft was standing, reviewing
his troops as they passed. He asked us to join him,
and we stood watching our friends of that long sum
mer leaving us, each erect in his saddle, eyes forward,
hand stiff in salute as he passed his colonel. If there
were no tears in our eyes, there were in our hearts, and
Colonel Rowecroft, saying, "It's hard for them to leave
this way," sent word down the column, "Kiss your
hands to the ladies."

So all the rest, as they came past, broke salute to
wave their hands to us, and turned in their saddles to
wave, and wave again. The last of them went down
the road, followed by the long line of artillery and the
pack trains of transport camels. We said "Good-bye"
to Colonel Rowecroft, and went on toward whatever
might be happening in the mountains.

That night there was a spatter of rifle fire just out
side the hospital gates, and two wounded Turks and
two bodies were brought in to us. There had been
an encounter between the Turks and the newly-arrived
French. I think no French were wounded that night;
later, when they were, they were always taken to the
French hospital in barracks. After that time, no night
passed without an outbreak of rifle fire in Marash.

Week by week as these little encounters increased,
it was apparent that the Turks were steadily growing

86 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

bolder. Even in the streets their manner changed;
they still stepped aside for the European uniform, but
their manner of doing so had insolence in it. The same
Turks who had meekly given up their arms in the
marketplace and allowed the English to search their
houses, now showed resistance and fired on French sol
diers who were doing the same thing. The one ques
tion of the teatables was, "Where do the Turks get
their arms?"

The French openly said that the English had armed
the Turks before leaving Marash, or, at least, the
English had either purposely refrained from thor
oughly disarming the Turks, or that, after disarming
them and receiving orders to leave, they had left the
collected rifles and ammunition in places where the
Turks could find them. To our indignant protests
against such a charge, the French retorted, "Then
where are the Turks getting their arms?"

We were left to choose between two theories. Either
this monstrous accusation was true, or the British, dur
ing eight months of martial law in Marash, had been
unable to disarm the Turks. For the Turks were
certainly amply supplied with rifles and ammunition;
fine German rifles, which must have been in the coun
try since the war.

I have only one thing to say about this question.
The English officers in Marash were gentlemen, and
our friends; the French officers were gentlemen, and
our friends. I cannot believe anything unworthy or
dishonourable about either of them. But this I do
know; the responsibility for what has occurred in

PEACE THAT IS NO PEACE 87

Turkey since that time rests on those men who were
meeting in diplomatic conferences in Europe. The
details do not matter. The fact remains that a united
Christian Europe might have shown, in the muddle
of old hatreds which is the Near East, a spirit of co
operation and honesty before which any effort of the
Turk would have fallen defeated. Instead, Europe
brought nothing new to Turkey. The game played by
the European Powers was the old game of hatreds and
greeds with which the Near East has been familiar
since Nineveh worshipped Baal. France, England,
Italy and Greece behaved like thieves quarrelling over
their spoils, and their quarrelling was the Turks' op
portunity.

Is this dishonourable greed inseparable from the for
eign policies of Empires? Would America have shown
it, too, if she had not withdrawn from the game and
gone home? Would it have been possible for America
to have taken an active part in this involved and des
perate struggle of the Peace, without losing her ideals
in the necessity for expediency? I do not know. In
the temptations and passions of the situation, she, too,
might have failed. Officially, America was in the Near
East only as an onlooker.

But the American people were there, working
through organizations as powerful as those of many
European states, and the American people were the
one voice in the Near East that was speaking for
Christianity. The American people were working, not
for Mesopotamia's oil-fields, not for the Bagdad rail
way and a trade-route to the East, not for Cilicia's

88 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

mines and farms, not for Syria's cotton and dates, but
for humanity.

It Is nineteen hundred years since Christ said, "A
new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one
another. By this shall all men know that ye are my
disciples, that ye have love one to another." And
after nineteen hundred years, there comes out of the
West from the youngest of the nations that have
risen beyond the rim of the world since Christ spoke-
one voice that echoes His words, one force that acts
upon them.

It came to this; that in Marash, in Adana, Aleppo,
Konia, Beirut, in scores of cities dotting the map
from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and the
Caspian, there were groups of Americans in hospitals,
caring for the sick of all the peoples; groups of us
in schools, teaching the children of all the races;
groups of us feeding and clothing the hungry and the
naked. This was America's part in the Near East;
the people of one Christian nation following Christ's
commandment.

This is a beginning; this is a new thing on earth.
Christ spoke to individuals, in an individualistic world.
We have made the machine-age, the age of organiza
tions. But we have not lost the spirit of Christ's
words. To the land where the travelling Samaritan
got down from his horse to bind up the wounds of
one dying by the roadside, America sends fleets of
freighters bringing thousands of tons of corn, thou
sands of tons of clothing, hundreds of tons of medi
cines and modern hospital equipment. The individual

PEACE THAT IS NO PEACE 89

is lost in the organization; the spirit is unchanged, but
its work is widened. Once steam lifted a kettle lid;
now it turns the wheels of ten thousand cities.

So I say that I am not discouraged, even by the
great failure of the Christian Powers of Europe in
the Peace, even by the sufferings and greeds and cruel
ties that seem to be overwhelming the world. For
this new thing, this spirit of Christ working in the
modern world, will not be lost. Every bit of unselfish
giving, every conquest of our own, small greeds and
pettinesses, contributes to its growth. One day it will
conquer the world.

Americans at home will think it strange that in the
midst of all these excitements in Marash, our lives
went on quite as usual. A murder on your doorstep,
a crackle of rifle fire at midnight in our peaceful sleep
ing town, would leave nerves unstrung and minds fever
ish for a long time. In the Near East these things
quickly become commonplace, even to Americans. For
a few nights you leap from your bed when the rifles
speak; then you waken, listen, go to sleep again. A
morning comes when some one says, "Did you hear the
shooting last night?" and you reply, while pouring
the coffee, "No, I must have been asleep. Why, was
it serious?"

Our clinic was crowded as always in the mornings;
in the wards babies were born, fevers were bathed;
Dr. Artine in sterilized surgeon's garb saved lives as
usual in the operating room. The tea hour profited by
the last cooling rays of the sun on our upper porch,

9 o BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

and we were still trying to soothe Dr. Artine's appre
hensions.

He had become so outspoken that the French au
thorities had sent for him and ordered him to keep his
anxieties to himself. The Armenians of Marash were
gathering around his leadership, a leadership undesired
on his part, which had grown naturally from his ability
and character. They were asking, begging, for arms.

"But you, yourself, can see that it is impossible," I
said, trying to soften the French refusal "The French
cannot arm the Armenians; it would mean riots im
mediately."

"Yes perhaps a few small outbreaks, here and
there " There were new lines in his face, in a few
weeks he looked years older. "But a few sporadic
riots would not be as bad as what is coming. Can't
you realize can't you realize that we will be helpless,
unable to protect our women and our children, when
it comes? Helpless as we have always been. I tell
you, we have walked into the same trap once more,
and now we watch it closing on us."

We thought him too pessimistic. The situation ap
peared serious, but not desperate. The French troops
were there; Turkey was, after all, a conquered country
and a weak one, confronted by the whole armed power
of Europe. French and English in their personal en
counters might be temperamentally antagonistic; there
might be quarrelling over shares of conquered territory.
But it was incredible that France and England would
not hold the united front of Christendom against Mos-

PEACE THAT IS NO PEACE 91

lem Turks, Germany's defeated allies. Dr. Artine's
forebodings were not so engrossing to us just then as
the flowering of Little Mary's romance.

One morning Mr. Solakion had called on me in my
office. Mrs. Solakion was quite well, he said; we had
long before made the arrangements for receiving her
in the hospital. He had not come to see me about
that, but to make an extraordinary request. It was
one which, after long thought and prayer, he felt it
proper to make. The young man who loved Mary had
long ago asked him to help persuade his parents to
permit the marriage. The young man was a sincere
Christian, honourable and kind, and he deeply loved
Little Mary. Mr. Solakion had done his best, for sev
eral months, to persuade the parents. He had failed.
Nothing would induce them to ask the hand of Little
Mary for their son. On the other hand, the son had
sworn, in the presence of his parents and Mr. Sola
kion, never to marry any other woman. He had begged
Mr. Solakion to ask me for her.

Mr. Solakion said that, of course, only the most
extraordinary circumstances would lead him to sug
gest such a defiance of parental authority. But he
believed that the marriage would have God's approval
and blessing. (He was very much the radical in social
and religious questions, was Mr. Solakion.) He as
sured me that the young man would make a good hus
band and father. Would I consent to give him Little
Mary?

9 2 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

I said that if he advised it, and Little Mary wished
it, I could have no objection to the marriage. I would
send for Little Mary and ask her.

She came in, and stood before my desk in her uni
form and cap, looking down at her clasped hands, while
I explained to her Mr. Solakion's errand, and my atti
tude. Then she looked at me with those startlingly
large eyes, and said, "I do not want to marry him."

I could not believe my ears. I asked her gently if
she were quite sure? She replied steadily that she was
sure, that she did not wish to marry any one, and least
of all that young man. I heard her with amazement
and incredulity. Could it be possible that Little Mary
had been merely amusing herself at his expense?

There was nothing to do but accept her refusal, and
we did so. Mr. Solakion's astonishment equalled mine;
he murmured that certainly he had been given to un
derstand ... He interrupted himself to inquire, how
could he break this news to the young man? He left,
having received no answer to the question.

Nothing more would have been heard of the matter,
had not a distressing change come over Little Mary.
Her face had always been delicately modelled, but in
two days it became gaunt. Instead of flitting in and
out, she was seen dragging herself piteously about, like
some small, wounded animal. Her eyes became ab
normally large, with a look of fever in them. She was
obviously ill. I urged her with all the sympathy I felt
to tell me what was making her so. She replied that
she was quite happy, and quite well I could only let
her go, and appeal to Big Mary.

PEACE THAT IS NO PEACE 93

"She loves that young man/' Big Mary said
promptly. "She cries all night and does not eat. She
will die if she can't marry him."

"But she can marry him! I told her myself that
she need only say 'Yes.' "

"She is a good girl/' said Big Mary. "How can she
say that she is willing to marry a man whose parents
don't want her?"

The situation evidently called for decisive parental
action from me. It had been an error to deal with an
Armenian romance as with an American one. I called
Little Mary into my office again, and firmly told her
that I had decided she was to marry the young man;
the engagement date was set. Little Mary flung her
arms around me and soaked the front of my uniform
with joyful tears. Between her sobs she said that she
was the happiest girl on earth, and that she would love
me all her life.

She was radiant. She did not slip down the stairs
any more, she seemed literally to fly down them. She
was everywhere, like the fluttering of a bird, and now
and then she was astonishingly heard singing as spon
taneously as one. She openly hugged all the girls,
she loved them every one, she loved the patients, she
loved the whole world. Preparations for the wedding
went on apace, bits of precious lawn came from our
trunks, Armenian lace was contributed on every hand.
The young man, of course, decorously stayed away
from the hospital, Little Mary had not seen him again,
but on Tuesday afternoon the betrothal was to be cele
brated. Mary's dress was ready, spread on the bed in

94 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Mrs. Power's room, guests had been invited, an Ameri
can cake had been made and splendidly set forth in
our dining room, where the feast was to be held*

At two o'clock, in Mrs. Power's room, we were dress
ing Mary. I had slipped carefully over her head the
white dress, and Mrs. Power was fastening it down the
back, when a shot was fired outside our gate, and like
an echo of it the whole of Marash answered with
rifles. We had time only to look at each other's
whitening faces, when machine-gun fire began to
ripple through the crackling of the rifles.

For a few minutes events came so fast that I have
no consecutive memory of them. Against some pro
test from us, the French had placed a machine gun on
our upper floor soon after their arrival in Marash.
The gunners were firing this gun. I reached that floor
to find bullets whistling through it. Miss Salamund,
an English missionary, seventy years old, in bed with
a broken hip, was calling for me. Dr. Wilson was com
ing up the stairs. I said, "We had better take Miss
Salamund down." A bullet just missed me and went
through her door, and I said, "We must take her
down."

We picked her up, on her mattress, and carried her
into the hall. One of the machine gunners staggered
out to us with a bullet through his lung. We took
Miss Salamund down the stairs, and came back to
look after him. One of our French sentinels was lying
dead in our open gate. The man next door had stepped

PEACE THAT IS NO PEACE 95

out into the street to bring in his cow, and he too was
lying killed.

I went out on our tea porch to speak to the other
French sentinel, telling him to move the dead men and
close our gates, and a storm of fire came at me. Ap
parently the Turks had taken me for a soldier; I could
not believe that they would have fired on me, knowing
who I was. Too many sick Turkish women were even
then in my care.

All this time the firing roared and crackled; all
Marash seemed to be exploding like an enormous mass
of giant fire-crackers. We brought most of the pa
tients into downstairs rooms where they would be pro
tected by the compound walls; the others we laid on
mattresses on the floor, where they would be out of
range of the windows. Bullets were singing like mos
quitoes around us; it seemed a miracle that none of
us were wounded.

Hours went on, and the steady continuance of the
firing became incredible. It had begun so suddenly
that every instant we expected it to cease with the
same abruptness. We waited tensely for at least a
lull in it, an opportunity to catch our breath and some
how arrange to bear it.

Dr. Artine was in the town, and had not come back.
Indeed, it was impossible for any one to move in the
streets; the whole population of Marash stayed where
it had been caught by the abrupt storm of battle.
When sunset and darkness brought no slackening of
the firing, we brought our mattresses downstairs and

96 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

spread them on the floor of the room in which we had
given Miss Salamund the bed. The battle, we thought,
might continue all night.

About nine o'clock, a visitor came dropping over our
rear compound wall Lieutenant Counarai, a young
French officer. He brought very little news of what
was occurring, except that trouble had begun the night
before on the road to Aleppo. He had been riding out
with Mr. Snyder, on the way to demobilization in
France, when they were fired upon. A bullet had
struck the steering wheel, and another had grazed Mr.
Snyder's forehead. They had turned and come back
at full speed around the curves of the mountain road/
and they had been fired upon for half a mile. This
indicated that the outbreak was in the mountains as
well as in Marash ; and that the French might have
some hard fighting to put it down. But young Lieu
tenant Counarai was delighted not to have missed the
scrap, and one could see his delight in the adventure
of it as he bade us "Good night" and scaled our back
wall again, leaving us to what rest we could get on
our mattresses.

When I made the last rounds for the night, I passed
Little Mary, again in her uniform. She was carrying
a tray with bowls of water and sponges going to
bathe a fever patient, she said.

The second morning brought us realization of the
situation. Until then, we had been much too busy and
too excited to think of ourselves. But the steady sound
of rifles and machine guns, still continuing after thirty-

PEACE THAT IS NO PEACE 9?

six hours, had settled Into a grimness more terrifying
than its violent outbreak. When we sat up on our
mattresses that morning Mrs. Power and I looked at
each other, with the same unspoken thought. It was
quite possible that we would not live to leave Marash.
Death is one of the unimaginable things like in
finity. No one ever believes that he will die, however
well we all know we shalL I thought of my own people,
in America, and was troubled about their worry and
the impossibility of sending them a message. When I
had made my rounds that morning I laid paper and
pencil on my desk, determined to make a record of
these events for them, and from time to time during
the days that followed, whenever I had a spare mo
ment, I wrote. The scribbled sheets give the picture,
I think, more clearly than any remembered descrip
tions.

VII
DIARY OF SIEGE OF MARASH

JANUARY 22, 1920. This is Thursday, and the
trouble began here Tuesday. Since then it has
not been safe to leave the protection of our walls.
Lieutenant Counarai was sent out from barracks last
night to bring in wounded. He did not find any, but
tried to return with eight marooned Algerians. When
he reached the hospital with them only three were
left; the other five had been killed. He says the
streets are full of dead. Miss Blakely and Miss Leid
were in town when the firing began; they have got
back as far as the house across the street from us.
They were seen at the window once, yesterday. There
is a steady storm of bullets down the street between us.

It was a mistake to put up the machine gun here,
for naturally the Turks have the hospital covered.
We asked to have it removed, and it was taken away
over the back wall the first night, but the Turks do
not know that. Last night French headquarters sent
to us for dressings for their wounded. We had to go
into the operating room with a light to get them, and
there was a shower of bullets until we got out. I am
sure the Turks thought we were the machine gunners.

The French are using all their machine guns and
cannon; a constant fusillade. Bullets never cease their

98

DIARY OF SIEGE OF MARASH 99

whining, and the cannon shots rattle our windows. The
Turks have two or three machine guns but no cannon,
I understand.

The Turks first tried to get over the mountains. We
saw them through our glasses, soldiers advancing in
regular formation. They were driven back by French
shelling. Now it is the Turks already in Marash who
are fighting. They are entrenched in houses all over
the city, and it is very difficult for the French to dis
lodge them.

All day long the French have been shelling the hills.
It is terrible and beautiful to see the flash of fire and
roll of black smoke against the white mountains. The
Turks cannot advance by daylight against such fire,
and at night the French have patrols out. The diffi
culty is in this fighting everywhere in a city of walled
courtyards.

We have one hundred and seventy-five persons in
our household; patients, employes and visitors who
were here when the battle began, with stray ones who
have managed to reach us since. The people in the
next house made a hole in the compound wall and got
through it to us. One poor Armenian came in last
night. He and his wife and children lived in a little
adobe hut beside the house from which the Turks are
firing on us. The Turks broke down his door and shot
him. They thought they had killed him and went
away. He crawled out through the Turkish cemetery
to us.

All these people have some one they love, outside.
My poor women patients, worrying about their families

ioo BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Aznive's mother and little sister are in the city, if
they are still alive. Luther, her brother, is here. A boy
of sixteen, who looks twenty-one now. He is in our
pharmacy, and was here when the fighting began.
Aznive is brave as can be, without a thought for her
self, but Luther stays in the basement.

Our telephone wires were cut at the beginning of
the outbreak and the French have no wireless, so
Marash is completely cut off from the rest of the
world. Perhaps you have had no news of this, and
are not worrying at all, but going about happily as
usual; I hope so. America is such a happy place.

January 24. Last night was incredible. This morn
ing we looked out at the hills and mountains, amazed
that they are still there, unchanged. Such a roaring
and splintering all night through. The firing gets
worse steadily.

There are five big fires now homes of influential
Turks. These fires must have their effect, for they are
impressive to see. But one cannot account for the
Turks. The second morning of this, two of them came
to the French barracks under a white flag, and said
the Turks wanted to stop fighting. The French heart
ily agreed, and the bugles blew "Cease firing." Then
the Turks didn't cease.

The French could only begin firing again. I think
there is no one in authority who can stop the Turks,
now that they have begun to fight. The trouble began
when the French arrested five leading Turks here*
This morning two of them asked to be released, say
ing that they could stop the battle. The French let

DIARY OF SIEGE OF MARASH 101

them go, and they went out into the town. No word
has come back from them.*

Sunday morning, Jan. 25. The French torches have
started many more fires in Turkish houses, and a bat
tery shelled the house from which the Turks have been
firing on us. Our front yard was so full of smoke
that we could not see the compound gate. The shells
passed directly over us with a terrific noise. Two shells
went through the roof of the Turkish house and one
through the wall.

Just after supper last night, Mr. Kerr and Mr.
Snyder got through to us, with an Algerian soldier.
They had come to rescue Miss Blakely and Miss Leid
from the house across the street, and to take back
to Dr. Wilson supplies for the wounded. He is in the
Children's Hospital and it is filled with wounded
French. That hospital and French headquarters are
in the same compound, and directly across the street
is the college, all protected by high walls. So all those
Americans can communicate with each other so nicely.
Poor Miss Buckley is quite alone in Bethshallum or
phanage, far away at the other end of the city. No
news has got through from her.

It seemed years before the two men got back with
Miss Blakely and Miss Leid. They had to go a long
way around, under cover as much as possible. We
worked all the time, packing supplies for Dr. Wilson.
When they got back Mr. Kerr was very discouraging,
saying that a general massacre of Armenians is ex
pected. Mrs. Power and I have talked it over, and

* They were never heard of again.

io2 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

decided that those two men are mere infants, trying
to make things seem as bad as possible.

All night long the skies are red-lighted in every
direction by the raging fires, and the cannons roar and
the heavens shake. Around our hospital at the other
end of Marash everything must be completely burned
away. The whole city Is overhung with clouds of

smoke.

The French are hoping for reinforcements to-day,
over the Islahai road. Yesterday they sent out two
Armenians disguised as Turks to meet the troops and
guide them in.

Monday, January 26. Every hour produces a new
big fire. One by one the French are picking out the
Turkish houses and burning them. It fills us with
amazement to see the precision with which the French
place torch after torch all over the city. This morn
ing we saw scores of Armenians loaded with bedding
and household things, running through Turkish fire
into one of our orphanages in a few minutes a large
Turkish house was a mass of flames, right among the
adobe houses the Armenians had left.

A soldier has just come with a note from Varton,
our buyer. He has a number of refugees and soldiers
in his house. He sent word that all is well there, and
that he is anxious about us; if we need anything we
are to send to him.

January 27. Who would have thought this could
continue so long! Last evening we were quite cheered
by a visit from Captain Arlabose, the French doctor.
The French have cut through walls and made a pas-

DIARY OF SIEGE OF MARASH 103

sage way to us. He came through that. After he had
gone he sent back a present of two huge Senegalese
guards and an orderly.

We were just settled for the night when there was a
knocking at our gate. I went out to order it opened,
and found an Armenian, badly wounded. He reported
massacres in his part of the city. While I was dress
ing his wounds, Mr. Snyder came with a letter from
Dr. Wilson; it confirmed the massacres, but tried to
be encouraging. The French have sent our Armenians
dressed as Turkish gendarmes to Islahai with telegrams
to Adana for reinforcements and to Beirut for air
planes. We pray God they may be successful in get
ting them.

All night, Armenians kept coming in with stories of
massacre. To-day the guns are silent, except for scat
tering shots, and I find myself longing for the sound
of the artillery. It would keep the Turks from their
devil's work.

Mrs. Power is a trump, and my one comfort here. If
she were the dependent kind I don't think I could
stand it. I feel that when I get out of this, if I ever
do, I shall never take responsibility again.

I have ordered a tree cut down. We have hardly
any wood left. Cooking only two meals a day, for
patients and all.

January 28. How our spirits go up and down! To
day we are all so happy. News came from one of the
big churches; there are nearly two thousand Armenians
there, safe so far. And I feel they will be. Dr. Artine
is with them. There are two big churches, and the

104 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Armenians have dug an underground passage between
the two, and the French have given them arms, so they
have been able to defend themselves. We are all so
glad. Their houses have all been burned, but nobody
cares about that, with this wonderful news that their
dearest are alive.

There is no news yet from Little Mary's fiance.

Later; We are getting stragglers from the massacres.
It is very terrible. There has been another big mas
sacre at the other side of the city, and we can only
pray that some of the men have been able to escape
into Miss Buckley's orphanage.

I wrote that, without thinking what I was saying.
At home one thinks of women and children first. That
is because we Americans are so blessedly safe all our
lives. I did not understand until now the stories of
Armenian men saving themselves in massacres and
leaving their women behind. We used to think it
cowardly. It isn't; it is an instinct of race-preserva
tion. The Turks always try to kill the men and boys;
the women have a chance of living then their chil
dren will be Turks but the men have none at all
The first thing Armenian women think of is to save the
men and boys.

I was wrong to blame Aznive's brother, to think that
he was cowardly. He is not. Aznive told me to-day,
"Every time I have a minute I run down to tell him,
'Luther, remember your mother. Take care of your
self. 3 " He is the only man left alive in their family,
he is the family. He must not take any risks with his
life. Aznive runs about everywhere, but she keeps

DIARY OF SIEGE OF MARASH 105

telling him that he must stay in the basement where
it is safe.

We have news to-day of Mr. Solakion. He was just
at our gate, coming to betroth Little Mary, when the
shooting began. The guards tried to persuade him
to come in, but he said he must get back to his family.
I don't know details, but evidently he was caught in
the thick of the fighting and had to take refuge in a
near-by house. Night before last, Mrs. Solakion came
crawling into the Children's hospital with five stab
wounds and three bullet wounds; her two children were
stabbed to death. She fell in a ditch and lay in the
water for a long time. She was to have another child,
and they operated and took the baby. She will prob
ably die. Yesterday some one learned where Pastor
Solakion was, and last night Mr. Kerr and Mr. Snyder
went to get him. They say he will perhaps lose his
mind.

Captain Arlabose came again yesterday morning,
and also last night. He is a comfort. He sent more
men last night to help guard the houses next us. They
are full of refugees their basements, of course. No
one dares go upstairs because of the bullets. These
people are added to my family and come to me for
everything. A soldier came just now to ask if he might
fire on the Turkish house from which the Turks are
firing on us. It is fortunate that I am a soldier's
daughter.

January 29. No change in the situation, and the
massacres continue. But last night brought the happi
ness of news that reinforcements are near; cannon at

io6 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

a distance have been heard by many different persons.
The Turks are bolder all the time. Surely it is be
cause they realize that this is the end for them, and
are desperate 1

We get horrible stories from Armenians who are
escaping the massacres. I try to keep them from be
ing repeated, but the basement and compound is full
of people, and of course they will talk.

The wife of the photographer who has done all my
kodak printing since I have been here came in with
one child, the oldest, a little girl about seven. She
sits all day, staring. We have given her work to do,
but she cannot do it. She had to leave all her other
children, one a nursing baby ; and come with this one.
The Turks had surrounded the quarter, and were to
begin the massacre next morning. The Armenians had
no weapons. They talked it over, and decided to try
to escape. To do it, they had to crawl, one by one,
between two Turkish guards, so close that the Turks
could have touched them. One of the old Armenian
men took control, and chose the ones to go. Only
the men, and the women and children who could con
trol themselves and keep quiet, were allowed to go.
If one of them made the slightest noise, they would
all be lost. So this woman had to choose between
dying with her little children, or escaping with just
this one and leaving the others. One might say she
had better stay and die. But then she could not have
saved this one. Her husband was not there, but she
had word that he is safe in the church. She will have
to face him and tell him what she did.

DIARY OF SIEGE OF MARASH 107

Fifty-eight Armenians got out; they were crawling
out all night, creeping without a sound past the Turkish
guards in the dark.

January 30. We have no further news of anything.
The French are only trying to hold out until reinforce
ments come. They know that they can never subdue
the Turks here without help. In the meantime they
are burning the city bit by bit A thousand Armenians
are in the American college compound now. They are
being fed one meal a day from our supplies. A mes
sage has just come asking if I can furnish salt? For
a thousand? No.

A poor old woman came in this morning, crawled to
our gate. She had two bullet wounds, and every bit of
skin was worn from her knees, where she had crawled
on them to get to us.

We are straining our ears for the sound of an air
plane or big guns on the plain. Will they come? Have
the telegrams got through? What does the outside
world know about us? Oh ? one can't stop and think.

January 31. And things much the same. We are
a little more crowded by the Turks. I had a distressed
note from Varton; they are hard-pressed.

Mrs. Solakion has died. My photographer has been
killed.

Last night was the coldest we have had this winter
a biting wind, and everything frozen. To-day is a
little warmer and I do hope it will stay so, for the
suffering is tenfold in the bitter weather. From now
on, there will be many dying of starvation, for this is
the tenth day.

io8 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Last night our squadron of nine men was keyed up
almost to breaking point. Our back door neighbours
were doing something, we did not know what. One of
our men was killed, a black. To think that he was
born in Africa, to die here in a French uniform, pro
tecting us! To-day, we learn that many more Turks
got into the clump of houses behind us.

February i. Just as day was breaking, one of the
night nurses came to say that Varton's house was on
fire. The next thing was that Varton was wounded.
We took in more than a hundred refugees from Var-
ton's house. His wound is not dangerous, a shot in the
thigh. We operated; had to lay the flesh open from
hip to knee, but he will be all right after a few weeks
in bed.

Yesterday two Zeitoun men came through the trench
from the French barracks, both with flesh wounds.
They are magnificent men, mountaineers, tall, strong
and very proud. They told me, while I dressed their
wounds, that the men of Zeitoun are fighting again,
have been fighting since the Turks attacked the French
here. They had no more ammunition, and these two
men have come in to get some from the French. They
came through the Turkish lines in the night, and were
wounded, but got away. They want to go back to
night. Zeitoun can hold out for ever, they say, if only
they can have ammunition.

An Armenian woman just came to me, so Indignant
because she knows some one in the neighbourhood who
has a large stock of food and is keeping it. I said,
"Do they want us to buy it? 5>

DIARY OF SIEGE OF MARASH 109

"Buy it! "she said. "Why should you buy it? Take
it by force. Is this a time to buy and sell?" She is
feeding fifty people in her house next door.

A time like this brings out characteristics that are
usually hidden selfishness, nobleness, greed ; self-re
straint, courage. Sometimes, I hate the whole world
when I see some one, in all this strain and danger,
doing a mean, petty thing; but always, a little later,
some one does something so big and fine that I feel
it is worth while to be here. If it is the finish, it is the
finish, that's all. One of the girls said something
big last night. Something made her think that Mrs.
Power and I were leaving, abandoning them all. Mrs.
Power said, "We wouldn't do that, Margaret," and
she answered so sweetly, "Even a mother leaves her
children at a time like this."

A note just came from Dr. Wilson asking if we have
a man on the place whom we could send out to Aintab
as a messenger with an appeal to Admiral Bristol?

February 2. Yesterday Dr. Wilson sent his message
out by the Zeitoun men who came in day before yes
terday. The French sent out another call for help by
them, too. We are not told whether they will get 'the
ammunition they came to get for Zeitoun.

The woman who had to abandon her children heard
to-day that her husband is dead, killed in fighting. She
is alone now, with the one child, but he never knew
what she had done.

February 4. An unusually quiet night. The church
Is still safe, and the twenty-five hundred Armenians
there have food. A messenger got through from them

no BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

again to-day. We have been unable to get any com
munication with Miss Buckley in Bethshallum orphan
age.

Two weeks this afternoon since this started. The
French are gradually gaining ground again, even with
out reinforcements. If they are able to win before
help comes, it will have a more crushing effect on the
Turks all over Turkey.

We have a French boy here, very ill with pneumonia,
and we feel that we cannot bear it if he dies. He
looked at me so pathetically the first night and said,
"Me, I have been counting the days until I could get
back to beautiful France, and now I will die here."
He will go back to France if care and will power can
save him.

February 5. Very good news yesterday. Captain
Fontaine is in the lower part of the city, back from
Islahai, and Captain Hervier is back with his airmen
from Aintab, Both have wounded men, but none lost.

February 6. An airplane has appeared overhead.

It flew around and dropped messages. We don't
know whether the French found them or not. There
is nothing so wonderful as an airplane, The Turks
fired on it. We thank God that they have no aircraft
guns. It went away, and then a second one came,
and the French fired two rockets to indicate their
position.

February 7. More good news. Aznive heard from
her mother. A man from the Latin Church (Lieu
tenant Van Coppanole's fort) got through with a mes
sage from her. The Latin Church is not five minutes'

DIARY OF SIEGE OF MARASH HI

walk from here, but this is the first word they have
been able to get to us, in three weeks.

My poor pneumonia French boy died yesterday
afternoon. How hard we fought to save him. In the
morning, he took out some postcards from France
and was crying over them. Oh, it is terrible, terrible,
to send these poor boys over here.

I did want the United States to take the mandate
for Armenia, but I am glad, glad! now that we did
not do it. I could not endure being safe at home and
knowing that our American boys were over here in
this earthly hell, dying as this poor boy died, crying
for home.

After the airplanes yesterday, two letters came from
the Turks, one addressed to the French and one to the
Americans. We do not know what the French one
contained, but the one to us said that this is not a
local movement, but a national one, and that the Turks
of Marash could not stop it if they would. In other
words, it is Mustapha KemaFs movement.

February 8. Mrs. Power and I had a laugh over
Luther yesterday. He has really proved himself a
splendid fellow; I do not know what we should have
done without him. He was a pharmacist in the Turk
ish army, and they kept him in the front lines much
of the time, so he thoroughly knows the Turks and
their manner of fighting. Yesterday he went out in the
compound and called to the house from which the
Turks were firing on us called until the owner came
out, mind you, and then said to him, "You are not to
fire on the hospital. You know it is not permitted to

ii2 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

fire on a hospital The Director Doctor Madame is
very angry about it, and will hold you responsible.
The Director says you are to stop firing at once."

Would you believe that the Turk stood there and
swore up and down by all the prophets that they never
had fired on the hospital and never would fire on it
and the hospital there before his eyes, looking like a
colander from their shots!

We were busy until four o'clock this morning; the
First Protestant Church was burning. We thought
there were hundreds of Armenians in it. We heard
later, however, that they had all got over to another
safe church.

Then came the great news that reinforcements have
reached us at last. Soon we began to hear them. All
night the shelling was heavier than ever before. Then
there were two more enormous fires, which burned a
whole quarter of the city. We doubled our guards
around the compound walls and had everything filled
with water.

We must be doubly vigilant from now on, for it
appears that the Turks will not surrender, but will
keep on fighting and doing whatever damage they can.

The reinforcements seem to be working their way
up through the city, contrary to the expectations of
Captain Arlabose, who thought they would come
around the barracks.

He amused us very much last night. He went to
French headquarters and was in bad humour when he
came back. He said anybody would be a neurasthenic
who stayed there long there were too many officers

DIARY OF SIEGE OF MARASH 113

and no two of them could agree. It was too depressing,
he could not stay there. So I said, "You must come
here, where we are all so calm and happy."

"Bien sur, ici c'est beaucoup plus heureuse/' he an
swered seriously.

We have taken in fifteen men with frozen feet to
night, and more are coming. The weather is bad.

Our precious airplane has just come and gone again.
If only we could reach it with a message. But any
way, it seems a connecting link with the outside world.

February 9. French reinforcements consist of three
battalions, nearly three thousand men, and eight can
non. There is fierce fighting on all sides of us this
morning, and we are having the worst snowstorm of
the winter. Snow lies thick on everything and fills the
air so that nothing can be seen.

News came to me yesterday that Miss Buckley was
killed on the first day. We knew that all the Armenian
girls in the Rescue Home were killed as soon as the
fighting began, but we had not heard this before. I
do not believe it; I could not bear to believe it. I
have said nothing to Mrs. Power about it.

One of our nurses learned last night that her two
little children are killed, and another nurse's mother
was killed with them. The commandant of the ma
chine-gun company has been killed, the only French
officer lost so far.

Little Mary's fiance has been killed.

Beyond the second house from us is a narrow alley,
and the next house is all stone and Turkish. The
people in it, however, have been quiet and peaceful.

ii4 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Last night they threw a paper over the wall and it fell
in the alleyway. Of course, no one dared go out to
pick it up. They came to ask me what to do about it.
I told them to call over the wall and tell the person
from whom the letter came to write another one. So
later two new letters came. One was from a Turk who,
we hoped, had protected some Christians. It said that
he had had thirty-five women and five men in his house,
but that the other Turks had forced him to give them
up and had killed them all in the street outside his
house. Little Mary's fiance was among them. We
think he had been trying to get to her here.

The other letter was addressed to Mr. Lyman, a
missionary, and asked the Americans to plead with the
French for the lives of Turkish women and children.

February 10. To-day started as usual until Captain
Arlabose came. We both saw that he was much dis
tressed. Nothing we could do would cheer him. He
went to headquarters and came back looking more
miserable than before. He has been trying to eat
luncheon with us. He has just told us that the French
are going to retreat.

VIII
FLIGHT THROUGH WINTER SNOWS

IT was many minutes before we could believe that
this was true. But Captain Arlabose's face con
vinced us more than his words.

In the hospital no one but ourselves knew the news,
and the French were insistent that no one else should
know. Mrs. Power and I went immediately to see
what the other Americans were going to do. Our heads
were swimming. Of course so far as going or staying
was concerned, each must decide for himself. Some
must stay, and some must go, so that none of the
Armenians would be left without the little help we
could give them.

The way was more difficult and dangerous if we left,
but more horrible, we thought, if we stayed.

The Armenians at headquarters had heard the news
before we had, and they were sobbing and screaming.
Thousands of them, screaming! They had relied on
us, on the promises of the great, powerful Allies. They
had come back to Marash, to their wrecked homes
and lives, under our protection. Now they were being
left to the Turks.

How many times I had said, "Don't be silly! Can't
you realize that the Allies are here, the Allies have
won the war? Haven't you been told, and told, and

n6 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

told again, that you are safe now? Why do you
foolishly imagine things to frighten yourselves? The
Allies are here." It was so hard to think.

Captain Arlabose looked actually happy when I told
him that Mrs. Power and I were going with the
refugees, and Miss Shultz had decided, too. The rest
had not decided. Miss Buckley, if she were still alive,
was in Bethshallum and could not be reached. Dr.
Artine, with the twenty-five hundred Armenians, was
still in the churches. I prayed that the news might
reach them, so that they could fight their way out be
fore it was too late. A note came to me from the
hospital. They had heard the news; what should they
do?

I think that all the rest of my days I shall suddenly
hear from time to time that sentence quietly said, some
times almost in a whisper, "What shall we do now,
doctor?" I have stood and stared dumbly for minutes
at a time, in absolute despair as to what to say.

When they saw us preparing to leave, the question
of many was settled, for they simply picked up their
packs and left. In the meantime, hundreds of people
were piling inr The compound was a mass of frantic
Armenians. Parents came into the wards, picked up
their almost dying children, and carried them away.
In the midst of this Captain Arlabose was getting all
the wounded soldiers out of the place.

He said he would stay with us all night. Mr. Kerr
came down, thinking that we were leaving that night
and ready to guard the hospital. He brought word
that all the Armenians who were leaving should go that

FLIGHT THROUGH WINTER SNOWS 117

night, as the French thought of issuing an order for
bidding any one to go with them. So I bundled up
our poor nurses, giving them everything nice and
warm, and with many assurances and promises that
we would overtake them on the road, we started them
out into the night. Little Mary was like a sleep
walker; I do not think she saw or heard anything.
Big Mary helped her away with an arm around her.
Poor little Aznive cried so quietly, and said, "Oh,
doctor, I thought I would not mind dying so much, if
I could only have died near you."

We had no sleep that night. Dawn came on an
almost empty hospital. Varton was one of the last to
go. I had got a donkey for him, had blankets and
food packed on it, and sent him off riding, accompanied
by all his family; it was impossible for him to walk,
with the wound in his thigh. Then we fixed our
rolls.

A woman who could not have lived long, a tubercular
case, had got up out of bed in the night, taken off her
clothing, and sat by the open window. We found her
sitting stark upright, frozen stiff. The ground was
too solidly frozen; we could not dig a hole in which to
bury her.

Captain Arlabose had given us instructions to come
to the caserne at six. Miss Dougherty and Dr. Crath-
ern in the meantime had decided to come with us. As
soon as it was dark, we four women went creeping
through the trenches from the college to the caserne,
and were welcomed into a warm, filthy room, the walls
of which shut out some of the screams of the Ar-

n8 BEGINNING^ AGAIN" AT "ARARAT

menians. No one had any news of Miss Buckley, and
there was still doubt as to whether messengers would
be able to reach her or Dr. Artine.

We sat waiting for Lieutenant Van Coppanolle to
come; we waited for hours, and he had not yet got
through when the order came to start. Captain Arla-
bose would stay to remove the guards from the empty
hospitals after Lieutenant Van Coppanolle got back
from the Latin Church. With trembling hearts we
stumbled out into the darkness. This was at 10.30
P.M., February 10.

It was difficult going as soon as we left the buildings
behind us, for the darkness blinded us and we did not
follow the road, but went across rough fields, guided
by hundreds of other marchers as lost as we were. We
were not taking the long road to Aleppo*,, but were to
strike out over the mountains in an attempt to reach
Islahai.

