Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1921-10-13
HUNGER HORROR
WAITS SNOW CUE
IN THE CAUCASUS
viCkREY, NEAR EAST RElieF'S
NATIONAL SECRETARY, TELLS
OF FAMINE-s WHEN
AUGUST CURTAIN ROSE.
10000 CHILDREN MUST DIE
THIS WINTER, WITHOUT AID

'One or the most dppdIilnB hOiioio
of history, the death by starvation
OF tens of thousands of children and
even larger numbers OF adults, VIII
be enacted in the Near East this WIN
ter unless food is sent them by
America before snow flies
The statement was made by Charles
V. Vickrey, national secretary OF Near
East Relief, who has just returned
to New York from a three-months trip
of personal inspection in the old Rus
sian provinces of Transcaucasia and
bordering lands of Asia Minor.
Into these war-hedged regions fed
as refugees those remnants OF the
Armenian and neighbor races who had
escaped massacre or capture by Turks
and Kurds or death by hunger, expos.
ure and attendant disease.
Mr.. Vickrey said, in part:
There are two distinct large areas
involved in the Russian famine prob
lem: the Volga region, reaching north
westward from the Caspian Sea; and
southern Russia or Transcaucasia, en-
bracing the new republics of Georgia
and Russian Armenia, TO the west
ward of the Caspian and extending to
the Black Sea-
1921 Death Harvest Early.
1T has been my lot to travel in
southern Russia each August of the
last three years. In those years the
wholesale death harvest did not de-
velop until late Winter or early
Spring. Never before have ! seen
actual widespread starvation in the
month of August. This year in Rus
sian Armenia | found the dead lying
In the streets; saw the death-wagons
go upon their twice-daily rounds
learned at first-hand of the other
corpses-infants, children, aduts-by
the waysides beyond the cities, the
buried and the unburied This in the
month of August instead Of in Janu-
airy, February and March.
I'm the once busy and comparative
ly well-stockeG market places of Fri
van, capital of the war-born republic
of Armenia, | encountered only wo-
men, children and very aged men,
wandering, wandering from street to
street, dumbly trying to exchange a
frayed garment or other fragment of
personal belonging for a portion OF
food to ease their hunger
Worse Than At Armistice.
1.-THE causes of the yearly famine
date back TO and include the huge
massacres Of 1915, following upon
the opening of the World War, when
hundreds of thousands of Armenians
fed the Turkish Kurd raiders and
sought refuge in the Russian eau
casus. Every year since that time the
country has been overrun and pill
aged by contending or unfriendly mil
itary forces. War has not ceased for
Armenia. Conditions appear worse
today, in the closing months of 1921,
than they were at the signing of the
armistice.
Upon withdrawal Of the Turkish
forces from Alexandropol last April
carrying away with them all trans
portable food supplies and every prop
erty that might be useful to the Turk
ish army fighting the Greeks on the
Western 'front.', the Armenians did
everything they could to plant and Sc
cure a crop, for they are So per cent
a farmer people. But the task was
impossible, the result inevitable.
10000 Fed 10000 Must DE-"
TN the vicinity of Alexandropol
alone, Near East Relief with the aid
of more than so American experienced
rescue workers is caring for 10000
orphaned children, constituting prob
ably the largest assemblage OF par
entless infants and youth the world
ever has known. The president Of
the local government OF the Alexan-
dropol district states there are 10000
other children in his district who will
die of hunger and exposure this Win
ter If they are not added to our or
phonage population. The whole num-
Der of orphans in Near East Relief
territory exceeds 100000.