The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1919-09-14

in Syria, one in charge of repatriation
work at Aleppo under the charge of
the former Red Cross director. Major
stephen Van r. Troubridge lin civilian
life, a Presbyterian missionary in
( Cairo), and one in charge of relief
work at Beirut under the charge of
the former Red Cross director, Major
Nichol lin civilian life, a Presbyterian
missionary in the Lebanon) Five hun
dred orphans in the Schneider orphan
! age in Jerusalem have been bequeathed
1 to the Beirut unit by the departing Red
! Cross. along with the Industrial work
among the 5000 Armenian refugees in
| the camp south of Port said.
! MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATORS
! The near eastern relief is now doing
/ the lions share of rebuilding in the
| Lebanon, a district which has suffered
more severely from the war than any
other district in the entire war zone.
( The Palestine and Syria relief fund,
an organization of twelve British mis-
sionary socities which was the first
relief organization to follow the British
army into Jeru salem, has had allocated
J to it the Menten district of the Lebanon
and is taking exclusive charge of it,
! except for work among its orphans.
The Armenian National Union OF Cairo
is doing some work among it's own
refugees and has q camp of 500 at
administrators of this section of Syria
When the Red Cross followed the
British army into Beirut, it found that
most of the human skeletons had dis
appeared. They had died. Thousands
Of the survivors, however were clad
in rags and others had been reduced
to their Sunday best" No cloth had
entered the country for four years
Thousands had sold their beds for the
wool that was in the mattresses, and
! were sleeping on the STONE floors.
Among the poor scabies was universal
and children whose scalps were fairly
boiling up, were common in the streets.
The previous winter had been a hard
one and the impending winter was
hard prospect. The harvest had just
come in. but there was no hope of
being able to make it's supply last
through the coming winter.
A Red Cross census showed that in
800 villages of the Lebanon, the pre-
war population of 2O3,5s1 had been re
duced by starvation and typhus to
1925. In 302 villages, there were
t1,S7S houses ruined, chiefly by the
seizure and sale of wood work and
other movea bles In 2S9 villages, there
were 1854 children who had lost both
parents and 9,6SS who had lost one
parent in most cases their fathers.
Some villages had been hit harder than
/
pre-war population was 1,245 and
whose present population is ST.
One of the Red Cross first acts in
Beirut after Major Nichol had brought
up his unit from Jerusalem, was the
picking up of the homeless waits who
filled the streets. British motor lorries
went through the streets, picked up
the little skeletons without stopping
to ask questions, and took them to to
nd
Cross had swept out for them Here
the naked were clothed in gunny sacks
plenty of condensed milk was fed
them, and out of 107 of them, only
one, who had tuberculosis, died. One
had been run over by a Berman motor
lorry and his broken leg had gone un-
attended to for eight months. I saw
these children today in the Jessie Tay-
lor home, formerly Scotch mission
school, which is now the Children S
! Shelter. They gave a programme of
determinations for which first prize
was awarded to a gilr of twelve years
1--WE picked her up back of the rail-
road station" the superintendent said,
"she was a skeleton covered with sores,
then"
At the same time the Red Cross Sc
cured the release of four missionaries
in the employ of the Syrian Protestant
mission in Beirut and because of their
knowledge of the Lebanon, sent them
out to complete the entire organiZa-
ton of the 200 miles of the Lebanon
from Tyre to Ladikiyeh within a month.
One of the four was a Syrian Ameri-
can who had formerly been New
York policeman the other three had
been active in the smuggling of food
j into the Lebanon during the war.
WAGES PAID IN SOUP
At the same time, too, the first
| of four public soup kitchens was
| opened in Beirut Three huge caul-
| drons were installed in a cookshop
near the Red Cross headquarters in
what was formerly the American
girls school, and in these three cauld-
rons 5000 gallons of soup was cooked
daily to be distributed in Standard Oil
tins to the feeding centers. Every pre-
caution was exercised to prevent the
! soup kitchens from breeding habits of
| chronic dependence. To persons abso-
lutely without means, soup was given
/ free, but Red Cross workshops were
established and a wage of 20 cents a
| day was paid, either in soup or cash.
! 1t was calculated that portion OF
| soup with a loaf of bred cost the Red
| Cross cents, and workshop employees
| were paid a single portion and 10
cents cash for days work. or two por-
lions and 10 cents cash, etc. To supply
| the grain for its food, the Red Cross
put a staff of buyers into the Hauran
and has leased flour mill, so that
| by the time it had been operated three
months, it calculated that the cost of
| a pound of its bread, made from pest
hard Hauran wheat was Z cents.
At the same time, also, clinics were
established in Beirut and throughout
| the Lebanon. contagious disease
| hospital was established near Beirut
and general clinics were opened
throughout thee Lebanon. The Syrian
protestant college at Beirut gave three
| quarters of it's beds, and the Red
| Cross occupied them continually with
! 100 patients. A tuberculosis sanitarium
was opened in the Lebanon. The most
| important of the clinics, however, is
/ the eye clinic in charge of DR.. Morton
f. Brownell This is the second larg-
est eve clinic in the world. the largest
! being in India Here 1900 patients a
week are seen, all of them of the
poorer classes who are unable to pay.
DIR. Brownell, who is the only eye spe-
cialist in the Lebanon, might be max
ing $1,000 a month from his practice.
He is paid the same wage that all other
near eastern workers are paid-S25
month and expenses. His work is
meeting the most important medical
need of the Lebanon. Ophthalmla'
trachoma, cataract, premature bind
ness and other eye troubles, due TO
filth and flies, are the characteristic
diseases of the east.
The most unique undertaking of the
near eastern relief which has now
taken over the Red Cross work in the
T ahanon is the prospective city OF