We had stumbled along silently up hills and down
into valleys for perhaps two hours, when we ran into
Lieutenant Van Coppanolle, gay as ever. He had
taken a shorter way and his company was ahead. A
young Armenian girl was with him, from the Latin
Church, and he immediately put her under my wing
and took charge of us both. The moon was rising,
and by its light we struck straight for the big camp,
reaching it in a few minutes.

Such a night! A turquoise sky flooded with moon
light over a white world, and across the snow, stretch
ing as far as the eye could see, a line of camp fires,
horses, wagons, camp fires, soldiers, refugees, camp

FLIGHT THROUGH WINTER SNOWS 119

fires, camels, donkeys, carts, all a mixture and con
fusion of sound and sight. We sat down to rest by a
fire of straw, and got colder and colder. The poor sol
diers kept coming with their frozen, wet feet to get a
taste of the fire, which was hardly warmer than candle
light. One brought the great relief of news that Miss
Buckley was alive, and staying in Marash. We had
rested less than three-quarters of an hour when the
order came to march. We did not stop again until late
the next morning, and by that time we had begun to
pass children and some women, dropping in the snow,
unable to go on.

It is indescribable, the memory of such things. We
stopped, of course, when we came to the fallen, and if
there were any hope La Petite (the young Armenian
girl) and I worked over them and tried to save them.
One little girl I especially remember, one of the most
sweetly pretty little girls I have ever seen. She was
about four years old. We picked her up and got her
on a horse. But I have no hope that any of those who
had fallen so soon ever got through.

Just at dawn, who should I recognize but Varton,
walking! In the confusion of the night, he said, the
donkey had got away from them, carrying all their
food and bedding. He insisted that he was all right,
but his wife and children were hungry. And there in
that desolation of grey dawn on bleak mountains, as
he dragged the wounded leg through the snow, he
looked at me and said, "The Turks burned my house.
If we had got the farm, they could not have burned
that, could they? I always wanted a farm."

120 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

A few hours later we sat down in a place somewhat
sheltered from the wind. It was very cold. Lieu
tenant Van Coppanolle gave us food, and I could have
eaten with relish, though the chicken and bread were
so frozen that bits of ice crackled between our teeth
when we bit them. But there were three people dying
within a few feet of us, and one was a mother with
a little boy not more than seven years old, who kept
trying to arouse her. He was so weak himself that
he could not make much of a sound, but he whispered,
"Mamma! Mamma!" tearing her dress open and beat
ing at her breast with his hands. She kept making an
effort, half rising and trying to smile at him, and then
falling back, while he whispered, "Mamma! Mamma!"
frantically. The Lieutenant insisted that I eat, but I
could not swallow, and when he was not looking I
gave some of the food away and put the rest in my
pocket for Varton's family. Two pieces of chicken
and a little bread and hundreds all about us with
nothing.

Our line was wholly demoralized; some stopping to
rest, others trudging on. As they passed, I kept ask
ing for Dr. Artine. No one had heard of him. This,
I thought, is the way Armenian families are broken up.
This is the way they tramp the roads of Turkey, ask
ing for news of each other. I am a refugee. This is
what it means. If I had been born in Marash instead
of in America, all that I know, all that I am, would
not keep me now from this; hunger and cold and
heartache, refugee camps and lines of refugees, bread
lines, dirt, disease. Why should I wish and pray that

FLIGHT THROUGH WINTER SNOWS 121

Dr. Artine escape alive? It would be easier for him
to be killed by the Turks.

We rested for half an hour, then on again ; with no
pause and no more food until we reached El Oghly at
three o'clock that afternoon. All the way Lieutenant
Van Coppanolle urged me to ride; I could have had a
horse or a place in a wagon. But I was not so tired
as the soldiers, and very much more fit than any of
the thousands of Armenian women and children.

We slept in a mud house that night, after eating a
good meal of beef from a cow that the soldiers had
picked up on the way. At five in the morning we
were on the march again. The weather was warmer,
and our spirits lighter. If the weather would be kind
for only two days more, we could all reach Islahai
safely.

All that day we went forward, in good spirits. From
the top of a mountain the sight of that column was
one never to be forgotten. Four battalions with their
guns, provisions, pack-mules and a train of three hun
dred camels, and behind that, a stream of refugees
going up and down the hills into the far, blue dis
tance. All seemed to be moving in good order; no
more were falling by the road. The dear sky was like
God's visible blessing.

That night we camped at Bel Puvar. There was a
good supper, a roasting fire, and we dropped to sleep
with the comforting thought, "Only one more day to
Islahai." At five o'clock, in the darkness, Lieutenant
Van Coppanolle waked me and said we must start at
once; there was a blizzard.

122 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

The swirling snow was so thick that we could see
only a few feet, and that with difficulty. Four thou
sand men were trying to get into line, more than five
thousand refugees were struggling in the confusion and
terror. Screams of horses, shrieks of women who could
not find their children, wails of children wallowing in
the snow alone, creaking of gun-carriages, shouts of
officers and, men, sudden looming up of camels that
grunted and bit, all coming out of a swirling whiteness.
I thought of my nurses, of Varton and his family, of
my patients from the hospital, women with new-born
babies, struggling in that madness. Impossible to find
any one, to do anything. We got somehow into the
frantic line and started on the long tramp. It lasted
fourteen hours.

We had been obliged to start without even a cup
of coffee, but both La Petite and I were well wrapped
up, and our good comrade was always beside us, caring
for us with such tenderness. I knew what heroism is,
seeing Lieutenant Van Coppanolle and La Petite trudg
ing bravely, without complaint. In a very few hours,
we were passing the dying all along the way.

The column was quite quiet. There was hardly a
sound for hours, except the scream of some one fall
ing. Always, just when endurance broke, they
screamed once as they fell. The column went on
silently, leaving them there.

Armenian women have a way of carrying their chil
dren on their backs, holding the two hands clutched
against the mother's breast and the child's weight on
the bent back. When children are carried in this way,

FLIGHT THROUGH WINTER SNOWS 123

almost always one sees their little bare feet, side by
side. Working with refugees, I see this perhaps a
hundred times a day, and never without remembering
the road to Islahai. Even now I cannot bear to see
children's feet; I cover them up whenever I have time
and can reach them.

That morning we passed hundreds of mothers, carry
ing their children in this way. First a vague darkness
in the swirling snow, then the mother's bent body, and
the child's little bare feet. I would reach out and tuck
them up in a corner of shawl or blanket as I went by.
I do not know how many hours we had been walking,
when I found the first dead child on its mother's back.
I walked beside her, examining it; she trudged on, bent
under the weight, doggedly lifting one foot and then
the other through the snow, blind and deaf to every
thing. The child was certainly dead, and she did not
know it. I spoke to her, touched her, finally shook
her arm violently to arouse her. When she looked up
I pointed to the child and said, "Finish." The mother
seemed not to understand at first, trudged onward for
a few steps, and then let go the child's hands. The
body fell, and the mother went on, blind and deaf as
before, all her life in that lifting of one foot after the
other through the snow.

This was the first one. There were perhaps fifty
more after that, always the same. No complaint, no
protest, a little time to understand what had happened,
and then a dumb letting go of the hands and the
weight. Strength was so exhausted in these women
who had carried their children so far, that there was

124 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

no emotion left, simply the last shreds of animal en
durance. If I had not spoken to them, they would
have carried the dead until they dropped and died in
the snow.

In time I, too, was a blind machine moving forward,
tucking in no more feet, examining no more children.
We had been walking ten hours, and I was probably
one of the most fortunate of the thousands of women
who followed the French out of Marash. I had more
reserve strength on which to draw. Still, there was
little of it left in the end. I thought of nothing, cared
for nothing, simply struggled onward and tried to keep
my balance. It seemed to me that we three were walk
ing on a very narrow ledge between two precipices,
and that if I lost my balance and fell we would all go
down thousands of feet.

Just in front of us was a cart; one of the women
in it had died and the body, caught by the feet,
dragged in the snow. I saw it dragging in front of us,
for miles; I looked at it dully, and avoided stepping
on it. No one thought any more about it than that.
If it had been taken out of the cart, there would have
been room for some living person, but no one thought
of that. Then the cart was not there. I do not know
what became of it. We may have gone around it.
Nothing existed but that narrow bit of solidity in the
white whirl, the solidity on which we tried to keep
our balance. Often and often it turned to broken ice
and water; we had come to a river, and I was picked
up and carried across.

I had felt hands plucking at my shoulder, stiffly

FLIGHT THROUGP WINTER SNOWS 125

fumbling at me and sliding and fumbling; it seemed to
me that I had felt them for a long time, when I heard
a voice saying, "Doctor! Doctor, what shall I do?"
I turned then, and there was Margaret, one of our
nurses, just behind me. She stood there holding out
her hands, stiff like dead claws with the cold, and
looked at me with wild eyes. Her clothes, wet in the
rivers, had frozen, the shawl on her head had blown
back and stood out in stiff icy folds. "Doctor, what
shall I do? I'm dying. I can't go on."

"Nonsense!" I said. "Of course you can go on.
Come now, I won't hear another word! March!"

We went on, repeating this, I walking carefully on
the narrow ledge and she fumbling, trying to get hold
of my shoulder. "No, doctor, I can't. Oh, doctor,
I'm dying. Oh, doctor, what shall I do?"

"March. You can. You must."

"Oh, doctor ..."

After a long time her hands slid down my arm and
I stopped to try to pick her up. Lieutenant Van
Coppanolle said, "Who is she?"

"One of our nurses."

"Here, get that girl on her feet and bring her
through," he said to his orderly. "Give her this to
eat." He gave the orderly a piece of chocolate. Then
we went on, hearing little querulous complaining be
hind us. The orderly had got her on her feet, but
they could not walk. He had not the strength to hold
her tip. He could not break the chocolate, and she
could not bite it. "I have a piece in her mouth, my
lieutenant," he said, "but she can't swallow,"

126 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

"Get her through, get her through. She's one of
the doctor's nurses."

Perhaps I dwell too long upon these personal ex
periences. Personal experience is the only window
through which we see the world, and if I share the
window with others, it is to show the same view be
yond. The things I felt and saw, multiplied by thou
sands, made up the experiences of the column that
crawled from Bel Puvar toward Islahai when the
French evacuated Marash. This was something, a
very tiny fractional part, of the price the Armenians
of Turkey paid, and are still paying, for the mistakes
and quarrels of the Allies since 1918. Statistics are
mathematics, and political discussion is an academic
thing. But the men and women and children who lived
through the massacres at Marash and walked to
Islahai are flesh and blood. And what they saw and
suffered then they are still seeing and suffering, in
other forms, in other places.

It was late in the afternoon of February 13, 1920,
that the men and women in this column, silently using
their last strength to fight through the blizzard over
the mountains, found that they were lost, that they
were not on the road to Islahai and did not know
where it was.

What were the statesmen of England and France
doing at that hour? Comfortable men, men who had
eaten, men who had roofs under which to sleep, men
whose wives and children were safe and warm they
sat playing the great game of international politics on

FLIGHT THROUGH WINTER SNOWS 127

the chessboard of the world, while the world bled lives
and sweated anguish at every move.

It Is simple enough to blame the Turk for the suf
ferings of Armenians. Seeing what the Turk does,
one hates him. But what is the Turk? A man who
thinks first of his own profit, a nation that fights for
its own interests as it sees them. Yes; the Turk is a
barbarian; he still does crudely with bayonets and
massacres what the civilized nations have learned to
do with secret agreements and treaties signed at council
tables. The Turk is a barbarian; in seven hundred
years he has learned nothing from the civilization of
Christian Europe. But what are the lessons that Chris
tian Europe has set him to learn?

Seven hundred years ago the Crusaders took Jeru
salem in the name of Christ, and looted it of gold and
silver and rugs and women, while their horses' legs
were drenched to the knees in blood. After seven cen
turies, General Allenby re-takes Jerusalem. All that
the Allies do it to cut up living Turkey on a map,
and then to quarrel over loot of oil-wells, and railway
routes, and new territory until the Turk rises and
drenches Asia Minor with the blood of their soldiers
and their helpless tools and dupes, the Armenians.
There may have been blood-stains on the rugs the
Christian knights carried home to France and Eng
land. To-day, the blood is on the Turks' bayonet;
blood-stains are invisible on the signed pieces of paper,
safe and clean in Downing Street or on the Quai
d'Orsay.

128 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

We were lost, and now the silence began to be broken
by low murmurs of talk the French officers consult
ing as to what we should do. The column still stag
gered on, blindly. After thirteen hours of marching
without food or rest, eyes baffled by the whirling snow,
feet weighted with the fallen snow, there was nothing
left in us but mechanical endurance. We continued to
move, as a dead snake moves, because there was still
a little life in our muscles that would not let go. The
cries of the falling were weaker now, and more huddled
bodies lay in the snow to be stumbled over. The of
ficers were talking, in a group beside the column.
Lieutenant Van Coppanolle stopped; all our little
group stopped. I could still stand alone, La Petite
holding to my arm but trying not to lean her weight
on it. My nurse went down, and the orderly reeled,
leaning over, slapping her, shaking her, helping her in
her struggles to get up.

Then Lieutenant Van Coppanolle laughed. The
other officers had said there was nothing to do but camp
for the night; we were lost, and in the darkness it was
impossible to find the road. It was then that the Lieu
tenant laughed, gaily, as at a delightful joke. We were
all right, he said; we might be a little way off the road,
but we'd find it again. Allons!

There is no miracle like a brave man's laughter in
the midst of death. Our hearts had stopped at that
suggestion of camping in the snow. It meant, of
course, that thousands of us would lie down and never
get up again. But the temptation of it! Just to lie
down, and let the snow cover us 7 and give up all effort

FLIGHT THROUGH WINTER SNOWS 129

for ever. Then Lieutenant Van Coppanolle laughed,
not defiantly, not even encouragingly, but with the
simple mirth of a gay and serene spirit laughing away
an amusing suggestion. Aflonsl

It was the one thing that could have kept us going.
We went on. It was quite dark now, so dark that we
could no longer see the snow, could only feel it brush
ing our faces and weighting our feet. It was so dark
that we stepped on the dying, unable to see them.

We had been going on thus blindly in the darkness
for perhaps an hour longer ; when the Lieutenant him
self suggested that we stop. He spoke of it not too
seriously, not as though it meant what we all knew it
did mean. But he was speaking of it, when we heard
a high, long whistle. The whole column thousands of
throats answered it with a terrible sob. A train
whistle! Islahai!

There were some who began trying to run toward
it. In the darkness there were screams, groans, calls
of those suddenly separated in the mob. The last
half-mile was nightmare confusion added to nightmare
exhaustion, and in that last half-mile, I think, more
people dropped and died than in any of the miles we
had toiled over. We came to buildings and lights, a
sobbing frantic crowd. Some one found us in it, and
said that our company was to go to the barracks on
the hill. We came upon a kitchen wagon and greedily
drank cups of cold, icy coffee. No warmth yet, but
how grateful we were for water and the stimulant of
coffee.

Hundreds of the refugees died in Islaiai. What it

130 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

must have been to them, the thousands who poured
down on the little station to find no shelter and to be
helped by no last heroic efforts of exhausted men, I
do not want to try to imagine. We, with the barracks
waiting for us, would have died on the hill that led
to them, if Lieutenant Van Coppanolle had not been
unconquerable. La Petite and I could go no farther.
It was a hill to climb, in waist-deep snow.

A riderless, lost horse came out of the darkness, and
the Lieutenant and his orderly got us on it. The or
derly kept falling, and the Lieutenant could get him up
again only with kicks and curses. La Petite and I
swayed on the horse's back; all my last strength went
in holding on and in encouraging her to do so.
Finally she could keep her balance no longer, and in
that last extremity the poor, brave, little thing let go,
rather than drag me off with her. These are things
you do not forget, when people speak scornfully of
the Armenians.

A second later, the orderly, the horse and I went
down, rolling in the snow. Lieutenant Van Coppanolle
got us the rest of the way by himself, dragging us
through the snow, beating the orderly with his fists,
falling himself and struggling onward on his knees.
So we got to the barracks at last.

I lay on a bunk in the officer's mess, soldiers rubbing
my feet and hands, an officer feeding me hot toddy
with a spoon, and saw the French officers coming in.
One had gone mad and was raving fighting, when
they carried him away. One fell on his face and lay
there until he was picked up. All of them were crip-

FLIGHT THROUGH WINTER SNOWS 131

pled, with frozen and frost-bitten feet, and in the last
stages of exhaustion.

Five thousand Armenians had left Marash, and per
haps a third of them lived to reach IslahaL That was
in February, 1920. To understand the lives of these
Armenians, remember that the evacuation of Mar ash
was not an isolated calamity interrupting comfort and
peace, like the San Francisco fire or the Galveston
flood. These people had lived through the massacres
and deportations in Turkey during the war; for six
years they had been suffering and dying as they suf
fered and died on the road to Islahai. It was those
few months of anxious peace in Marash that was the
novelty to them; those few months of patiently be
ginning again to rebuild ruined houses and broken
lives. And the evacuation of Marash was the begin
ning of the old story again the beginning of the
wanderings and sufferings which are not ended yet.
For those who lived to reach Islahai went on to
Smyrna, and Ismid, and the villages of Anatolia that
were held by the Greeks, and the power of new Turkey
was rising behind them like a hurricane.

IX

THE AMERICAN LINE RE-FORMS

MUSTAPHA KEMAL held Marash. It was the
first battle in the new war between Turkish
nationalism and European imperialism, and
the Turks had won it.

It was also a temporary defeat on another battle-
line the invisible and wavering line where good meets
evil, in the eternal warfare which to some of us seems
more important than the rising and falling of empires.
For a time, the work that Americans were doing in
Marash was ended.

We who represent the spirit of Christian America in
the Near East often fail to represent it perfectly. We
are only human beings, with our own spiritual battles
to fight; life often confuses and perplexes us, and
always we fail to reach the ideal of living and working
which we try to attain. For ourselves, it can only be
said that we do the best we can, and that the odds
against us are very great. But the spirit that sent
us here, the unselfishness of millions of Americans, the
miracle of their caring for the sick and miserable of
the whole world, is a pure and beautiful and strong
thing. In the confusions and perplexities of their own
lives, they, too, are only struggling human beings. But
their giving, their caring to give, their wanting to share

132

THE AMERICAN LINE RE-FORMS 133

their riches and their goodness with the multitudes of
the world ? is a bit of Christ in their lives. Twenty
millions of Americans^ for a moment rising above
boundaries of races, of nations, even of creeds, to reach
the ideal of unselfish love for all the world, have
created the great organization that is fighting in the
Near East for these oppressed and miserable peoples.

That organization had now to retreat, re-form its
line, make a new stand. The work in Marash was
ended, for a time. But there was this in our defeat
which is not in the defeat of empires; it was a tem
porary and negligible thing. Hatred and greed and
all the passions of men may seem for a time to be
gaining, but they will never conquer that spirit in the
world which, because we have no finer word for it,
we call love. This is a warfare of the ages, in which
the work of a lifetime is only one gesture among mul
titudes, and the history of an empire is no more than
a day. We who do the best we can, living only a
little while and being soon forgotten, are fighting on
the winning side.

I was only four days in Islahai. Being able to walk
the second day, I found all our nurses from Marash,
and got them off on the train to Adana, where they
went to work in the Near East Relief there. I had
put them on the train and was leaving the little station
when I met Dr. Artine.

The change in him, even after the experiences he had
undergone since I last saw him, was so appalling that
my relief in finding him alive was still-born. We shook
hands almost silently, and he walked beside me through

134 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

the snow toward the refugee camp. I hesitated to ask
Mm questions, and he had no wish to talk. The little
he told me was in explanation of his situation.

The twenty-five hundred Armenians who had been
with him in the two churches had received no warning
of the French evacuation. They had been fighting
valiantly, and thought that the Turks were being de
feated. They had accomplished terrific feats, organiz
ing, getting the tunnels through f roni church to church,
digging trenches, rationing their food, and fighting with
the skill of military experts. On the night before the
evacuation, while the French were deciding to retreat,
these Armenians had defeated the Turks in a hard
fight and had got through to Bethshallum, the Ameri
can orphanage. Their careful plan of strategy was to
fight through, from these two points, to a connection
with the French forces. Their ammunition was run
ning low, but they reckoned that, by making every
shot count, they had enough to drive the Turks back
and reach the French supplies. They planned to do
this in twenty-four hours, and believed that when their
lines touched the French, they could together defeat
the Turks of Marash.

Marash was the crucial point. It was Mustapha
KemaPs first defiance of the Allies. The Turkish
troops had been unable to reach the city, against the
French artillery. The two thousand fighting Arme
nians in the churches believed that if the Turkish citi
zens in Marash were thoroughly defeated, the city
could be held until the arrival of French reinforce-

THE AMERICAN LINE RE-FORMS 135

ments able to defeat the Turkish army outside it.
Victory seemed to them only a question of holding out
and fighting, and they were doing both with success.

It was a happy night. After their battle, the
Armenians were more encouraged, more hopeful than
they had been since the fighting began. They put
out guards and held a short service of thanks to God,
after which the men went to sleep on their rifles, and
Dr. Artine performed an operation.

He said that he had not been so happy for months.
The danger he had so long feared was actually upon
them, and they were confronting it and defeating it.
BethshaJlum had medical supplies; he would now be
able to take care of the wounded. The operation was
a leg amputation. Two days earlier the man's leg
bone had been splintered by bullets, and he had been
helplessly suffering all that time. The operation was
successful, and at five o'clock in the morning Dr. Artine
lay down to sleep.

The sentries woke him at dawn. The Turkish flag
was flying over French headquarters. The French had
left Marash at ten o'clock the night before.

The twenty-five hundred Armenians in the church
held a meeting to consider how they should die. They
could fight one day more, or they could try to make a
dash for escape. If they fought, not one would live;
if they made a quick dash some of them might get
through. It was the desperate pleas of their women
that decided them. They broke their guns, threw their
ammunition into the well. There was a little while in

i 3 6 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

which they all said "Good-bye" to each other. Then
they massed behind the gates, and at a signal threw
them open, and ran.

Their only way out of Marash led past trenches now
filled with Turkish troops. The Turks began firing as
soon as the Armenians appeared, and poured a steady
stream of bullets upon them. Two hundred of the
twenty-five hundred that started from the churches got
past the trenches alive. One hundred and fifty reached
Islahai.

Dr. Artine's two sisters had been with him in the
church. Before they left, he had divided all the money
he had with him, and given them each half of it. They
both fell in front of the Turkish trenches. Dr. Artine
was in Islahai, the only one of his family left. Every
thing he had had in the world was gone, his family,
his friends, his beautiful house, his surgical equipment,
his practise, the place he had made for himself in the
world. He was living on charity. He asked me if I
could help him to get work. "Any kind of work, of
course; anything that will earn food and shelter. I
don't ask to keep on in my profession; I don't expect
to be able to do that, now. There is no work except
with the Americans, and you have your own doctors.
But I would be most grateful if you could perhaps get
me a job as a porter, or cleaning the offices."

We were able to give him work as an interpreter, in
the Near East Relief hospital in Adana. Within a few
months he had shown such ability that he was given
the management of the hospital. Wherever he is, he
will always be a gallant, gentle, intelligent man. But

THE AMERICAN LINE RE-FORMS 137

his personal life, Ms career, and his hopes were killed
in Marash.

Little Mary was for a long time a weight on my
mind and my heart. She was so frail and so exhausted
that she could not work in Adana; there were few
jobs for all the thousands that clamoured for them,
and the places in the hospital must be filled by those
most able to do the work. I left her in the refugee
camp in Adana; there was nothing else I could do.

Thousands of Armenians were pouring down from
the mountains, in front of the Turkish advance. They
were gathered at Adana in the fields, an enormous
camp of homeless families, some living in tents, others
in shelters they contrived of scraps of wood and flat
tened Standard Oil cans. With one of these families
I left Little Mary, and for a long time I remembered
her, standing in the flap of the tent and looking
after me.

She had given me a letter to her brother, who lived
in Boston. I mailed it, registered, from Beirut, and set
in motion the Near East Relief machinery for trans
mission of money and handling of passports. The end
less complications of such work, and the waiting for
an opening in the over-crowded immigration quotas,
take a long time. It was six months before I heard of
Little Mary again; a cable from her brother said that
she had safely reached Boston.

Big Mary is in Constantinople, taking a special
course in nursing. I see her now and then, when my
work takes me to that sprawling, swarming Oriental

i 3 8 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

village on the shores of the Bosphorus. Her fate Is
still dependent, as so many millions of obscure lives
are dependent, on the quarrelling imperialisms that
meet In Lausanne or Geneva. If there are no mas
sacres in Constantinople, and she can finish her course,
there will be work for her among her own people,
under the wing of America.

My dear Aznive travelled with me all the way to
Beirut. For Luther we found work in Aleppo, with
the Americans. Aznive, I was sending to a friend of
my own in Detroit. She had never been out of
Marash; she had never seen a railroad, or the sea;
she had never worn a hat. In Beirut she saw the sea,
and we bought her a hat; I do not know which ex
perience most deeply shook her.

Beirut was a whirlpool of excitement; Feisal was
crowned king of the Arabs, and all the multi-coloured
peoples of the East jostled each other in the narrow
streets, and all their hopes and fears and intrigues
simmered underneath. Freedom and a new kingdom
of their own had been promised to the Arabs, as they
were promised to the Armenians; the Arabian peoples
were still believing that their services in fighting
Turkey during the war were to be rewarded with pos
session of Arabian Syria. But Syria had also been
promised to the French by one of those secret treaties
among the Great Allied Powers which were so numer
ous in the early days of the war that I forget which
one it was. King FeisaFs reign in Syria was short;
the French dethroned him, and the English took him

THE AMERICAN LINE RE-FORMS 139

to Mesopotamia and set up his puppet kingdom there
where the oil-fields are.

I left Aznive on the wharf in Beirut. She was to
take a later steamer that went straight to New York.
Her ticket was bought and in her pocket; her passport
visas were obtained; friends would put her on the
boat, friends would meet her in New York, and she
was going to my friends in Detroit. But every few
minutes a terror shook her, and everything but terror
ebbed from her face.

She went with me to my boat, clinging to me dumbly.
At the gangplank I was obliged to unclasp her strain
ing fingers from my arm, laughing at her a little, coax
ing her to be happy. "See, you have the ticket, you
have the passport, it is all arranged. You are going
to America. Come now, aren't you glad? Laugh,
then; it isn't the time to cry, my dear/ 7

"But nothing good has ever really happened," she
said. "Nothing ever really happens but How can
I believe that I am going to America ?" She began to
sob. "I can't even believe that America is really
there."

I stood on deck, looking down at her on the dock,
and she tried to smile up at me. But when the boat
cast off its mooring and began to move away, sud
denly she stretched her arms after it and screamed,
terrible, hysterical screams. All that she had lived
through must have come rising from the depths of her
when she found herself abandoned on that wharf, and
her self-control had gone to rags and tatters. My
gentle, quiet, patient little Aznive fought the friendly

i 4 o BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

hands that tried to quiet her, and raised her hands to
the sky and shrieked till passengers on the deck cov
ered their ears. So I sailed away and left her there,
screaming like a lost thing caught by the unendurable
pain of the world.

And I heard of her next in Detroit. She had arrived
safely, my friends loved her as I had known they
would; she was so happy that tears splashed the letter
she wrote me. "I did not know there could be on
earth a place like America," she wrote. "Often I think
that I have died and gone to heaven. Nobody is afraid
of anything here. Quite grown-up people smile like
children, and even strangers are kind to each other,
and tell each other where to find places on the streets.
It does not matter what your religion is, they do not
even ask you, but are kind to you without knowing."

From my friends I heard that she was studying
hard, taking a nurse's training course. She was popu
lar everywhere, and young Armenians clustered around
her. More than one had asked her to marry him, but
she said that she did not want to marry; she wanted
to work, like American women.

Then I had a shy little letter from her, saying that
she was engaged. "Many men have asked me to marry
them, and I did not wish to marry, but when I saw
Paul I changed my mind."

He was a young Armenian, a machinist; a fine
young man, my friends wrote. They were married,
and are now living in a modern apartment in Detroit;
three of them now, for there is a baby. Paul works

THE AMERICAN LINE RE-FORMS 141

in the Ford shops, and has had a raise in salary, Aznive
writes; the baby has three teeth, and is more intelli
gent than any baby ever was before. She does not say
this because the baby is her own; every one says so.
I should see them going walking on Sunday, the baby
is so cute in its carriage, and Aznive has a new hat,
and they go to the moving pictures. Every week they
put money in the bank for the baby's education. "My
own country is so far away, it is like a bad dream after
you wake up and know it was only a dream. We are
Americans now."

But the Near East is not a bad dream. From the
safety of America it must seem so. But it is real; it
is the cancer that threatens the life of the whole of
the Western world.

The attempt to bring cleanliness and peace into
Cilicia had failed. From the victory of Marash the
Turks swept forward, driving before them the French
and the last of the Armenians. Eight hundred years
ago the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia had welcomed the
French Crusaders, fought beside them, fed them, saved
their lives and helped to make them powerful. The
Mongolians had overpowered Armenia, while the Egyp
tians drove the French back to Europe, but the
Armenian people had continued to live in Cilicia, under
the Mongolian conquerors. Now once more the French
had landed on Cilicia's shores, once more the Arme
nians had welcomed them, trusted them, exerted their
puny strength to fight beside them. The conquering

142 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Turk of to-day was not so merciful as his cousins the
Tartars of eight centuries ago; this time the defeat of
Europe was the death of the Armenians.

How shall one disentangle the snarl, how divide
praise and blame? None of our standards apply here,
in this world unchanged since the tribes of Israel came
into it from Egypt. We, who were born in America,
are the children of another age ; living in another world.
Here in the Near East greed for possessions and power
is the only motive; getting possessions and power is
the only glory. Europe encouraged the Armenians to
dream of regaining the old freedom, never forgotten
through eight hundred years; thus Europe could use
the Armenians as a weapon against the Turks. Turkey
was fighting for her life against the greed of Europe,
and when Europe failed to protect her little allies, the
Armenians, the Turks called them traitors and killed
them.

This was the end of that group of the Armenian
people who made the Kingdom of Little Armenia. In
all Cilicia to-day there is hardly a living Armenian.
Marash is a desolate city, burned and depopulated.
The Armenian villages are deserted ruins.

The Turks had Cilicia, but Europe continued the
fight in Syria and in Anatolia. Italy had been check
mated in her attempt to get Smyrna; the Greeks were
sent there. The Greeks, too, dreamed of regaining an
ancient power. Theirs had been the Byzantine Em
pire, the Rome of the East. The Greek peoples, too,
had been living here in Asia Minor centuries before
the Mongolians came, and still were living here.

THE AMERICAN LINE RE-FORMS 143

Greece, given Smyrna to keep the Italians out, felt her
hopes rekindling as the hopes of the Armenians had
done. The Greek lines pushed farther into Turkey, ran
from Smyrna to Eski Cherher, to Brussa, to Ismid.

Behind these lines accumulated the mass of disease
and misery which is refugees. Those Armenians who
had lived to escape from Cilicia, those Armenians
who had been peacefully living in the interior villages
of Anatolia, poured down to the sea-coast cities. On
one side of them was the sea; on the other, the Greek
lines that pushed further and still further into Turkey.

Into this mass of misery and disease went the Ameri
cans. In the winter after the ruin of Mar ash I was
opening a hospital in Ismid.

X
THE NEW FRONT AT ISMID

WE were in Ismid in December, 1920. This
very old city (known in ancient times as
Nicomedia) on the coast of Anatolia was
then like all the other western coast cities of Turkey
a grey-white fringe of the sea spread around the
harbour. Its history began when men first lived on
this coast, and ventured out on the waters in ships to
find peoples living on the islands of the ^Egean and
old civilizations flourishing in Egypt. The Greeks
came to it when first they began to be a maritime
people, and doubtless they knew this harbour when
they were fighting the war with Troy. Ismid was a
city coloured by all the races of the Near East, but the
core of its life was Greek; the shop-owners, the work
men, the merchants who handled the trade of the port,
were Greek in blood, though they had lived here a
thousand years, and often did not speak the Greek
language.

British warships lay in the harbour, slim islands of
grey steel as steady as rock, seeming to protect by
their presence, not only the grey-white curve of houses
and shops, but also the Greek cruisers that lay beside
them, and the trading ships that came and went.
Italian and French destroyers came, dropped anchor,

144

TRANSPORT DIFFICULTIES AT ISMID

Doctor Elliott's Ford is compelled to halt in a too-narrow street in the Armenian
quarter of the old city.

DOCTOR ELLIOTT IN NATIVE YALI

The author frequently used the native araba or yali, a picturesque and
comfortable vehicle employed throughout the interior of Anatolia.

THE NEW FRONT AT ISMID 145

lay for a week or two, and went again. American de
stroyers, those peaceful, watchful ships that are gath
ered in these waters to be a refuge for American lives
when refuge is necessary, were always in the offing,
ready. Beyond the city the low, bare hills curved
round like the palm of a sheltering hand, keeping the
life of Ismid from the rising winds that were blowing in
Turkey.

The life of the city went on, under the protection of
the guns, under the shelter of the hills, held firm by
martial law. The Eleventh Greek division, commanded
by General Gagaledes of Macedonian fame, was in the
city, waiting. The battleships were in the harbour,
waiting. Beyond the hills were the troops of the Turk
ish Nationalist army, waiting. They were all waiting
for the decision of the London Conference. Mean
time, the little -shopkeepers of the bazaars displayed
their goods, drank their Turkish coffee, bargained;
bare-footed women-servants, veiled, going to and fro
on errands, stopped to gossip on the corners; in the
walled courtyards the women embroidered and talked
the endless, monotonous talk of sheltered women inter
ested only in the minute events of their days. And
disease came invisibly into the city from its breeding
places on battlefields and refugee camps, and reaped
its silent harvest.

Refugees were pouring into Ismid from the interior
of Turkey, scurrying before the rumour of Turkish ad
vance like leaves blown by a rising storm. There were
six thousand Armenians and nearly as many Greeks
overflowing refugee camps and spreading through the

146 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

crowded bazaars; almost naked children with thieving
fingers clutching at crusts or bones or anything left
unguarded, haggard women begging on doorsteps, and
men who could do nothing but sit on curbs, since there
was nothing else to do.

The Near East Relief orphanage was crowded; the
refugee-relief workers toiled at an ever-increasing
task. There were bread-lines, soup-kitchens, delous-
ing plants, temporary hospitals unable to cope with
the multiplying disease. And every day the question:
What will be done with us, at the conference in
London?

General Gagaledes received me cordially, sitting be
hind a table in his bare, soldierly office. Certainly he
would give me a building for a hospital; had I chosen
the one I wanted? From the window I showed it to
him, a large empty building on the hill. He smiled.
Nothing would be easier than to give me that; it was
within a few yards of the front-line trenches. But did
I think it healthy for patients to be under fire?

We laughed. The building I really wanted, I said,
was on this side of the city, but it was occupied by
Greek troops and I thought it useless to ask for it.
General Gagaledes touched a bell, and told the aide
who answered it to go with me and order that I should
immediately be given possession of any building in
Ismid that I chose.

So the hospital was started. The building had been
a Turkish hospital; Greek troops had been living in it
and destroying it as soldiers always do. Within
twenty-four hours they had moved out, and on their

THE NEW FRONT AT ISMID 147

heels came an army of refugee-workers with scrubbing
brushes, whitewash pails, panes of glass, papers of
putty, cans of paint.

The ingenuity of these Armenian and Greek refu
gees, their skill in contrivance, was remarkable. It
encouraged me to the enterprise of installing hot and
cold water. Lead pipe was found, copper coils were
made. I knew nothing of plumbing; neither did these
workers. But by sheer intelligence the pipes were
connected, the heater was made, the joints were
soldered and left uncovered, anxiously to be observed
lest they leak; the plumbing system became reality,
and worked. We dreamed then of a bathroom. Tiles
were found, abandoned in an old German factory
wrecked during the war. We confiscated these, made
the bathroom and tiled the floors.

In five weeks there was the hospital, a beautiful
place, as sanitary, as modern in every way, as one
could wish. A hundred beds were in the wards, filled
with patients. A clinic was opened. Across the gulf,
in Badizag, we opened headquarters for the war against
epidemics.

Three months had gone by, and we had built from
the bottom upward the completed machinery of an
organization. From the first it had been running; now
it was ready to slip into low gear and really pull the
whole load. Then the London conference ended.

The British had declared that they would give East
ern Thrace to Turkey. The Greeks, first sent into
Asia Minor to keep the Italians out, then encouraged

i 4 8 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

and cheered on aaid supported by the British in further
invasions, and now abandoned, cried out in fury that
they would not again open the doors of Europe to the
Turk. They would fight, before they would yield
Thrace.

The British warships steamed out of the gulf of
Ismid, leaving the Greeks to hold it; in June the
Greeks decided that they could not hold it. It was a
question of re-forming the battle-front which ran all
the way to Smyrna. The line was too long to hold;
military necessity dictated that Ismid be evacuated,
and the Eleventh Division withdrawn to make the left
wing, resting on Brussa. This explanation was quite
true and reasonable, but there was another reason for
the weakening of the Greek army. King Constantine
had come back to Athens; the seasoned revolutionary
fighters who had commanded the army were withdrawn
and their places filled by royalist officers. General
Gagaledes was gone; General Kladis commanded the
Eleventh Division. He had been in exile with the king
throughout the war, seeing none of the fighting. He
was not a popular hero, like General Gagaledes. All
through the Greek army one saw enthusiasm waning,
morale weakening, dissatisfaction growing.

The news of the evacuation was to Ismid what a
stick is to an ant-hill. All normal activities were lost
in feverish excitement. Refugees came piling into the
heart of the city and swarming down to the water-front,
where across the stretch of blue water the Greek
cruisers stUl lay. They were to remain in the gulf,

THE NEW FRONT AT ISMID 149

and two thousand Greek soldiers were to be left in
the city; this garrison, under the guns of the boats, was
thought sufficient to protect the refugees.

The Eleventh Division marched down to the
wharves, through a silent city. Company by com
pany, it was swallowed by the ships that took it across
the gulf. It was to march to Brussa by land. All
one day the soldiers were embarking; by night the
last of them was landed on the opposite shore. At
sunset a rippling crackle of rifle-fire ran around the
edge of the city. The Turks had come.

Once more bullets were zipping across our compound
and striking into the plaster of the walls. Again we
put patients on the floor, out of range of the windows.
There was fighting in our cherry orchard. In half an
hour the first wounded Greek soldier was brought in
through our front door; ten minutes later the first
wounded Turk crawled to our back door and hearing
him beating on it, we opened it and took him in. After
that they came continuously, both Greeks and Turks.
At midnight a roar and a boom shook our windows;
the cruisers in the harbour were bombarding.

All the next day the battle continued, crackling of
rifles and the booming of the cruiser's guns, and that
night the searchlights signalled across the harbour an
appeal to General Kladis to return; the Turks were
taking Ismid.

The troops came back across the gulf, and the rifle-
fire died down and stopped. The deserted streets were
peopled again, and crowds clustered around placards

i S o BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

hastily slapped on walls by Greek soldiers. By order
of General Kladis, all who wished to leave Ismid must
do so within forty-eight hours; on the third day the
Greek troops would withdraw.

There were now about fifteen thousand Armenian
and Greek refugees in the city; the Greeks had fled
from their interior villages, and the Armenians had
been driven here and there across Turkey, for five
years, before they came to this edge of it where the
sea stopped them. In addition to these, there was the
entire Christian population of Ismid, All these men
and women, more than thirty-four thousand of them,
with their children and such goods as they could carry,
swarmed down to the water-front, frantic as crowds
caught in a theatre fire. There were so many of them,
there were so few boats; every gangplank seemed to
each of them a last chance for life.

