Mountain Home Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1915-1946, 1918-03-23
ARMENIA SUFFERS
FROM TURKISH WAR
Speaker From Balken State
Tells Horrid Tale of Afro
cities and Suffering


Home and Elmore county to helT
save her starving million survivors ol
Turkish and German ruthlessness
was presented by word of mouth
Sunday forenoon by a man from Ar
menia, DIR. Samuel Krikorian, who
spoke at a mass meeting held In the
Standard theatre under the suspices
of the Idaho committee, working
through Spokane headquarters, un-
der the American Committee for Ar
menian and Syrian relief
Women and even men in the audi
ence were moved to tears and wiped
their eyes unashamd, as DR.. Krikor-
ian told how Armenian mothers, at
the bayonet point, had been forced to
leave their dying babies by the road
side in the desert; how starving
children picked flesh from the bones
of animals that had died; how women
and children, by boatloads, were
/ dumped into the sea, shrieking; how
girls were sacrificed to the passions,
not only of Turkish, but of Hunnish
| fends, how-yes, DR.. Krikorian
apologized for the terriblness of the
tales he told.
"But il Armenia can endure to
suffer So, he cried, can we not at
least have patience to listen to the
story of her suffering, that we may
help her intelligently?"
And the story was not five per
cent told, he said.
Dr.. Krikorian, only "a years old,
tall, swarthy, eloquent with a burn
ing message from his own life, was
introduced as a member of family
which, for 200 years, had suffered
under Turkish misrule
When the war began, he said, Il
had SO relatives, including my father
and mother So far as this world is
concerned, / do not expect to see
very many of them again, but do
expect to see them up yonder about
the great white throne, AS the
speaker stood, pointing and looking
upward, in dramatic climax, the
reality fhis own personal loss
brought home tellingly the reality
of the story of Armenian suffering
which he had been relating.
Il would rather my sister and my
cousin had died he said, than for
them to have suffered what they have
suffered at the hands of the Turks. "
Yet the cruelties of Germans in
Armenia have made the Turks hang
their heads in shame. he said, so
that, though he knows what Armenia
has suffered under six centuries of
Turkish persecution, he would rather
bow his head to a Turk than to
German officer.
He told viyidly how the Armenian
men, / s to As years of age, were sent
to the war front, how the old men
and boys from 10 to Is years of age
were massacred on their refusal to
renounce Christianity and how the
women and little children, then,
hopeless, homeless, destitute and
half-elothed, were driven out into
the desert on a march to an unknown
destination-a march that dragged
out, day after day, into weeks and
months, leaving trail of the corpses
of starved women and children and
little babies, as the marchers went
Through such persecution, 1900,
900 of the 2,500,000 Armenian peo-
pie have been killed he said, and it is
to save the lives of the remaining
100000 that the campaign to
raise $30,00O,O00 in the United
States is being inaugurated. 1t will /
cost 10 cents a day to feed these
starving people it was explained,
and an apportionment of 80 cents /
per capita from the people of the |
United States has been made.
Wherever community fails to
meet its quota of 80 cents per capita,
it will mean that some of these
refugees will die because the people
over here have not done their part
said Ex-Congressman Robert Nc
of Boise, Idaho state chair
man for the campaign. This cam
paign has the Endorsement of the
Red Cross, of President Wilson and of
and every cent that is
raised will be used in the relief
work. The expense of transmission
Of the money has been provided for"
Superintendent f. n Nelson of the
Mountain Home public schools pre-
sided at the Sunday morning meet
ing
Morning church services were su-
spended.