The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-09-18
GRIPS
 SYRIA; BEIRUT
 IS DEVASTATED
Whole Levant Is Starving and Hopeless, American Woman
 Writer Says.

London, Sept. 2S-The London Times publishes an article by an American woman who recently returned from Beirut, Syria. by way of Turkey. Bull garia, Austria-Hugary and Germany. She begins:
 '.The Levant is starving. This is the literal, truth We left the country exactly two months ago, a party of six, five Americans and one Greek We crossed the whole of Europe at war; visited four countries of the Central Powers, and saw lot we would rather forget than remember, but nothing ex-
 isting in Europe can even compare
 with present conditions in Asiatic
 Turkey.'
 When Cumberbatch, the British Consul General at Beirut, warned all | British subjects to leave the country. many laughed at him, thinking he
 was an alarmist unnecessarily Cum
 berbatch, however" the writer says,
 went on advising, all families and
 practically ordering all single women
 engaged in mission work in Syria to
 leave the country. That part of the British Consular archivesSwhich Cum
 berbatch did not destroy before leav- ling was left at the Consulate under
 the protection of the United States Consul General. American protection.
 which at first seemed a safeguard,
 proved of very little value. The United States Consul-General sealed up the
 archives, but as soon as the Turkish officials realized that there was o
 military backing behind his refusal to
 give them up. they daily became
 broke the seals and seized them. Population In Panic.
 "A great panic among the popula-
 ton followed. Arrests of members of the best Syria families began to take place in quick succession. All the peo- pie arrested belonged to families
 which had been connected with the
 French Consulate. It became known that among the French papers a num-
 Der had been found which proved po-
 litical sympathies so strong that the Turkish government termed them high treason. There had been as great a panic among Syrians with British
 sympathies, but none of them was
 touched.
 "The arrests were followed by trials by court-martial. Men whom we
 knew personally, with whom we had
 been /on committees. with whom we
 dined and played tennis. whom we
 looked upon as the best and most en- frightened of their country. were
 beaten, tortured, deported, and put to death. There were days when A dozen | h. it hn Ia squares of Beirut at dawn, their dead bodies being left there for some hours. ''The hush of fear hung over the city. No man dared to trust his eigh-
 Dor. The end of this tragedy only
 came in the beginning of 1S16." The
 writer then paints a graphic picture of the havoc wrought to the crops by the
 visitation of swarms of locusts. By the end of July, 1915. the whole olive and grape crop of Lebanon and South- ern Syria had gone. The wheat crop in the north was damaged, but not ruined.
 Syria had been suddenly thrown on it's own resources by the strict French blockade enforced shortly after the be- ginning of the war. After the vieita-
 tion of the locusts ceased. the Turkish government in Ahe autumn of 1915, as a result of the reported proposed land ing of the Allies, began to prepare for an invasion. "The open coast of Syria" the writer continues, twas recognized as untena- ble, at any rate it should be as little of a prize as possible, so no stores of food were allowed to be laid up any longer and transportation of food from the north was limited.
 Famine Prices for Food.
 After few weeks the activities of the Red Cross were stopped entirely by the government. The city's supplies became smaller and smaller. At last all transportation of flour and wheat ] was taken in hand by the government and as a natural result food prices went higher still. Money was scarcer than ever, and misery increased
 weekly. Toward spring cases of starvation
 began to be known. The poor were found in the streets unconscious and were carried to hospitals. We passed women and children lying by the road side with closed eyes and ghastly pale faces. It was a common thing to find people searching garbage heaps for
 orange peel or other refuse, and eating it greedily when found. Everywhere
 women could be seen seeking edible
 weeds among the grass along the roa6e.
 "The priest of Q mountain village
 had to come down to another village 1 to beg some men to help him bury the
 dead that were lying about in the
 streets. From very reliable source
 we heard that in thS Kessrman barren
 district in the Lebanon range. cases
 had been found of the eating of hu- man flesh.'