The Coconino sun., 1920-03-12
American Women Stirred
 by Armenian Horrors


 Evening Post Describes Conditions
 Among People of Western Asia. "NNERCIFUL GOD. it's all truei
 IVA Nobody has ever told the whole truthi Nobody couldF"
 Thus Eleanor Franklin Egan, in the Saturday Evening Post, quotes Howard Heinz of Pittsburgh, Her bert Hoover's representative in the Near East, on the real conditions in Armenia as he saw them with his own eyes.
 Mir. Heinz had been one of those who had believed the stories of star walton and death in Armenia mad been exaggerated. Not until he went himself to the Caucasus did his views change. Then he was shaken to the foundations of his soul by what he saw.
 Mrs. Egan, herself. admits she went to Armenia in doubtful frame of mind. She had been told by MT. Heinz after his, return:
 "'You will be sorry all your life that you did go. What you will see will make scars on you that you will never get rid of. But, nevertheless, you must go. It is duty"
 Fearful! Awful! Horrible Unbelievable '" are some of the ad- jectlves Mrs. Egan says must be used fin speaking of conditions in the Near East, where Near East Relief, l Madison Avenue, New York. sup ported by contributions from the American people, Is conducting the only organized effort to save the lives of these utterly destitute mill lions. Everything she saw and heard justified the necessity for quick and generous aid from America. Her story of what she witnessed rein forces the call of the Near East Re lief for aid for stricken Armenia.
 ""The Hunger grin is everywhere evident" Mrs. Egan writes. "The pitiful hundreds seemed to me to be weeping constantly. Not profoundly as in grief. but whimperingly. ap- pealingly as in unbearable physical distress. A terrible population. Un- speakably filthy and tatterdemalion throngs; shelterless, death stricken throngs milling from place to place, children crying aloud, women sobbing in broken inarticulate lamentatfon men utterly hopeless and reduced to staggering weakness, needless of the tears rolling down their dirt-streaked faces"
 That Is her picture of the Ar menians most In evidence in Ar menIa. These are the throngs. Then she turns to the mobs. Large num- bers here and there, wide-eyed, eager, hands outstretched in wOlfish supplicatlon teeth barred in a ghast- }y-grin that had long since ceased to smile--an emaciated skin-stretched grin, fixed and uncomfortable"
 "Is 1t any wonder" she asks, 'that I could not swallow my food? I threw 1t to the children in the raven ing hordes and started small riots. The children fought together, snarl- ed and clawed at one another for small bits of army biscuit or m0rsels of bully beef.
 And then was told that many of them were so starved that solid food was likely to kill them instantly. This was too terribly true. Yet in the whole length and breadth of the land there was not an ounce of food of the kind necessary for such cases At Kars I saw one man die with bread in his teeth. And if you will consent to look with me upon too awful thing, I will add that he show- ed evidence of having eaten too much grass.
 T went hungry in Armenia and I associate remembered bangs of my own with all my recollections of the terrible land. I had plenty of food with me but for days on end I c6uld not eat. It was . physical impos- sibility.