These crowds were controlled,- in masses, by close
ranks of Greek soldiers with bayonets. The Greek
government sent boats. As each one came alongside
the wharf and lowered its gangplanks, a shiver went
over the crowd, which moved like a wheat-field in a
heavy wind. Then down lanes of soldiers the multi
tudes poured into the ship, filling it to overflowing,
crowding the decks to the limit of standing-room, even
pushing upward and clinging to the masts. There was
a struggle on shore; the soldiers stopping the streams
with their bodies and bayonets, and then there would
be an outcry of screams and pleadings from the mass
that had been silent. Shrieks of separated families,
cries of trampled children. The gangplanks were

THE NEW FRONT AT ISMID 151

lifted, the ship loaded down under the weight of its
human freight, moved slowly away toward Thrace.
Another one took its place.

In the hospital, we were thinking of our Armenian
nurses. All of them volunteered to stay with us. But
our waiting-room was crowded with their parents,
pleading with them to go. On the morning of the
second day I called the mothers together, and spoke
to them. I said that I would not insist that the girls
stay with us, but that if their mothers would leave
them in my care I would promise to keep them under
American protection, to stay with them, and not to
leave Ismid unless every one of them went with me.
There was a moment of silence after I had said this,
and then one mother looked up at me and said, "I
lost my girl during the deportations. For three years
I did not see her. Now that I have found her again,
can I go away I do not know where and leave her
behind me?"

It was settled that the nurses should go, all except
three who were orphans. All the servants had gone;
cooks, laundresses, scrubwomen. The nurses stayed
in the hospital and worked, day and night, caring for
the crowded wards, until they must go down to the
last boat, which left at five o'clock in the morning
of the third day. The troops had embarked again;
the harbour was empty; the last cruiser went out with
the five o'clock boat. Only an American destroyer lay
off-shore, sending a little gleam of light to us through
the darkness.

The city was silent, save that now and then a dog

152 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

barked. From the window of the room where I was
working I saw houses burning, red flame mixed with
thick black smoke in the darkness. I had a maternity
case, and no one to help me. My American nurses
were so exhausted that I had sent them to bed. There
seemed to be nothing in the world but silence, the light
of the burning houses, and the agony of my patient
who was giving birth to another life. Another Arme
nian coming into the world! Born of innumerable
agonies and despairs, child of thirty centuries of glory
and fighting and suffering and stubborn hope, before
morning this child would be living in the city just
emptied of his people. What would his life be, what
could it be? What did it all mean life, the endless
blind struggle? It was the cold weak hour of the
morning, when the realities of daylight melt into in
tangible things, and it seems perhaps that everything
is a dream. But the only thing to do was to work, for
there was the task to be done.

The child was born, and dawn was making the
window-panes grey, when a strange noise came up from
the courtyard through the open windows: a bellowing,
bleating, whinnying, clattering wave of sound. I
leaned from the window, and looked down on the
backs of scores of cows, horses, donkeys, oxen, a solid
mass of backs under a confusion of horns and ears and
tossed noses. Somewhere beneath it were sheep and
goats, bleating uncomfortably.

During the night the last refugees had turned into
our compound the animals they must leave. Why they

THE NEW FRONT AT ISMID 153

did it I do not know. Perhaps it was in a desire to
give them to us, or perhaps it was an unreasoning feel
ing that there was safety under the American flag for
the herds and flocks that were the only wealth. At
any rate, there they were, and there they must not
stay; we had no water for them, and no food.

I had hastily bathed, slipped into a fresh uniform,
and was going downstairs to order our new Turkish
gateman to drive out the animals, when I met him com
ing to say that a Turkish officer was there. The of
ficer with several men was in the courtyard picking
out the horses.

He greeted me with beautiful courtesy, speaking the
French of a Parisian with the manner of one. He was
enchanted to meet me, he said, quite as though there
were nothing extraordinary in my meeting him in my
own courtyard, taking horses from it. He was happy
to have the opportunity to express the respect and
gratitude felt by all Turks for our work, to assure me
that they appreciated our kindness to their soldiers.
He begged that if we desired anything that it was
possible to obtain, we must believe that the Turkish
officers were most gratefully our servants. And with
,a wave of his hand to his men, he said in Turkish,
"Drive out that bay horse, I will take him for myself.' 7

"But you can't take that horse; he's mine," I ex
postulated. He was in fact my own horse, on which
I rode about my work outside the hospital, and went
for rides in the evenings.

The officer yielded immediately and gracefully. He
urged me to take, not only that horse, but any others

i 5 4 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

that I chose. His air was that of a princely bestower
of gifts, and I am convinced that he did not for a
moment believe that the bay was really my horse.

The reign of the Turks began in Ismid. It was the
first step forward in the second move of the Turkish
Nationalists. Beginning at Marash, they had driven
the French from Cilicia. Beginning at Ismid, they
were now advancing to drive the Greeks from Anatolia.
Ismid was the beginning of the campaign that was to
end with the burning of Smyrna,

The battle-front had moved over us, and we were on
the Turkish side. Off-shore lay an American destroyer,
guarding us; the American flag was over our hospital
and orphanage and relief stations. As well as we could,
under the circumstances, we kept on working.

Immediately there began in the city an only partly-
suppressed riot of looting. The Turkish families living
near us sent anxiously to beg that we let them know
if we decided to leave, so that they could go at the
same time. The streets were not safe, and precise
orders were sent by the Turkish commandant; we were
allowed to leave the hospital only by certain routes,
and in daylight. No Armenian patient or employe was
to leave the hospital grounds. We had to obtain a
special military permit for our Armenian chauffeur,
in order that he could drive our truck.

The reason for this looting is to be found in the
custom of warfare in Asia Minor. The rules of it may
be found in the orders given to the children of Israel
when they went out to take the cities of the Promised

THE NEW FRONT AT ISMID 155

Land. Troops are not paid; their recompense for fight
ing is the looting of conquered territory. Had Ismid
been captured in battle, Greeks and Armenians would
have been the victims of the customary three days and
nights allowed for despoiling the enemy. Ismid was
evacuated; only Turks were left in it when the Turkish
army entered. Many of these Turkish citizens had
taken possession of the shops, houses and goods that
had been abandoned. The ragged, footsore and hungry
troops were thus cheated of the pay they had expected
for fighting, but they looted anyway.

Almost at once we learned another thing; Ismid was
not only like a city without police, it was like a city
in a general strike. We could not get bread for the
hospital; the bakers were Armenians and Greeks,
therefore there were no more bakers in Ismid. The
bathroom plumbing began to leak, and there was not
a workman in Ismid who could fix it; Turks are not
plumbers. Meat became unobtainable; Turks do not
keep butcher shops. We could not get a cook or a
laundress to replace those who had fled; Turks are not
servants.

There was no commissary with the Turkish army;
when the soldiers were hungry they foraged, killed
their own meat, cooked it over their camp fires. There
was no doctor with the Turkish army; behind the
Turkish lines I was the only physician for scores of
miles.

I remained in Ismid, in charge of the hospital, for
three months after the Turks took the city. Nothing

i S 6 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

but that experience could have made me understand
the conditions spreading over Asia Minor behind the
victorious Turkish advance.

It is not a question of blaming the Turk, who is
what his blood and history and religion have made
him; it is a question of facts. The Turkish National
ists have risen with the cry, "Turkey for the Turks."
In their fight against European imperialism they have,
I believe, definitely and firmly determined upon a
policy of having no more Christian minorities in
Turkey. As long as there is a Christian minority in
side the Ottoman state, it will be a danger to that state,
both because the Christian peoples want their freedom,
and because their desire to be free is used as a tool
by European politicians. Half a century ago, realizing
this fact, the Red Sultan began the wholesale killing
of the Christian populations. To-day, the Turkish Na
tionalists have in view the same end to clear this
country their ancestors conquered of the last of its
original Christian inhabitants. Those that they cannot
kill they will drive out.

But the Turk has never learned to do the work that,
until now, the subject Christian populations have done.
The Turk came into Asia Minor as a conqueror, a fly
ing band of Mongolian warriors from the steppes of
Northern Asia. The chiefs of his tribes became sultans
and favourites of sultans, enriched by the loot of cap
tured provinces. They have had no more need to learn
to work than the courtiers of France in the seventeenth
century. Like those courtiers, these rich Turkish
leaders have developed, with centuries of infusion of

THE NEW FRONT AT ISMID 157

white blood, the most charming manners, the most cul
tivated tastes, the most delightful personalities, and the
same ideas of honour and the same capacity for ruth
less cruelty that distinguished the European courts of
the Middle Ages.

Meantime, their humble Turkish followers have to
some extent settled on the soil. They have learned to
sow and cultivate and harvest. Their little houses,
bare of furniture, are spotlessly clean inside, though
their courtyards are piled with garbage. They are per
sonally clean, for the laws of the Koran in regard to
personal cleanliness are as strict as the laws of Moses.
They are industrious in their little fields, though the
Turkish peasant women do much of the work, as peas
ant women do everywhere in Europe and Asia. They
do not read or write, or care about the world outside
their village; they have their food, their roof under
which to sleep. The rest they leave to the will of
Allah, and now and then it is the will of Allah that a
leader shall take them out to war against the infidel and
give them the loot that belongs to victors.

These two classes make the Turkish state. But
within this state there have been, until the Peace of
Versailles, the remnants of the conquered peoples,
Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Jews, Armenians, Greeks.
The Arabs and Kurds are still nomadic peoples. The
Assyrians were mountaineers and shepherds. The
Jews were traders and philosophers. The Armenians
and Greeks developed the crafts and occupations of
civilization. The Armenians and Greeks were the
bakers, carpenters, masons, tinsmiths, bookkeepers,

158 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

merchants, bankers, exporters and importers, the
builders.

In getting rid of them, in order to save herself politi
cally, the new Turkish state has swept away the whole
of the small structure of modern civilization that she
had. Nothing is left but warriors, politicians, and a
few agriculturists whose sons are in the army.

The former comfortable citizens of Ismid, who had
made Ismid a city, were now sitting penniless, with
empty hands, in the enforced idleness of refugee-camps
in Eastern Thrace. Ismid was left to disorganization,
famine, and militarism.

Against so wide a background, our own struggles to
keep our work alive may seem so small as to appear
comic. But they seemed to me typical of the general
conditions. We tried to keep the hospital running
we shut off the water in the bathroom and we suc
ceeded, limpingly. The Turkish gateman suggested
that his wife and sister come to do our cooking and
laundry work. They came, shapeless bundles of black
cloth from which one eye peeped, and all day long
they sat in our kitchen, sat in our laundry, or came
out to sit together in our courtyard. I think they
meant to do the work; but they simply did not know
how. They knew nothing of cookstoves and washtubs.
Ya Allah! what were they to do with them?

We opened a dispensary in the city, for disease was
spreading among the Turkish people. An American
flag was over the door, a Turk guarded the place. One
night he was not there, and the dispensary was raided,

THE NEW FRONT AT ISMID 159

all cloth stolen from it, and the drugs scattered among
spilled medicines on the floor. We had the place
cleaned and put in order again, and the Turkish com
mandant detailed four soldiers to watch it night and
day. Two weeks later it was raided again. We closed
the dispensary.

The Turkish commandant came to beg me to reopen
it. "We do appreciate what you are doing/' he said.
"Believe me ; we are sincerely grateful. Anything that
we can do, I promise you will be done. Only open the
dispensary again, and I will give you guards for it."

"But you did give me guards. They do not guard,"
I replied. "We cannot afford the waste of supplies,
they are too precious, and they are sent to us to use.
No, we cannot risk such a loss again."

The famine became serious; Turks were dying of
starvation in the streets. Yet the cause must have
been lack of organization; the soldiers running like
locusts over the fertile country, the peasants hoarding
their food instead of sending it to Ismid. The Near
East Relief opened feeding stations for five thousand
civilians of Ismid, and our truck ran every day, helping
to carry supplies.

One day a resplendent Turkish officer called at my
office and informed me with apparently sincere expres
sions of regret that the tires had been stolen from our
truck in our garage. "I assure you, madame," he
protested, "that I offer you in the name of the govern
ment, our deepest apologies. Please, I beg you to allow
me to pay you in full for the tires."

"But the money is of no use to us," I said. "We

160 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

need the tires. Our truck cannot run without them.
This is a most serious calamity, because we need the
truck every day in our work. Can't you find the
thieves and bring back the tires?"

"I should be so glad to do so, madame," he replied,
"but unfortunately the tires are on my car, and I am
this moment starting for Angora. I have not an instant
to spare. There is no time to take them off." He
again reiterated his regrets, and his assurance that this
unfortunate situation should never have arisen had he
only known of it in time. Then he got into his ma
chine, an army truck, and drove away on the tires.

He spoke French perfectly; I had understood every
word he said. But why he said them, what was in
his mind, I shall never understand.

Trains were running to Constantinople, but we were
not allowed to leave Ismid without a permit. This,
under the circumstances, was a matter of course. But
the permit could not be issued by any one in Ismid;
it was necessary to send to Angora for it. And no
American mind could fathom the motives of Angora.
Sometimes the permit came, sometimes it was refused,
sometimes the request for it was lost and never heard
of again. Sometimes the permit arrived, and was not
honoured at the station.

Miss MacLaren, one of the American nurses, had an
ulcerated tooth. The dentists in Ismid had been
Armenian and Greek; it was now necessary to go to
Constantinople to reach a dentist's office. A request
for a permit was sent to Angora with all possible ur
gency; after three weeks of waiting, it arrived. I took

THE NEW FRONT AT ISMID 161

her to the station, where the train stood waiting. The
station guards refused to let her get on the train.

It would, in any other country than Turkey, have
meant another delay, another permit. But I simply
put her in my car, and before the eyes of the guards
and the trainmen drove out on the road that followed
the railway, to the next station, in the neutral zone.
When the train overtook us there, she got on it and
went to Constantinople.

Battling against such conditions as .these, in a wholly
demoralized town, we somehow continued to work.
Now and then the rioting became serious; once the
American destroyer sent a landing party ashore to
guard the hospital overnight. Always, day and night,
we kept in order the signals that would call for help
if it were needed.

In September I left Ismid for Constantinople, to
cross the Black Sea and Georgia, on my way to Cau
casian Armenia. The hospital at Ismid continued its
work for ten months longer, and then was obliged
to close because the difficulties of running a modern
institution under Turkish rule had become Impossi
bilities.

XI
INTO SOVIET ARMENIA

I WENT to the Caucasus because the medical work
there was increasing. Medical work in war-time
is largely emergency work. When wars end ; the
hard medical fight begins. The harvest of war is
disease, and epidemics kill thousands where bullets
have killed hundreds.

When the Maxim Gorki stops in Alexandropol, and
an American eye sees for the first time this city which
was formerly the largest in Russian Armenia, the sen
sation is one of distinct shock. Apparently nothing
remains of the city but ruins. The effect is much as
though some prosperous small city of the American
Middle West had been destroyed by a stroke of a
gigantic hand.

The carriage drives past rows of two-story stone
buildings, roofless, windowless, with one wall or two
fallen and the others crumbling. Here and there these
skeletons of buildings have been used as support and
protection for haystacks, or for equally tall piles of
dried dung cakes, stored for winter fuel. Shoulder
high along many walls are plastered other dung cakes,
drying. Here and there an attempt has been made,
with piled stones or flattened Standard Oil cans, to
make a corner livable. But the general effect is ruin

162

INTO SOVIET ARMENIA 163

and desolation, not relieved by the rolling plain, tree
less and uninhabited, which runs fifty miles south-east
to the gigantic base of Mount Algoz.

Alexandropol is the youngest city in Armenia, being
only eighty-seven years old, yet its little history tells
all the story of Russian Armenia, as the life of a germ
on a microscope slide reveals the history of a disease.

When our grandfathers were young, Alexandropol
was a little Armenian village named Gumri, on the
banks of Barley River (the Arpa Chai). Armenians
had lived here, probably, long before the days when
the Assyrian Empire rose on the plains of Asia Minor.
All recorded history had washed over this village; the
Empire of the Medes and Persians, the glorious cen
turies of the Armenian Empire, the invasions of Alex
ander the Great, the Roman Empire, and the Byzan
tine. But the little village of Gumri had no history.
Its people lived as their ancestors had lived, and as
Armenian villagers live to-day, in little, stone huts half-
buried in the earth to protect them from summer's heat
and winter's cold. They had a. few ox-carts, they
scratched a little soil with wooden ploughs and har
vested a little grain to be threshed by the feet of the
oxen and ground in mortars. They had a few sheep,
and spun and wove the wool. Birth and marriage and
death, spring and summer and winter, and the rise and
fall of empires, passed over this village and left it the
same.

In the year 1800, it belonged to the kingdom of
Georgia, and the people probably heard, from some
chance traveller stopping for the night, that the King

1 64 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

of Georgia had gone on a journey beyond the reach
of any villager's imagination a journey to see the Tsar
of the Russias. But the village of Gumri could not
have known, a year later, that it was now annexed to
Russia, for Georgia itself did not know that it had
been annexed.

The story of that annexation of half the Caucasus,
hardly more than a century ago, is amazing to any
American. We have forgotten the days when politics
were so simple and so personal. It happened in this
way: The king of Georgia, troubled by the ceaseless
wars between the many tribes in his kingdom, and
unable to suppress them, decided to ask the help of
the Tsar. He gave orders to his goldbeaters and silver
smiths, to weavers of rugs and writers on parchment,
and when a number of suitable gifts were prepared and
the parchment scroll setting forth his difficulties was
ready, he ordered out the sumptuous, royal caravan of
camels and set out with his nobles to visit the Tsar.

A year later he reached the court of St. Petersburg,
and the Tsar received him with every courtesy and
honour. Apartments in the Winter Palace were set
aside for the Georgian king and his nobles. Gifts and
entertainments were showered upon them. Unfortu
nately, soon after their arrival, the king of Georgia
mysteriously died. But the nobles were not so grieved
as they might have been, for they were dazzled by the
splendours and luxuries of the court. On their wild
mountains and in their rude castles above gorges roar
ing with waterfalls they had not dreamed of a city like
St. Petersburg, of palaces like the Tsar's, of bewilder-

INTO SOVIET ARMENIA 165

ing ladies in costumes from Paris. The Georgians are
perhaps the most handsome men on earth, and their
picturesque costumes are the most suited to display
masculine beauty. The Georgian princes were the
rage of the season at the Imperial court, and they en
joyed it immensely. Georgians are not only handsome
and brave, they are also reckless, extravagant, hot
headed and childlike. The princes lost money at
gambling tables with a prodigality that challenged even
that of the Russians; they quickly learned to be hosts
at parties that would have made Cleopatra worry about
the bills. When they had no more money, the generous
Tsar refilled their purses, asking in exchange only the
distant, half-forgotten castles and lands in the Georgian
mountains. Meanwhile, the parchment brought by the
king of Georgia had somehow been lost by the keeper
of the Imperial archives, and Russian state documents
began casually to refer to "our province of Georgia."
Georgia had been annexed.

Georgia went on living as always, unaware of the
transfer, and having its own engrossing little wars
between tribes, until the Russian armies came down to
suppress them. Then there was much brave fighting;
mediaeval castle after castle held out to the last against
the Russians, and when it fell its defenders learned with
astonishment that they were to be hanged as rebels
against their Emperor, the Tsar.

Gumri was on the plain, and had no part in the
many battles. Eventually, however, a regiment of Cos
sacks appeared and made camp on the banks of the
Arpa Chai; a military outpost to protect the new Rus-

166 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

sian frontier. Troops massed there to drive the fron
tier even farther southward. From Gumr! they
marched to attack the Persians at Erivan, and when
Erivan fell and peace was signed with Persia in Feb
ruary, 1828, Marshal Paskevich concentrated at Gumri
the forces which attacked Turkey three months
later.

The Tsar was moving down toward Constantinople.
But the Armenians of Turkey saw in the Russian
armies the Christian power that would release them
from bondage to the Moslem Turk. They rose to
fight beside the Russians; together they took Kars and
Erzeroum and a great slice of Turkish territory. If
Russia had held these conquests, Gumri would have
remained the simple village it had always been. But
there was a Peace Conference; Russia returned Kars
and Erzeroum to Turkey by the Peace of Adrianople.
The unfortunate Armenians who had welcomed the
Russians fled northward in a flood of refugees behind
the Russian retreat, to dig themselves a shelter in the
plains of the Arpa Chai. Gumri became the advance
military base of the Russian armies.

For a time the Russian movement toward Constanti
nople stopped, to consolidate its winnings, and to face
England, who was ready to fight rather than let Russia
cut the British route to India. Emperor Nicholas the
First came down through the Caucasus in person and
inspected Gumri, which was already being made into
an important fortress. He approved the plans, named
the place Alexandropol, signed a few orders on the Im
perial treasury, and went back to St. Petersburg. Fif-

INTO SOVIET ARMENIA 167

teen years later Gumri had become Alexandropol, the
largest city in Russian Armenia.

The Russians are good builders, and Armenians have
been renowned for masonry work since men first began
to build stone houses. Not far from Alexandropol
there are limitless quantities of a black volcanic rock
which cuts like sandstone. Three enormous military
posts, for infantry, cavalry and artillery, were beauti
fully built of this stone and roofed with red tiles.
These posts were AlexandropoPs reason for being and
only means of support. Around them grew up a city
of thirty thousand Armenians, living and working in
buildings of the same black stone. Three churches
and a cathedral for the Gregorian Armenians, one
Armenian Catholic church, and a chapel for the few
hundred Greek refugees from Erzeroum, were added
to the city. Armenian education was restricted by the
Russian government; Alexandropol was allowed only
two small primary schools, and a Russian school which
taught badly less than a hundred pupils.

Nothing more happened in Russian Armenia until
the Russian government confiscated the Armenian
Church treasure in 1905. Then an outbreak of revo
lution swept through Armenia, so violent that the Cos
sacks could not put it down. The Tsar's secret police
were more powerful; they armed the Tartars, and in
cited them to massacre the Armenians. Thereafter
there was constant war between the Armenian and
Tartar villages, until Germany marched on Belgium in
1914. Simultaneously, the Russian armies marched
down from Alexandropol into Turkey.

168 BEGINNING "AGAIN AT ARARAT

These were the armies whose arrival was prayed for
by the Armenians of Van, entrenched in their quarter
and fighting the Turks, while the girls I met in the
Rescue Home in Scutari were being driven back and
forth across Turkey, through massacre into slavery.

The Russians came in time to help the Armenians
take Van. As they moved forward, again Armenians
hailed them as deliverers, again Armenian companies
joined the Russian army, while their women and chil
dren poured northward into Russian Armenia. The
Russian armies again took Kars and Erzeroum, ad
vancing always farther into Turkey.

There was no fighting in Russian Armenia except
between the Armenian and Tartar villagers until the
Russian revolution worked its way down through the
Caucasus to the front lines. Then, in 1918, the armies
went to pieces, the soldiers shot their officers and went
home, and the Turks followed on their heels, clean
across the whole of Russian Armenia.

The whole Armenian population of Northern
Turkey, which had welcomed the Russians, broke
loose and stampeded northward, fleeing from Turkish
vengeance. With it went the whole population of
Russian Armenia, northward into the mountains of
Georgia, pursued by the Turks. Then came the Armi
stice, and the Turks retreated.

Out of the chaos they left behind them rose the
Armenian Republic. For half a century the few uni
versities of Tsarist Russia had been hotbeds of revo
lution. The few Armenians that could get into uni
versities inevitably became revolutionists, working un-

INTO SOVIET ARMENIA 169

derground, hunted by the Russian police. Most of
them were members of the Socialist revolutionary par
ties. But there was another Armenian group, the
Armenian Nationalists. They were not anarchists, so
cialists or communists; they were revolutionists in the
sense that George Washington was. These National
ists gathered together the Armenian soldiers who had
been armed by Russia, declared their independence,
and asked recognition and help from the Allies.

The waves of refugees were coming southward again.
They found their villages destroyed not by the Turks,
but by other wandering bands of refugees who had
torn down roof-beams and the timbers that supported
walls, to feed their camp fires. There was no harvest,
for the Turks had taken it, and had also eaten the
cattle and sheep. Alexandropol had no bread, and its
debris-choked streets were filled with dead and dying.

Then the Americans appeared. They took the
wrecked barracks, repaired them and filled them with
orphans. They cleaned the streets, carried out and
buried wagon-loads of dead, distributed food and cloth
ing and medicines. But it was like trying to rebuild
between two earthquake shocks; the earth still
trembled beneath their feet. All the old hatreds had
been fanned by the war; the Tartars were attacking
Armenians and Molokans, the Armenians were fight
ing Turks and Georgians; the English army had gone
northward from Persia to the Baku oil-fields; the Red
armies were pushing south the chaos of revolution.

In 1920 the Turks came through this turmoil like a
knife through butter. Kars, permeated with Bolshevik

170 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

propaganda, fell without a struggle. Again the stam
pede of refugees started northward. Again the Turks
came into Alexandropol. The Armenian Nationalist
government was defeated and dispersed, and this time
a new Armenian group came to the top. It was the
Armenian branch of the Communist party. Under the
wing of the Turkish military occupation, it proclaimed
in Alexandropol the creation of the Armenian Soviet
Republic.

The last act of the Armenian Nationalist government
was desperately to sign a treaty of peace with Turkey,
which moved the Turkish frontier northward to the
banks of the Araxes River. The Turks retreated, but
before the Nationalist government could recover, the
Russian armies had joined the Armenian Soviet govern
ment. The Armenian Nationalist government, the
hope of an independent Armenian state, was irrevoca
bly lost.

The exiled Nationalist President, Khatissian, has
since lived in Geneva, Switzerland, where he has at
tempted to continue his service to his beloved country
by keeping before the world the needs of Armenia and
a knowledge of the unfulfilled promises of the Allied

Powers.

When we came into Alexandropol in 1921, Erivan
was the capital of Soviet Armenia, and Alexandropol
was the largest orphanage in the world.

Five minutes of driving past ruined buildings brings
one to the still-living core of the city half-abandoned
rows of shops, showing reviving commerce by dingy

INTO SOVIET ARMENIA 171

windows piled with fruit or cigarettes, displaying a
few lambskins and lambskin caps, or racks of American
old clothes. A high-wheeled cart drawn by two large,
white camels and driven by a Bolshevik soldier In
peaked, red-starred cap rattles down the street, dis
turbing a knot of men gathered around a sheep. Its
owner holds it by the horns, while prospective buyers
run their hands through the wool to feel muscle and
fat. A few two- and three-storied buildings display the
rayed star and red flag of government offices ; a white
statue of Marx, newly erected, stands above a pile of
debris.

The road leaves these signs of activity behind, passes
again between rows of crumbling buildings, and curls
around a little hill, bare and wind-swept. Beyond it
appear the many solid, long buildings of Kazachy Post,
headquarters of the Near East Relief in Armenia.

In mid-morning, these buildings have the populous
and yet deserted look of factories. One story high,
built of the black volcanic rock relieved with trim of
red brick and red-tiled roofs, they cover a long swell
of the prairie with their utilitarian military arrange
ment. There are a dozen or more of them, end to
end, along the railroad track; others stand in groups
of four and six, roughly enclosing several acres of drill-
ground. In this bare space rise the right-angled and
circular walls of an Armenian church. The dusty roads
that run between the buildings are deserted save for a
carriage or two accompanied by dust-clouds, and re
duced to miniature by the distances. Here and there
one sees a child bound on an errand, a solitary white

1 72 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

speck moving across the field of vision. But a low
hum rises from all the buildings, like the murmuring
from beehives.

This is the usual aspect of Kazachy Post in summer,
and of the other barrack-groups, Seversky Post and
Polygon. In winter, the savagery of nature over
whelms it all. The great bulk of Mount Algoz is a
white mound on the horizon, and all the world at its
foot is smothered in snow. Snow buries the red roofs
and piles against the buildings till the black stones seem
to be cracks in the sides of snow-drifts, and the wagon-
roads are trenches deep-cut in snow, and the wind that
blows across the interminable plains is scented with
snow and edged with ice.

Yet it is only with an effort that one recalls either
of these aspects. To one who has seen Alexandropol
the sound of its name brings another picture the
amazing, stupendous spectacle of summer noon or eve
ning, when the children pour from the buildings to
cover the landscape.

There can be no other sight like it in the world.
The earth becomes alive with little white figures, as an
anthill is alive with ants. Long lines of them cross
and criss-cross, linking the buildings together. Thou
sands of them scatter between the lines, each follow
ing his own direction over the rolling plain, a little indi
vidual lost in the mass-effect of tumultuous motion.
From them all rises a sound, too widespread to be
called a clamour, too light to be called a roar, too
sharp to be a murmur thousands upon thousands of
children's voices, laughing, crying, singing, talking,

INTO SOVIET ARMENIA 173

shouting, calling. The monitors of each line have
whistles which they blow at any excuse or with none;
somewhere in the mass Boy Scout bands are tuning
instruments or playing marches; at the dining rooms
the beat of gongs marshals the ranks, and the kitchens
sound like factories with rattle of spoons. But unless
you are close to one of these noises, you hear none of
them. All are submerged and lost in the sound of
children's voices.

There were more than twenty-five thousand or
phaned Armenian children in the three posts at Alex-
andropol, and each of them has a human story of
terror and flight, of murder and death from exhaustion
on refugee-marches, of being lost and cold and hungry
and sick. Each of them, not too young to remember,
had memories of long journeys on bare feet across
plains and over mountains, fleeing northward to escape
the Turks, southward to escape the Georgians, west
ward to escape the Tartars. Some had walked from
the Black Sea to Mesopotamia, from Mesopotamia to
Persia, from Persia to Baku, from Baku into the
steppes of Russia and the Ural Mountains, and south
ward again, past the Sea of Azov, over the Caucasian
ranges, across Georgia and back once more to this
Turkish border, on the banks of the Arpa Chai.

"Where do you come from?" one asked them, and
they replied. "From Van." "From Trebizond."
"From Baku."

"Have you a father, a mother?"

"They took my father away, and my mother was

174 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

killed in Syria." Or, "They killed my father and I
don't know where my mother is. I lost her and the
baby on the desert in Azerbaijan. I met a woman in
Russia who said she saw my mother in Georgia, but I
don't know where she is now."
"Do you know where any of your relatives are?"
"Yes, I have a brother. He is in the American or
phanage in Erivan."

But these twenty-five thousand stories were lost in
the mass of them. The child became a unit in handled
hundreds. Only by organization could the thousands
be fed and clothed, schooled and doctored. Often it
seemed that the big fantastic spectacle was this ad
venture of American organization in the immemorial
chaos of the Caucasus. It was a bit of modern Amer
ica inserted between two chapters of the Old Testa-
men t the wandering refugees led by Moses, the wars
between Israelites and Philistines, the Lost Tribes in
their dispersion, coming suddenly upon a gigantic
American business organization which handled food
and shelter and education and hospital care.

"Soviet Armenia," we said. And it was true that
Armenian Communists filled all political offices. But
Communism is an economic theory, and in Armenia it
remained merely a theory. Economically, Americans
were governing the country. American activities were
felt in every village; the American organization was
the business organization of Armenia. The peasants
sold it wood, cotton, vegetables, cheese, hay, meat,
wool, butter, eggs, fruit, and received in exchange the

INTO SOVIET ARMENIA 175

American old clothes which were far more valuable
than money. For the same priceless wages men and
women and ox-teams worked for the Americans, who
were the only large employers of labour in the Cau
casus. Great blocks of buildings were filled with the
shops that manufactured cloth, clothing, shoes, furni
ture, pottery, window-frames, doors, stoves, ploughs,
horseshoes, wagons, for the orphanages and the or
phanage farms. All the children strong enough to do
so worked part-time in these shops, which taught them
trades while supplying them cheaply with necessities,
but they worked under the direction of skilled Arme
nians. Armenian teachers found employment in the
schools. The numbers of peasants and ox-teams that
worked on the twenty-two thousand, seven hundred
acres of the American farms ran into the hundreds.
All these activities grew from the necessity of pro
viding for the forty thousand orphans in our care in
Armenia, but, in addition, there was the adult relief
programme, which was giving food and clothes in ex
change for labour on roads, bridges, irrigation canals
and electric plants.

The weight of this enormous American organization
had broken down the communistic system of distribu
tion even while the new Soviet government was trying
to set it up. The Americans were there when the
Turks invaded the Nationalist Armenian Republic in
1920; when the Bolsheviks took over the country the
only thing in it which was not disorganized was the
American machinery for taking care of the orphans.
That continued to work, and neither laws nor protests

176 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

could keep it from working; to stop it by force meant
to starve the next generation of Armenians.

The Soviet government decreed that all farm-prod
ucts and labour must be handled by Soviet officials, but
the decree was waste paper while orphans were hungry
and cold, and Soviet officials had neither food nor wood.
The peasants had these things, and the Americans had
old clothes; nothing could have stopped the stream of
trade between them.

As a Communist, every government official hated the
Americans; as a man and an Armenian, he was grateful
to them for saving the life of the Armenian people.
Every American who was working overtime to do this
hated Communism, but could forty thousand helpless
children, whose lives had just been saved by desperate
efforts, be abandoned again to disease and starvation?

Ordinarily, medical work among these children
would have meant merely establishing hospitals to take
care of those who fell ill in normally conducted insti
tutions, a very small per cent. But in Armenia, we
found the medical relief of forty thousand children on
our hands. I mean this literally. There was not one
healthy child among them.

The orphanage buildings were not yet finished.
When it is necessary to cut down the tree to saw into
lumber to give the carpenters to make into a window-
frame to set in a wall that must be built from a heap
of stones, buildings that will shelter forty thousand
children cannot be finished in a year. Four walls with
a roof above them were a heaven of shelter to the

INTO SOVIET ARMENIA 177

children, and more than one building was crowded
before the roof was finished. Beds were still being
made; in the meantime the children slept on the floors.
The beds that came pouring from the shops were made
in two and three layers, like bunks in a steamer cabin,
and at least two children, sometimes four, slept in every
bunk. This crowded condition was horrible from any
standpoint of health, but a hundred times more horrible
were the steps of the buildings, covered with filthy
heaps of children who were dying because there was
no room for them inside.

The medical work at first was such work as may be
done on a battlefield under fire. Diseases that at home
would have hospital care were here the normal stand
ard of health. As fast as the children could be taken
in, they were undressed by nurses with rolled-up
sleeves and handy basins of antiseptics; the rags that
were taken off were put with tongs into a fire; the child
was bathed, its head was shaved, and it went into the
hands of the nurse who dressed its sores. Contagious
diseases were isolated as much as possible, but all the
children had the contagious diseases of favus and
tracoma.

As rapidly as possible they were sorted out, and the
orphanages were graded by scale of diseases. Four
teen hospitals were opened. But every orphanage was
also a hospital, every child was a patient, and medical
treatment was as much a part of the orphanage routine
as mealtime. Every morning in Alexandropol the inside
of the eyelids of eighteen thousand children was rubbed
with a copper pencil treatment for tracoma, the eye-

178 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

disease that blinds and every child had his own cop
per pencil numbered and filed in a box.

Of the many other diseases I will not speak. These
are, after all, technical subjects. And the Americans
who sent us to Armenia, the safe and clean Americans
for whom I am writing, will be sickened even by read
ing of the things these children lived with every day.

But I wish to say this: Every American who went
to the Caucasus was a hero. Of myself I do not speak,
nor of the other doctors who were working there before
me, who remained to work with me, and who are there
yet doing the last of the work among the recovering
healthy children; our profession is work among the
sick. But the relief workers, the orphanage managers,
the construction men and supply men, all the men and
women who directed the work, left the cleanliness and
health of America and went to the Caucasus to live
every day in invisible danger of blindness and horrible
death. What Father Damien did among the lepers,
what Florence Nightingale did in the pest-hole of
Scutari, these men and women did in the Caucasus.
And America sent so many of them that the list of
their names is too long to record here. Nor do I think
they wish to have their names recorded. What they
did they did, because they are Americans, because they
represent the spirit of America.

XII
MISS MACKAYE'S BLUE BABIES

SEVERSKY POST was over the hills from Alex-
andropol. The tracoma orphanage (six thousand
of the worst cases) and the tent-hospitals ^f or
tubercular children were there. But the attraction of
Seversky was that its isolation made it seem so much
more vividly in Armenia. Three minutes from it were
the banks of the Arpa Chai, where the river enters a
narrow valley between hills. The higher hills to the
south were now in Turkey, and the blue mountains
beyond them hid Trebizond and Van.

In the late afternoons the children cover the little
plain between Seversky and the river, dancing Arme
nian dances in little, white eddies around a leader.
Their voices are like the shrill, sweet chattering of
birds. Among the boulders on the river's edge dozens
of little ermine play in and out with flicker of swift
tails and bright eyes. Beyond the bridge are the sol
diers 7 camps, and on the road there is always a pass
ing of army carts, large-wheeled, rickety affairs that
look absurdly small behind the huge white camels that
draw them.

Down this road, too, come Armenian women bent
under packs and walking on bare, or rag-bound feet.
They linger at the roadside to watch the dancing chil-

179

i8o BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

dren, and when the children have gone trooping in to
supper and to bed you will always find a woman or
two slipping furtively about the buildings. If, meet
ing one, you question her, she says, "God be with you.
I come from the province of Van. My husband is
killed and my children dead. I go to find my brother,
who was in Tiflis before the war." If you question
her further, too closely, she will ask God to bless
you, and shuffle off down the road to the north.

But if you do not drive her away by questions you
will see her lingering there, sometimes for days. She
watches the children. She walks around the tent-hos
pitals. From time to time, when she finds a child
alone, she will ask questions. "Have you seen a little
girl named Morning Star, from the province of Van?
She should be seven years old now."

From the window of an office you see her question
ing, and turning away. Or sometimes waiting on that
spot for hours, until the organization's routine brings
toward her a little girl who will break away from the
others, shrieking, "Mother! My mother!" Then the
woman embraces her, carefully, because of the white
clothes and her own dirty rags. She holds her away
and looks at her, looks at the clean skin and clean
hair, touches the cheeks that are filling out, and fingers
the coarse dress of sheeting. You see them minutes
later, the woman kneeling with the child before her,
each gazing into the other's eyes as though finding
nourishment there to feed a long hunger.

You turn back to your work. That child is not an
orphan; she has found her mother. You should go

MISS MACKAYE'S BLUE BABIES 181

down and question them; you should refer the case to
the family-finding department, which is discharging
children as fast as possible. It would give the little
girl a blanket and an outfit of whole garments and an
order for half-rations 3 and there would be one less in
the dormitories where the beds hold three. But you
do not do it.

You glance from the window once more. Morning
Star is with the others, in the long lines filing into the
dining-room, and her mother is trudging out of sight
over the hill.

The end of that story is in the future. The ends of
other stories like it are found in the offices, where
every day five or six women appear to ask for their
children.

"I lost them on the road, after the Turks took Kars,"
one said. "They were in a cart and I was walking.
I fell down by the road. In the morning a woman
gave me some water and bread and I went on to
Erivan. Nobody there had heard of my children. I
worked for the Americans, scrubbing in the hospital.
My children were not in the orphanages. I heard that
my brether was in Djalal-Oghly, and I walked there.
My brother was sick and had no work. That was last
spring. My children were not in Djalal-Oghly, but I
saw my cousin's son in the orphanage there. He said
my children were here, I walked here, and saw my
son in Polygon Post; he said the baby was here in
the hospital, and I waited nine days outside the hospital
but did not see my baby. Then I walked back to
Djalal-Oghly. My brother has a house now, and a

i82 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

job, and I come to get my baby. Is my baby alive?
If she is alive, she is four years old now. Her name
is Purity, and when she laughs she has a dimple in
her chin. I want my baby now. My brother has a
cart, and he is buying an ox. When he has the ox,
then I will come again for my son. He can drive the
ox-cart, and we will have bread for us all."

It is from glimpses like that that one gets the pic
ture of the human lives that make Russian Armenia.
This is the story of the million and a half of its
Armenian population a nomad, refugee life for five
years, during which villages and homes were destroyed
and families scattered, and now a settling down and a
reintegration of the primitive social structure. "I
want my baby now," and "My brother is buying an
ox," expresses it all.

