The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-11-23
RED CRIMES IN PURPLE EAST
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS ON THE
 CENTURY'S BLOT.

Awful Slaughter.
 To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 Two women have just returned from the port of Marsailles, where they have been engaged In helping Armenian ref ugees. They established a temporary home for them there, where they are made welcome on landing and from whence they were sent on to join other Armenians who were so fortunate as to live under the protection of the Unit ed States or Great Britain. It was very good work that these two women were doing, even though the little they did was not final, and though it leaves the Armenian question still unsettled. Theirs was the sort of work the Sisters of Mercy perform for wounded SOL while the men are fighting at the front; with this difference, that in this in- stance there were no men fighting at the front
 So the real importance of their work lies in the fact that the little they did shames those who do nothing; that it sets an example to those in high places, who might do so much, and that it leaves no one an excuse to sit idle with folded hands while the crime of this century is being perpetrated.
 For the last two years the churches of the world, especially those of this country and Great Britain have had accredited agents in Armenia to whom thousands of dollars have been sent and who have sheltered and fed thou sands of Armenians, and societies and missionaries, emperors and ambassa- dors have been appealing and threaten ing, and have shown ceaseless activ- ity, and they have accomplished noth- ing.
 Miss Clara Barton has gone and re- turned and been interviewed and the money that eager people poured into her hands and into the hands of other pro- fessional philanthropists has been dis tributed; she herself has scattered blows, painted red and marked Clara Barton Relief Fund.- all over Upper a<aSdcAb WAlClCfCl tiiOy Woulu dO lllC lilOSL good. But in spite of these, for some reason, the massacres have continued and authough ambassadors have met in council and issued protests and edicts and round robins-almost ev- erything in fact but ultimatums, until they are as common as the editions of an evening paper, the massacres have not ceased. In fact, in spite of the money offerings and the indignation meetings of societies at home and of the earnest efforts of their agents in Asia, everything is exactly as it was two years ago. with the slight differ ence that some twenty thousand men and women who were alive then are not alive now, and that while the mon- ey poured in, and the ambassadors fretted and fumed, men were clubbed to death and dragged through the streets of Constantinople by the heels, and women had their brains dashed out with musket butts, and children were spitted on lances and bayonets; and our Secretary Olney wrote to hum- bly, thank the sultan for allowing the wives of those Armenians who have es- capped him to join them in this coun- try. Week after week and month af- ter month for two long years the mur- ders have continued, and we still wait, properly mortified, for some one to do something. And, in the meanwhile, Miss Frances Willard and Lady Hen- ry Somerset, who had grown tired of waiting, went down to Marseilles to do the little they could.
 The question Is not whether the Ar xIzAt~ rH1l. dans or Mormons, or whether there are bad men among them or worse men representing them at a safe distance in foreign cities. The question is one of humanity "Old Gods give way to new Gods; here is your brother"
 This is small world in which we live, and we live in it for very short time, and what we can do to help those who are with us is inf1nitesimal. But that is only the greater reason for do- ing that little and showing that this is a better world to-day than it was when the publicans passed by on the other side while robbers were beating the traveller to death, and when Cain ask ed, Am I my brothers keeper?"
 We are all familiar with the different arguments which explain why no one is called upon to interfere with the sultan of Turkey in his butcher1es. The great European powers say they cannot do so because such interference would bring on a great continental war, which seems an excellent argument, even if it be a selfish one. Great Britain has been warned that if she meddles with the Moslen all of her Mohammedan subjects in the Indias and in Afghanis- tan might rise against her; and, more over, as one of the powers that signed the treaty of Berlin, she must not act without the consent of the other pow CTS. Signing that treaty, however, did not stop her s1om smelling the Moham- medans at Dongola month ago, nor from destroying the Matabele with Maxims in the Matoppo Hills last July; nor has it prevented the French from killing the Hovas in Madagascar. But 1t absolutely prevents those two pow CTS not from taking, but from saving the lives of some thousands of human beings in a territory which each has bound herself to protect.
 They are helpless because they sign | ed the treaty of Berlin, and oddly E enough, the United States government Il cannot interfere because she did not Il sign it. It would not do for her to be- come entangled in a foreign alliance, nor to drag this country into a war over