Norwich bulletin., 1916-02-14
ExiLEs
 NEAR ROMA, TURKEY
Letter From Hospital Staff Member There Tells of Turkish Cruelty and Armenian Agony.

Letter From Hospital Staff Member
 There Tells of Turkish Cruelty and
 Armenian Agony.
 Konia, a city of 25, ,000 inhabitants, is perhaps the most important railway station in Western Turkey. It was at Konia that many of the Armentans, , driven from their homes in Central and Eastern Turkey, were supposed to take the trains for their destinations | further south. From 10000 to 30,OOO of these exiles were encamped about the place for weeks at a time, with little or no water and with bread served at the rate of a loaf week for each person,-if he was lucky enough to get 1t.
 In Konia Is a hospital maintained by foreign money though not under any missionary society. This hospital has done effective relief work for the
 unfortunate thousands. so far as its 1 resources permitted. The American l Board of Commissioners for Foreign 1 Missions has lately received the fol- hospitals staff, which adds its evi- derce as to Turkish cruelty and Ar menian agony.
 Soon after the great deportation | that preceded the arrival of the new i Vali, Miss C. and I drove out to ! Kachin Han, the first station on the ] roailroad towards Eregli, just to fol- : low up the crowd. as large number l had been driven off on foot with the l expectation of taking the railroad ! later on., Kachin Han is about three ! hours from here by carriage and even 1 so near to Konia as this we found | about 100 people, sitting and lying i about the station in utter Restitution. 1 They had been there three days; most | of them had eaten up all the provisions ! they had and loked haggard and emac : lated, veritable famine victims such : as one sees in pictures occurring in 1 India
 ! The train from Konia came along ! while we were there and most of the i people dragged themselves to the cars
 and endeavOred to get on, but were i pushed back by the gendarmes, part l ly because they had no tickets and | the poor people turned back bitterly 1 and hopelessly to where they had been | sitting or lying about the station. ! There is a village an hour or two
 away from the station and a Turkish | baker had driven to the station with l bread for sale, but as there was no | money 60 buy, the grown people lok- i ed at it from the distance, while the | little gaunt children drew near to | stare at it wistfully. 1 bought enough 1 many declared that it was the first
 food they had had for three days.
 Some of the people were Intelligent and educatCd-their sufferings were even greater than those of the vil- | lagerS who were more accustomed to l hardship Two women, desperately
 sick, had puny babies tugging away | at the breast and getting nothing, i their pathetic cries mingled with the l groans Of the mothers in physical and l mental anguish.
 | A few miles further on we found a | little heap of ciods that had been ap- l parently piled together and then scat
 tered, and near it bundle of rags full | of child's hones-the skull. with l scalp still ciinging to it was lying a. yard or two aWay-evidently there had ] been a nasty burial and the dogs had l come and torn the grave to pieces and i devoured the body. That same day we l found another dead body by the road ! quilt: also a woman about forty years old sitting alone by the road, miles ] away from the city or village, almost 1 pulseIess, with feet bare and swollen, ! and evidently crazed from terror and | exposure. muttering something about | T's who were coming to cut her throat 1 about her people who had left her be- | hind, and so forth.
 A little further on, lying beside an | empty waySide stable, we found an old woman, half naked, pulseless, mutt l tering in low delirium and with only a few hours to live. We lifted her in- | to the old stable, covered her with an
 old quilt that we found near her and II l with the thought of the awful suffer | ing that is going on all over the | country, especially to the southeast of
 US, of which we see such terrible ex- amples at our very doors.
 A side light on the rate of extermina- tion of the Armenians is thrown by a II glance at mortality statistics in the
 konia hospital which I have been
 studying lately. In ordinary years the | average mortality from all causes is l about 4 per cent. This year. among
 500 to 500 soldiers who were taken in,
 it has been about per cent, the in
 crease being doubtless due to the lowered vitality of the soldiers in gen.
 eral. The mortality among Armenians -exiles-admitted to the hospital
 wards has been 30 per cent. and in
 spite of the fact that only the or
 dinary run of maladies have been re-
 ceived and. that there has been no epidemic! The nation Is being sys- tematically done to death by a cruel
 and crafty method, and their exter-
 imitation is only a question of time''