Interested in this woman, we inquired next day
whether her baby had been found among the six thou
sand in Seversky Post. Yes, Purity was one of Miss
MacKaye's Blue Babies. Impossible, then, not to go
with the mother and the office-girl across the drill-
fields to the home of the Blue Babies, where one could
watch the meeting.

Miss MacKaye's Blue Babies are the point in Sever
sky Post where emotion breaks through routine. The
debate between organization and emotion in charitable
work is an endless one, and painful to those involved
in it. A child needs love, a warm hand to hold, and a
listening sympathy, perhaps even more than food and
shelter. Food and shelter save the body, love saves
the heart and soul But when forty thousand children

MISS MACKAYE'S BLUE BABIES 183

are dying in ditches and fields, how can one decide to
give love and time to a thousand and let the others
die? The orphans of Russian Armenia were given
bare life, at the cost of incredible effort. A handful of
Americans in a devastated country saved them got
them bathed in rooms that had to be built on ground
from which bodies and debris of fallen buildings must
first be cleared, got them sheltered from cold under
roofs that were laid above their heads, and beside
stoves that were made from old oil cans in blacksmith
shops that must first be built and equipped, got their
nakedness covered with clothes that must be shipped
and followed and fought for, all the way from New
York to Constantinople and over the Black Sea and
through the war in Georgia and across chaotic Armenia.
This was done by organization; nothing else could have
done it. But the child was lost in the mass, as a grain
of wheat vanishes in the floor pouring into a grain-
elevator. The children were handled in blocks of thou
sands, they became symbols in card-index systems so
many thousands of receptacles into which so many hun
dreds of pounds of corn-grits and fats must be put in
so many hours. There was no time to think of them
as immature human beings.

Two years had not been time enough in which to
do all that must be done. Deaths from cold and star
vation had been stopped, the fight against disease was
under way and gaining ground, schools had been pro
vided, workshops were running. There was time, then,
to catch the breath and say that something must be
done to equip the children for living. There was some

184 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

opposition to spending funds which were running
short for luxuries like Boy Scout bands and Y.M.C.A.
work in boy's camps. Armenia had not known such
things in the past; it was rather like giving cake to
the starving. But neither had Armenians ever before
been caught by the huge impersonality of organiza
tion that impersonality so destructive to the human
spirit that, wherever it appears, social service work
follows as its antidote. The debate was warm, in the
councils of the Near East Relief. Meanwhile, quietly,
and because she is the kind of person who does things
when she can no longer bear their not being done,
Janet MacKaye had created the Blue Babies.

There were sixty or seventy of them, all less than
eight years old, and they were called the Blue Babies
because, partly by dogged persistence, and partly by
her own generosity, Miss MacKaye had got them
every one dressed as cunningly as any American mother
dresses her own babies. They wore little dresses and
baby-boy suits of blue chambray, with white collars or
bits of embroidery on pockets. They lived in a house
where there was a playroom with pictures on the walls,
toys in play-pens for the very littlest babies, and a
few rag dolls and little carts for the older ones. There
was even a baby phonograph that scratchily sang.
These were all gifts from Miss MacKaye's personal
friends.

But it was not these riches of possessions and gar
ments that really distinguished the Blue Babies; it
was the confidence with which they slid a hand into

MISS MACKAYE'S BLUE BABIES 185

yours and skipped beside yon. Everywhere in all the
posts the wistful little girls would wave their hands
and call "Good night!" to the passing American; a
hundred times a day a child timidly touched your skirt
and searched your face with eyes hungry for a smile
that would be all her own. But the Blue Babies did
not ask for your interest and affection; they took them,
happily, expecting them from you because they had
always had them from Miss MacKaye.

It was one of these Blue Babies that the mother from
Van was going to take away. We found them playing
Ring-around-a-Rosy, in a whirling blue circle, singing
out of tune with all the strength of healthy lungs. The
mother stopped at sight of them and stood rolling and
unrolling her hands in the ends of her black headker-
chief. There was nothing bright or gay about her
stooped figure, clothed in salvage from some old-
clothes bundle a navy blue serge waist, a worn black
petticoat, some man's old shoes, broken at the sides.
Her face was wrinkled and brown as leather, her teeth
were decaying, and between the bright dark eyes was
the blue tattoo mark of the Turkish-Armenian woman
who has known slavery to the Arabs.

We waited, while one of the children ran to call Miss
MacKaye from her office. The office-girl and I
glanced at our wrist-watches. The Blue Babies
stopped playing and gathered around us, all who could
get fingerhold on our arms clinging to them, and the
others making shift with a handful of skirt. They
clung to us silently, free forefinger in their mouths,

i86 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

looking at the woman, and she looked at them with
sombre eyes. She did not know which of them was
hers.

Then Miss MacKaye appeared, sunshine on her
golden head, and we were deserted. Out of the blue
mass that ran to her like chickens to their mother,
Miss MacKaye picked little Purity from Van and
brought her to us. She was not a pretty child few
of the children born on this side of the world during
the Great War are pretty children. But when she
found herself in Miss MacKaye's arms she smiled, and
there was a dimple in her chin. The mother recognized
her then, but made no move to take her. Each was
awkward, shy of the other, and when the baby under
stood that she was to go away with this woman she
clung to Miss MacKaye's neck in silent desperation.
No tenderness, coaxing, explanations, could move her;
her arms were unwound by force, and she was taken
away to the offices, stumbling and clinging to the of
fice-girl's hand, looking now and then with startled eyes
at the mother trudging stolidly beside her.

In a few days, no doubt, she would pick up the life
that had been interrupted when the mother fell, ex
hausted, from the refugee lines. She would be again
an Armenian child in an Armenian home, with nothing
left of her two years with the Americans but the little
clothes she would soon outgrow and the capital of
health she had accumulated. She was only four years
old. It will be a generation before one can know the
effect on Armenian life of returning to it the forty
thousand children who have spent their most impres-

MISS MACKAYE'S BLUE BABIES 187

sionable years in being rescued from refugeeism by an
American organization.

The tiny gap which her going left among the Blue
Babies was filled before Miss MacKaye could return
to her office. As she went away the mother from Van
passed another woman coming in, leading by the hand
another four-year-old. She wanted to leave the child
with the Americans. The child, she said, was her
cousin's daughter; father and mother dead. If eyes
and voice have ever betrayed untruth, she was lying.
But she was lying desperately, as people lie for food
when they are starving. The little girl was covered
with dirt, with lice, with scabies and favus; her fright
ened eyes looked at us from a face blue-white with
hunger. The woman who held her hand said that she
could not take care of her; her husband was dead, her
village was in Turkey, she lived in the fields. In any
case, she said, the child was not hers and she would
not be bothered with it.

Now there are strict rules in the Caucasus organi
zation that no more children be taken in. Instead,
they are being sent out to relatives as fast as relatives
can be found. But Miss MacKaye, with fire in her
blue, Scotch eyes, gave orders to take this one. "She
will die if we don't, and I'm not here to condemn sick
babies to death. Take her to the hospital and register
her."

The child, finding herself carried away, suddenly
began to fight. Once she cried, "Mother!", and then
she screamed like a little, wild animal in a trap. The
woman who had turned away, stopped, whirled, ran

i88 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

after her, stopped again, turned, could not make her
self go, and stood with her back to the screams that
grew fainter and were suddenly cut off by the closed
door of the hospital.

She was taken to the offices to report, for the files,
what she knew of the child. She gave the child's name
and age, refused to tell anything about herself. "She
isn't mine. She is my cousin's child," she said. "My
cousin is dead, and his wife is dead; all the family is
dead. She is an orphan. She is nothing to me, I do
not want her. Why do you want my name? No, I
have no children. They are all dead. No, I do not
want to take her back. She is an orphan. I do not
care what becomes of her."

It is such incidents that made many Americans
think that Armenians do not care for their children.
The callous attitude of this childless aunt, recorded as
she expressed it, is horrifying. And the mother of
little Purity, leaving her children for a year in the
orphanages, knowing where they were and making no
effort to see them! Hundreds, thousands, of incidents
like these pile up, wherever Americans work among the
Armenians. But I think that if I had a child of my
own as hungry and sick and ragged as Armenian chil
dren are, and saw from outside the gates Miss Mac-
Kaye's Blue Babies playing "Ring-around~a-Rosy," I
would disown the child, too, in order to leave her there.

In Ismid there was an American nurse who adopted
an ugly, sick, little Armenian baby. The mother, who
had other children, gave this one away as soon as the

MISS MACKAYE'S BLUE BABIES 189

suggestion was made, saying carelessly, "Yes, keep
her if you like. I don't want her." She was six months
longer in Ismid before she was crowded on a refugee
boat for Thrace; in all that time she made no effort
to see the child, and she left without making any.
We were shocked by this unnatural callousness; we
felt that at least she might have inquired about the
child. It seemed that the lowest, instinctive, animal
emotions would have led her to do that much.

Three years later I was rushing in an automobile
from Piraeus to Athens, during those mad days when
the refugees were pouring in from Smyrna, bringing
small-pox, typhus, and all the problems of debusing,
feeding and sheltering hundreds of thousands. Sud
denly a woman darted fropi the side of the road into
the path of our car, waving her arms and scream
ing. Fortunately the car had good brakes and a
lightning-quick chauffeur. Before we recovered from
the jerk of its stopping, the woman was on the running-
board, clutching at me. "Doctor, doctor! Suzanne?
Is Suzanne all right?" I did not recognize her, "Don't
you remember? I am the mother of Suzanne. Don't
you remember my Suzanne? In Ismid?"

She had been through the massacre and the burning
of Smyrna, her second husband and two of her children,
the boys, had been killed; she had with her the other
one and the baby. All she asked was news of Suzanne,
the child she had given away. Fortunately I was able
to tell her that Suzanne was well and happy, with her
adopted mother in the Caucasus. "God is good," she
said. "In seven weeks she wiU be four years old Is

igo BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

she pretty now?" Very pretty, I said, with rosy cheeks
and bright eyes and a lovely smile.

That was all. She got down off the running-board,
thanking me, and vanished again in the ebb and flow
of refugee multitudes.

XIII
LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE

IT was the autumn of 1922; I had been a year In
the Caucasus. The first hopeless agony of the
Armenians had passed, had become an endurable
suffering which now began to be coloured with a little
hope. The refugee problem was disappearing. There
was a question of just how much general relief work
would be needed in the coming winter, and a doubt
as to the accuracy of government estimates. There
fore an unofficial survey of conditions in the villages
was being made. On one of these trips I was an idle
observer, occupying a vacant place in the automobile
and taking a few sunny, wind-swept hours as a pre
scription for a point of view that was suffering from
too long and too close attention to detail.

We drove out from Alexandropol across the wide,
rolling plateau that gave the name to Barley River.
Behind us a quarter of the horizon's circle was blocked
by the forty-mile-long base of Mount Algoz, which lies
like the finny back of some huge, half-submerged sea
monster between Alexandropol and Mount Ararat.
The mountains on the Turkish side of the Arpa Chai
curved in many-changing tones of blue toward the
Black Sea in the west. All the rest of the world was
waves of prairie, dipping and swelling to the far edge

I9X

192 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

of the sky where, like waves about to break, they ran
up into folds of tawny, blue-shadowed hills.

The sky appears very large and clear from these
Armenian uplands. The blueness of it, the white
clouds that are always sailing in it, and the sweet,
thin breezes give an impression of infinite airiness.
Even the plains of Armenia seem to be lifted into the
sky, and the gigantic mountains that border them are
not oppressive masses that subdue the spirit, but seem
rather to be protecting walls to keep one from rushing
too far and falling over the rim of the world into bot
tomless space.

Five minutes from Alexandropol there was nothing
to be seen but sky, mountains, and treeless prairie.
The town had vanished in the folds of the deceptive
plain that seemed so nearly level. Little winds ran
over ripe, wild grass that rippled changing tones of
greyish-green and golden brown. Coveys of some little
bird resembling a partridge rose with whirring wings;
blackbirds fluttered and rested and fluttered again;
a rabbit bounded from the road and disappeared in
three, long, quick leaps. As far as the eye could reach
across the wide plains, nothing else was to be seen,
save one American tractor dwarfed by distance, draw
ing behind it across the golden land a thin black mark
of ploughing.

Miles upon miles of good land bare, wasted, while
human beings were starving for the food it might be
producing. Twenty, thirty miles we went across it,
and in all that time we saw not one more moving
thing. Then the road began to climb, looping among

LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE 193

Mils as golden brown and as barren as the plain. Here
we began to pass long caravans of ox-wagons, loaded
with hay and grain. Over the edge of the car we
looked down upon them, toiling upward on lower loops
of the road as it dropped to a valley, or looking up
we saw them moving slowly in file along a ridge that
made the skyline. When we came upon them the
drivers clambered down from their seats to cover the
eyes of their oxen from the terrifying sight of an auto
mobile. These drivers were not Armenians, but Rus
sian Molokans, broad, sturdy men, fur-capped and tall-
booted. Their auburn beards fell on blue peasants'
blouses, and their small, blue eyes twinkled in stolid
broad faces.

The Russian map showed that we should find in
these hills the Armenian village of Metz-Kaitti But
when we reached it we found nothing but heaps of
stones and blackened spots where the house-timbers
had been burned in refugees' camp fires. If the people
who fled from this village when the Turks came to
Alexandropol had ever returned, they had not stayed
to rebuild the ruins.

Further on, a camping-place for the caravans.
Sixty ox-teams rested there beside a stream, oxen lying
unhitched by the wagons, or drinking in the shallows;
men unloading the noon food for themselves and their
beasts; a few red-cheeked women in full-gathered,
brightly coloured skirts and white aprons and caps
starting the samovars. These were Molokans, again.
Their village, they said, was nine hours farther on
but they were thinking of ox-team speed and an hour

194 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

from the road. The first Armenian village was three
hours beyond their own.

In another half hour we had climbed the hills, and
were racing across a windy, high plateau an immense
terrace, lifted by the Mils perhaps two thousand feet
above the Alexandropol plain. It, too, appeared un
inhabited save for birds and rabbits.

Looking at these thousands of acres of fertile, idle
land, it was easy to understand Russia's spasmodic
efforts to colonize the Caucasus, this point of the wedge
which for a century she had been driving down toward
Constantinople. Military conquest should have been
followed by a flow of population, to consolidate the
victories by a mass of peaceful human lives to sacrifice
in the next war. The point of the wedge would be a
hollow shell until this was done.

Catherine of Russia recognized this, and she had
seized upon the early-nineteenth-century religious con
troversies in Wiirttemberg as a means of filling the
empty Caucasus with her own German blood. Tens
of thousands of German farmers, accepting her invita
tion, had set out with their families toward these un
inhabited acres of fertile soil which seemed to them
an Eldorado. But Russia, large, loose, impractical,
temperamental, had killed them by her carelessness
while they tried to make the long journey, on foot and
with ox-teams, across Bessarabia, around the northern
shores of the Black Sea, and over the Caucasian ranges
down to these plains. Tens of thousands began the
journey; three years later, thousands reached the fron-

LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE 195

tiers of Georgia; a few hundreds survived the first
years of malaria, cold, hunger, and wars between
Armenians, Georgians, and Tartars. Two German vil
lages still remain on the Georgian-Armenian frontier.

The next attempt to colonize the Caucasus was made
with the Molokans and Doukhobors, the Quakers of
Russia. Because they refused to worship ikons or to
do military service, those who were not killed were sent
here in chains, in long convict lines driven by Cos
sacks with whips. Those who survived the year's jour
ney were released in Armenia and left to work or
starve. They worked, and are a prosperous, simple,
conscientious, communistic people, numbering some
thousands. But the land on which our eyes rested, if
farmed like the Kansas plain, could still swallow a
hundred villages and cry for more.

Here and there on the foothills were small patches of
cultivated land, crazy quilt patterns of light and dark
soil; all the plain seemed left to wild hay. In the dis
tance we saw three Armenian villages, low and rough,
like a disease of the earth breaking through the stubble.
After another hour that registered thirty miles on the
speedometer we came to Kazanshi.

It looked like a group of straw stacks, clustered on
one side of the road. On the other side a tiny stone
building, smaller than a straw stack, announced by its
ladder-like wooden belfry that it was a church. Its
roof was covered with sod, and the tall, ripe grasses
waving on it seemed to be reclaiming the building for
the prairie. The car stopped beside it, and looking

196 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

between two straw stacks we saw a group of men stand
ing by a hand-made fanning mill. Stepan Gregorian,
the chief of the village, was turning its handle.

When we waded knee-deep through the straw to his
side he stopped his work to welcome us courteously.
He was about forty years old, slow, deliberate, stoop-
shouldered with the work that had gnarled his hands
and weatherbeaten his face. His clothes had come
from American old clothes bundles; except for his eyes,
so black that the pupils were lost, he looked like any
American farmer harassed by bad crops and mortgage.

The fanning mill was as primitive as machine can be,
but the men were watching it with the interest that
American farmers once felt in a combined thresher.
It did not belong to Kazanshi, they said; its owner
took it from village to village and charged a tithe of
the grain for its work. The grain was poured slowly
into it; two vibrating screens husked the kernels, and
a large fanwheel blew away the chaff. It was run by
hand, but had obvious advantages over the common
method of rubbing the grain between the hands and
flinging it into the air by handfuls on a windy day.

Stepan Gregorian was quite willing to show us his
village, and sending a small boy for a key he tramped
beside us among the straw stacks and the houses. It
could not be said that we were on road or street; the
houses had no more pattern in their arrangement than
the straw stacks or the heaps of dried dung cakes that
towered over the flat earthen roofs. The ground be
tween them had been trodden grassless by bare feet and
hoofs of sheep and oxen. There was no colour in the

LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE 197

village, no trees, no flowers, no bright garments. A
few ragged, barefooted women and half-naked children
looked at us from the doorways that were like mouths
of caves.

We were taken at once to the church; the new one,
for Stepan said the church by the road had not been
used since his father's time. It was the only building
entirely above the ground. Large, gaunt and ugly, it
stood in an open space ringed with straw stacks. Be
tween them the ground sloped gently to a little stream
and the plain beyond. While we waited for Stepan
to struggle with the lock of the church door we stood
in the sunshine looking across half the village and out
to the golden fields, where men and women were load
ing ox carts with sheaves of barley. A few geese
paddled in the stream, watched by a little girl. In
three circles of straw stacks three teams of oxen were
threshing the grain. Driven by women with cracking
whips, they went patiently round and round, drawing
wooden sledges over the scattered sheaves. Three half
grown girls came up from the stream, carrying casks
of water on their shoulders. A couple of Bolshevik
soldiers went by, looking very smart in their new khaki
uniforms, with the gnome-like peaked cap and the red
star over their foreheads. Beside the black doorway
of a house a woman stopped for a moment to look at
us, then went on with her work. She was mixing with
her hands a tubful of watered cow dung, and plaster
ing handsful of it against the wall of her house^ to dry
in the sun. She would not stop her work of storing up
the winter's fuel because strange visitors had come.

198 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Let the chief attend to them; the life of the village
went on undisturbed.

Only a few unhealthy children and one old woman
followed us into the church. An air of reverential
respect settled upon them. The interior was bare and
gloomy, and filled with a musty smell. Rain had
streaked the whitewashed walls and dome. A few
heaps of rags lay on the floor, for worshippers to kneel
upon. Two iron candlesticks stood on the altar, and
over them hung a gaudy, Italian lithograph of the
Madonna and Child. Around the altar ril ran a series
of small pictures, six inches by eight, depicting in crude
colour and horrible frankness all the tortures suffered
by Armenian saints. Stepan waited respectfully while
we glanced at these and, embarrassed, turned away
from their nai've obscenity, but they were not what
he had brought us to see. He led us to a corner and
showed us with a tragic gesture the blue and gilt frag
ments of a plaster Virgin, lying on the floor. It was
as though he showed us the murdered body of a son;
the moment was too terrible for speech. Behind us the
old woman and the children began to sob.

After we had silently looked, Stepan led us away.
"The Turks did that," he said, and the old woman,
appealing with shaking fists toward the grimy dome
while tears poured down her withered cheeks, called
down upon the Turks most hideous curses.

Outside in the sunshine again, we walked with
Stepan toward his house. He said that when word
came that the Turks had left Alexandropol all the
people of Kazanshi fled northward into the Georgian

LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE 199

mountains, leaving only a few very old men to guard
their houses from other refugees. These old men had
kept Kazanshi from the fate of the villages that were
torn down to furnish fuel for camp fires. After a few
weeks the Turks came, and broke the plaster Virgin.
She had come all the way from Rome; she was very
beautiful, Stepan said. His grief was sincere and deep.
We asked whether the Turks had done anything else,
and he replied, "Yes." They had driven away the
cattle and sheep and taken the harvested grain.

After a year, when the Turks left Alexandropol, the
villagers followed the Russian armies back. Twelve
hundred had gone away; nearly twelve hundred re
turned. Some had died of hunger and exposure in the
mountains, but babies had been born to fill out the
number. This year in the village many more had died
than during the year in the mountains. They had
come back to famine. Also, three hundred refugees
had come from Turkish Armenia; these had nothing,
and of course the villagers had taken them into their
homes and divided with them what little food they had.
Then in the winter there had been fever. Typhus,
brought by the refugees, I mentally commented. But
Stepan said it was the will of God.

This almost sublime resignation failed when he spoke
of the approaching winter. Before spring, he said, the
whole village would starve, and he placed the responsi
bility for this fate upon the Soviet government.

We had come to his house. Half-buried in the earth,
like all the others, and heaped over with earth, it
looked out at the golden valley through one small win-

200 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

dow and a doorway set in a wall of stone cemented
with mud and wooden cross-beams. The low doorway
opened into the square hall of the cow stable.

Stumping through it with the heavy unelastic tread
of the tired farmer, Stepan opened the door of hewn
boards that led to the living room. The floor was of
earth, so many times moistened and pounded that it
resembled cement. Two iron beds ? made up with white
covers and feather pillows, almost filled the small space.
There was a hand-woven rug on the whitewashed wall;
a wooden chest under it. A little table covered with a
crocheted doily just fitted beneath the window, between
the beds, and there remained room for two rawhide-
bottomed chairs. On the table lay the village tax-roll.
Stepan's wife came in from the stable-room to wel
come us and to apologize for her dress and for the
house, which she said was untidy, though it wasn't.
It was washday, she said, and she had been down at the
stream all morning. Her dress was knitted of black
and white wool in horizontal stripes, and she wore a
black headkerchief over her smooth, greying hair. She
was like any farmer's wife in America, hard-working,
anxious, with lines of worry and of laughter around
her eyes.

Stepan Gregorian was desperate, turning the leaves
of the tax-roll. He was chief of the village, he said,
and the new government forced him to collect the taxes.
It was impossible; he could not do it. His gnarled,
stubby finger went painfully along the lines of writing,
stopping at this name and that. Here was a man
whose harvest was three poods of grain; the govern-

LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE 201

ment demanded four from him, and when lie could
not pay it, he was taken away to jail in Alexandropol.
"He has a wife and four children. They have nothing
to eat and come to me crying for- bread. What can I
do? I cannot do anything. I must see them starve
until they die. There will be no food in the village for
any of us. Our whole harvest is fifty-five hundred
poods of barley, and the government is taking forty-five
hundred poods. They are making me take it from my
own people, and what will be left in my village for my
people to eat?"

We said there must be some mistake; the govern
ment was, after all, Armenian, and Armenians could
not intend to starve their own people. This would be
a madness destroying the government itself. Had
Stepan explained the situation to the government?

Yes, he had. He had made the two-day journey to
Alexandropol, and had waited two days there to speak
to the Executive Council. He had stood before them,
and told them that his people could not pay the taxes,
that the village would starve. But all they had said
to him was, "Go back and collect the taxes."

"I cannot pay my own tax," said Stepan. "This
year I have harvested twenty poods of grain, and the
government demands sixteen poods. Three poods I
must have for seed next spring. That leaves one pood
for my wife and children and myself to live on until
another harvest. We must have fifteen poods at least,
or die."

The sixteen poods demanded by the government
were not all taxes, however. On paper in the govern-

202 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

ment offices the taxes were heavy enough, but not too
great a burden to be borne, and as to the taxes, Stepan's
figures agreed with those given us by the government.
The tax was reckoned in proportion to return from the
seed.

Stepan had planted three poods of seed and har
vested twenty of grain & good crop for Armenia. His
tax was therefore five poods, which would have left
him the necessary fifteen poods on which to live. But
he must also return to the government the three poods
of seed it had lent him when he came back from
Georgia to his empty granaries, and the Near East
Relief had given him eight poods of corn-grits, im
ported from America, on which to feed his family until
the harvest. These eight poods must now be returned
in grain. This made the sixteen poods to be subtracted
from this year's crop, a proportion true for all the
village. But, whether one called it tax or called it
repaying a loan, the result, said Stepan, was the same-

In his agonized eyes the government appeared a mon
ster as cruel as the Turks. "In the winter," he said,
"the snow comes down. All our houses are buried in
snow, and we sit here in the dark. We cannot get to
Alexandropol. The government will be in Alexan
dropol, eating our grain. We will have nothing to eat.
Even if we eat all our seed, and kill our cows and
our sheep, there will not be enough. Before the spring
comes, we will all die of hunger in the dark. The
Bolsheviks say there is no God, and perhaps God has
turned His face from the Armenians since the Bol
sheviks came."

LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE 203

We could only hold out the hope that perhaps this
year, as before, the government would lend him seed
and the Americans lend him food to feed Ms people
until another harvest. The terror remained in Ms
mind, darkly underlying his talk of other things, and
rising always through it.

The people of Kazanshi, he said, had been refugees
from Turkey a hundred years ago. Apparently they
had been in the northward drift of Armenians when
Russia, by the treaty of Adrianople in 1828, relin
quished Kars and Erzeroum which her armies had
taken from Turkey. It was the story repeated during
the Great War; the southward drive of Russian armies
on their way to Constantinople, the rising of Arme
nians to welcome them and to fight in their ranks, the
withdrawal of the Russians, and massacre following
on the heels of the fleeing Armenians. The great game
of European imperialism, played with the little pawns
of helpless races, had caused it to happen that Stepan
Gregorian's grandfather was born in a ditch by the side
of a road choked with desperate and dying refugees,
instead of under the family roof in a village near Erze
roum. Of Russia's need for a warm water port, or
England's reasons for fighting the threatened break in
her route to India, Stepan Gregorian knew nothing at
all. He knew only that his grandfather had been born
on a road south of Alexandropol, that the mother had
been left there dead, and that the baby had been
picked up by another woman whose own baby had
died.

Two hundred of the refugees travelled onward until

204 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

they came to this plateau, where thousands of acres of
uninhabited land awaited them. There they had met
the winter, and dug shelters for themselves in the earth.
In the spring those who were left alive had gone to
work on the land. They had taken thirty-five hundred
acres of land, which no other idea had ever occurred
to them they owned in common. Every seven or
twelve years, as families dwindled or increased, they
held a village meeting and re-divided this land into
portions allotted to each family. In a hundred years
the two hundred villagers had become twelve hundred;
Stepan Gregorian 7 s father had been chosen chief of
them, and when he died his son had taken his place.
Nothing else had happened save spring and summer
and winter, birth and marriage and death until the
Russian armies came marching south again in 1914.

"I hope you will stay with us for supper," said
Stepan, and when we said that we couldn't, a flush
deepened the thick tan of his cheeks, as he realized
that he had been speaking of starvation. He said with
awkward dignity, "It is true that we have only poor
and simple food, but as long as we have anything at
all, it makes us happy to share it with a guest. I did
not ask to be polite, I asked because we would like you
to stay."

We made him believe, I hope, that our reason for
going was the lateness of the hour and the distance to
Alexandropol. He trudged beside us among the straw
stacks and piles of dried dung, past the half-buried
front walls of houses that seemed to lift the earth to
peer out at us, and back to the road where the car

LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE 205

stood. The man who owned the fanning mill was still
idle beside it, a half-grown boy was now enjoying the
excitement of turning the fan-wheel's handle.

"God go with you on a happy road/ 7 said Stepan
Gregorian, standing knee-deep in the straw and look
ing solemnly at our car. "In an hour it eats the dis
tance that an ox-team travels in a day/' he commented
as though to himself, "God go with you, and bless
you for your kindness in visiting our village. 77

Stepan Gregorian's haggard face, bent above the tax-
rolls, remained a long time in my memory. Statistics
of Armenia's actual condition, in that autumn of 1922,
were of course unobtainable; they did not exist.

Stepan's village and the twenty-seven other villages
in the district of Alexandropol lay somewhere out of
sight beyond the miles of rolling plain. From the low
hills above the city one saw only the immense circle
of treeless prairie and the three barrack-centres, some
times gaunt and bleak on the yellow earth, sometimes
alive with the swarming children, whose white clothes
gave the effect of snow. All that Alexandropol knew
of the villages was that the taxes were coming in,
loaded on long lines of ox-wagons led by a military
band and fluttering red flags. They looked like holi
day processions, like spontaneous expressions of the
joy with which the loyal peasants were bringing their
harvest to the government. Alexandropol knew, too,
that little groups of refugees from the villages were
gathering in the streets, driven in by approaching
winter. One morning a rumour ran about that the

206 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

small city orphanage (of three thousand children) was
taking in more, and at noon the orphanage manager
came distraught to the Kazachy luncheon table; she
had turned away that morning more than two hundred
children, a mob of childish desperation besieging her
office door.

Yet the situation was immeasurably better than it
had been a year ago. No one lay dead in the half-
repaired streets, where twelve months earlier twenty
and thirty bodies a day had been found on the piles
of debris that choked the ways between wrecked build
ings. Every morning two hundred men earned that
day's bread for their families on the road that was
being built by the Americans between Alexandropol
and Seversky. The refugees were making shelters for
themselves in the shells of abandoned buildings, and the
clinic started for them reported no serious epidemics.
Alexandropol would get through the winter with only a
few score deaths from exhaustion and exposure. This,
of course, did not answer the question of the villages.

One day, in the course of business, I met the Presi
dent of the Economic Council of the Alexandropol dis
trict. Remembering Stepan Gregorian ? s despair when
he told of his two-day journey to see this man, I looked
at him with keen interest. He was a type of Armenian
new to me. Thin, earnest, with deep-set eyes in which
burned a flame, he reminded me of the young American
Socialist of the nineties, the Christian Socialist whose
gospel was Bellamy's Looking Backward. That early,
and now almost forgotten Socialist movement in Amer
ica produced hundreds of young men like this one,

LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE 207

whose imaginations were stirred by a vision of the
Golden Rule governing the world, young men who
were poets and dreamers and thought themselves scien
tists. Flaming with an ardent desire to save the world
from poverty, unhappiness and crime, they threw them
selves into the Socialist movement with a devotion that
made them young ascetics. Admirable and ineffectual,
they burned out their flame and disappeared. But it
seemed that they, or their kind, had left an heir in this
young President of the Economic Council, who had also
inherited a thing they had never had power.

He was the supreme authority in the Alexandropol
district. There could be no question of his sincerity
or devotion. He worked hard, ten to fourteen hours
a day; he received a salary of eight dollars a month,
and certainly did not spend more on his way of living;
one glance at his face showed that he needed better
food than he was eating. His office was a bare room,
furnished with an unpainted, rough table and chairs.
Maps and charts lined the walls, and on the windowsill
was stacked a file of home-study courses from Cornell
University. How they had found their way here I do
not know. In the outer office, where Stepan Gregorian
had sat waiting two days, a secretary was translating
into Armenian a Cornell pamphlet on farm soils.

When another outwardly joyful procession of peas
ants bringing in their taxes passed beneath the win
dows, I could not refrain from speaking of Kazanshi
to the President of the Economic Council. I made the
village's peril clear enough, and asked why the govern
ment was pushing its peasants to such desperation.

208 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

"What else can we do?" said the President, all the
lines in his face deepening. "The harvest is not enough
to feed the people. It is a choice; some must starve
to death, or all must starve a little. This is a com
munist government, a government of all the peasants
and workers, for all the peasants and workers "

Now it was certainly impossible to make me sympa
thize with Communism, or believe that the government
of Armenia was a government of the peasants. The
man who was speaking was obviously neither a peasant
nor controlled by peasants. Yet he seemed to believe
what he was saying.

But the sincere Communist they are not all sincere
has two contradictory sides to his mind, one of im
practical theory, and one of hard, concrete fact. The
President turned quickly from one to the other. "The
peasants of Kazanshi will either have to starve, or go
to work and earn their grain back."

"You mean, earn it twice?"

"Exactly. These are not normal times; we confront
an emergency." During the year 1922, he said, con
ditions had greatly improved. Ninety thousand acres
of land had been cultivated, yielding two million, three
hundred and fifty-two thousand poods of grain. This
had been possible only because the government had dis
tributed seed and the Americans had distributed corn-
grits to feed the people until harvest, so that they could
plant the seed instead of eating it. This harvest, how
ever, was only sixty per cent of the amount needed to
feed the people and replant the fields.

The government's policy was therefore to take nearly

LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE 209

the whole crop, in taxes and payment of these loans ?
so that the food-control would be in its hands* The
grain would be redistributed in payment for work on
roads and irrigation canals. Thus only those who
needed it most would get it, and their labour would
improve the country. For example, Alexandropol plain
had a very slight rainfall, and needed irrigation. The
government had begun the building of the Arpa Chai
irrigation canal, eleven versts from Alexandropol; by
arrangement with the Near East Relief, the grain taken
in payment for the American grits was being paid out
in wages to workers on this canal. Americans were
supervising the work and the payment. In the spring
the canal would be completed, and would irrigate
thirty-five thousand acres of land.

Cattle were not taxed, in order to encourage cattle
raising. The expected result was not attained, because
the high price of meat in Georgia caused the Armenian
peasants to sell their calves for slaughter. Neverthe
less, cattle had increased twenty-five per cent during
the year.

Another difficulty was that during the war the pro
duction of wheat had dropped, the price having gone so
high that the peasants did not keep seed. Before the
war, sixty per cent of the cultivated land in the Alexan
dropol district had produced wheat; now seventy per
cent produced barley. Wheat was a better crop. The
government was trying to get into its hands all the
barley in Armenia, and would distribute none of it for
seed. Russia was sending three million poods of wheat
from the Crimea, to be distributed for seed.

210 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

The impression left upon me by this interview was
that the government was doing the best it could, under
difficult conditions, and hampered by the fact that revo
lutionists are human beings, full of all human faults,
and that they have had no experience in the working
world. Certainly the corn-grits from America, handled
by Americans, were the deciding factor in the situa
tion. The working out of the problem was hard on the
Stepan Gregorians who, after toiling all summer to
raise their crops, must now toil all winter breaking
frozen soil with picks in order to eat their own grain.
But at least they would not die of hunger. America
would keep them alive through another year.

The question of an American mandate for Armenia
had long been forgotten, buried under the accumulat
ing disappointments of the peace. Americans had been
willing to fight only for an ideal, they had gone into
the war with no careful preliminary treaties dividing
prospective spoils, they had tried to make a peace
founded on American principles; they had failed.
After that failure, America continued to pour out her
workers and her millions in an effort to save the Euro
pean peoples from the consequences of their govern
ments' cynical policies, and from the Atlantic to the
Black Sea she was hated because, in the wrecking of
Western civilization, she had suffered less than Europe.
She was hated because she had the men and the mil
lions that she was spending in charity. Still, she was
expected to spend them, and when our government re-

LIFE ON A RUSSIAN PRAIRIE 211

fused the offered burden of Armenia, we Americans in
the Near East were sorry.

Two years had shown, however, that when the Euro
pean Powers slashed new frontiers for themselves
across the map of Turkey they were cutting into a
living nation. If America had taken the Armenian
mandate, she would have been as deeply involved in
the bloody peace, that is not a peace, as she had been
involved in the war. American boys would have been
killing and dying in Asia to defend Allied imperialistic
policies, as they died in France to defend the Allies'
lives. The fall of Marash had shown the wisdom of
our government in going home when it did, though its
going left the Armenians to agonies that do not bear
thinking about.

Now, in Alexandropol, one saw that Americans had
taken the Armenian mandate which our government
refused. At home, Americans are saying that our old,
American liberty is disappearing. Socialists and labour
leaders, the man who likes his glass of wine, the em
ployer who likes unrestricted power, all complain that
organizations of minorities are destroying the freedom
of the individual. Everywhere in the world rapid
changes are occurring; old social structures shaken by
the Great War are recrystallizing in new patterns. In
America individualism is disappearing in organization.
But doesn't this mean simply that our old American
freedom is expressing itself in new forms? Certainly,
in no other world-state have individuals masses of
individuals moved by a common desire created or-

212 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

ganizatlons that have entered the field of International
affairs, independently even of their own Foreign Of
fices. Officially and wisely, America refused the Arme
nian mandate. Actually, the Americans interested in
Armenia had taken it.

The American organization was doing everything
that our government could have done for the Arme
nians, except to defend them with the bodies of Ameri
can soldiers. It was feeding the children and the
refugees; in order to do that, it was developing the
country, encouraging agriculture, building roads and
irrigation canals and electric plants, establishing
schools and hospitals, importing manufactured articles,
buying native products.

Directly or indirectly, it was entering the life of
every Armenian, and the sum of its effect on Armenia
cannot be reckoned in our lifetime.

XIV
UNDER KAFTERLOO'S TREES

THREE hours by carriage from Alexandropol Is
the Boys' Camp at Kafterloo. I wish that I
could make Americans see that wide, rolling,
barren plain which swallowed the wandering wagon-
track the great bulk of Mount Algoz lying on the
southern horizon, the faint blue mountain ranges of
Turkey, the marvellous cloud-varied clearness of the
Armenian sky. Our carriage went rattling over the
swells of prairie on which the grass rippled silvery-
golden in little winds. The sun was warm; a faint
haze veiled the snow-peak of Mount Algoz, and the
little hills that ran from its base to curve around the
edge of the world before us were water colours of green
and blue and rose. Quite suddenly, as we came to the
crest of another prairie-swell, Kafterloo appeared be
fore us, green with trees.

This unexpectedness of the Armenian landscape, like
that of the Armenian character, prepares one for any
thing. We were ready to believe that any fold of the
land concealed other surprising groves, but this is not
true. Kafterloo is unique on the Alexandropol plateau
because of its trees, and it was their charm of leaf and
shade that had brought the Boys' Camp here.

The Boys' Camp, like Miss MacKaye's Blue Babies,

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214 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

was an attempt to relieve the deadly spiritual barren
ness of institutional life. There were conscientious
men in the Near East Relief who opposed the appro
priation for it, saying that American people did not
want to pay for Armenian boys 7 vacations; contending,
too, that only a few hundred boys could be benefited
by it, while thousands were left out. But Mr. Ray
Ogden, Y.M.C.A. trained, had fought successfully for
his idea. Keeping life in the children's bodies was no
more important than saving their souls alive, he said.
Spiritual inspiration could not be measured out in thou
sands of pounds, like food. Personal contact was nec
essary. The Boys' Camp, by giving a few hundred
boys fine ideals of manhood and of service, to take
back to the crowded posts at Alexandropol, would be
making the little leaven for the whole lump. "I'm try
ing to educate leaders for the new Armenia," he said.

Those future leaders were vigorously playing Ameri
can games when we drove into the grove. In an instant
they abandoned bars and vaulting poles and baseball
diamond to come running to the carriage. In their
white suits, with bare, sun-browned arms and legs and
white teeth flashing in sunburned faces, they were like
any crowd of American grammar-school boys. "Good
morning!" they cried, taking off their caps, and some
held the horses while others helped us out of the car
riage.

In a few minutes they had unharnessed the horses
and led them away, they had spread blankets in a
shady spot for us and brought dripping jars from the
spring, and at a word from Mr. Ogden they had gone

UNDER KAFTERLQO'S TREES 215

back to their games. The grove was alive with, them
and their voices ; and one marvelled at the rapidity
with which they had externally at least become
Americans. For the Armenian child in his own village
never plays; he works, or sits in some airless hovel
soberly talking. Like all boys in the Turkish Empire,
he goes from helpless babyhood into grave manhood
with no interval of being a boy. It is precisely this
interval of being a boy, of developing physical and
spiritual muscles and a healthy zest in living, which
Armenia needs.

