Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1916-10-23
Appeal for
Immediate Relief

Armenian women and children are
eating dogs and dead animals to pre-
vent starvation in the Arabian desert
and have even in some instances
been driven to cannibalism by the
lack of food in the districts TO which
they have been deported by order
of the Turkish government.
Letters just transmitted through
official channels to the American
Committee for Armenian and Syrian
Relief from the trustworthy OBJ
servers in interior Turkey make this
indisputable. Previous letters from
these sources, received by Charles R.
Crane, treasurer of the committee,
No. 20 Fifth avenue, New York, re-
ported that tens of thousands of the
Armenian women and children near
Aleppo and Dor ell Zor, one of the
center of extensive marsh lands, the
other on the fringe OF the Arabian
desert, were eating grass to keep
from death and that thousands died
daily.
A letter dated September 8. and
just received from Dor ell Zor, says,
in part:
Tell our missionaries that their
college children young and old, are
dying of hunger To look at them
breaks ones heart. Many pure
young girls are driven by hunger to
seek refuge at the hearths of Arab
ian men to whom they are sold for
bread. Mothers wander about in de-
spair to find bread for the little ones,
young people weakened by hunger,
appear like old people, prematurely
aged. We must daily buy back at
least three or four young girls, else
they will be completely lost.
The people kill and eat the street
dogs. A short time ago they killed
and ate a dying man. A women cut
off her hair and sold it for bread
| saw a women in the street eat the
clotted blood of an animal Up till
now all fed themselves with grass
but that, too. is now dried up Last
night we came to a house, the occu-
pants of which had eaten nothing
for three days. The wife had a child
in her arms and tried to give it a
crumb of bread to eat. The child
could eat no more: it groaned and
died in her arms.
A mother threw herself into the
Euphrates after she had seen her
child die of hunger. A father did
the same. The people we meet in the
street look hardly like human be-
ings."
A letter from Hamam, Dated Sept.
/, reads:
"If it goes on like this. with star
vation all about us here in the 1000
Armenian tents, the greater part of
the people, perhaps all, will perish
of hunger and misery. The people
fight for the clotted blood of killed
animals. They gnaw the bones which
they find; they look for grains of
oats in refuse. They also eat the
flesh of fallen animals and men.
Many who cannot bear 1t any longer
throw themselves in to the Euph-
rates.
A third letter received from Sep
ka. and dated August 81, says:
81 ask aid of you for crowd of
more than $500 miserable, hungry
people, dried up to skeletons. Many
die of hunger every day. The grave
diggers are always busy. The groans
and lamentations in the market place
in the streets and out in the quiet
desert. give our hearts no rest"
Every citizen is earnestly request
ed to contribute to fund now being
raised for the relief of the Armen-
ians and Serbians Contributions
NAV be left at McNair Brothers drug
store or with the Beaver Realty COM
pany.
- NL