They took to it awkwardly at first, Mr. Ogden said.
It was necessary to make them play, to set baseball and
football as tasks to be done. It was necessary, too, to
teach them to use their muscles; their minds were alert
and quick, but their bodies had never learned to trans
late thought into action, and an Armenian boy was
quite capable of watching a ball come through the air
and hit him in the nose, well aware of what it was
doing, but never moving to stop it. Within a week,
however, their muscles began to co-ordinate with their
minds, and thereafter they were mad for games and
could not get enough of them.

These boys came out, in groups of a hundred, to stay
two weeks in camp. They played games all day long
and in the evening by the camp fires Mr. Ogden talked
to them, teaching them that religion should be used,
should be put into their lives and expressed in action.
He told them that Christ was not only a mystical figure,
but that He became a living man on earth in order to
show mankind how to live its life in this present world.

216 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Now the Armenian adoration of Christ is mystical.
Christ is to them a Principle of Good which if wor
shipped, will lead them to heaven, and He is wor
shipped by symbols, such as kissing the stones of His
churches. As a guide in daily conduct, the Armenian
follows, not the precepts of Christ, but the ancient
patriarchal traditions, loyalty to the family, respect for
elders, hospitality, and hatred of the alien conquerors
of Armenia.

But these boys were eager to hear of Christ the
Teacher, Mr. Ogden said. They understood the
stories of His life, because they were set in familiar
scenes. Their own fathers and mothers had gone riding
on donkeys to pay taxes; they, too, had watched the
fishermen on lake waters; they had run along with
crowds following a speaker to a high place and had
listened to his words spoken from the top of a hill;
there were jars of wine at their own marriage feasts,
and women bringing water from the village wells, and
in their villages dogs licked the sores of beggars, and
poor men ate the leavings from rich men's tables. The
marvellous story of Christ was to them what it would
be to us if He had come to our cities and given us
the example of His perfect life lived among sky
scrapers, automobiles, telephones and radio-systems.
His human story enthralled and inspired them.

Another way of reaching them was through their
patriotism. "I tell them frankly what I have heard
people say, that Armenians are a crafty, dishonest,
lying people/' says Mr. Ogden. "It infuriates them.
I've seen the whole hundred around a camp fire, so

UNDER KAFTBRLOO'S TREES 217

angry that they choked when they tried to speak. But
if I say, Do you want me to stop? 7 they say, ( No, no!
Go on!' I tell them that people are justified in having
a low opinion of Armenians, because there are Arme
nians who do lie and cheat and steal. They all know
it. I say that as long as their own people disgrace
them, they have no right to resent others having a
bad opinion of them. It is up to them to clean their
own house, if they want other people to take off their
shoes when they come in. They can't have respect
unless they deserve it. That isn't our affair, it's theirs.
"The result is, that we've got here as fine a lot of
boys as you can find in the world. Splendid boys!
When you think what they have come through gen
eration after generation of ancestors so oppressed that
they had to scheme, and lie, and cheat, just to keep
alive; then their own lives during the war, their people
killed, and they, themselves, driven from refugee camp
to refugee camp, hungry, living as best they could
it's remarkable. There is probably not a boy here who
has not stolen food and clothing, and lied and cheated
to get them, and seen men killed for them. When you
think of it, it is a wonder there is one decent Armenian
left. Yet I haven't had a bit of trouble with these
boys. My tent is full of things they ache to get their
fingers on, lying there unguarded, but not a thing has
been touched. They have a sense of honour, and
they're using it. When you remember that in a few
years these boys will be leaders of their people they're
bound to be ; they are educated men already, by
Armenian standards, and already they are leaders in

2i8 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

tlie orphanages why, I think our work has been worth
while, if it stopped to-morrow."

No one can say, of course, what will be the effect on
Armenia of those forty thousand men and women who
will have spent their childhood in American orphan
ages, workshops and schools. To-day they are four
per cent of Armenia's population.

We sat there on the blanket, spread under a tree, and
watched the boys playing in the sunshine and shadows
of the grove; some chinning themselves on the hand-
bar, some practicing a running jump, a long line play
ing leap-frog, and eighteen intent on a flying baseball.
Who can predict what their future will be, in this un
certain world still shaken and rumbling underground
in the earthquake of war? Yet never anywhere in the
world except in America has there long been peace,
and all the good there is in the world has come from
scattered seeds like these.

Mr. Ogden was opening his mail (six weeks old),
which we had brought out from Alexandropol. One
of the letters was from a friend in California, enclosing
a statement of the goods sent that year from the Pa
cific coast to Armenia: Clothing, 850,294 pounds; flour,
2,545,780 pounds; beans, 4,492,877 pounds; rice, 259,-
320 pounds; dried fruits, 436,355 pounds; milk,
175,508 pounds.

"We'll have some of those beans for luncheon,"
said Mr. Ogden, and suddenly the Western world of
stenographers' reports and way bills seemed to me

UNDER KAFTERLOO'S TREES 219

more romantic than the East with its camel caravans
and blue bead charms against the Evil Eye. Beans,
grown in the valleys of the Sacramento and the San
Joaquin, and sent half around the world to be eaten
in the Boys' Camp at Kafterloo! Rice and dried fruits
and flour, gifts from the American people to the anti
podes!

Those boys, shouting to each other in Armenian
while they played American games, had never seen
and probably would never see a sky-scraper, a subway,
a soda fountain, a traffic policeman; the world around
them is a world of mountain, plain and sky, of veiled
women at the village wells and shepherds watching
their flocks by night, of laden donkeys trudging down
to the low grey towns & world unchanged since Christ
was born to it. But these boys are alive, and are the
boys they are, because typewriters are clicking, trains
running and ships being loaded, in businesslike, matter-
of-fact America.

In the cook-tent a tin pan clanged with a wooden
spoon, and the boys went running to the wash-basins.
In a few minutes the first grinning, wet-haired ones
were in line with their tin pannikins, filing past the
bean kettle and the piled chunks of bread. Some of
them brought beans and bread and tin cups of coffee
to us, and when all were served they stood in a long line
under the trees, their food on the grass at their feet,
and with bowed heads and folded arms repeated an
Armenian prayer. Then clamour broke out again, ac
companied by the clatter of spoons on tin.

220 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

One of the boys seemed apart from the rest; he had
not been playing with them, and now he ate quietly,
speaking very little. His name was Hagop Kooyou-
nian, Mr. Ogden said; a fine boy, but handicapped be
cause he could not speak Armenian. He was learning
rapidly, however. A very good Boy Scout.

After we had eaten the California beans and the
boys had washed the dishes, we talked to Hagop Koo-
younian, who was embarrassed as could be. Nothing
could remove his boyish self-consciousness. He stood
at attention, after a snappy Scout salute, and answered
questions briefly.

He was an Armenian of Van five years old when
the Turks began the massacre cf 1915. No; he had
not been with the Armenians who fought the Turks.
Yes; his family had all been killed. The Turks had
come into the house and killed them. The Turks had
taken him, with about five hundred other boys and
girls. They had walked to the sea. The Turks had
been good to them all the way, let them rest and gave
them food and water.

From the seashore they had been taken on a ship
to Constantinople and put in a Turkish orphanage.
He had been five years in the Turkish orphanage.
The Turks beat him when he said he was Armenian.
They said he was a Turk, that there were only Turks
in Turkey. They tried to make him say that he was
a Turk. Later, they forgot, and did not ask him any
more what he was.

Were the Turks kind to him then?

They were kind enough, if you did not say that

UNDER KAFTERLOO'S TREES 221

you were Armenian, lie replied. They gave all the
children food and clothing. A hodja taught the boys
to repeat the Koran in Arabic; that was the school.

When he was ten years old, some of them were taken
on the Black Sea to another Turkish orphanage in
Trebizond. He heard that Van was not far away, so
he watched for an opportunity, and escaped. Why?
Because he was Armenian, and did not want to be a
Turk.

Did the other Armenian boys in the orphanage feel
as he did? Some of them did; some of them, the
youngest, did not care. You could call them a Turk,
they would not fight you.

Why would he not let them call him a Turk? He
gave us a straight, dark look under lowered eyebrows,
and said, "I am Armenian. I was five years old; I
do not forget."

What did he do after he ran away? He walked
from Trebizond to Kars, following the camel caravans.

We asked who had given him food during those
weeks of walking, and then, seeing him flush beneath
his tan, we knew he had stolen it, and hurried to ask
how he had come from Kars.

In Kars, he said, he learned from the other boys in
the bazaars that the city was Turkish, but that there
was an Armenian consul there, and that further north
there was an Armenian country. So he went to the
Armenian consul, who gave him a passport and a bag
of food. Then he walked on, northward, and many
months later he came to Alexandropol, where he had
heard that there was a family from Van. That family

222 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

did not know Mm, and lie could not speak Armenian,
but when he told them in Turkish that he was an
Armenian of Van they took him in. He lived with
them for a year, but they did not have enough food.
He tried to get work on the roads for the Americans,
but they said he was too small, and then an American
man took him into the orphanage in Polygon.

It was a simple story. But there were and are many
meanings in it. It shows from another angle the des
perate policy of Turkey to leave alive no avowed Chris
tians within Turkish boundaries; it shows again the
Turkish eagerness to assimilate Armenian blood, and
it shows the stubbornness resisting that assimilation.
Looking at that twelve-year-old boy who, fed and cared
for by Turks, had cherished since his fifth year a
hatred of them, a boy who had forgotten his mother's
language, but not his race, one saw that any solution
of the problem inside Turkey was impossible. Bar
barian rulers, sultans and Young Turks, had dug too
deep the gulf between Turk and Armenian; no effort
could bridge it now. If the Kemalists do not make
that effort, it is perhaps because they know it could
not succeed. Their policy, Turkey for the Turks,
means that they can only massacre or deport their
Christian populations.

XV

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF VILLAGES

WE walked through the grove and across the
little stream into the village of Kafterloo.
There was the church, tall and gaunt with
the square stone wall and round towers of all Arme
nian churches; autumn leaves rustled on the stone
steps and a bearded old goat stood there, solemnly
watching us. Beyond the church, in another small,
high building, was the new government hospital. Its
two little rooms were whitewashed and clean the win
dows, of course, tightly and immovably closed and
there were six iron beds, one occupied by a malaria
case. There were enough sheets and bedding, and a
shipment of quinine had just come by pack-mule from
Alexandropol, Kafterloo's share of Russia's gift of
three hundred pounds of quinine to Armenia. The
Armenian nurse in charge had been trained in an
American hospital in Turkey, and she was almost tear
fully proud of her little hospital. There were none in
Russian Armenia before the war.

From the steps of the hospital we looked across the
roofs of Kafterloo and looked for some time before
we realized that they were roofs, covered as they were
with mounds of earth. It was like going underground
to walk along the narrow winding streets between the

223

224 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

stone walls of the burled houses. Here and there stone
steps led to the roofs ; where hens and goats were walk-
Ing and a few women sat pouring grain through the
breezes. The chaff flew away like streams of bright*
winged gnats in the sunshine.

A child who had been watching for us ran with news
of our coming, and two women were on the threshold
of the priest's house when we reached it. They were
the priest's wife, a matronly woman with mildly anx
ious blue eyes under a black headkerchief, and her
daughter, apple-cheeked and demure, her heavy hair
in two black plaits.

The priest's house, like that of all Armenian vil
lagers, had a common entrance to stable and living-
room a narrow, stone-walled passage, with an earthen
floor. A few hens scratched in the straw of the empty
cow-stall ; beside it, on the threshold of the living-room,
the priest waited to welcome us. He was a stately
figure, in sweeping robes of black wool. Between the
well-combed luxuriance of long hair and patriarchal
beard his eyes looked out at us keen eyes, intelligent
and commanding. His hand, emerging from the wide
sleeve to take ours, was slender, white and sensitive,
the hand of a scholar.

The narrow street beneath the earth-covered roofs
had been like a trench; entering the house had been
like entering a dug out. This cave-like effect of the
passageway continued in the living room. The small
windows were above the broad platform which, in
Turkish style, ran across one end of the room, serving
by night as bedstead for the family and by day as a

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF VILLAGES 225

seat for guests. A ray of sunlight came through the
panes of glass, striking bright colours from the rugs
that covered the platform; kneeling on them, one could
have seen blue sky outside, but that glimpse was not
for guests sitting properly in a row on the platform's
edge, facing the dim room. Had we been Turkish or
Armenian, we should have sat more comfortably upon
the rugs, cross-legged, with cushions against the wall
at our backs. Being American, we sat perforce with
dangling feet, like school children attentive before our
host, who occupied the one chair.

The conversation was formal, and disturbed by the
activities of the priest's wife and daughter, who brought
a table, set it before us, covered it with a white cloth
and with much coming and going deposited upon it so
many dishes that there was not room for them all. The
samovar must be removed to the platform on which
we sat, and even the two women stood holding dainties
for which no place could be made on the overcrowded
cloth. The domestic discussion revealed the family
relations, in which wife and daughter were submis
sive to the authority of father and priest. Their rever
ence for him combined the attitude of housekeepers
to an employer, the respect of ignorant for the learned,
and the unrebellious obedience of women in patriarchal
households. So, no doubt, did the wives of the chil
dren of Aaron the Levite serve their husbands, con
tented with their lot, proud of the high positions of
their lords who were priests of Jehovah.

This sense of ancient tradition conveyed by their
gestures and voices gave such solemnity to the breaking

226 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

of bread that we could not appear our every-day selves,
and in vain I reminded myself that we were merely
taking tea with the pastor of a small town.

The priest broke the bread for us, tearing the thin
sheets with his fingers and giving us each a handful.
With courteous gestures he urged us to eat, pressing
upon us plates of shredded cheese made of sheep's
milk, rubber-like cubes of goat's milk cheese, rolls of
butter, strained honey, comb-honey, bowls of soured
milk, preserved fruits, and seven kinds of small Ar
menian cakes, all made, he said, by his daughter, whose
placid peasant's face beamed at the word of implied
praise. Mother and daughter refilled our glasses with
tea, and handed us the dishes, while the priest shared
the feast.

There was no apology nor complaint in his manner
of saying that this was poor fare for guests, and a
poor house in which to receive us; dishes, spoons and
nearly all his rugs had been taken by the Turks. He
belonged in another village nearer the frontier, he said;
he had come to Kaf terloo during the Turkish invasion
of 1918, which did not touch this place. In 1920, dur
ing the second invasion, the Turks had come to Kaf ter
loo. He expressed no rancour against the Turks; their
officers, he said, had been courteous to him and had not
disturbed the church. Only one unpleasantness had
occurred, when a certain young Turkish officer had
desired an Armenian girl, whom the priest had aided
to escape. Infuriated, the officer had demanded that
the priest tell him where the girl could be found, and
had threatened him with death. Fortunately, the of-

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF VILLAGES 227

ficer was suddenly recalled to military duty elsewhere.

Then, one night, several Turkish soldiers had bat
tered down the door of the house and demanded that
the priest give them his treasure. He had no treasure,
but they insisted that he had quantities of gold buried.
They held him down on the floor and prepared to
torture him with hot irons, but the fire burned so
badly that they became impatient while waiting for the
irons to heat, and decided to cut his throat and let it
go at that. One had grasped his beard and drawn a
knife, when three Turkish officers appeared, having
come to call. They drove the terrified soldiers from
the house, and themselves remained for some hours,
discussing Persian poetry. It was a pleasure to talk
with the Turkish officers, said the priest; in general,
they were admirably intelligent and well-educated men.

When the Turkish troops retreated, however, these
same officers had come to make their polite farewells,
and in leaving said, "We will take with us your rugs,
as souvenirs of our very pleasant acquaintance." And
they had taken every rug of value in the house. Being
connoisseurs in rugs, they had been interested only in
the cream of his collection, and had left him those on
which we were sitting.

As to the new government, the priest merely said
that it had not molested him, nor his flock. Taxes were
high, but crops had been good at Kafterloo. Much
depended upon the personality of the tax-collector in
each village. The tax-collector in Kafterloo had been
an ignorant, but not an unkind man, he had not op
pressed the people. That week, however, he had been

228 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

removed from his post. He had been selling part of
the collected grain, putting the money in his pocket,
and making up the weight to the government by filling
the sacks with gravel. This naive and infantile graft
had naturally been discovered; he was now under
arrest and would probably be executed. A new man
would take his place next week. It might be that
he would be both more honest and more oppressive
than his predecessor.

While we were talking, a cow had come down the
passageway, gazed at us for a moment from the
threshold, and then turned into her own room, from
which the hens fled with protesting cackles. It was
milking time, and rising, we said farewell to the priest,
who asked us to express to America the gratitude of
Kafterloo. These phrases of thanks, so often and sin
cerely repeated by Armenians, become almost a for
mula of all greetings and farewells. For an instant
they bridge the distance between this priest's house in
Kafterloo and the many little American parsonages
from which so much help has come to the Armenians.

The priest remained, a figure of patriarchal dignity,
on the threshold of the living room; wife and daughter
accompanied us to the street door. The women of
the village were coming down from the rooftops, carry
ing their winnowed grain; a few sheep went by, fol
lowing the leader's tinkling bell; a girl came up from
the river with a tall jar of water balanced on her
shoulder. We climbed stone steps to the trodden earth
of the roofs, deserted now, and the life of the village
disappeared, leaving only a sweep of rolling prairie.

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF VILLAGES 229

the grove on the banks of the stream, and the bulk of
snow-crowned Algoz, gigantic against the sky.

But I felt that that Armenian life remained, buried
in the earth at our feet, obstinate as a grass-root, tena
cious and surviving. Wars of Medes and Persians, of
Romans and Greeks, of Turks and Russians, waves of
empires and revolutions, pass over it and leave it essen
tially unchanged, essentially occupied only with eternal
things, with seed-time and harvest, birth and mar
riage and death, the rhythms of immortality on earth.

The real life of the million Armenians of Soviet
Armenia is in these villages. The traveller and the
busy American see almost nothing of it. The impres
sion they have of it is of something furtive, concealed,
like the life of wild animals. The villages are in
visible, in the folds of the immense and apparently
empty plateaus. In the villages, life retreats still fur
ther underground.

One would like to know what that life is, to those
who live it. It is possible only to imagine it. Auto
mobiles are, for the energetic American, the only pos
sible transportation in a country crossed by only one
railroad which was built for Russian military purposes,
with complete disregard of cities or centres of popu
lation. In a day, an automobile rushes from Alexan-
dropol across the plains, over mountain ranges, through
the Karakles Pass, and down the valley of Big Demon
River to DjaJal-Oghly. Leaving an American break
fast table, one arrives at an American dinner table.
Between them are one hundred and twenty miles of

230 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

excellent road, of incomparable views of mountain and
plain, a few glimpses of toiling strings of ox-wagons
and a camp of a hundred workmen repairing a sixty-
foot stone wall that, at a curve of a mountain torrent,
protects the railroad above from being washed away.

But to the Armenian, what a different country must
appear. For him, distances are magnified. Seven days
at least he would count, from Alexandropol to Djalal-
Oghly; seven days of slow jogging in his seat on the
yoke between the necks of his oxen; seven nights of
making late camp, in a circle of wagons drawn around
a camp fire, a stockade-camp such as American pio
neers built on the plains to protect them from attack
by Indians. Seven nights of taking his turn on watch,
with rifle ready to raise the alarm of brigands. Seven
dawns that would find him already on the road again,
jogging slowly, ox-wagon in front of him and ox-wagon
following.

Two weeks it would take, to make the trip from
Alexandropol to Djalal-Oghly and to come back; longer
time than it costs the villager of New England to visit
California. No larger proportion of Armenians than
of Americans normally make such a journey. Their
nearest metropolis a large city of perhaps twenty-
five thousand persons remains for them something
imagined but not important, as San Francisco is to
the shopkeeper of a village on the Hudson. Armenia,
this bit of land in the Caucasus, smaller than most
American states, stretches out around them to the
edge of their world.

And when terror drives them out across it, floods of

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF VILLAGES 231

human beings fleeing a monstrous pursuing horror, they
go over the edge of all known things into strange lands
of strange peoples who do not speak their language.
They live for a time, for years, perhaps, as primitive
man lived, amid mountains and forests, surrounded by
the unknown. They wander, hungry, exhausted and
sick, dying and giving birth, driven this way and that,
until at last they can come circling back to their vil
lage.

The centre of the world is their village. What must
it be, to think of home as a stone-walled underground
cave, to count wealth in terms of sheep driven in
through the house door at night, and of the height of
piled dung on the roof? To know God as the Great
Power, swift to anger, who Is placated by kissing the
cornerstones of His Church? To think of Govern
ment, dimly, as another alien but earthly power, that
suddenly intrudes on life to take the harvested grain
or to carry away sons to fight its mysterious battles
for its own mysterious purposes? To know that the
God of the Turks, and of their cousins the Tartars who
live in the next village, is an enemy of our God, and
that the Turks and the Tartars kill our men and steal
our women, have always done so, always will do so?
Then what must it be, to hear that far away is a place
called America, where there is no war ; where all men
live together in peace, and all men are rich beyond
dreams of avarice; a land where all the peoples wor
ship one God, a land whence come pale-eyed men and
women who speak no known language, and who from
their unimaginable riches give food and clothing to all?

232 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

No; no American can fully understand the Arme
nian. There is no American so poor or so ignorant
that he is not immeasurably richer, wiser and more
powerful than the Armenian peasant. There are very
few Americans, however wealthy and cultured, who
match in culture and taste the children of the Arme
nians who were rich before the war. Somewhere be
tween these extremes is the American, too busy and
too practical to know the ancient Persian poets, to
quote Homer or Heine, to recognize at a glance the
history, the mystic meanings and the value of a rug
woven long ago in Kashmir, and too rich to know the
meaning of darkness, cold and hunger, too happy in
his place in history to accept the barbarities of war and
massacre as normal things. Yet Americans are bring
ing up the children who will be the next generation of
Armenians.

I think of Djalal-Oghly, the little town on the brink
of Big Demon canyon, as a place more dramatic even
than Marash or Ismid. The landscape itself is dra
matic. The automobile runs across interminable miles
of high plateau, rimmed at the edge of the world by
blue, snow-tipped mountains. For an hour one sees
ahead the village of Djalal-Oghly, white amid trees.
The purring engine brings it closer, until one sees the
Russian church, and market-place and village foun
tain, the beginning of a street of white cottages and
little red-brick houses that might have been brought
here from New England. One minute more should end
the journey, and hats are straightened, hair tucked up,

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF VILLAGES 233

and purse In hand, when the solid earth suddenly opens
at the front wheels. There is the unsuspected chasm
of Big Demon River, which rushes foaming four hun
dred feet below.

The road goes painfully into the depths, eight sharp
hair-pin turns, and caravans of toiling ox-wagons are
looped against the canyon walls. The sky grows nar
rower overhead. Djalal-Oghly has disappeared. Half
way down, at the edge of the cliff, a man sits beside
the body of an ox that, dying, has left him ruined, his
only wealth the wagon that he cannot move. Above
his bowed figure the rock walls of the canyon seem
savage; the river roars relentlessly in the depths it has
made. An old primitive terror stirs in one; Nature is
huge, cruel and careless, and man so weak.

Nearly an hour later, with a last violent struggle, the
engine carries us over the edge of the chasm to upper
earth and sunshine again, and we feel that we have
escaped a trap.

The human drama lies before us. Djalal-Oghly is a
typical Caucasian Armenian town, in that it is half-
Russian, half-Armenian, the two parts as distinct as
though a continent separated them. For a century
these two peoples have lived side by side, sharing the
same streets, the same markets, going to different
churches. Never has Armenian married Russian, or
Russian taken an Armenian to wife. To these two
towns in one, is added the American. Four thousand
Armenian and Russian orphans live in it.

On the porches of their houses Armenian women are
grinding corn between two stones. By the village foun-

234 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

tain, while the trickle from the stone fills the pottery
jars, Russian women are spinning wool from distaff to
dangling spindle. In the large white buildings under
the trees of the American grounds, the four thousand
children are working in modern industrial schools, with
knitting machines, compressed air, and steel tools. The
agricultural class is out on the ten thousand-acre farm
with its tractors and model stables; the gMs in the
nurse's training school are learning English and modern
medicine; the Boy Scouts are doing setting-up exercises
on the drill-ground. This American invasion is di
rected by Mr. Newman of Oregon, assisted by Mrs.
Newman of Washington, Miss Stockton of Ohio, Mr.
Nelson of New York, Mr. Parker of Texas, Mr.
Rankin of Kansas. Down in the chasm of Big Demon
River Mr. Bowers of Pennsylvania is building, with
refugee labour, an electric-lighting and power plant
for the village of Djalal-Oghly.

Yet there are persons who think that the days of
romance ended when the plumes were sheared from
the helmet of the last mailed knight.

XVI
WELCOME TO THE FORT WORLD

FIVE minutes from Djalal-Oghly, as the eagles
fly, is the village of Berd. The word Berd
means in Armenian, fort, and the village of
Berd really is a fort. We reached it after an hour of
driving across the prairie, and by this time the Arme
nian landscape had so taught us to expect the unex
pected that we were hardly surprised when we found
ourselves again on the brink of the chasm of Big
Demon River. Another crack in the earth joined it
here, and on the tip of the promontory between the
two canyons was the village. It was reached by a neck
of land hardly wide enough for our carriage. After
creeping along this, we were confronted by high,
double stone walls and a tunnel gateway unchanged
since it was built, some two thousand years ago.

It was unguarded, and we drove through it, as Alice
went through the Looking Glass, into some unknown
period of time. Beside us, against the walls, were
the grim towers of the castle fort, and before us the
huddle of peasants' huts. An old woman who was
gathering cow dung in her apron looked up and greeted
us, "Welcome, my ladies, welcome to the fort world!"
A few yards farther on we met several men going to
the field with scythes, and they stopped, and bowed,
and asked us what we desired.

235

236 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

One of them came to show us the village. It was
built, he said, "before we knew Christ/' by a certain
David the Landless. David whose name would sug
gest one of the children of Abraham, or more probably
a descendant of a relative who did not go down to
Egypt was landless because, when his father died,
his older brothers took his portion. David fled north
ward among the savage tribes who were ancestors of
the Georgians of to-day, and having collected among
them a sufficient force, he returned with arms and
caused this fort to be built. From it, he waged suc
cessful war against his brothers, and took not only
his portion of his father's land, but theirs, and their
lives. Thereafter he lived prosperously in Berd, no
doubt with frequent small wars to occupy the time
and more frequent descents upon wealthy travellers
passing by.

The fort, grim as it looks from one side, proves from
the other side to be nothing but a fragment of wall
with a few steps of stone stairs still projecting into the
air. Clambering over the fallen sides of it, we were
led to a sunken place, floored with marble that still
showed traces of beautiful polishing, and surrounded
by bits of carved marble that had once been the base
of circular walls. There had been steps going down
into a rounded deeper place, now partly filled with
earth. This, our guide said, had been the Emperor's
baths. What Emperor? The last Emperor of Ar
menia, who had for a time held Berd as a stronghold
while the Persian and the Byzantine Empires were
overwhelming the Armenian Empire in the fifth cen-

WELCOME TO THE FORT WORLD 237

tury. From Berd this last Emperor finally fled west
ward and died on an island that has since become the
Cite of Paris.

Leaving these baths, we were led over the edge of
the cliff, and precariously downward on a narrow trail
that was dizzy above the depths of the canyon. Some
six hundred feet below us Big Demon River growled
and worried boulders with its white teeth, and fearing
that our guide might intend us to make the descent,
we protested, clinging to projections of the cliff with
nervous fingers, while little stones slipped under our
feet and went downward with sickening silence. But
he was taking us only under a boulder that overhung
the hardly visible trail. On its other side there was a
gap between two strata of the cliff, and when we had
unwillingly crawled through it, our guide struck fire
from flint and lighted a bit of tow. The flame re
vealed the smoke-blackened walls of a large low cave.
"Here, one hundred people," said he.

We crawled out, and following him farther came to
a boulder which concealed the entrance to another cave.
Our noses told us, even before the flicker of light
showed bits of wool clinging to the rocks, that this
was a sheepfold. "Two hundred sheep," said he, wish
ing us to come stooping to admire the size of this
cavern. But we had seen enough; we backed out, and
insisted on climbing to steadier footing. He was dis
appointed, he had just begun to show us innumerable
similar refuges. For cattle and for sheep, for food
and for people, he said, there were caves all along both
sides of Big Demon canyon. He pointed out, across

238 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

the chasm, the almost hidden entrances. The cliffs
were honey-combed with them. Nine thousand Arme
nians, two thousand sheep, nine hundred oxen, had
lived there all the months of 1920 that the Turks were
in Armenia, he said. They ate cold food, went out
only at night, and muzzled their animals so that they
would be silent. The Turks never found them.

This would explain the strange legend encountered
now and then among American relief workers, that
after the Turkish retreat of 1920 meadows and foot
hills became populated overnight with unaccountable
herds and flocks that until then had been invisible.

On the edge of the cliff, watching our ascent, stood
an Armenian woman. She was hale and hearty, ap
parently about forty years old. Her bright eyes looked
humorously at us from beneath her black kerchief,
and her fingers knitted a sock so rapidly that the strand
of wool ran from its hidden place in the folds of her
black and grey garments and sped in a white streak
around her silver belt. It was the belt that attracted
us. Apparently before the war every one in Armenia
wore silver belts; the Near East Relief has chests
upon chests of them, taken in pledge for loans of food
and seeds; the peasants are beginning now to redeem
them. But this was the most beautifully wrought one
that we had seen. We could not help commenting on
its delicate workmanship of chased links and black
enamel, we could not take our eyes from it, and at last
we offered to buy it.

She laughed good naturedly. "We women are not
like you," she answered. "We work hard. We bring

WELCOME TO THE FORT WORLD 239

all our water from the spring down there," and she
gestured over the edge of the chasm. "We bring it up
in jars on our backs, and often we are very tired. But
we have silver belts. When you make the spring run
up the cliffs into our fort-world, then I will sell my
belt."

As we picked our careful way along the rough trails
that are the streets of this mediaeval village, we were
joined by a lad about twelve years old, whom the
woman said was her son. He wore a sheepskin coat
and carried a staff; evidently a shepherd boy, and Berd ;
it seemed, was a village of shepherds.

The houses have certainly never changed in pattern
since David the Landless built this fort in pagan times,
and shepherds first gathered under the protection of
its walls. If Wells is right in thinking that all races
of men were once nomads, such houses were doubtless
the first that Armenians built when the beginning of
civilization dawned for them. Little shelters of rock
laid without mortar, built more for the flocks than for
the people who sleep in one corner of them. All the
life of the houses was in the open air, where within
crumbling walls of courtyards women were busy about
the baking-pits or carding wool or winnowing grain or
spinning thread on a twirling spindle.

We came first to the old church. No one knew
how old it was. From earliest known times the Arme
nians were famous builders. They set together so
marvellously the great hewn rocks, and their unsup
ported wide domes were such wonders, that it was said
of them that they glued their buildings together with

240 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

white of egg. This little church certainly numbered
its years in tens of centuries, but it still stood as solidly
as when it was first built. Only the doors were gone,
the floor piled with wood stored here out of the rains,
and the ledges were resting-places for multitudes of
pigeons that made much fluttering overhead. It was
a little church, not in Armenian style, but septangular,
perhaps twelve feet in diameter and twenty feet high.
Two pillars in each wall crossed in arches overhead,
deep niches were between them, and on walls and
pillars, arches and dome, were deeply cut crosses.
Three kinds of crosses, Byzantine, Catholic, and the
kind we call Maltese; all cut haphazard without pat
tern. We thought this church probably a pagan
temple, redeemed when Armenia became Christian by
the carving of these crosses. If there had been an
altar, there was no trace of it, no indication of where
It might have been.

These things we saw, peering gingerly through the
doorways because of the frantically flapping wings
of the pigeons, and then we went to see the new church.
It could not have been more than a thousand years
old. It was the typical Armenian church architecture,
which seems ugly at first (but you grow to like its
crudeness) ; square-angled walls outlining a cross on
the ground, and round towers and domes. Inside, the
square centre of the cross is roofed by a great un
supported dome, and the four ends of the cross are
entered through wide arches. The walls are of stone,
unornamented. In one of the longer ends of the cross
is the altar, and there is no other furniture. But the

WELCOME TO THE FORT WORLD 241

light and shade of the arches on the grey stone walls
make the place beautiful.

In this old church the altar was no more than a
stone reading-stand, with a scrap of gold- and silver-
embroidered cloth falling to pieces with age upon it.
On the cloth, two Bibles. How old they were I do not
know, but certainly the museums of London or New
York would be glad to have them. They were bound
in cowhide, with corners and plates of metal, wrought
in naive figures of angels and saints. The leaves were
parchment, covered with Armenian writing which
dated the book at no earlier than the fourth century,
for it was just as the Armenian Empire fell that the
Armenian alphabet was discovered and they were
voluminously illustrated in colours still bright.

Our guide turned over the leaves as one well ac
customed to finding his way among them, showing us
this picture and that, pointing out that every page had
a different border of fruits and flowers and figures of
angels, men and animals. Even the shepherd boy had
a favourite page to display.

Andl was glad that these Bibles are where they are,
in this bare mildewy church in the village of Berd,
where shepherds enjoyed their beauty. Even though
the leaves were falling apart, and a corner gnawed by
mice, I thought them better here than carefully pre
served in a glass case in the Metropolitan Museum or
the Louvre.

Out in the sunshine again, we pursued our intention
of becoming better acquainted with the humorous-eyed
woman who knitted without stopping. It was difficult,

242 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

for she had little to say about anything. "You must
remember that our women are not educated/' said the
man. "What happens in other parts of the world is
unknown to them. They know only about the wars
with the Turks." As to the wars with the Turks, she
said only that they had always been and would always
be, and that as long as the caves were hidden the
people of Berd would be safe. But her husband had
been killed by the Turks in 1920. He had been caught
before he could reach the caves, because he had gone
to bring in his flocks, and it happened that they were
far away.

Then suddenly she upset us by saying that she had
seen many wars with Turks (she meant Tartars) dur
ing her eighty years on earth. We looked at her, and
did not believe it. Her hair was greying, true, but the
braids that fell below her kerchief were thick, and
blacker than grey. There were her teeth all showing
when she smiled, and no more wrinkles on her face
than forty years should have. And her son! "He is
twelve years old, and you are his mother?"

"Yes/ 7 she said, as Sarah the wife of Abraham might
have done. "The Lord God has blessed the loneliness
of my latter years." She had five sons, she said, and
this youngest was the only one left in her house; all
the others were married and grandfathers. Four
daughters she mentioned when asked. They were mar
ried, too, she said, and many of their daughters also.
Still we did not believe that she was eighty years old,
but the man beside her confirmed it.

"I do not know when she was born," he said, "but

WELCOME TO THE FORT WORLD 243

she was married and a grandmother before I entered
this world."

They urged us to stay and eat with them,, but we
declined not because we feared unpalatable food, but
that we knew Armenian hospitality would beggar the
village in order to force us to eat too much. Our
luncheon was in our carriage, and we could eat it on
the sunny prairie. The man and the woman and the
shepherd boy followed us through the arched tunnel
under the towers of the gate, to call after us, "Happy
road!' 5

XVII
SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE

WE sat in an open sunny space there was no
other on all those miles of plateau from
which, in the sunshine of noon, the moun
tains had retreated into vaguely piled blueness and
ate our sandwiches. At a little distance the two mules
hitched to the carriage struggled with the difficulties
of nose-bags, and the tall-hatted coachman who had
inherited his headgear from some American alderman,
devoured many square feet of Armenian bread and
swallowed boiled eggs.

Three women, searching the ground for something
they continually stooped to get, slowly came toward
us across the prairie. When they reached us they
stopped to give polite greeting. They were gathering
dung for winter fuel. Each carried on her back a
filled sack and in her hands one partly filled, and they
were clothed in neatly sewed, clean patches. Each had
between her eyebrows a tattoo mark in blue, so we
knew that they were Armenians from Turkey who had
once been slaves to an Arab master.

Yes, they said; from Erzeroum. They had come
from that distant Armenian city with the retreat of
the demoralized Russian armies in 1918. Three years
they had been on the road, walking and camping

244

SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE 245

with other refugees, until they reached this place,
where they had found the son of one of them. He
had been separated from his mother one night in the
mountains when a sudden alarm of Turks had scat
tered the camp into the darkness, and she had thought
him killed by the Turks. He was a tinsmith, and now
they all lived with him in a village hidden somewhere
on the plain. He worked at his trade, and the village
people paid him with food, so that he earned enough
for them all to eat. The women kept his house, and
gathered dung. They were doing very well, they said;
already the pile upon the roof was larger than the
house, and they would be warm in the winter storms.

We gave them the rest of our luncheon and they
wrapped it carefully in a handkerchief and one of them
put it in her bosom. Then they went on, stooped under
their burdens and searching the ground with their eyes.

"There you have fifteen hundred years of Armenian
history," said Suzanne. "The life of my people.
Always building up what is always torn down, always
starting again in a new place. I think you don't like
Armenians. But do you realize that what is bad in us
comes from the life we've been forced to lead, and
that what is good in us has survived in spite of it?"

Suzanne was one of the Near East Relief inter
preters, and it was loyalty to her people that made her
say "us," for she had no doubt whatever that we liked
her. We liked her tremendously. Nor was it true
that we disliked Armenians. It was more that there
was something lacking in our liking them. Somehow
our minds could never quite meet theirs; there was

246 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

always something oblique there a starting from differ
ent angles. Somehow we never got quite close to them,
not even to Suzanne.

Clever, and pretty, and charmingly dressed she had
a way with clothes, and from merest scraps of old
things given her she evolved suits and blouses and hats
that might have been made by French fingers and
much better educated than we, and liking us as much,
I'm sure, as we liked her, still there was that indefinable
thing in her or in us which kept us from really be
ing comrades. She had more in common with those
refugee women whom she had never seen before than
she had with us. In that few moments of chance talk
with the dung-gajtherers the gulf appeared, and we
were on one side of it, and she with them on the other.

"Were you ever a refugee, Suzanne?' 7 I asked.

"Oh, yes," she said casually. "Twice. I was in
Baku when the Turks took it, and I was in Kars when
it fell. Let me see about fourteen months, in all, I
was a refugee."

She looked so pretty and so untroubled, sitting there
in her smart blue suit and clever hat, her whole appear
ance was so much that of any American girl in her
early twenties, who has never had anything to worry
about, that her words seemed incredible.

"What was it like, when the Turks came to Baku?"
I asked. The whole idle afternoon was before us.
"Do you mind talking about it?"

"Why, no, not at all. Though you won't I mean, I
can't really tell you what it was like. You must live
through things like that, to understand them.

SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE 247

"I'd just come home from school in Tiflis. That is,
I had come to my uncle's house in Baku. My own
people were Turkish Armenian, you know. My father
was very modern in his ideas, he wanted his daughters
to have the best European education. My sister and
I were in the university in Tiflis when the European
war began. My father had sent us there because we
had relatives in Tiflis the family had branches and
banks all through Armenia, from Baku to Aleppo.
After we'd finished the university, we were going to
Europe for post-graduate work.

"Well, then the war Of course we couldn't get
back, from Russia to Turkey. My father was killed
by the Turks in 1915, and you know what they did,
in the deportations to the women and children. Our
little sisters may still be alive, in some Turkish house
we don't know we've never heard

"My sister and I went on with our university work
in Tiflis all through the war. There was nothing else
we could do. My sister had a year of nurse's training
after she finished the university; she's a year older
than I. Then we went to our uncle's house in Baku.
We were going to be teachers. Of course nothing was
left of our father's property, and we didn't want to
be dependent on our uncle; that was the fault of
father's modern ideas, our uncle said.

"We came to his house in 1918, just before the
Turks attacked Baku. The fighting went on for some
time, but we did not have much news of it. Then
we began to hear the firing, and lots of wounded were
coming in. My sister went to work in the hospital,

248 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

taking care of them. But every one said that the
Turks could not take the city, that we were winning
battle after battle. We were not really worried until
one day oh, God will punish them! one day, with
out warning us, our Armenian leaders suddenly left the
city.

"I was down town shopping matching some silks,
I remember and I saw a friend of my uncle's in a car
riage with his family, and the carriage full of baggage.
I called to them and asked them where they were
going. He laughed, and said he was going to Persia
on business and taking the others for the trip. But I
was worried. I told the coachman to drive straight
home, and there was my uncle, and he said our armies
were defeated and the Turks were coming. My aunt
and cousins were crying, the servants were all run
ning away, my uncle was trying to get some things
packed and bundle up his papers securities and
things, and money. I went to the hospital to get my
sister.

"I had to walk. All the servants were gone except
the coachman that stayed to drive my uncle's family
to the boat. There was no one to go with me, and
my uncle commanded me not to go, but there was no
one else to go for my sister and bring her to the boat.
I had never been alone in the street before, of course,
and but American girls do walk alone, dojft they?
You would not know how I felt. Besides, the streets
were full of people hurrying to the water-front, and
merchants were putting down their shutters. I could
not find a carriage that was not loaded down with

SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE 249

goods, going to the boats, and on the sidewalks people
were dragging things trunks on ropes, and bedding-
rolls.

"Will you believe, when I got to the hospital, my
sister wouldn't leave? She said it was her duty to stay
with her patients. It was a senseless thing what good
could she do, staying? She couldn't protect them.
Anyway, it wasn't my duty to stay, that wouldn't do
any good, either. Things went around in my mind,
that way. I told her we'd be killed for nothing, and
there was the boat, and my uncle expecting us. I
remember I actually shook her; I said she had to
come. But she wouldn't, and so somehow, I don't
know why I didn't go either.

"We stayed in the hospital, and I helped her work.
She showed me what to do. It was two days before
the Turks came in. But all the boats got away that
first morning. There were thousands of people on the
water-front, and more going all the time. The only
way out of Baku was by the Caspian, no trains were
running. And there were no boats on the Caspian,
but some sort of crazy feeling made everybody go down
and stay close by the water. All the important people
had got away. If only they'd told us the truth, almost
everybody could have gone. There were plenty of
boats going and coming from Persia during all the
weeks of fighting.

"Then the Turks came in, and began the looting and
killing, and my sister and I ran away. We just simply
ran out of Baku, on to the desert, and kept on going
along the railroad tracks in the direction of Tiflis.

2 so BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

There were not very many of us in our group, I sup
pose two or three hundred.

"We had brought some bread in a handkerchief, and
my sister had a little money. It was all we had. Of
course our clothes were perfectly good at first, clean
and whole. We walked three days and nights, all the
time, just sitting down for a few minutes now and
then. After that we went more slowly. We were tired,
and some days we just sat, and didn't walk at all. It's
strange what a difference it makes in your mind, being
a refugee. Sleeping in your clothes, on the sand and
we hadn't brought a comb. That's the worst, when
you are used to being clean not having a place to
wash, or a toothbrush, and your hair gets so so awful.
You become quite a different sort of person, in your
mind, I mean.

"I told you that you would not understand, you
couldn't. But being a refugee does things to you
Sometimes I hear Americans talking about Armenians
stealing things. 'Here we come to help the Armenians/
they say, 'and we have to guard our goods to keep
them from being stolen. Armenians are all thieves/
they say. Sometimes I have a mean feeling; I wish the
people who say that were refugees for a while. They
would understand, then. Things anything you can
imagine, a handkerchief, a pin get to be so important.
You can't dream how much they mean, until you have
to live without them for days and weeks and months.
Your character goes to pieces, too; you become just an
animal. You live like an animal, and eat like an ani
mal, and you can't even keep yourself clean and

SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE 251

healthy, as the animals do. Human beings are so help
less without things."

Lounging there comfortably, after our excellent
luncheon, it was indeed almost impossible to imagine
the degradation of refugeeism, passionately as she tried
to express it to us. It was difficult, too, to realize that
she had experienced it, however slightly. She looked
so thoroughly the dainty, well-bred girl she was. And
what fineness in the way she told the story, without
personal emphasis. Daughter of a rich Armenian fam
ily, she must have spent her girlhood in a physical and
intellectual luxury such as few Americans know, yet
she had fallen through all the social strata into depths
below the lowest. She had become a refugee, without
family, friends, food or shelter, tramping the roads of
Azerbaijan and sleeping in ditches. She who had never
left her walled gardens without at least one servant in
attendance. But she did not think of herself in telling
the story; she tried to make us understand her people.
We must ask her to be personal again.

"We got finally to the Georgian border. We didn't
have passports. But we speak Georgian so well that
when we said we were Georgians nobody doubted it.
We made up a story about how we came v there and
why we had no passports, and of course, we had a
little money for bribes we got permission to go to
Tiflis. There we found relatives. My sister went to
work in the hospital, and I got a place in the high
school, teaching."

"Why did you leave it to go to Kars? You'd have
been safe in Tiflis."

252 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

"I did stay a year in Tiflis. But we don't like the
Georgians, you know. They aren't our. own people.
We've always been enemies."

Now it was actually in prehistoric times that Arme
nians and Georgians first met, and they have lived to
gether ever since, as mixed as the races that make
America. Yet is it quite true that they are enemies;
neither has been able to kill all the males of the other,
so neither has disappeared, and nothing has ever sug
gested to them that peoples of different races, living
in the same territory, are not necessarily mortal
enemies.

"Then we had our own Republic, you know. We
thought it would last. There were the Fourteen Points
we thought they were the basis of the Peace. We
thought the Allies would keep their promises and help
us. We'd only started; but we had good armies on the
Georgian frontier and the Azerbaijan frontier, and we
were already fighting the Turks oh, we were so hope
ful in those days! Of course I wanted to be helping.
Especially with the schools, because you know Russia
had never allowed us to have more than two grades
in Armenian schools. There was an Armenian high
school started in Kars, and I was given an opportunity
to teach in it, so of course I took it. My brother was
in prison there, too, and I thought I might be allowed
to see him, or at least to send him food."

"In prison? Your brother?"

"Yes. He's the only brother we have left. The
Turks killed the other five. He was just a youngster,
only sixteen, when the war began in Europe. He was

SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE 253

in the Russian university in Baku. He was young,
and easily influenced, I suppose, and of course uni
versity students you know how idealistic they are,
and always revolutionists. And the war cut him off
from our father and from all of us anyway, he became
a Bolshevik. When the Bolsheviks succeeded in Petro-
grad, we couldn't do anything with him. He was just
delirious with happiness; he thought all the troubles
in the world were ended. Then we found out that he
had been a member of the Communist party for sev
eral years, and you know the Party discipline. He
was ordered to Erivan for propaganda work. When
it came to the choice, he gave up his family for the
Party. Our uncle was head of the family, since my
father was killed, and he cut my brother out of it for
ever, disowned him, and read the burial service for
him. It was terrible. We were never to speak of him
or recognize him again.

"My sister never did, nor any one but myself. I
don't know he was so young, and the only brother
we have left. I just couldn't. Everything is changed,
anyway, since the war. All the old things are break
ing up, even our patriarchal families. Perhaps it is
wrong of me, perhaps there is something wicked and
rebellious in me, too, as there was in him. Anyway,
I meant to see him when I went to Kars. He had been
circulating Communist propaganda and the Armenian
government had caught him and he was sentenced to
be shot. I kept thinking about how sweet he had
been when he was a baby. I used to play with him
when he was little, and sometimes the nurses let me

254 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

take care of him out in our garden in the afternoons."

"Did they let you see him?" we asked, after a pause.

"No, I didn't see him. When I got to Kars, all the
political prisoners had been taken away. We did not
know where, but we thought probably they had been
executed. Everything was in confusion, for our army
had been defeated, and the Turks were coming to
attack Kars. No one dreamed that it would fall; it
was an impregnable fortress. We had huge supplies of
munitions and plenty of food. We weren't afraid, but
we were excited.

"I organized a sort of Red Cross for our soldiers.
It was hard to interest the women, for Armenian women
have never done such things, and they thought it was
not proper. But I talked, and scolded, and shamed
and browbeat them. When our men were fighting and
dying, it did seem that Armenian women might be
making bandages and collecting medicines and ciga
rettes for them. Almost every day a few of us went
up to the fort to take something to the soldiers and
to do what we could for the wounded. We wore our
veils and were careful to be very dignified, not to smile
or laugh at all, and in a little while the soldiers under
stood and were quite grateful to us. That was how I
learned that we could not hold Kars."

"Why not?"

"The soldiers said the Turks would take it. They
were all discouraged and discontented. Lots of them
were Bolshevists not real members of the Party, but
grumbling about fighting, asking what was the use of
war, and what quarrel did Armenian peasants have

SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE 255

with Turkish peasants things like that. Frightful
things. They should have been shot down right there.
But the officers were really, secretly, afraid to do any
thing to them.

"Then one day I went with three other women to
distribute cigarettes in the fortress, and the soldiers
said the Turks were coming. They could not fight
them, they said, because the artillery was trained on
the Kagizman road. They had expected the Turks to
come that way, but instead they were coming by the
Sarikamish road. So even if they fired the guns, they
would not hit the Turks."

"Couldn't they change their aim?"

"I asked them that, but they said it would take three
days to figure out the new range and to move the guns.
They said it was no use to try; the Turks would be
there before they could do it."

This seems to me to be one of the most amazing
things I ever heard of in warfare. Of course I know
nothing whatever about artillery. But I tell it as
Suzanne got it from the soldiers in the impregnable
fortress of Kars.

"Was that what happened?"

"I don't know. I went back to my work. The
school was open, though we didn't get much done.
The guns began to fire that afternoon, and they kept
firing for twenty-four hours. , I was standing in the
gateway of the school, listening to them, when I saw
one of the officers driving past driving the carriage
himself, on the coachman's seat. His wife was in the
carriage, and it was loaded with trunks and packages,

256 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

and just as it went past me a hatbox fell off. His wife
stood up and said, 'Don't stop! Don't stop ! ' I called,
'Are the Turks coming?' The officer looked back at
me and shouted, 'No, no! Kars is impregnable. Don't
be alarmed/

"He was too far away then to say anything more.
I just looked at that hatbox lying there in the street
and went back into the school to get my hat and coat
and make up a bundle. That time I remembered to
take a comb and toothbrush, and underwear, and stock
ings. Before I got them together, crowds of parents
were coming after their children. I thought I ought
to do something, but everybody was hysterical, no one
could listen, the place was like a mad house. The
guns had stopped firing. I thought we'd all have to
go northward into Georgia again, for even if we held
Alexandropol, the country would be unprotected. The
trip would take a couple of months at least; it's hun
dreds of miles. When we got to the frontier, Georgia
might be fighting Armenia. I must have money to
bribe the officials at the frontier, to get a Georgian pass
port again.

"I'd left my money with a friend, so I went to her
house. It was quite a large family, but the only man
left in it was this woman's brother. They were pack
ing their things; he had gone to try to get a carriage.
She was very fat, so fat that she could hardly move,
and she begged me to help her. So I helped her pack,
and all the time she cried and begged me not to leave
her, to go with her. But it took such a long time;
even when her brother came with a carriage they

SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE 257

couldn't decide anything, or seem to get anything done.
The streets were full of people crying that the Turks
were coming. At last I left. Perhaps I should have
stayed with her. But they had filled the carriage with
goods. And she was so fat, she couldn't really have
got away on her feet."

"Did you ever hear what became of her?"

"Oh, yes. When the Turks were really right there,
they unloaded the carriage, and she got away in it.
Her brother stayed. He hid as much of the goods as
he could, and barricaded himself in the house. But
the Turks broke down the doors and killed him. His
body was found there later, the house wrecked and
almost everything in it gone. But he had had time to
bury one box of money and jewels where the Turks
had not found it. Afterward, when peace was signed
with the Turks, she went back to Kars and got it.
The last I heard of her, she was living in Kars and
keeping a pastry shop. I don't think there has been
a massacre since; she is probably there yet"

"And where did you go?"

"From the cries in the streets, I decided the Turks
would catch us before we could get away. So I thought
I would go to one of the American hospitals. I think
there were three of them Near East Relief hospitals,
or perhaps they were orphanages. At least, American
houses, under the American flag. They were in the
little valley, between the town and the fortress. I went
in that direction, and I saw an American woman on
horseback in the crowd. She was bringing in a convoy
of ox-carts, with supplies. The people were so frantic,

258 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

there were nearly pulling her to pieces, and she stood
up in the stirrups and slashed at them with her whip,
and kept on shouting orders to the men on the wagons.
She was magnificent. You American women are really
wonderful. You don't ever lose your heads, as we do,
do you? You don't seem to have emotions. I suppose
because you control them so well."

Perhaps. How can any one say when self-control
is stronger than emotions, whether it is because the will
is strong or because the emotions are weak? It is one
of those interracial questions that can hardly be an
swered, because no one person can ever really know
both sides.

"I couldn't get to the American houses. Our soldiers
were coming down the hill on the other side of the
valley, and on the bridge they were meeting the crowds
that were trying to get to the American flags. We
could see the flags. But I don't know whether any
one was .being killed in that jam on the bridge, but it
looked as though they were, and the Turkish flag was
on the fortress. So thousands of us turned and ran*
back into the town.

"There was an Armenian hospital there. I knew
the woman in charge of it, so when I saw it I pounded
on the gate until she let me in. She had a great many
wounded Armenian soldiers there, and said she would
not leave them. We knew the Turks would come. We
kept going around in the wards, so that the men would
see that we hadn't left them.

"Nothing happened for a long time. Of course we
heard a great deal of shooting outside. Sometime in

SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE 259

the night she had an idea. I speak French and Eng
lish; you see, and she said that when the Turks came,
I was to pretend that I was an American. Then they
would not dare do anything to us or the patients. I
said I would try it, though I was afraid they wouldn't
believe me. I don't look like an American, and be
sides, at that time my English wasn't as good as it is
now. I knew that a Turk who knew English might
recognize my Armenian accent. It was quite notice
able then. So I kept practicing the words I might have
to use, saying them over and over to get the accent
right.

"It was about ten o'clock next morning when we
heard a pounding and shouting at the gate. We looked
out, behind the shutters, and it was a naked man
entirely naked and covered with blood, beating at our
gate and calling out in Armenian. We would not have
dared let him in. But we did not have to decide, be
cause we had hardly seen him when some Turkish
soldiers came running around the corner and shot him.
Then they stood and looked at the hospital. Of course
our shutters were all closed. In a few minutes a Turk
ish officer came, and he looked too. He couldn't see
us, but we felt he was looking straight at us, and we
ran away from the window. Then we heard him
pounding at the gates and shouting to us to open them.

"My friend said I must go out and speak to him.
She dressed me in a white apron, and put a cloth with
a Red Cross on my head. I don't remember that I was
frightened; I was just stupefied, and all I could do was
to listen to the Turks shouting. She had to move my

260 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

arms as though I were a baby. The officer's voice was
so cold angry and cold.

"My friend shook me and slapped my face as hard
as she could. She said if I did not go out, we would
all be killed anyway. That did not make any impres
sion on me, I didn't even remember it until afterward.
Then she opened the shutters, and I stepped out on
the balcony and said in French, What do you want?
What do you mean, making all that noise? Don't you
know there are sick people here?'

"The officer looked up at me. He looked surprised.
He asked me who I was, and I said, 'I am the Ameri
can in charge of this hospital.' I tried to speak French
with an American accent. I think God must have had
us especially in His care that day, for that Turk did
not speak English. He apologized in French for trou
bling me, but he said he must inspect the hospital.

"The officer was perfectly perfectly what is that
word? meek. He was perfectly meek. I have often
thought since, it's just your air of expecting to be
obeyed that gives you Americans all your power out
here. Why, if I had really been an American woman,
I would have been just as much alone as I was. Not
a man in the place, except the sick patients. No one
to protect me, really. Not even America, for America
has never killed anybody when missionaries have been
killed. It was just assuming that no one would dare
to hurt me that protected me, just as it would have
protected an American. Just because I gave orders,
as though I must be obeyed, the orders were obeyed.

"I went down and opened the gate, and told the

SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE 261

officer that three men were enough for him to bring in.
I said I would not have more dirty feet spoiling my
clean floors. He took three men, and ordered the
others back, and I fastened the gates again. Then
we took the officer through the hospital, and I went
down with him to the gates and locked them behind
him. He didn't do anything but ask if we could take
in some wounded Turks. I said he would have to ask
the American committee, as all our beds were full, but
I thought it could be arranged.

"Of course we knew that as soon as the three days'
looting was over, and the Turkish officers took control
again, the hospital would be safe. Especially if the
Turks had spoken about it to the Americans. And
that was just what happened."

"But I thought you said you were a refugee from
Kars. Do you mean that was being a refugee?"

"Goodness, no! Why, that why, I was as clean as
I am now, and sleeping under a roof. It was later
I was a refugee."

"But why? Why didn't you stay in Kars if every
thing was safe?"

"I did stay, more than a week. Then you see, I
had a girl friend, an Armenian, about my own age.
When it was safe to go on the streets again, I went to
find her. Her family owned a sweetmeat shop,, very
nice, very modern like the Tiflis shops. They were
not exactly rich, but they had plenty of money, all they
could use, and all the girls were well educated. When
I went to look for them of course I went to the shop;
I knew the Turks would have taken their house, I

262 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

found my friend and her mother living in the little
back room behind the shop. Her father and brothers
had got away safely. They were very happy about
that, and happy to see me, and they gave me tea, and
the Turk who had taken their shop sent us in some
bread and cakes.

"It was so nice that in a day or two I went to see
them again. I had to go through the shop to get to
their room, and of course I went quickly and held my
veil across my face, but I thought the old Turk looked
at me strangely. And this time my friend wasn't the
same. I thought she seemed to be hiding some thought.
But her mother made a great fuss over me, and petted
me, and made me promise to come again the next day.

"The next day, when I went through the shop, there
was a Turkish officer sitting there, drinking coffee, and
he watched me. And my friend's mother was so de
monstrative, kissing me, and praising me, saying how
beautiful I was, and taking down my hair to admire
it I don't know maybe it was all my imagination
but my friend looked pale. She said she had a head
ache. Anyway when her mother spoke about what a
rich husband I should have, and how with my talents
and my education and my good looks I should marry
some high person and have jewels and servants again

"I didn't stay long. I put up my hair and doubled
my veil across my face, and left. When I came
through the shop, the officer was still there, and I felt
that he and the old Turk had been talking about me.
You know how you feel such things. So I went straight
to the hospital and took my bundle and went quickly

SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE 263

out with the refugees that were still going northward.

"Of course there may have been nothing in it. I
hate to think that any Armenian woman still, when
you are desperate enough and of course she had to
think of her own daughter. She might even have per
suaded herself that it would be better for me to marry
a rich Turk than to be a refugee. They were there
in that little back room, and they had nothing to eat
but what the old Turk gave them. And again, there
may have been nothing in it at all except my fancy.
But I had that feeling

"Anyway, I thought it best to get out of Kars very
quickly. So I did."

I cannot express the poignancy and the unreality,
together, of this story as Suzanne told it. Here for
more than a week we had been talking every day to
her, a pretty, well-bred girl, interested in hats and en
joying funny incidents, and suddenly she opened this
vista of memories, all strange and dark and terrible.
And how she took for granted things that our minds
stumble over.

"I had to walk alone in the street," she said, as
though no girl of twenty had ever walked alone in a
day-lighted street. Yet, "Of course when the three
days of looting and killing ended," she said, as we
might say, "after luncheon." And "this time I had
a comb and toothbrush," she said, quite cheerfully.

"I kept them all tied in the handkerchief with my
money, inside my blouse. So it wasn't as bad as the
first time, and there was plenty of water in the moun
tains, too. But we were much longer on the road. It

264 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

was months before we reached Alexandropol. You see ;
the Turks were advancing, and there were skirmishing
parties of them all through the country; we had to
avoid those, and kept going miles out of our way."

"What did you have to eat?"

"Some people started with a little food, and some
of them, sometimes, divided it. Then there were ox
carts, at first and we ate the oxen. There weren't
many people left in the country, because first the
Armenians had driven out the Tartars, and now the
Turks were driving out the Armenians. There was
some stock., a few sheep and cattle and hens that had
been left. There were birds. It wasn't the season for
bird's eggs. There were some rabbits. And in some
villages there was grain.

"Yes, we tore down the houses. We burned every
scrap of wood we could find. We cut down grapevines,
olive trees, anything. It was so cold. Even when we
had fires, we couldn't all get close to them, and it was
so cold the rest of us didn't sleep. I had a blanket
when I started, but it was stolen. I don't blame who
ever took it. I'd have stolen one myself if I could
have. I don't think I would have stolen it from a baby
or a sick person, but I would have from any one else.

"Of course there were times when we didn't eat at
all. Other days when we found pine-cones you know,
the nuts in them. And acorns. They're bitter, but
you're glad to get them.

"Lots of people died, of course, along the roads."

The shadows in her eyes, even to us who saw
them from outside, were painful. We skipped to the

SUZANNE TWICE A REFUGEE 265

end of the story. "How did you meet the Americans?"
"I was in one of the refugee camps in Alexandropol.
There were about two thousand in that camp, and every
day an American man came and gave us bread. When
I had bread for a few days I began to think again, and
I asked myself why I was sitting there when there was
work to do? I thought I might help the man. So
next day when I was going past him in the line, taking
my piece of bread, I asked him if I couldn't help. He
was so surprised. 'Hello! You speak English ? ? he
said. 'Mission school? American orphan?^

"I told him no, I was a graduate of the Tiflis uni
versity, and that I knew French and German and Rus
sian and Georgian and Tartar and Turkish and Arme
nian, of course and that if I could help him I would
be glad, because I didn't like being idle all day. Yet
there was nothing else to do, unless I could help the
Americans. So he told me to go up to the offices, and
I did, and they gave me a job as interpreter. They'd
just got a shower-bath installed, and they let me have a
bath a warm bath, with soap, and towels. And this
is a funny thing after all those months that I hadn't
shed one tear, I stood in that warm water and cried
like a baby. It seemed so wonderful

"They gave me some things to wear, too. And a
pair of the long-pointed shoes that Americans wear I
was so funny! I used to look down at myself and
laugh and laugh. I would have loved to see myself in
a mirror. But one of the girls in the workrooms lent
me shears and a needle and gave me yards of thread,
and I sewed at night, so in a little while I was quite

266 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

presentable. It's surprising what talents you have
without knowing it. I wouldn't have supposed that I
could ever sew a seam. But now I'm a complete dress
maker and milliner. Don't you think this is a cunning
hat? I made it myself."

It was a cunning hat. It also seemed to end the
story, and as the mules had long been restless and
the coachman reproachful-eyed, and the sun was get
ting near the western mountains, we rose and prepared
to return to Djalal-Oghly. We went careening across
the empty plateau for some time before I remembered
one thing Suzanne had left untold.

"Did you ever hear of your brother again?"
"Oh, yes. He's chief of the department of political
education in Erivan. I had a letter from him only two
months ago, and before that I had heard that he was
alive. He was sentenced to death, but while the Turks
were coming in he escaped. He was hiding in the
mountains, in Zangazour, when I got to Alexandropol.
When the Russian armies went to Erivan he came down
and joined them, and when they took Erivan they made
him a member of the government. He is studying Eng
lish; he wrote to me in English. He said he was study
ing at night, trying to make up for not having been
able to finish the university. But he said he is working
so hard that he is too tired at night to keep awake.
He wouldn't give up his work, not even for an educa
tion. He's so enthusiastic about the new government.
I'm sorry; he's so young and he was such an intelli
gent boy. I think he would have been a great man
if it hadn't been for the European War."

XVIII
FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT

A T the foot of Mount Ararat, "Mother of the
A% World/' all Armenia becomes comprehensible.
Mount Ararat has seen from the beginning the
life of Armenia, coming out of the mists in which his
tory's memory begins, crossing all remembered cen
turies, and going on indomitably into the future. The
vastness and silence of the mountain reduces all human
things to their proportions in the universe, and the
short tale of mankind's life on earth becomes a chapter
in the story of Mount Ararat.

The great mountain lifts its two peaks above the im
mense plateaus that are the birthplace of the Tigris
and the Euphrates. Northward it looks across the
valley of the Araxes at the huge lower bulk of Algoz
that hides Alexandropol and the mountains of Georgia.
On the banks of the Araxes there is a crescent of green
trees and flat-roofed houses; Erivan. Twenty miles
nearer the source of the river, grim fortress-walls,
church towers and ancient gates guard the Katholicos
in Etchmiadzin. But both these places Erivan, capi
tal of Armenia when the wolf was suckling Romulus in
the wild forests of Italy, and Etchmiadzin, where Saint
Gregory founded the Armenian church sixteen hundred
years ago vanish in the sweep of the plain. The

267,

268 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

rhythm of rolling land is like the waves of the sea,
caught up and flung to the sky in the two white peaks
of Ararat, and land and mountain and sky are vast and
indifferent as they were when the first Armenians came
furtively, armed with stone and wooden spear, to find
the undiscovered sources of the Euphrates in the far
mysterious West.

They were an adventurous people, those first Arme
nians whom Mount Ararat saw emerging from the un
known sources of the white man's life on earth. Their
brother tribes had turned southward, to the fertile
plains of India; still others stayed contented with the
discovery of Persia. The Armenians pushed westward,
higher and still higher, climbing the enormous moun
tain-walls of the world, and fighting as they came with
wild animals and wilder tribes of men.

Some of these wild peoples were less warlike, like
the Iroquois tribes of America; these were Semitic
peoples, living in the valley of the Euphrates. The
Armenians subdued them. But the mountain tribes
Georgians and Kurds and a score of others were
savage and fierce as Hurons. They fought so des
perately the invaders of their mountain peaks that,
though slowly and inch by inch for unnumbered cen
turies the Armenians drove them back, they are still
unsubdued and warlike, still holding here and there a
mountain peak or a range, and still nourishing their
hatred of the white men who took their country from
them. Thus, in the deportations of 1915, it was these
tribes that descended on the masses of helpless Arme
nian women and children whom the Turks were aim-

FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT 269

lessly driving about, and slaked their prehistoric
hatreds in blood.

No one knows when the Armenians, moving west
ward, first began this war for the plateau of the river
Araxes at the foot of Mount Ararat. They had estab
lished themselves in the lower valleys, perhaps mil
lenniums before the Flood. They were living harmoni
ously with the Semitic peoples they had found there.
Centuries mixed the two strains of blood, the conquered
Semitic peoples took the language and customs of the
victors. Haiq was king of the Armenians; no one
knows when. Following him came kings of Semitic
names, Aram, Armais, Armenag. But the Armenians
kept the name of their own king; to this day they call
themselves Haicians, and they call their country Haias-
dan. The name Armenia was given to it by the con
quered Semitic tribes of the valleys; it meant In their
language, "the high country.' 7

One imagines these ancient Haicians living much as
the villagers of Berd live to-day. In the valleys, no
doubt, they built little shelters of mud. They had a
few sheep, perhaps; perhaps they wore only skins of
wild animals. There would be a little group of
Haicians living in a village around the hut, larger than
the others, of their father-chief. Nearby would be a
village of Semitic peoples. On some days the men
would go hunting animals in the forests of the foot
hills; on other days they would go hunting the men
of the savage mountain tribes.

As they pushed higher into the mountains, they lived
in caves. When settlers from the valleys followed their

2yo BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

pioneer warriors, they built shelters of stones. One
day they built a wall around a village; it became im
pregnable. Thereafter, they went farther into the land
of Kurds and Georgians; they built a wall around a
camp, and held it. Warfare had made a great advance.
They pushed the savages back, to the base of Mount
Ararat, then to the banks of the Araxes. Civilization
was conquering the wilderness.

But behind them another civilization was rising, the
Semitic civilization of the Assyrians. A little more than
eleven hundred years before Christ the Assyrians
began their own conquest of their mountain frontiers.
The Armenians of the valleys found their Semitic
neighbours allied with the enemy, and their own blood
mixed with the same colour. The Assyrian armies
easily overcame them. The mountain Armenians were
left between two enemies: to the north the savages, to
the south the Assyrian empire. They fought bravely,
but three hundred years later Assyria had conquered,
and Assyrian camps were pitched beside the Araxes
River, in the afternoon shadow of Mount Ararat.
There was a last, convulsive struggle, the Assyrian
Emperor himself arrived at the head of his army, and
Ararat saw the first massacre of Armenians. The sur
vivors fled to inaccessible peaks of the Taurus and
Caucasian ranges.

The obstinate tenacity with which these groups of
fugitive brigands clung to their independence and re
sisted centuries of effort to absorb them into the As
syrian civilization created innumerable legends which
Armenian mothers still tell their children. One may

FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT 271

hear these tales to-day, by refugee camp fires on the
shores of the Black Sea, in groups waiting outside de-
lousing stations on the Greek islands. The legend of
Ara the Beautiful, beloved of Semiramis; the legend
of painted Belus, Emperor of Assyria; the legend of
Astayage's dream. Children, small and helpless in an
adult world, tell themselves fairy stories in which they
are prince and princess, ruling an imaginary realm.
Peoples oppressed by conquerors tell themselves leg
ends of imaginary ancient glories.

Thus we have the legend of Haiq, king of Armenia,
as it was clothed in song during long winter days in
caves on snow-buried Ararat, while Assyria ruled from
the Araxes to the Mediterranean. Haiq did not die
in the valley of the Euphrates, says the tale. He fled
to the Mother of the World to Ararat where all the
peoples bowed before him. He established a kingdom
and built cities, he was a renowned and powerful king.
Then came Belus, king of Babylon, marching to attack
Armenia. The Babylonians came in numbers as the
leaves of the forests, their spears covered the earth as
thickly as reeds in a marsh. Haiq marched forth to
meet them with a mere handful of warriors. But
they were Armenians! The two armies met in the
valley Haiots-tsor, and encamped on opposite sides,
while Haiq and Belus came forth to battle. Belus was
so terrible in his warpaint that even the stout-hearted
Armenians were shaken by the sight of him, advancing
spear in hand. But brave Haiq drew his bow, and the
swift arrow sped to bury itself in Belus' heart. Over
come by this disaster the Assyrians turned and fled,

272 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

pursued by the Armenians who slaughtered ten thou
sand. Triumphantly they returned to camp, bearing
with them the corpse of Belus, whose blood stained the
warpaint.

Other legends take up the imaginary glorious his
tory. There is Aram, another king of Armenia, whose
fame was known to the uttermost shores of the world.
His son was Ara the Beautiful, the splendour of whose
countenance was like the sun. He was so beautiful
that Semiramis, Queen of Assyria, lost her heart when
she heard him described. She sent messengers begging
him to marry her, but Ara the Beautiful proudly re
fused. The great queen's love would not be denied;
she declared war on Armenia in order to capture its
beautiful king, and herself marched at the head of her
troops. Before the battle she gave orders that the man
would be killed who disturbed one hair of Ara's head.
But in the fury of the fighting a chance arrow killed
him. Ara the Beautiful lay dead, and the Queen's
sorrow made her victory a defeat.

Even the death of Ara the Beautiful would not
have conquered the indomitable Armenians; powerful
Semiramis was driven to stratagem to save her armies.
Ara the Beautiful must be shown to his enraged people.
No living being had beauty comparable to his. There
fore the body of Ara, dressed in his royal robes, was
shown every day at the window of the palace, and his
people, thinking him a living hostage in the hands of
Semiramis, were quiet.

Semiramis crossed the plateau of the Araxes, and
went to Van, Such was the beauty of Armenia that

FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT 273

she was not content until she made that country her
royal residence. The most magnificent city in the
world was built on the shores of Lake Van, and the
gardens of the palace were more marvellous than the
hanging gardens of Babylon. There Semiramis lived
in more than imaginable splendour, until the Fire-
worshippers came to end her reign and her life.

To this day, the Armenian people see ; in the ruins
on the shores of Lake Van, the enormous walls of
granite built for the palace of Queen Semiramis. The
ruins are indeed there, and a wealth of inscriptions in
cuneiform writing, which can be read but cannot be
understood. They are the tombstones of a forgotten
race. Ara the Beautiful, Semiramis and her sorrows
and glories, are poetic creations of Armenian refugee-
brigands, driven to mountain caves by the Assyrian
armies. These kings and queens, battles and palaces,
never were on earth. But they are a flowering of that
deep root, still buried, still alive, which is Armenia.

It gave us also the legends of King Tigranes, who is
described as the ruler of free Armenia. He, and his
son Vahakian, are heroes of a cycle of tales, In which
they are seen performing more mighty deeds than Her
cules. Fact and legend cannot be disentangled. But
the fact seems to have been that the Armenian brig
and-patriots came from their mountain retreats when
the Empire of the Medes arose, that they joined the
Medes in their wars against Assyria, and that in return
they were given the limited freedom of a vassal state.
Some centuries later King Tigranes appears, making
alliance with the Persians against the Medes, then giv*

274 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

ing his sister in marriage to the Median king, then
waging successful war against him and taking back
his sister by the simple expedient of making her a
widow. Tigranes is then described as the ruler, not
only, of Armenia, but of the lands of the Medes.

The legendary age ends with Vahakian, son and suc
cessor of Tigranes. Thereafter, for many centuries,
we have no more news of the Armenians. History was
recording as far as records were made the great con
flicts in the valley of the Euphrates and in Asia Minor.
The Armenians apparently were free, a small people
spreading over the plateaus of the Caucasus, mixed
with Medes, Assyrians and Persians who had straggled
to these edges of the known world. There must have
been many tribes of them, loosely united under the
leadership of one or another. There must have been
innumerable little wars among them, and between them
and the valiant survivors of the original inhabitants.
Their freedom and these wars expressed their emo
tions in the world of reality, therefore they made no
more legends.

This chapter of their history ends with the defeat
and death of their king, the last descendant of Haiq,
at the hands of Alexander the Great, when the Mace
donians and Albanians were conquering the world.

When Alexander the Great died, and his brief Em
pire fell to pieces, Armenia became captive to Syria.
Still it profited by its great distance from the centres
of government, and its subjection was more nominal

FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT 275

than real. Emperors were apparently content to let
that turbulent corner of the world alone if, now and
then, a knee were bent and a tribute offered. There
were troubles enough in Asia without stirring more.

The Parthian Empire was rising now, overthrowing
one by one the kingdoms established by Alexander's
generals. Looking back upon those days, one sees the
pattern; one says, "The Parthian Empire was rising. 7 '
So will historians some day see the pattern of to-day's
events, hidden from us now by the events themselves.
There is no doubt that during the several centuries fol
lowing Alexander's adventure, no one knew what was
happening. It was known only that everywhere there
were wars and intrigues.

Out of them came triumphant the chief family of
one small town, whose power had steadily waxed until
it covered the whole earth, save only those remote
fringes of it, the Balkans. Persia was conquered, the
Macedonians were driven from Babylon, the Greeks
who had followed them to Asia Minor were chased from
its shores, Syria was subdued. The glory of the
Parthian Empire began.

It was a large, loose empire, administered in each
of its various subdivisions by a member of the royal
family. To a brother of the Emperor was given the
task of subduing and ruling the Caucasus. The rem
nants of the Macedonians were organizing a revolt
against the Parthians, and the position of the Arme
nians between the two greater powers appears in their
brief emergence from history's forgetfulness of them.

276 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Macedonians and Parthians joined battle; the Arme
nians killed the leader of the Macedonians, and were
at once attacked and defeated by the Parthians.

The first work of the new Parthian ruler of Armenia,
Valarsace, was to wipe out brigandage. He was horri
fied by the barbarity of the country, whose inhabitants,
he reported, lived by murder and pillage. So are all
empires horrified by the feeble retaliations of their
subjects who certainly are not conquered by kind
ness and charity and so do all conquered moun
taineers retaliate. The ensuing conflicts among the
crags of Mount Ararat were called, as usual, "pacify
ing the country," and in those conflicts the Armenians
undoubtedly displayed a ferocity equal to that of the
Parthians. They were, however, pacified in the end.

Valarsace then organized this subdivision of the em
pire, and conferred his greatest favours upon a certain
Jew whose name was Pakarad. Pakarad was given the
title of Bragatide, or Bestower of the Crown, with the
honour, made hereditary in his family, of placing the
crown upon the heads of all successive kings of
Armenia at their coronation. This office carried with
it the position of commander of the royal cavalry, and
the successful Israelite founded a family destined to
great power in the annals of Armenia. The Bragatide
princes, indeed, survived even the Armenian empire,
and more than a thousand years after the death of the
founder of their family they were kings of the little
Armenian kingdom which endured almost to modern
times.

FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT 277

Valarsace, aided by Pakarad, organized Armenia so
well that for almost half a century the country had no
history; then it began to play an important part in
world affairs.

The Greeks were defeated and had retired. The
huge Parthian empire was beginning to suffer from its
unwieldy size. West of the western rim of the earth,
another small village was spreading its power, be
coming a city, a state, a kingdom, an empire
Rome.

Tigranes the First, king of Armenia, was able to
play against each other the declining and the rising
empires, and to seize advantage from both. Armenia
became a world-power. Mark Antony, the young
Roman general, waged war against her and captured
the son of Tigranes, whom he sent captive as a present
to Cleopatra of Egypt. It was Cleopatra's royal ca
price, later, to have him decapitated.

Eventually Armenia was made a vassal of Rome.
An unwilling vassal, rebellious and turbulent. Ar
menia's kings enlisted the aid of Persia in their revolts
against Rome. Various rebellions were put down, and
in time we find Abgar, king of Armenia, ruling it as
a Roman governor, and quarrelling violently with
Herod, Roman governor of Judaea. Herod sent armies
against Armenia, the Armenians triumphantly de
feated them, and extended Armenian territory into the
lower valleys of the Euphrates.

The political situation was anything but pleasing to
Rome. Abgar had made a visit to the court of Persia;

278 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Abgar was building a royal city on the banks of the
Euphrates. An alliance between Armenia and Persia
would be a serious danger to Rome. Herod was re
called, and a new governor of Judaea, with fresh armies,
was sent to replace him.

Abgar immediately sent his favourite, Anan, to visit
this new governor of Judaea, to protest Armenia's inno
cence of any plot to attack Rome, and to pay the
annual tribute, now some time in arrears. Of this
journey from Armenia to Judaea a curious story is told,
which may not be true, but which easily might have
been.

Returning from his successful mission, so the story
goes, Anan lingered a while in Jerusalem. Political
missions in those days, as now, showed no great haste
in making history, and the hotels and entertainments of
Jerusalem must have been pleasant to a hard-worked
emissary from the provinces of the Caucasus. While in
Jerusalem, Anan heard much discussion of a new
prophet who was said to be causing grave uneasiness
in inner official circles. He was described as a magi
cian, who performed miracles of many kinds, including
the cure of diseases. His birth had been surrounded
with such portents that Herod had ordered a massacre
of all Jewish male infants. His following was grow
ing, and might become dangerous to the safety of the
province.

Returning in due time to the Armenian court, Anan
reported these rumours. King Abgar, who suffered
cruelly from an illness which appears to have been
rheumatism, and who may also have had political

FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT 279

reasons for making the acquaintance of an enemy of
Herod and a leader dangerous to Rome, immediately
dispatched Anan to Jerusalem again, with the follow
ing letter:

"Abgar, son of Arscham ; to Jesus, the great doctor
who has appeared in Judaea Greetings:

"Sir, I have heard much of thee and of the cures
thou hast made. Thou dost not heal with drugs and
with the juices of roots, but with Thy word alone.
Thou givest sight to the blind, strength to the lame,
health to the leprous and hearing to the deaf; Thou
drivest out devils and raisest the dead from the grave.
Thy word heals all those who suffer and are in pain.
Therefore I address to Thee this supplication: come to
me to heal me of my pain and of my suffering as I
believe that Thou hast power to do.

"I have heard also that there are those who com
plain against Thee, pursue Thee and would do Thee
to death. I possess a beautiful small city and sufficient
of all good things for Thee and me. Come to me, and
we will live together in peace,"

This letter, the story goes, was carried by Anan to
Jesus, at the house of the High Priest in Jerusalem, and
after having read it, Christ replied that the work which
He had to do would not permit Him to live at the court
of Armenia. He promised, however, that, later, one
of His disciples would go.

Historically, it is true that soon after the Crucifixion,
Saint Thomas sent to Armenia one of his disciples,
named Thaddeus, who was followed by Saint Bartholo-

280 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

mew. This attempt to convert Armenia, however, did
not succeed.

"A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love
one another. ... By this shall all men know that ye
are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. . . . "

This was one voice., speaking to a few poor ragged
men who tramped the roads of Asia Minor and slept
beneath the stars, while all the world was filled with
turmoil of battles and clash of old hatreds and new
greeds.

"Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-
laden, and I will give you peace."

A new commandment for the war-tortured peoples
of the world, that they love one another. A new com
mandment, that would bring them peace.

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This
is the first and great commandment.

"And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself.

"On these two commandments hang all the law and
the prophets."

One voice, speaking as the voice of one man could
speak, for the few that followed Him through His short
pilgrimage on earth.

The Roman Empire covered the world. The little
town on the Tiber had grown so powerful that all the
old empires had fallen before it. It had pushed even
beyond known limits of the world, had conquered the
savages of Gaul, had reached the limits where the world

FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT 281

ceased to be and only waters were beyond. It was dar
ing to adventure even over the world's edge, to find
lost in the encompassing oceans another small frag
ment of land where savages called Angles and
Saxons and Picts fought the Roman soldiers with
stones.

Love? Had the doctrine spread, civilization would
have fallen to fragments. Civilization was then the
Roman Empire, the Roman Empire was war. The
world had been made by war and massacre; it con
tinued to exist by massacre and war. The Roman Em
pire did not want the peoples of the world to love one
another; it had subjected the peoples of the world by
force of arms and by force it continued to keep them
subjected.

A new commandment? But the world was full of
old gods, Roman gods, Greek gods, Persian and Egyp
tian gods, and here and there gods of Israelites and
Assyrians and Chaldeans, whose commandments their
peoples followed.

In a remote corner of the earth a minor Roman gov
ernor who found a man stirring his province with these
doctrines, treasonable in politics and in religion, could
do only one thing. His political future was at stake.
A successful term of office in Judaea, with proper politi
cal support in Rome, might lift him from his mediocre
place to one nearer the imperial purple. A serious dis
turbance in Judaea, calling for Roman legions to sup
press it, would lose him his political head.

The Galilean was arrested, tried, convicted. The
rabble that had followed him was not considered im-

282 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

portant Respectable people who happened to hear of
the incident thought that the Voice that had spoken
of love was silenced for ever on Calvary.

"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words
shall not pass away."

Abgar, the king of Armenia, died. The successful
war with Herod of Judaea had extended Armenia
down the valley of the Euphrates into Mesopotamia.
Abgar's son inherited this fertile lower half of the
kingdom, but the son of Abgar's sister took the slopes
of Mount Ararat, and descending from them with his
hardy mountaineers at his back, seized the whole. The
country then fell into complete anarchy. Profiting by
this condition, a certain Erovant exterminated all the
descendants of the former kings, and seized the throne.
Only one infant escaped the massacre. This infant,
named Ardashes, was carried by his nurse to the strong
hold of Sempad Bragatide (Bestower of the Crown),
who was the reigning descendant of Pakarad, inheriting
his honours, wealth, and power.

Erovant, bargaining with Rome for the safety of his
kingdom, relinquished Mesopotamia to the Romans,
and retired to High Armenia, where he built a magnifi
cent capital, Erivan, on the shores of the Araxes. Here
he established his court. For his gods, however, he
built another city at a little distance, in order that the
multitudes of pilgrims who came to worship them might
not oblige him to keep too large a garrison of soldiers
to protect his court. Thus nineteen centuries ago
Mount Ararat looked down, as it does to-day, upon

FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT 283

Erivan the capital of Armenia, and Etchmiadzin, the
centre -of Armenia's religious faith.

Erovant reigned here in splendour and comparative
peace. Rome did not trouble him; every year he
bought his freedom by payment of tribute to the Em
pire. But the fugitive child of Abgar?s family was
growing to manhood in the care of Sempad Bragatide,
and one day Erivan was startled by news that he
was coming to reclaim his kingdom. King Erovant
hastened out at the head of his troops, and battle
was joined on the banks of the Araxes. That night
the victorious Ardashes slept in the tent of former King
Erovant, who had been killed by a soldier in the very
gates of Erivan.

The reign of Ardashes, under the prudent tutelage
of Sempad Bragatide, was long and prosperous. When
a large Roman army appeared at the gates of his capi
tal, doubtless intending to profit by the disturbance of
the revolution and annex Armenia, Ardashes bought
them off by payment of a double tribute. During his
reign he built a new capital, of which no trace is
visible to-day, and installed there a large colony of
Jews, doubtless under the patronage of Sempad Braga
tide.

The ancient and still unended war with the original
inhabitants of the mountains Georgians, Kurds and
other savage tribes broke out afresh, and Ardashes
brilliantly defended the northern boundaries of his
kingdom. Defeating the savages, he returned from
the war with a wife, Satinig, still celebrated for her
marvellous beauty. There are Armenians to-day who

284 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

still sing fragments of the old songs commemorating
that marriage.

The great king Ardashes rode out on his black war-horse,
His thong of red leather and links of gold hissed in the air;
Swift as an eagle falling upon its prey he crossed the river.
The thong of red leather and links of gold curled round the

virgin's body,
And cruelly seizing around the waist the beautiful Georgian

princess
Roughly he bore her away into his camp.

There are villages among the crags of Zangazour, I
am told, where, to this day, the guests sing at marriage
feasts, while the musicians are playing and Soviet paper
roubles are showered on the heads of the dancers, the
old song:

A shower of gold fell on the marriage of Ardashes,
And pearls rained down on the wedding of Satinig.

Still the aboriginal peoples of the Caucasus con
tinued to revolt, and Sempad Bragatide took the field
at the head of an army whose victories were rewarded
by the gift of a northern province. Here the Braga-
tides built their own semi-independent capital, Ani.

So many successes in war, combined with the trou
bles which beset Rome in Europe, emboldened Ar
dashes to refuse to pay tribute to the Roman Empire,
and when Roman armies came to collect it, the Arme
nians defeated them. Armenia was now at the

FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT 285

of her power, and while Nero was gazing through his
emerald at the slaughter of Christians in the arena at
Rome, Armenians and Persians were raiding the east
ern provinces of his empire.

At home, too, Ardashes was accomplishing great
things. The king and Sempad Bragatide were import
ing into the wild Caucasus the civilization of the val
leys. Bridges were built across streams, boats were
launched on the mountain lakes. A method of count
ing the days and reckoning the passage of months and
years was established for the use of the court. The
people, of course, continued to count time only by the
changing seasons and the waxing and waning of the
moon. But for them, too, there were improvements.
They were instructed to sow seed and to reap the
harvest; agriculture was beginning. Grapevines were
brought from Persia and set in Armenian soil. The
fashion of cooking meat before eating it began to
spread; it was an acquired taste, like olives, but those
who had tasted baked meat while hot, preferred it to
the raw flesh cut from the slaughtered animal, and the
villages began to dig baking-pits. With the harvest of
grain, too, came a method of grinding it between stones,
mixing the result with water, and spreading the dough
on hot stones to cook. The Armenian bread of to-day
had been invented.

These golden days passed. Rome revived under
Trajan, and when Egypt and Palestine resounded again
to the tramp of Roman legions, Ardashes abandoned
valour for discretion, and hastened to remit to Trajan
the unpaid tribute of the rebellious years. The king

286 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

was growing old; his sons were intriguing against each
other and against Sempad Bragatide. In the midst of
these troubles, Ardashes fell ill, and although hundreds
of human victims were sacrificed to the gods in order
to save his life, he died. His funeral was a magnifi
cent one, and his wives and concubines ; buried alive
with his body, were counted by scores.

It is said that before his death, during one of the
quarrels among the princes, Ardashes had cursed his
son, Ardavazt, who succeeded him to the throne. This
curse is supposed to have caused the death of Arda
vazt, who fell into a mountain chasm while king and
court were one day hunting wild asses. Since that
time, the Armenian peasants believe, Ardavazt has
lived chained in a cave and tormented by two enor
mous dogs. Eternally he tries to break his chains
and to escape. Should he ever do so, he would devas
tate the country. Therefore, whenever among the
mountains is heard the subterranean rumbling of the
living volcanos, and when a trembling of the earth
rattles the copper pans and cracks the stone lining of
baking-pits, the villagers make the sign of the Cross,
saying, "Ardavazt is trying to break his chains." And
every Sunday the prudent blacksmith strikes three
times with his hammer upon his anvil, for thus he
forges again the chains that bind Ardavazt in his cave.

One by one, four kings succeeded Ardavazt, while
the villagers sowed and reaped, were born and married
and died, and summer and winter went over the eternal
snows of Ararat. On the plains of the world, far below
these high plateaus, history was being made. In the

FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT 287

West, barbarians were attacking Rome from without;
from within there was a growing restlessness among the
slaves Christianity. In the East, the remnants of the
old Parthian Empire were reviving. In Persia a na
tional religious revolutionary movement was persist
ently growing.

Khosrov reigned in Armenia when this Persian revo
lution succeeded. The revolutionists, overthrowing the
kings who had adopted Greek gods, re-established at
the Persian court the religion of the people, Fire-wor
ship. Amid enthusiastic acclaim of all the populace,
the new Persian king, Ardashes, ascended to the throne,
and Persia was securely anticipating a revival of her
old glory, when Armenia suddenly became dangerous.

It is a characteristic of all nations so far known to
history, to attack and if possible, invade any neigh
bouring country which is upset by revolution. In
international politics, the difficulties of a neighbour are
always opportunities for adding to them. Khosrov of
Armenia naturally lost no time in attacking Persia.
Many of his captains deserted to the Persians, but
Khosrov appealed to Rome for aid, and gave battle.
So successful was he, that he not only defeated the
Persian armies with great slaughter, but pursued Ar
dashes, their king, even to the frontiers of India.

Ardashes, thus ruined and exiled, was driven to
stratagem. He promised, to any Armenian who would
kill Khosrov, the highest place in the empire which
he did not doubt that he could recover, were the king
of Armenia dead. There were, of course, many claim
ants to the Armenian throne; to one of these, named

288 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Anag, Ardashes promised to give Armenia if he would
earn it by killing Khosrov.

Anag agreed to the bargain, and his entrance into
Armenian history is sufficiently dramatic. He appears
fleeing across the borders of Persia, pursued by Persian
armies and shrieking to Khosrov for aid. Khosrov im
mediately sent troops to his rescue, and brought him
to Erivan, where he soon became a royal favourite.
For two years Anag dwelt at the Armenian court, cov
ered with honours and showered with gifts, and during
those two years he became the father of a child who
was named Gregory. This boy was born sixteen cen
turies ago; for more than fifteen centuries his bones
have been dust, but his short life has preserved for
fifteen hundred years the life of the Armenian people.
He became Saint Gregory the Illuminator, founder of
the Armenian Gregorian church.

He was a baby in the arms of his nurse when Anag,
his father, carried out his promise of killing Khosrov.
Choosing a moment, when in the excitement of a hunt,
the unsuspecting king was unguarded, Anag stabbed
him to death and fled toward Persia. On the banks of
the Araxes, some miles below Erivan, he was overtaken
and killed by the king's guards.

Dying, Khosrov gave orders that Anag's family
should be massacred, and none of his blood escaped
the slaughter save Gregory, with whom his nurse fled
to Caesarea, a Roman city of Anatolia.

As soon as the news of Khosrov's death reached him,
Ardashes gathered his armies and threw himself on
Armenia, which was embroiled in a dozen civil wars

FROM SNOW-CROWNED ARARAT 289

among claimants for the empty throne. Easily defeat
ing the disordered country, Ardashes subdued all the
warring chiefs, excepting only the reigning Bragatide,
who took refuge in impregnable Ani. As for the family
of Khosrov, it was massacred, with the exception of
one infant named Tiridates, whose nurse fled with him
to Rome.

After his victory, Ardashes established himself in
Armenia, defeated an army sent against him by Rome,
and suppressed all gods but Fire, throughout his new
dominions. He reigned comfortably for thirty-six
years, and was succeeded by his son as king of Ar
menia.

Then Rome played her trump card Tiridates, the
rightful heir to the Armenian throne, who had been
held in reserve and educated at the Roman court.
Roman armies marched into Armenia and made him
king, that is to say, they reconquered Armenia for the
Roman Empire. Tiridates, established on his throne,
drove out the priests of the Fire, set up again the old
gods and those of Rome, and began his long and event
ful reign.

Not long after it began, there arrived a traveller from
Csesarea, Gregory. He had been brought up as the
son of his nurse, a poor woman and a Christian, who
had taught him her own faith. Living as a modest,
working man among the poor, he had married a Chris
tian woman and was the father of two sons, when he
heard the story of Khosrov's murder. Thinking about
it and praying for guidance, it seemed to him to be his
duty to devote his life to expiating his father's crime.

290 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

His wife agreed with him. The family was broken up,
the wife and two boys going to join a Christian group
in Rome, while Gregory came to Armenia to serve
Tiridates.

He was well received by the king, and very soon held
a high place in the royal councils. He had not told
Tiridates that he was the son of Khosrov's murderer.
Feeling it his duty to expiate that inherited sin by serv
ing the orphaned son, he could hardly have begun his
service by an announcement that would have ended it
and his life together. But when the time of the autumn
sacrifice to the gods arrived, another difficulty arose.
Tiridates was a deeply religious king and a devout
worshipper of the old gods. Gregory was a Christian.
As a Christian, he was constrained to refuse to sacri
fice to the gods of Tiridates, and the friendly king was
reluctantly compelled to put him to the torture. Greg
ory, under the torture, was still refusing to abandon
his faith, when jealous courtiers who had been mak
ing private inquiries into the past of the king's new
favourite, announced to Tiridates that the obdurate
Christian was the son of Anag.

In natural fury, Tiridates ordered him thrown into
an old well to starve. Thereafter during some thir
teen years, Gregory was forgotten.

XIX

BAPTISM AND MASSACRE

THE stage is set for Armenia's conversion to
Christianity. Around this great fact so many
legends cluster and so many battles have been
fought by those more learned than I, that I hesitate. I
hesitate, too, because I remember my many Armenian
friends, cultured, intelligent and sincerely devout men
and women, to whom the story of this conversion means
no more, and no less, than it means to the American
for whom I write it, I would not misrepresent the
Armenians, whom it is my hope, indeed, to represent
as they actually are, through these many wearying
pages of writing. I pause, remembering among others
Dr. Artine, whom I am glad to call my friend; a man
who, in the Armenian Church, is one of the number of
earnest followers of Christ who are working within
the Christian Churches of the world to make them ex
press more perfectly His Spirit.

Yet to make intelligible his effort, and that of many
other leaders of the Armenian people, the weight
which they are trying to lift must be shown. When
I think of the Armenian faith, its followers seem to me
to fall into three groups; the mass of the people, op
pressed during fifteen centuries, to whom the Church
is what the Catholic Church was to the miserable peas-

291

292 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

ants of Europe during the Dark Ages, a bit of beauty,
a light in darkness, a hope; the Vartabed-Bishops of
Etchmiadzin, whom I shall later describe; and the men
and women scattered through all masses of Armenians
wherever you find them, who are Christians as we, who
belong to the Churches of America are Christians.

Please to understand then, that the story of Ar
menia's conversion to Christianity which I am about
to relate is that story as it is understood by Armenian
peasants, as it is told to their children by the shawled
women who reverently kiss the cornerstone of every
church as they pass it.

Thirteen years after Saint Gregory had been thrown
into a well and forgotten, King Tiridates received a
letter from Diocletian, Emperor of Rome. Diocletian,
after amiable greeting to the King of Armenia, in
formed him that a certain Christian virgin of remark
able beauty was said to have fled from Rome to Ar
menia, accompanied by several other women. Dio
cletian, having been told of the girPs charms, had sent
his soldiers to bring her to him, but when they reached
the place where she had been living with other Chris
tian women, they found that the whole community had
escaped. It was said that they had taken refuge in
Armenia. The girl, a Greek, was named Hripsime, and
the Mother-Superior of the community was known as
Gaiane. Diocletian requested Tiridates to search his
kingdom for these women, and if they were found, to
send these two under guard to Rome.

Tiridates immediately offered rewards for the dis-

BAPTISM AND MASSACRE 293

covery of the women, and it was soon reported that
they were living not far from Erivan, in a shelter in
which winecasks were stored between vintage seasons.
One of their number understood the art of making
beads, and by selling these the community earned its
food. When Tiridates received this information, he
ordered Hripsime brought to the palace, and the others
guarded until he should decide what to do with them.

The king's guards sent to carry out this order en
countered an unexpected resistance. Hripsime not
only refused to accompany them, but when they at
tempted to take her by force she fought so desperately
that a second detachment was ordered out to help to
subdue her. No less than twenty men were required
to get her to the palace, and the king, hearing of this
remarkable battle, himself went to see her.

He was so struck by her beauty that he decided to
marry her himself, rather than send her back to Dio
cletian. The marriage was announced, and according
to the simple custom of the day Hripsime was carried
to the king's apartments, while gifts were distributed to
the rejoicing populace in the streets of Erivan. While
the marriage was thus being celebrated and all Erivan
was singing and dancing outside the palace, within the
king's apartments Hripsime was continuing her resist
ance so effectually that the king barely escaped with
his life.

Force having failed, Tiridates sent his guards to
bring Gaiane, the Mother-Superior of the little Chris
tian community. Gaiane was threatened with torture
and instructed to command Hripsime to yield to the

294 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

king. Instead of doing this, she spoke to the girl in
Greek, a language which the guards did not under
stand, and urged her to remain firm in devotion to her
vows of celibacy. Gaiane was taken back to her other
companions, and that night Hripsime fought so des
perately that she escaped from the palace.

The king's guards sent in pursuit captured her be
fore morning, tied her to four stakes, cut out her eyes
and tongue, burned her with their torches, and sub
jected her to other tortures until late in the following
day, when they killed her with stones.

Gaiane and the little group of thirty-four Christian
girls in the shelter of the wine casks were reserved for
the entertainment of the court, which enjoyed the spec
tacle of their sufferings under more deliberate refine
ments of cruelty until they also died.

Immediately the wrath of heaven fell upon king and
court; Tiridates and all who had assisted in the martyr
dom of the Christians were changed into wild boars.
A few faithful citizens of Erivan guarded them in the
forests to which they had rushed, where they lived on
acorns. Armenia was left without a king, and the
horrified family of Tiridates appealed in vain to their
gods. At last Christ sent a dream to the king's sister.
In this dream a figure of more than mortal beauty
appeared to her, and said that the king would be cured
only when Saint Gregory was brought from the well
into which he had been thrown thirteen years earlier.

In the morning the king's sister related this dream,
but no one thought it important. Only after the figure
had five times appeared to her, repeating each time the

BAPTISM AND MASSACRE 295

same words, was she able to prevail upon the king's
minister to release Gregory. He himself went to the
well in which it had been thought that Saint Gregory
had died long ago, and drew the saint from its depths.
During the thirteen years Saint Gregory had become
completely black.

He was taken to Erivan, and thence to the forest,
where at sight of him Tiridates and his courtiers re
covered their human reason and voices, but remained
imprisoned in the bodies of boars. These boars fol
lowed Saint Gregory weeping and imploring him to
save them from their hideous punishment, and every
order which Gregory gave was immediately confirmed
by the boar Tiridates.

Gregory's first desire was to be taken to the bodies
of the Christian martyrs, which were found to be still
perfectly preserved. By Gregory's orders they were
carried to the shelter of the wine-casks, and there the
saint prayed before them during sixty days and nights,
while the human boars grovelled outside the door,
listening to his words.

At midnight of the sixty-sixth night Saint Gregory,
still awake and meditating upon the infinite mercy of
God, was granted a vision. With a noise of thunder
and of crashing waves, the firmament opened like a
tent, and from it descended a figure of shining light
who called Gregory by his name, saying, "Look up,
and contemplate the wonders which I am come to show
thee."

Saint Gregory beheld the heavens opened, and there
were revealed mountains and valleys so enormous that

296 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

the eye could not see their limits. From them poured
a light that fell upon the earth, and in this light came
innumerable shining angels with wings of flame. These
filled the flood of light as particles of dust fill a ray
of sunshine which in the bright days of springtime may
sometimes enter a house through a crack made by
winter storms. These angels covered all the earth,
together with the spreading light.

Then from on high descended a man of terrible
aspect, holding in his hand an enormous hammer of
gold. He came like an eagle dropping swiftly from
the sky, and struck with his hammer the gigantic land
scape of mountain and valley. The sound of the ter
rible blow filled the deepest chasms of hell, and in
stantly mountains and valleys vanished, and an im
mense plain stretched as far as eye could see.

Then in the midst of the city of the old gods, near
the palace of the king, appeared a golden pedestal,
from which rose an immense column of fire, with
capital made of cloud, surmounted by a fiery cross.
Around it rose three other pedestals, one where Hrip-
sime had died, one where her companions had been tor
tured, one above the shelter of the wine-casks. These
pedestals were of blood, their columns were of cloud
and their capitals of fire- All were surmounted by
crosses, and from these crosses sprang arches, and
upon the arches appeared a pavilion made of clouds.
Under this pavilion, on the arches, stood the martyred
women, ineffably beautiful, clad in shining, white gar
ments. Above the pavilion stood a throne of iron, and

BAPTISM AND MASSACRE 297

upon this throne was the Cross of Christ. The light
from Heaven mingled with the rays of light spreading
from the Cross, and radiant columns of light touched
the bases of the columns of cloud.

On the enormous plain which filled the heavens a
spring of water opened, and flowed out upon the land.
The water became a blue sea, the fields about it be
came blue as the sky, upon them appeared innumerable
fiery altars, and beside each altar a column surmounted
by a cross; the numbers of them were as the stars of
heaven.

Through the blue waters came immense flocks of
black goats which, having been bathed in that sea, were
transformed into white lambs with shining fleeces.
These became sheep and increased and multiplied,
lambs covering all the plains. Again these divided
into two parts, of which one, crossing the water, be
came black wolves and turned upon the lambs to de
vour them. Rivers of blood flowed from the carnage.
But great numbers of the lambs became winged, and
flew from the slaughter to join the shining legions of
the angels. A torrent of fire destroyed the wolves,
and the vision vanished.

In the morning Saint Gregory described the wonders
he had seen, which Tiridates understood to mean that
Armenia must immediately become Christian. Under
his orders, crowds immediately began the work of
erecting Christian churches on the sites indicated by
the columns of the vision. Meantime, Saint Gregory
laid the bodies of the martyrs in pine coffins, and Tiri-

298 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

dates himself, aided by his wives who had retained
their human shape, dug the graves.

As to the spot where the column of fire had been
seen by Gregory, it was enclosed by high walls. Tiri-
dates went to the top of Mount Ararat and himself
brought down from the summit a huge block of granite
which formed their cornerstone, and when he had done
this he was restored to human form. The walls were
completed, a cross set upon them, and they remain
to this day the walls of Etchmiadzin, the Vatican of
the Armenian church.

In these legends one sees the reaction of a primitive
people on whom a new, and unknown, religion is sud
denly forced. Gregory had converted to Christianity
the king who, during his long reign, had most devoutly
worshipped the gods of the people. In Armenia were
probably remnants of all religions known to human
ity; prehistoric, unknown gods such as those wor
shipped there to-day by the Yezidees, whose religion
is secret, but is said to be worship of the devil; old
gods of the Medes and the Persians; Jehovah, the god
of the Jews; gods of the Assyrians and the Chaldeans;
the modern gods of the Greeks, come from Olympus;
the gods of the Romans, Jupiter and Mars. Here and
there, furtive among the mountains, persecuted by Tiri-
dates, must have been groups worshipping Fire, the
god of the Persians. That there were some Christians
in the country is obvious, for Gregory's imprisonment
was a fact, and during it he was fed secretly by an old
Christian woman of the neighbourhood.

BAPTISM AND MASSACRE 299

One imagines what the conversion must have been
to the masses of the people. Upon this mixture of old
creeds suddenly is forced a new faith. King Tiridates
has decreed that men worship a new god named Christ.
On the heels of this announcement come the king's
armies, the king himself at their head, with Saint
Gregory beside him, and war and massacre sweep the
land. The priests of the old faiths fight desperately
in their fortress-towns, the people rally around their
gods, which do not save them. Town after town falls,
accompanied by the bloody slaughter of its defenders;
with his own hands Saint Gregory fires a stronghold,
burning men and women and children alive. With his
own hands he throws down and breaks the smoke-
blackened idols. By thousands and tens of thousands
the terrified populations flock to announce their con
version.

In three years the last priest of the old faiths has
been killed or has escaped over the borders into
Persia; the last god lies in fragments. Saint Gregory,
in a wagon drawn by white mules, and attended by
twenty-four princes of Armenia, goes to Caesarea,
where he is ordained a bishop. On his return he brings
with him some bones of Saint John the Baptist, pur
chased by Armenian gold from the Bishop of Csesarea,
and in one day, on the banks of the Euphrates, he
baptizes the king and court, the army, and one hun
dred and ninety thousand of the people. Armenia has
become Christian.

Tiridates died after a reign of fifty-six years, and

300 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

his death was sunset for Armenia. A little light
lingered for a time, troubled and cloudy, and then
Armenia disappeared as a nation.

Naturally there remained much discontent and tur
moil of religions in the country. The early, primitive
Christianity of the men and women who had known
Christ in the flesh had its scattered adherents. Tiri-
dates had persecuted them as he had persecuted the
Fire worshippers. The new Church, of which Saint
Gregory was the first Katholicos, continued to perse
cute both, and in addition was obliged energetically to
continue the suppression of the gods formerly favoured
by King Tiridates.

Persia was not slow to use the pretext of persecuted
co-religionists in order to further her imperialistic de
signs on Armenia. She stirred up religious revolts in
Daghestan, then sent her armies to aid them. Armenia
was obliged to call on Rome for help. Thereafter
her short story is one of desperate attempts to save
her life, both from Persia and from the Byzantine
Empire. The two great powers as has always been,
and is to-day, the way of powerful nations with weaker
ones used Armenia as a pawn in the game they were
playing against each other, until the game paused for a
moment at the peace treaty with which they divided
her.

The last kings went down in convulsive efforts to
save themselves, not only from foreign invaders, but
from the Katholicos of the Church. As they lost
strength, the Church acquired it.

Diran, king of Armenia, having bought safety by

BAPTISM AND MASSACRE 301

paying tribute both to Persia and to Rome, was obliged
to send Ms family as hostages with the Emperor Julian
on a campaign in Persia. While they were gone, the
Katholicos Jousig tore down from the wall of the Royal
Church a portrait of Julian and trampled it beneath
his feet. Diran, trembling for his family when the
Emperor should hear of this insult, had the Katholicos
whipped to death. But the Armenian troops that were
with Julian, when they heard of this sacrilegious execu
tion, refused any longer to obey Diran's orders, and
deserted. The Roman Emperor's vengeance was
averted by his death from wounds, but immediately
Diran received an invitation from the Persian Em
peror to visit him at the Persian court, an invitation
he dared not refuse. The Persian Emperor received
him courteously, ordered his eyes burned out, and gave
Armenia a king whom he thought would be more loyal
to Persia.

This story is typical. Repeated for a century, it is
the story of the fall of Armenia. In the beginning of
the fifth century, Great Armenia was engulfed by
waves of foreign invasion, and save for the brief up
rising of the Bragatide dynasty at Ani in the ninth
and tenth centuries and of Little Armenia in Cilicia
during the Crusades, Armenia has ever since remained
submerged.

The force that has kept her alive, a nation, a people,
resisting absorption by the successive conquerors of
fifteen centuries, is the Church. Persians, Greeks,
Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Franks, Egyptians, fought

302 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

each other over the living body of Armenia, and did
not destroy her, because of the Church. The five cen
turies of comparative peace under the Turkish Empire
did not absorb her people, because of the Church.
Obstinate, forceful, mystic, intelligent, the Gregorian
Church has maintained itself through fifteen centuries
of attack, and the walls of Etchmiadzin still stand as
firm as the cliffs of Mount Ararat.

While the last, little kings of Armenia were dying,
the great Katholicos Nerses laid the foundations of
the Church government. He was such a leader of the
Church as the Pope of Rome became in Europe during
the Middle Ages. It was he who treated with the Em
perors of Constantinople and of Persia, he who gath
ered the armies that brought back fugitive little kings
and set them again on the tottering throne.

But his wisdom was in the depth with which he laid
the foundations of the Church. He built them in the
hearts of the people. For the first time the peasants
living in their cave-houses, the poor who had never
known anything but toil and war and oppression, re
ceived something from their ruler-priests. Houses
where the sick were cared for appeared in all the
villages; shelters were built for travellers; on the sum
mits of the mountains and on the lake islands rose
monasteries whose walls were refuges where justice
could be found, and at whose doors bread was dis
tributed to the hungry. In one short lifetime the
Armenian people learned to love their Church with a
passionate devotion which nothing could overcome.

Before the century ended, the Church had given the

BAPTISM AND MASSACRE 303

Armenians a new religion, a new unity, an alphabet,
the beginning of a Golden Age of literature which
Europe was not to equal for a thousand years. The
monasteries had drawn into* their cloisters the intelli
gence, the energy and the genius of Armenia, and in
the sixth century they were producing one of the finest
flowerings of humanity's creative spirit.

The fresh vitality brought to the life of the people
by the Church was revealed in the first of the politico-
religious persecutions inflicted upon the Armenians. In
the first half of the fifth century these began, with
the determination of the Emperor of Persia to re
establish the worship of Fire throughout his dominions.

The news of this intent became known to the
Armenians when a large army led by the chief of the
Persian generals crossed their borders, announcing the
Emperor's orders that all Christians must abandon
their faith and adopt that of the Magis. This order
was followed immediately by the arrest and convey
ance to the Persian court of the leading bishops of
the Church. One imagines how this news swept
through the mountain defiles and penetrated the under
ground villages of the peasants on the plains of the
Araxes. It was followed by a report that at the
Persian court the bishops had yielded, and had sacri
ficed to the Fire.

The Bishops had in fact done so, thus early showing
the flexibility with which the Church weathered storms.
The yielding had been a stratagem. Loaded with
Persian gifts they returned to their own country and
at once announced a holy war. The people who had

304 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

been unable to defend their kings rose as one mass to
defend their church. The first Persian army sent
against them was defeated before the snows of that
winter fell. Then, in the mountain passes buried in
snow, Armenians stood staunch throughout the long,
bitter winter. During seven months Persian emissaries
tried in vain to sow discord among the troops; not a
single soldier deserted. In the spring the army ad
vanced to battle, and on the second of June, 451 A.D.,
Ararat looked down upon the contending forces.

Armenian historians describe the battle as of ter
rible ferocity; it endured an entire day. The Persians
lost three thousand, five hundred and forty-four men
before they won the victory. The battle was followed
by a massacre of one thousand and thirty-six Arme
nians, and the whole population of Armenia, men,
women and children, with their flocks, fled to inaccessi
ble defiles of the mountains. Doubtless the village
of Berd took refuge in its caves.

Harassed and assailed by small bands of the intrepid
Armenians, who descended on them from all sides, the
Persian armies were unable to subdue or to hold the
country. To set up Fire worship was impossible. The
Persian general was obliged to admit defeat and to
report to his Emperor that his rage should fall upon
the men who had suggested the disastrous attempt.
The Emperor immediately appointed a new governor
of Armenia, instructed to subdue the Armenians by
kindness, and withdrew his armies.

In the year 1924 the peasant-villagers of Soviet
Armenia are still celebrating with song and dance the

BAPTISM AND MASSACRE 305

anniversary of that battle in which three thousand, five
hundred and forty-four Persians fell. The spirit which
they showed in the fifth century has not failed them
since, and though names and dates and conquering
races have changed as centuries passed, their history
since that time has been little more than repetition.

XX

THE AMERICAN INVASION

SO we come to Erivan, crescent of green trees and
flat-roofed houses, curved among low hills on
the banks of the Araxes at the foot of Mount
Ararat. The Armenians say that Noah named it, when
the Ark rested between its two peaks, and looking forth
at the receding waters of the Flood he saw the first
land emerge, and exclaimed, "Yerivan!" which means,
in Armenian, "It is seen!" One of the shallow de
pressions in the rolling land about it is called, "The
footprint of Noah," and on the spot where he is thought
to have made his vineyard stands a village named,
"The vine was planted here."

Travellers who saw Erivan before the war speak
of it as a city of gardens and fountains^ of cobbled,
walled streets where beautiful Armenian women walked
in filmy veils of white and red, of flat roof-tops where
all the people slept beneath the stars.

When the Americans came into it in 1919 it was a
city of fallen walls and death. The Tartar section had
been destroyed as Jehovah had commanded his people
to destroy the cities they took, so that not one stone
remained upon another, and nothing living moved in it.
The Armenian city had passed through the siege of
the Bolsheviks, and had suffered in the riots and

306

THE AMERICAN INVASION 307

massacres of the Armenian Nationalist's short-lived
counter-revolution. The very pavements of the streets
were uprooted, walls had fallen upon them, choking
the gutters of running water, and pestilence had come
out of the ruins to feed on the starving people.

Nothing of this was new to Erivan, the city that
has suffered looting and burning and massacre at the
hands of invading Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs,
Tartars, Turks and Russians, since first its walls were
built. But the invasion by America was new.

Do I say this too often? Can it be said too often?
The attitude of Americans toward the world is a new
thing. Nineteen centuries ago an ambitious politician
and a group of fanatical churchmen silenced for ever
as they thought a Voice that said, "A new command
ment give I unto you, that ye love one another. . . .
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples,
if ye have love one to another." For nineteen cen-
tures that Voice has been buried under noise of wars
and clamour of old hates and new greeds; its message
clothed in creeds that kept it alive, but stifled it. In
the name of Christ every barbarity has been done that
was known to the old gods. Under pretext of spread
ing Christian civilizations in un-Christian countries
old hates have been nourished among Christian na
tions, and war after war has drenched the earth in
innocent blood and fed the living on misery. Now,
after nineteen hundred years, Christ's message comes
again to the suffering multitudes, clothed not in words
nor creeds, but in deeds. Twenty millions of human

3o8 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

beings, citizens of a world-power, followers of all
creeds and of none, twenty millions of us with all our
human faults of selfish ambitions and envy and all
uncharitableness, nevertheless unite to express in deeds
a Christian love.

For the first time since Armenians, clothed in skins
and carrying stone-weighted clubs, came out of the
unknown birthplace of mankind to climb the foothills
of Mount Ararat, a powerful foreign nation has in
vaded the country, bringing not hate, but love.
Twenty million Americans, who had never seen and
never would see Armenia, so felt the spirit of Christ
that they did this thing.

That, to me, is the real meaning of the American
work in Armenia. Not the multitudes that were saved
from starvation, nor the tens of thousands of little
children bathed and clothed and fed, not the unofficial
but actual economic administration of an entire coun
try, but the great fact of Christ's spirit working
through the machinery of the modern world.

For the first time it animates that machinery, and
it works partially and feebly. Human beings make
the great organizations, human beings carry out their
work. Christ said, "Love your enemies." Christ said,
"Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor."

But we are human still, and a Divine spirit does not
fill us to overflowing, crowding out all other things.
It is too much, yet, to ask us to sell all that we have
and give to the poor; a little sacrifice we can make,
but not such a great one. It is too much, yet, to ask
us to love our enemies. But the love we have for

THE AMERICAN INVASION 309

ourselves, spreading to our families, to our neighbours,
to our state and country, at last brims over that boun
dary. We cannot love our enemies, we cannot yet love
Germans or Turks, but at least we can love strangers.
Another obstinate obstacle to the spreading of Christ's
spirit throughout the world breaks down then.

So the Americans came into Erivan. Representative
Americans, as human as the rest of us. Not animated
solely by unselfishness, nor more filled to overflowing
by Divine spirit than most of us all. Many came
because they liked strange countries and adventure;
many because .their work in the war had taken them
from their normal lives at home, and chance led them
on to Armenia; many because their professional work
was such as must be done here, and they were follow
ing their careers. But all these motives were mixed in
them with the motive spirit that had sent them, and
their work was done in that spirit.

It was strange to see, in aged Erivan, the coming of
those Americans. Straight-eyed, healthy, active Amer
ican girls in uniform, walking through the walled
streets as no gracefully veiled and subtly feminine
Armenian girl had ever walked, climbing over heaps
of debris, inspecting ruined buildings with practical
eyes, directing workmen. Nurses in white, efficient,
practical, and jolly, sleeves rolled up and antiseptics
handy, washing emaciated bodies all day long, treat
ing loathsome sores, shaving and anointing hundreds
of favus-encrusted heads. Men in khaki, with Sam
Browne belts and Russian boots, striding into gov
ernment offices, or busy at tables with piles of esti-

310 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

mates, waybills and roughly sketched architect's plans.
Young, vigorous, impatient Americans, heading gangs
of refugee workmen who were cleaning the streets
and hauling away the cartloads of dead and fumigating
pestholes. Shirt-sleeved Americans, pencil in hand,
checking carloads of goods into warehouses, checking
them out again into camel-carts and ox-wagons, pre
siding over distribution of bread and of old clothes,
Americans, working, getting the job done.

We do not talk of our souls, like the Russians; we
work and put our souls into the work. We do not
sit for long hours contemplating the stars and cloth
ing our thoughts of them in beautiful words, as the
Persians and the Tartars do; we say, "It's a peach of
a night, but gee! I've got to get up early tomorrow 1"
We do not kiss the cornerstones of churches, nor say,
"God's blessing on you," to each other, as the Arme
nians do; we keep our thoughts of God to ourselves,
and when every Sunday the Americans in Erivan meet
to read together a chapter of the Bible and to sing
a few hymns, they close the hymn books to talk of
warehouse tonnage and of new hospital wards. We
are a practical people; many men scorn us for it- But
we are the first people who have built great organiza
tions to feed the hungry, clothe "the naked and heal
the sick; we are the first people who have fought an
unselfish war and withdrawn from a dishonourable
peace. We are the first people who have done Christ's
work in Christ's own country, the Near East.

The Americans in Erivan cleaned the streets, cleared
the choked gutters that were spreading pestilence, laid

THE AMERICAN INVASION 311

down again the up-torn paving stones. They created
nine hospitals, where thousands of sick have been
brought from dirty paving stones to be bathed and
laid between clean sheets on beds. Thpy gathered up
forty-five hundred miserable sick little animals and
made them again into human children, clean, rosy,
and able to laugh. They built workshops, where boys
are learning trades; a Boy Scout house where they are
learning to be honourable and self-respecting men; a
Girl Scout organization which is giving future mothers
of Armenia the ideals of American womanhood.

The Americans in Erivan did these things, but they
were the hands of twenty million Americans on the
other side of the world.

So Erivan was made into the city it is to-day, by
busy stenographers in New York City, by men and
women on the farms of the Middle West, by miners in
Colorado, and oil-drillers in Oklahoma and California,
by business men and women in Chicago and Portland,
Oregon, and Portland, Maine, by pastors of little
churches and their wives who make their own hats, by
multitudes of school children who went to see a mov
ing-picture show, bringing food from mother's pantry
to pay their admission, by the farmers' sons of Kansas
who raised corn for Armenia by America.

Erivan is now a crescent of green trees and flat-
roofed houses, on the banks of the Araxes in the
shadow of Mount Ararat. Its streets are still broken,
but clean; water flows in its sewer-gutters until win
ter's cold freezes them. Its buildings that were
wrecked are homes and schools and workshops and

3i2 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

hospitals for thousands of Armenian children whose
lives were saved by America. The huddle of markets
that surround the square of the old Russian church
are alive again, living on the new currency, American
old clothes, which was put in circulation by American
purchases of labour and materials. Ox-wagons lumber
through the streets, bringing in the harvest of fields
that were sown because America fed the peasants with
Kansas corn-grits. That harvest has set turning again
the wheels of the old water-mills in the canyon of the
Araxes.

Mount Ararat and the Araxes, that saw the pre
historic invasion of the Armenians, that saw the
invasions of Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Greeks,
Romans, Arabs, Turks, Tartars, Russians, that have
seen the marching of German armies and English, have
now seen the American invasion.

The road to Gamarlu runs from Erivan toward the
Persian border, a long straight road across the plains
below Mount Ararat. Ten years ago it must have
been a beautiful and romantic road, bordered all the
way by the low mud villages of the Tartar people.
Rows of poplars shaded it and raised their slender
spires of green above the Tartar gardens where fruit-
trees bloomed; Tartar women sat by the roadside
grinding grain between two stones and gossiping of
the passers-by. This was the caravan road from
Persia; along it drove the carriages of the rich, drawn
by shining horses decked in silver and blue beads, and
up and down it passed the long pack-trains of camels

THE AMERICAN INVASION 3*3

with their deep-toned chime of bells and their packs
of spices and rugs.

The road to Gamarlu is now an empty track through
desolation. Dust blows across the untilled fields, the
walls of the gardens are broken down, the houses are
falling shells of homes. For twenty miles one goes
through ruins, where only a few returned Tartars live
furtively and poor, in gardens whose flowers are dead
and whose unpruned and broken trees pitifully attempt
to bloom. Then one comes to the village of Gamarlu,
where the Lord Mayor's Fund is feeding the children
of refugee Armenians from Mesopotamia.

The English attitude in foreign affairs is that of the
business man, and it is the American who says that
there is no sentiment in business. Nevertheless, cer
tain obligations, once undertaken, must be carried out
even at a loss. The English had given the Armenians
refuge in Mesopotamia, and having done this, they
had the Armenians on their hands. Twenty-five hun
dred of them were brought from Mesopotamia to Soviet
Armenia, where the government gave them the lands
of the Tartars who were driven from their villages in
1915. Here the British government is caring for them,
through the Lord Mayor's Fund.

This refugee-camp of Turkish Armenians is an ob
ject-lesson which makes Soviet Armenia reluctant to
admit others. Exhausted by years of refugeeism, de
moralized by idle years of living encamped in Meso
potamia, and worn by the long march northward, they
arrived in the new homes. Here they fell prey to
malaria, the scourge of the lowlands to which during

314 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

centuries the Tartars had become immune, but which
decimates the exhausted Armenians. The British give
them seeds and tools and farm animals, but their ef
forts to till the soil are faltering and ineffectual. Hud
dled in shelters made amid the ruins of Tartar villages
on the plain, they sit hopelessly, alternately swallow
ing the quinine served out to them and shivering in
the ague of new infection brought by swarms of mos
quitoes from the undrained lands.

They are Turkish Armenians. These men accus
tomed to the life of shops, to handling goods and bar
gaining, these women with babies at their breasts,
whose home villages are in ruins far away, are too
tired and too listless to adapt themselves to life in a
new country among people who do not speak their dia
lect. They respond spasmodically to the galvanizing
efforts of the British, and sink into apathy again.

Only the several hundred of their children who have
been taken into British orphanages in Erivan, will live
in the Armenia of to-morrow. These, sturdy and
healthy in their stout boots and sensible clothing such
as English children wear, are growing up to useful lives
of an English-Armenian character. So much England
contributes to the pattern of Armenia, toiiich all na
tions of history have somewhat coloured and changed.

On the plains between Gamarlu and the base of
Mount Ararat, a little hill rises steeply above the well
in which Saint Gregory is supposed to have spent his
thirteen years of imprisonment. The summit of the
earthen cliff is surmounted by a church Saint Gregory
built. The stone walls around it, twenty feet thick,

THE AMERICAN INVASION 315

are a honeycomb of rooms and narrow stone staircases;
In the quadrangle stands the church, as solid as when
first it was built sixteen centuries ago. Only sunshine
and mountain breeze come here now; the last priest
who lived here is dead. To this church of Saint Greg
ory, founder of their faith, the Turkish Armenians
from Mesopotamia are to be moved. It is hoped that
the height of the hill and the distance from the marshes
will somewhat protect them from malaria.

XXI
CATHEDRAL TOWERS

THE way to Etchmiadzin dips into the deep
gulch of the Araxes River, below the crumbled
walls of Erivan that rise against the sky.
The steep banks climbing to them were once the Tar
tar quarter; now gangs of refugee-workmen are clear
ing away the debris of houses and terracing the de
clivity. One day it will be a public park, beautiful
above the swiftly rushing water.

Crossing the torrent on a bridge above the water-
mills, whose flat roofs are golden with grain piled in
the sun, the road rises swiftly to the level of the
plateau, and there is again a glimpse of Erivan's Rus
sian Church towers and the dome of the Persian Blue
Mosque like a sapphire bubble above straight lines of
jroofs. Then the dust-deep road turns into narrow
lanes hemmed in by high mud walls. These are the
walls of little farms, and over their tops appear the
topmost twigs of fruit trees, olive and apricot and
peach.

Armenia's fruit, like her cotton and wine, is famous
throughout this part of the world. Persia's is not
larger, juicier or more deliciously flavoured. The har
vest of the orchards is no longer what it was, for trees
are unpruned and irrigation ditches broken by war

316

CATHEDRAL TOWERS 317

years of neglect, and here and there a break in the walls
shows once-tilled rows that are wastes of dry weeds.
But patiently the peasants are beginning their labour
again, and when the road leaves the last wall behind
and starts out across the prairie-land gangs of men
appear, working on a new irrigation system which
America is building.

It is twenty miles to Etchmiadzin, and nothing is to
be seen upon the way but the immense plateau, in the
south sweeping upward to the two peaks of Ararat
that are crested white like a breaking wave, and in the
north rising to the great unbroken curve of Mount
Algoz.

At last the church-towers rise from the concealing
waves of land; Saint Hripsime's church, standing
lonely on the prairie, Saint Gaiane's church, further
ahead, and midway between them the fortress-walls of
Etchmiadzin. The red flag flies from one corner of
them, the American flag from the other, and between
them rise the Cathedral towers. There the three forces
that control Armenia are represented. The Soviet gov
ernment has confiscated the printing plant of Etch
miadzin; the Americans have filled a block of cloisters
with a hospital-orphanage for babies; and still mighty
behind his invaded walls sits the Katholicos, supreme
head of the Armenian Church and of the Armenian
people throughout the world.

An old man, the present Katholicos so old and so
worn by life that now he does little more than wait
for the call to heaven. One sees him walking slowly

3i8 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

and with effort in his flowing black robes, a Vartabed-
Bishop upholding either arm, a servant following with
a chair. He moves along the worn pavements of an
cient stones, beneath the heavy stone arches; he goes
through the archway-tunnel that pierces the cloisters
and into the tiny garden where the fountain is dry and
the flowers are not watered now. The chair is placed
for him beneath a tree, slowly he lowers himself into
it, and sits, his withered hands listless on his knees
and his tired eyes seeing only his own thoughts.

The long years during which he was a power, years
when he fought the Tsar of the Russias for his people
and for his Church, are ended now. He is very old
and tired, his life-energy has ebbed away, and he
cannot fight the fierce young enemy, the Soviet gov
ernment. Only a few years remain to him on earth,
before the shell of him that carries the heavy, jewelled
robes and wears on its forehead the enormous diamond
of the spiritual ruler of Armenia will be laid beneath
the granite blocks that floor the Cathedral. Until that
time, he remains a symbol. As a symbol he is served
reverently by the community of black-robed Vartabed-
Bishops who move about the ancient quadrangle of
Etchmiadzin like figures from some remote past.

The Middle Ages are still alive in Etchmiadzin.
There is no other place like it known to me. It is
neither a community withdrawn from the modern
world, nor a community coloured by it, as Roman
Catholic monasteries are. It is a community squarely
in its place in its own century but the century is one
that we, in the West,, have passed. The simplicity, the

CATHEDRAL TOWERS 319

hospitality, the pomp of Etchmiadzin are those of the
Catholic Church of Europe before the Reformation.

The Vartabeds who surround the Katholicos are
the court of a spiritual emperor in a land where the
spiritual world has a solidity which no longer exists
for us. The scientific spirit has not penetrated here,
with its eternal question lifting veil after veil from
a core of the Unknowable. God and the angels and
the saints, the golden pavement of heaven, the iron key
of Saint Peter, are still corporeal things, in Armenia.
They are mystic things in the imagination of the
people, mystic presences having little to do with this
world, which is governed by its own traditional laws.
But in heaven, in their own world, they are as real as
human things are in the human world. There is an
actual gate of heaven, opened to the faithful by an
actual key. God sits in a solid throne, with a
sceptre in His hand. And His personal representative,
His diplomatic minister to the human world, is the
Katholicos.

It is as though Armenia, with its conversion to Chris
tianity in the fourth century, became a vassal of the
empire of heaven. Its own earthly rulers still ruled
it by its own earthly laws, but above them was the
Katholicos, viceroy of God. The Church is his court.
Because Armenia was a vassal of heaven, it was for
Armenia that the Church fought, against both spiritual
and temporal enemies.

The Church offered to intelligent Armenians an op
portunity for a career. By becoming Vartabeds they
escaped from the temporal world, where they were

320 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

oppressed by foreign conquerors, into the safety of
Etchmiadzin, where they could study, write, think, and
become powerful Tulers of the Church.

These mediaeval-minded men are the scholars of
Armenia, and in European scholarship they hold high
places. They study old manuscripts, spend a lifetime
untangling legend and fact to clear up some abstruse
point of theology, or to decide some debated question
of ancient history. They decipher inscriptions on old
stones, they know forgotten alphabets and old Assyrian
and Chaldean lore. Their correspondence before the
war was enormous; their museum and their library
were a Mecca of pilgrimage from Europe; their names
are known in that dim world of learning which is closed
to most of us.

It is a strange life, a quaint and, in its way, a beau
tiful life. For recreation, they walk in their walled
gardens, they study botany and astronomy, or with
miniature brushes patiently and lovingly illuminate
their manuscripts. They know printing and book-bind
ing, too; their printing press, the only one in Armenia,
produced treatises on learned subjects that were most
marvellous examples of the printer's and book-binder's
art.

Their rooms are like engravings in some old musty
book; stone walls four feet thick, lined with book
shelves and pierced by small deep-set windows; stone-
flagged floors worn by centuries of sandalled feet;
heavy furniture dark and glossy with age. Here in
jovial mood, when a visitor is to be entertained, they
bring from small wall-cupboards a flagon of Etch-

CATHEDRAL TOWERS 321

miadzin wine or a decanter of Armenian cognac and
sheets of the paper-thin Armenian bread which they
spread thick with honey and butter and roll into de
licious morsels. Their grave faces framed in the tall,
pointed, black cowls break into child-like smiles, and
their plump bodies shake with laughter under their
long black robes, while jest follows jest until, all to
gether, they sing an old Armenian song.

There is still another side to Etchmiadzin. The ob
stinate tenacity, the deep-rooted life of Armenia which
all history has not been able to destroy, are here in the
Armenian Church. Changes in temporal affairs have
beaten against the walls of Etchmiadzin for sixteen
centuries like little waves against a granite cliff. Now
the Tsar has fallen, the Soviets have come. The
Soviets may endure for a few years or for a few cen
turies; it is all one to Etchmiadzin. Some day the
Soviets will go, as all temporal governments do, but
Etchmiadzin will still stand.

A certain surface flexibility is needed to meet these
changes; the Church has always had it. An ever-
renewed and yet unchanging life has been in the
Church, and always will be. The Katholicos is old
and very tired; soon there will be a new Katholicos.
He will probably be the present Archbishop of Erivan,
Archbishop Khorian. One cannot predict this with
certainty, for the Katholicos unlike any other spir
itual ruler is elected by the vote of all Armenians
in every part of the world. But to-day it is Arch
bishop Khorian who is most frequently spoken of as

322 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

their next choice, and he is already the power behind
the throne in Etchmiadzin. When the Church speaks,
it speaks with the voice of the Katholicos, but its words
are those of the Archbishop.

He has spent nearly all his life in the service of the
Church. A young man, son of a family neither rich
nor powerful, he struggled through Tiflis University,
against all the obstacles which the Tsar's government
put in the way of Armenian education. Graduating,
he became a teacher in the Nerses Academy. Even as
a young man, he must have shown ability and char
acter, and the Armenian Church has always shown
cleverness in choosing its recruits. The former
Katholicos visited Tiflis, saw the young Khorian, and
asked him to come to Etchmiadzin.

This is a peculiarity of the Church; its supreme head
is chosen by democratic vote, but he is surrounded by
an oligarchy of his own choosing. The Bishops of
Etchmiadzin are celibate monks, but the village priests
must be married. The result is that the priest cannot
become a bishop unless his wife dies, and even then
very rarely. There is democracy within Etchmiadzin,
there is democracy on a lower level among the village
priests, and there is democratic choice in the election
of the Katholicos; but there is no democratic passing
from one level to another within the Church. An in
vitation to become a monk at Etchmiadzin is an op
portunity granted to few.

The young Khorian's gifts were administrative, ac
tive rather than passive. His scholarship is extraordi
nary, but it is his recreation, not his life. Within a

CATHEDRAL TOWERS 323

few years lie became Archbishop of Erivan, in the
forefront of the battle against the Tsar. He became a
clever, acute, resourceful politician. Only one error
is recorded of him. In 1905, when the Tsar confiscated
the Church treasure and the whole population of the
Caucasus rose in revolt, the Russian governor of Erivan
was besieged in his palace by a mob as furious as that
which destroyed the Bastille. Armed only with such
weapons as they could improvise, scythes and axes and
clubs, the Armenians killed the governor's guards and
were tearing down the palace. Messengers rushed to
the Archbishop, begging him to save the governor's
life. The Archbishop came out on a balcony, held up
his hand, and quietly told the silenced mobs to go
home. They went. The Russian government there
upon arrested the Archbishop and exiled him to the
Crimea, on the very logical grounds that his influence
with the Armenian people had been proved to be
strong enough to be dangerous to Russia.

Saving the governor's life was the one error in a long
and brilliant career; it was an error excusable, no
doubt, on the ground of his youth at the time.

He escaped from exile by very clever political work,
and since his return to Armenia his power has steadily
increased. To-day he is the unofficial leader of the
Church, the skilled adversary encountered by the
Soviets. With the Communists he is on the same
excellent terms as were the first rulers of the Church
with the last Armenian kings.

Never before has there been greater enthusiasm for
the Church among the Armenian peasants; the re-

324 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

ligious processions grow larger and more enthusiastic
every year. The Archbishop contemplates such tre
mendous modern reforms in church service as seats
for the congregation, and instrumental music in the
Cathedral. He is adroit; the government has returned
the Church vineyards it confiscated, and the Church
buildings it claimed. The government has given Etch-
miadzin permission to open the university for which it
fought so long and so vainly against the Tsar's opposi
tion. Archbishop Khorian is interested in the refugee
problem, and in irrigation to reclaim land on which the
exiles from Turkey can be established. The govern
ment has been brought respectfully to ask the Katholi-
cos to allow Archbishop Khorian to work with the
Soviets on this plan.

The Archbishop does not discuss Communism or the
Soviets; he talks of the peasants, of the reforms in
church service, of his irrigation projects. But behind
all these activities there is the real interest, the only
interest, the interest to which all his plans are sub
servient his intention to bring the Church through
this political storm stronger and more energetic than it
has ever been.

Everything indicates that he will succeed.

Behind the walls of Saint Hripsime's church, stand
ing lonely on the prairie outside Etchmiadzin, lives the
Vartabed Khatchik Dadian. He is an old man now.
Twenty-five years of his life and all the fortune in
herited from his father have been spent on his one
passion, the discovery of the real church built by Saint

FATHER DADIAN IN HIS CELL

The renowned scholar lives alone in rooms in the walls that surround Saint
Hripsime's church, and delves into the past as revealed in old manuscripts.

ONE OF THE BIBLES AT BERD

The leaves are parchment, voluminously illustrated in colors still bright,
although dating back probably to the fourth century.

CATHEDRAL TOWERS < 325

Gregory after his vision. This church he believes he
has found, and buried beneath one of the pillars that
his excavations unburied were the bones, he asserts,
of Saint Gregory himself.

This attack upon the tradition of Etchmiadzin made
by a man whose great learning was nurtured in the
bosom of the Church, is received with silence in the
cloisters that surround the Cathedral. Khatchik
Dadian is a Vartabed-Bishop, and will be one until
he dies, but his labours are no longer supported by the
Church. He can dig no more, for even were his own
fortune not exhausted, the Soviet government forbids
further excavations. So he lives alone in his rooms
in the walls that surround Saint Hripsime's church, and
delves deeper into the past as revealed in old manu
scripts. But on the prairie at some little distance lie
the fruits of his life work: the temples uncovered when
he stripped one of the many small hills to its bones
of granite blocks and broken columns.

Here are exposed again to daylight the ruins of five
temples, built one upon another, each raising its walls
on fragments of the former ones. Three thousand
years ago, said Vartabed Dadian, the first temple was
built in honour of Sun, Moon and Air. The Greek
gods wrecked it, and twenty-one hundred years ago a
temple to Diana rose above its fragments. A wave of
Persians came from the East, and Diana disappeared;
the Magi lighted the sacred Fire on their own altar in
this place. The worship of Fire passed when Tigranes
the Great of Armenia conquered Persia. Then, for
the thousands of Jews who were brought here to the

326 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

new towns built by Sempad Bragatide of that genera
tion, a temple to Jehovah was erected, sixty years be
fore the birth of Christ. This was one of the temples
destroyed when Saint Gregory converted Armenia, and
his little temple built to Christ was made of all the
walls that had fallen. Still built into the walls of this
little Christian church are stones smoke-backened by
the fires of the Magi.

This little church, still distinctly traced upon the
ground by its pavement of granite blocks and still
surrounded by fragments of its walls, is the original
church built by the saint, if Vartabed Dadian's docu
ments tell the truth. Near it stood King Tiridates'
palace, burned during an invasion of the Romans in
59 A.D.; it was rebuilt seven years later when Tiri-
dates himself had gone to Rome to sue for pardon,
and receiving it had brought back Roman architects
to raise the palace walls again. The lower floors and
dungeons of this palace are still buried by the slowly-
moving waves of earth, but its upper halls, its corri
dors and its judgment seat are uncovered to the wind
and rain, and Vartabed Dadian, stamping on the stone
pavements, awakens below them a hollow sound that
testifies to hidden chambers.

All the little hills surrounding this excavation, he
says, are filled with palaces of ancient kings. A city
lies concealed here, holding unknown treasures of truth
about the almost forgotten childhood of man. He
sighs, knowing that now he is too old ever to see them
uncovered, and he smiles, looking at the wealth of
Greek and Byzantine and Persian carvings, at immense

CATHEDRAL TOWERS 327

pillars and their capitals of granite eagles with out
stretched wings that he has unearthed.

Standing against one of the bits of old wall is a slab
of stone as tall as a man, on which are deeply graven
forty-seven lines of writing, in the language of the
Urardu, the first tribes of Armenia. For long years
after it was discovered it could not be read, for the
language had been forgotten. How this stone had come
here was unknown, for it was far older than any of the
five temples that had succeeded each other here, but
at last its meaning was deciphered by scholars, and
from depths of the past this stone spoke, and said:

"To God the Sun, Ruler of the World, this stone is
inscribed by order of Rusas, son of Argistis. To the
illustrious worshippers of the Sun, Rusas son of Argistis
speaks, saying: I have conquered the land of Quturli,
with all that belonged to it, to its uttermost frontier.
This great victory was granted to me by the Sun, Ruler
of Earth. To him I have built these things: a garden
of cypress trees and oaks, a splendid city with walls
about it, and a wide canal from the River Ildaruni to
water the trees of this garden of the Sun. In the name
of Rusas, son of Argistis, libations are poured. The
wall of the city, the wall of the canal, are built. A
lamb is sacrificed to God the Sun; sacrifice of a lamb
is made to God the Moon, may these offerings be ac
ceptable to the gods.

"For abundance of water in the canal, a goat is sac
rificed to the Sun, a lamb to the Sun, a lamb to the
Moon, a lamb to the Air, as offerings acceptable to the

328 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

gods from the hand of Rusas, son of Argistis, the
powerful king, the great king, king of the world, king
of the peoples of Van, king of kings and king of the
city of Tosp.

"Rusas, son of Argistis, commands: Whosoever de
stroys this inscription, whosoever defaces the name of
the king, whosoever takes upon himself to give com
mands, whosoever overthrows this stone, whosoever
pretends whoever he may be that he has been the
builder of this city, of the garden, of the great canal,
whosoever effaces the name of Rusas, son of Argistis,
to place his own name in this place, though he be a
man of Van, though he be a Lulubien, may God the
Sun, God the Moon, God the Air, the great gods, wipe
out for ever his name, his family, and all that are of
his blood."

This Is the only record left of Rusas, the son of
Argistis, of his people, of his victories or of his build
ing. No one knows who were the Lulubiens or the
peoples of Van. No one knows, save for this stone,
that the city of Tosp existed. Of the pride of the
king of kings, the emperor Rusas, and of his people and
his empire, nothing remains.

Only the canal that he built of huge blocks of stone
was discovered when a tunnel was run from the River
Araxes through the hill on its banks. America is re
pairing it, with wages paid in corn-grits from Kansas;
it is part of the new irrigation system that will water
the plains around Etchmiadzin.

XXII

PEACE BETWEEN THE VILLAGES

THE Soviet government of Armenia existed, as
an Armenian government, less than two years.
It was established under cover of the Turkish
occupation of 1920; on the first of January, 1923, it
was dissolved into the federal government of the Fed
erated Socialist Soviet States. That is, Armenia was
again absorbed by Russia.

Armenia's escape from Russian dominion was brief,
and had two phases; first, the Nationalist government,
then the Armenian Soviet. Neither of these govern
ments represented the Armenian people; neither of
them lasted long enough to give the exhausted, starv
ing masses an opportunity to recover and assert them
selves. Both of these governments were an adventure
of a group of revolutionists. The Dashnak Nationalist
government was militaristic and autocratic; the Soviet
government was socialistic and autocratic.

In a sense, responsibility for the faults and crimes
of any revolutionary government lies on the head of
the government that the revolutionists have destroyed.
Tsarist Russia created her revolutionists, embittered
them by oppression and cruelty, distorted their minds
by enforced ignorance and long years of idleness in
prison, and made them her relentless enemies by cen-

329

330 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

turies of bloody injustice. The revolutionists ruling
Russia to-day are the legitimate children of Tsarist
Russia, exactly as much as her cultured, beautiful and
callous aristocrats were.

From thistles come forth thistles, and from grape
vines, grapes. If, in faraway America I had ever
feared that bloody revolution threatened our own
country, that fear would have vanished when I saw
Soviet Armenia. Only bloody oppression brings forth
bloody revolution, for they are two sides of the same
thing. Seeds of discontent may fall as fast as they
will on the soil of any country where men are free;
they will find no place in which to root and grow.

Tsarist Russia was a bloody oppression; a govern
ment of the Dark Ages. In the small sunny spaces
around her courts blossomed an aristocracy of culture
and beauty, but even in it there was no political free
dom. Children of the aristocrats who loved art, an
tiquity, literature or luxury, could cultivate those
tastes and develop in them a perfection which we do
not know in busy America. But even the sons of
the aristocrats could not speak of political freedom.
When, in their universities, they dared to do so, they
were driven into outer darkness, hunted, imprisoned,
exiled to Siberia, executed. Hate was burned into their
souls. Living furtively as hunted animals, pursued in
all the countries of Europe by agents of the Tsar's
secret police, they educated themselves as best they
might by midnight study of Marx, of Engels, of all
the men who had dreamed of a perfect world built upon
the ruins of the real world. Of what the real world is,

PEACE BETWEEN THE VILLAGES 331

these revolutionists could have no real understanding;
they saw only as much of it as the terrified fox sees
of the farm from which, starving, he steals chickens.

The fox would dream of the perfect farm, one sup
poses, as a place where there were plenty of chickens
for all. If it can be imagined that this fox murdered
the farmer and became master of the farm, he would
at once decree chickens for all. But he would know
nothing about cultivating the soil, harvesting the grain,
building the chicken coops, running the incubators.

So the revolutionists dreamed of a world of liberty
and plenty for all the "dark people," the oppressed,
ignorant, hungry people of Russia. But there is very
little liberty in the real world; none of us have more
than a small bit of it. Even in America we sacrifice
our personal liberty every day to our social sense, to
our recognition of the rights of others and to our con
ceptions of right and wrong. As for material things,
a wealth of them comes only from self-discipline, work,
and knowledge of how to work. The revolutionists
among all the peoples of Russia did not have any
knowledge of how to work, how to manage factories,
farms, railroads, or government. How could they know
these things? The government of the Tsars had given
them no opportunity to learn.

This was true of the Armenian revolutionists, as it
was true of their comrades among the innumerable op
pressed peoples of Russia. Armenia was a conquered
province, and Armenians were not given even the very
small opportunities that the Russians had. There were
few universities in Russia none in Armenia and

332 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

these were entirely for children of the aristocrats.
Even the aristocrats of Armenia were not allowed
freely to enter them. All the peoples of the Caucasus,
Armenians, Georgians, Tartars and Abcasians, were
permitted to send to Russian universities only seven
per cent of the total number of students. Whenever
able men developed among the Armenians they were
taken from Armenia; they were not allowed to stay
among their own people for fear that they would help
to educate them and education was a danger to the
Tsar's government.

The Armenian Church was a danger to the Tsar's
government. It was the heart of a submerged Arme
nian nation; the people gathered around its leadership.
Therefore the Armenian Church was oppressed. Its
lands were taken, its treasures confiscated. Its efforts
to open a university were crushed. Even the last spark
of liberty left to the Armenians, the right freely to
elect the Katholicos, the head of their Church, was
taken from them by the Tsar.

When, after the disastrous Russian-Japanese war
of 1905, the Tsar refilled his treasury by confiscating
the wealth of the churches, the peoples of the Cau
casus were driven to a frenzy. There were mass meet
ings, demonstrations, riots, and a sudden lovefeast of
all the peoples. Armenians, Georgians, Tartars, united
to resist the Tsar's attacks on their churches. Such
friendliness among his subject peoples was the most
imminent danger to the Tsar; if ever they were united
his throne would be destroyed as by a hurricane. The
Russian secret police desperately hastened to avert

PEACE BETWEEN THE VILLAGES 333

such a calamity as friendliness among the races of the
Russian Empire.

In Baku they disarmed the Armenians and gave
arms to the Tartars. Then hundreds of them, working
among the ignorant Tartar masses, inflamed their
minds with stories of Armenian atrocities, until on a
certain day they distributed free vodka to all the
armed Tartars, withdrew the police from the city, and
led the drunken mobs into the Armenian quarter. The
massacre was one of the most terrible in Armenian his
tory; for days afterwards thousands of bodies lay piled
in the streets. The whole Armenian quarter was
burned; even the oil wells owned by Armenians were
set on fire. The sky was covered with black smoke,
the blazing oil ran out over the waters of the Caspian
Sea until even it seemed to be burning, and all the
passions of ignorant men crazed by vodka rioted
through this inferno during three days and nights.
Satisfied, the Tsar's secret police brought back the
Cossacks; the carnage ceased in a ruined city. The
desire of the Tsar had been attained; there was no
more love between Armenian and Tartar. Such was
the rule of the Tsar over the Armenians.

The war between Tartars and Armenians did not
cease during fifteen years. From the massacres of
1905 until the establishing of the Armenian Soviet
government in 1920 there was constant war between
Armenian and Tartar villages everywhere in the Cau
casus. Men ventured from their villages only in armed
groups; the life of a Tartar in an Armenian village
or that of an Armenian in a Tartar village was worth

334 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

no more than the shortest possible time required to
kill him. Every effort of the leaders of both races to
stop this slaughter, to make peace between the peoples,
was thwarted by the Russian secret police. So long
as the peoples could be kept killing each other, they
would not turn against the Tsar.

This was the soil in which the Armenian Communist
movement grew secretly, of course. Under cover,
hunted, always in danger of capture and death, the
Communists spread their propaganda and created the
party in which all races joined hands. While peasant
Armenian and peasant Tartar went armed, ready to
kill each other, Communist Armenian and Communist
Tartar called each other "Comrade."

Let me repeat that it is only in such soil, only in
such darkness and under such oppression, that revo
lutionary movements can grow. Revolution is re
action to unscrupulous oppression; the two things go
together, inseparable. In a free country, among a free
people, neither of them can exist.

When the Tsarist government disappeared, blown to
bits as by an explosion of the forces it had so long
held down, Armenia was captured, not by the Com
munists, but by the Armenian Nationalists. Armenia
did not want to be Communist; it wanted to be free.
But the Nationalist government was between the Turk
ish armies and the Russian; Kars was taken by the
Turks from the South, the Red armies came down from
the North. The Nationalist government fell, and the
armies of Communist Russia helped to establish the
Communist government of Armenia.

PEACE BETWEEN THE VILLAGES 335

It was a bad government, judged by any standard
of ours. It could not be anything else. Revolution
ists controlled it, and revolutionists are such men as
we do not produce in America. They had never had
as much of a share in the work of governing as every
twenty-one year old man and woman in America has
when marking a ballot. They had never known such
a thing as free political discussion. They did not know
as much about railroading as the loneliest telegraph
operator in our most isolated railway station; they did
not know as much about agriculture as any farmer's
boy who drives the cows home from pasture at night.
They could not know these things; they had been given
no opportunity to learn.

They had on their hands the government of a coun
try most utterly wrecked a desolation of fallen house
walls, untilled fields, and starving, diseased peoples
such as no American at home can imagine. To cope
with this situation they had an economic theory which
had never been applied to the real world of human
beings, and nothing else. When they tried, as best
they could, to apply this theory to the life of more
than a million human beings who knew nothing about
either economics or theories, who were dying of hunger
and exposure and disease and wanted nothing but food
and shelter and medicines, they encountered immedi
ately a great American organization. The Americans
had come to Armenia to save hundreds of thousands of
human lives, and they saved them. They did it by
methods that had nothing whatsoever to do with Com
munism, American methods.

336 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

The Near East Relief had been established and
working in Armenia before the Communist revolution.
Nearly forty thousand orphans were dependent upon
it, and all the life that was left in Armenia centred
around it. The Communist revolution was serious
enough to the small Nationalist group that fought it
in Erivan, and serious enough to the small Communist
group that was backed by the armies of Russia. But
both to the American organization and to the masses
of the Armenian people, it was merely a sound and fury
signifying nothing; a crackling of thorns under a pot.

One thing the new government did; it stopped the
long warfare between Tartar and Armenian and
Molokan. For the first time in fifteen years, there
was peace in the villages. Azerbaijan, the neighbour
ing country of the Tartars, was Soviet; Armenia was
Soviet; Great Russia was Soviet; the Soviet govern
ment was being attacked by armies from Europe and
by armies of counter-revolutionists, and unity was ab
solutely necessary between the Soviet states. The Red
armies controlled the Caucasus, and the order from
Moscow was, "Internal peace at any cost." Therefore
there was peace.

Stepan Gregorian, returning to his village after a
year of living in refugee camps, did not know any
thing about Communism, nor wish to know; he cared
as little about Europe's policies and the wars of the
Red armies; he and his wife and babies were dying
of hunger and all he wanted was food. Tartars,
brothers of the Turks, had always been his enemies
and always, he thought, would be his enemies. But if

PEACE BETWEEN THE VILLAGES 337

his friends raided a Tartar village for food, the gov
ernment descended upon them and carried them away
to jail, perhaps to execution. When the Tartars raided
his village, behold! government descended upon them,
and treated them likewise. Word spread that there
was now peace between Armenians and Tartars. Word
spread that the war between them was ended. Cau
tious groups ventured from one village to another;
nothing happened. Men grew bold, and went from
village to village in twos and threes. They were not
killed. There came a day when a lone Tartar, un
armed, rode into an Armenian village, and rode out
again, alive. Stepan Gregorian, returning in his ox-
wagon from a trip to the Americans who had lent
him corn-grits to live upon till harvest, drove through
a Tartar village and saw a Tartar woman milking a
water-buffalo. He paused, and offered to exchange a
small portion of corn-grits for a measure of milk for
his baby. He told her that the baby ? s mother was ill,
and that the baby grew thinner every day, and there
were no cows left in his village. The Tartar woman
gave him the measure of milk. Indeed, there was peace
between the villages.

This is the one thing that all the villagers of
Armenia say, "The new government made peace be
tween the villages." They do not like the new gov
ernment; it collects cruel taxes, it makes the villagers
call meetings and elect men of its own choosing, not
of theirs, to represent them in Erivan. But it has made
peace between the villages.

Another thing the Soviet government did was to

338 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

establish schools for the people. Poor schools, and
not as many of them In reality as there are on paper,
but schools. And never before were there any schools
at all for those who were born in villages. There is a
university in Erivan, and a night school, and any man
or woman who wishes to study may do so; it is not
necessary to have been born an aristocrat. The rooms
are bare and cold; the teachers are underpaid, shabby
and hungry; books are few. But there it is, a free
university, where even the son of a farmer may go.

The new government oppressed the people and op
pressed the Church, but not as much as the Tsar op
pressed them. The Communists have confiscated the
museum of Etchmiadzin and have opened it at Erivan,
in the government building. It is crowded every day
by masses of reverent hungry-eyed clerks and peas
ants old women in shawls, Tartars in their long, tent-
like black capes and pointed hoods of camel's hair
cloth, Molokans in blue Russian blouses and high
boots, soldier-boys in khaki uniforms, and peasants
in coats of sheepskin who gaze for the first time on
treasures of woven stuffs, embroideries, illuminated
manuscripts, collections of old coins, and walls covered
with the beautiful canvases of Armenian painters.
The Communists have confiscated the printing press
of Etchmiadzin, and it is printing leaflets of Com
munist propaganda and a few pamphlets on agricul
ture, home medicine and hygiene, which may reach
the peasants. But the Communists have given Etch
miadzin permission to open the university that per-

PEACE BETWEEN THE VILLAGES 339

mission which Etchmiadzin could not get from the
Tsar.

It was a bad government, inefficient, here and there
corrupt; a government that imprisoned without trial
hundreds of men, and executed no one knows how
many. It was a government that did not know how
to govern, but that nevertheless, somehow ; desperately
and badly, did govern. It enforced peace and order;
it tried to encourage agriculture; it hated the Ameri
cans whose huge and working organization at every
turn blocked efforts to establish Communism, and yet
it co-operated with them, as well as it could, in build
ing irrigation canals and roads and electric plants. It
lasted nearly two years, and handed a somewhat re
covered Armenia back to Russia.

This reunion with Russia was inevitable. Little
Armenia, without markets, factories or ports, with at
most a tiny army of her own, could not long exist be
tween Russia and Turkey. One or the other would
swallow her. A formerly wealthy Armenian, now
ruined and living in the basement of his home, which
the Communists had confiscated, expressed the situa
tion to me in these words, "Communist Russia is better
than Nationalist Turkey. At least, we are alive. 7 '

On January i, 1923, occurred the reorganization of
the whole of the former Russian Empire. The word,
"Russia/ 7 vanished from all official documents and
was replaced by "The Federation of Socialist Soviet
Republics. 77 All the multitudinous peoples of Russia
Kerghis, Cossacks, Tartars, Daghestanese, Georgians,

340 BEGINNING AGAIN AT ARARAT

Abcasians, Mongols, Huns, Molokans, Russians, and I
do not know how many others, have each their small
separate Soviet state, represented (theoretically) in the
Federal government at Moscow. Among these states
is the Armenian.

It is possible that as part of this mass the Armenian
people may be able to develop again some revival of
their ancient culture, their genius in building and in
poetry and art. It is possible that with time the revo
lutionary despotism may relax, and that the peoples
may be able to take a part in governing themselves, a
thing which to-day, after centuries of oppression by
the Tsar, they are not capable of doing, even were they
given the opportunity to try. It is possible that com
merce and industry may develop; already Russia has
sent Armenia a present of machinery for a cotton-mill.

On the other hand, it is possible that out of Russia
may rise the "Strong Man" for whom the exiled
ruined aristocrats are hoping, and that this Slav
Napoleon may revive the Empire and hand-in-hand
with Turkey sweep across Europe the savage warriors
from the steppes of Asia who were beaten back when
the Mongolian Khans halted in the eleventh century.
Who can say what will come out of Russia, or what will
be the patterns of the wars of to-morrow?

Whether for better or worse the Armenians of the
Caucasus are now part of the fate of Communist
Russia. Another chapter in their long history ends.
Armenia will live; a root deep-buried in the ground,
refusing to die. Twice it has blossomed into a culture
remarkable for its day. Now it has a new sap, some-

PEACE BETWEEN THE VILLAGES 341

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ing in workshops and on playgrounds, their ideals,
their energy. To-morrow, they will be men and
women, and who can doubt that they will be the
leaders of their countrymen? Something of America
has been planted here; something that will grow.

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dence, but authentic data vouched for by reliable and
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knowledge of the author. This book possesses historical,
missionary and political significance of more than ordinary
value.

MRS. ARTHUR PARKER

London Missionary Society ;
Trivandram, India

Sadhu Siindar Singh

(Called of God)

Illustrated, I2mo, net $1.25.

"His story, ably told by Mrs, Arthur Parker, reads like
a book of Apostolic adventure. Paul's perils of waters
and of robbers, by his own countrymen and by the heathen,
in the city and in the wilderness, were Sundar Singh's
also. Rejected by his family he has become India's fore
most evangelist." $. $. Times.

NEW EDITIONS

S. HALL YOUNG

Alaska Days with John Muir

Illustrated, i2mo, cloth.

"Do you remember Stickeen, the canine hero of John
Muir's famous dog story? Here is a book by the man who
owned Stickeen and who was Muir's companion on that ad
venturous trip among the Alaskan glaciers. This is not only
a breezy outdoor book, full of the wild beauties of the Atas-
kan wilderness; it is also a living portrait of John Muir in
the great moments of his career."- New York Tims.

S. R. CROCKETT AU^T *f tar s* n d ,*.

Hal 'o the Ironsides :

Illustrated, I2mo, doth.

"Crockett's last story. A rip-roaring 1 tale of the days of the
great Oliver days when the dogs of war were let loose in
English meadows, and "the gallants of England struck home
for the King." Examiner.

FANNY CROSBl

Fanny Crosby's Story &g*g;

By S. Trevena Jackson. Illustrated, cloth*

"This is, in a way, an autobiography, for it is the story of
Fanny Crosby's life as she told it to her friend, who retells
it jn this charming book. All lovers of the blind hyrnn
writer ought to read this volume. It tells a story of pathos
and of cheer. It will strengthen the faith and cheer the
heart of every reader." WQtchmafn'Exmwer.

PROF. HUGH SLACK

The New World

i6mo, cloth. \

"Dr. Black is a strong thinker and a clear, forcible writei'.
Here he analyzes national tendencies toward unrest social,
material, religious. This he does with moderation yet with
courage, and always with hopefulness." The Outlook,

S. M. ZJPEME_R,_D._D., F.R.G.S. Authtr / *&, ^

Childhood in the Moslem World

Illustrated, 8vo, cloth.

book covers much ground hitherto lying untouched in Mo
hammedan literature." Christian Work.

110950