Indiana daily times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1914-1922, 1921-06-25
ONCE GREAT SEA
PORT NOW CRIES
FOR FOOD STUFF
Batum Is Bleak and DesOlate
After Capture by BOlshe-
visit Forces.

NEW YORK, June 25.-The once
prosperous Black Sea port of Batum,
formerly a busy point of entry for a
rich trade between Europe and Trans
caucasia, is now bleak, desolate and
crying for food, declares Melville Chatter
of New York City, a worker for the
Near East Relief, in a report to Charles
V. Vickery, general secretary of that or
ganization.
Chatter accompanied the first food ship
to arrive in Batum since the city was
captured by the Bolshevists early In
March. His report, written about a
month ago, gives the first detailed de-
scription of the economic situation in
Transcaucasia to be received since the
Inauguration of the Soviet regime In
Georgia Chatter was the first American
to arrive in Batum after that port fell
into Bolshevik hands, relief officials de-
clare.
THE people are living largely on a
sort of bread known as maize Chatter
reports. ut is dark yellow, and mixed
with what seems to be macerated straw,
very bitter, and so soggy that, merely in
handling it, the hands are eft damp. It
is certainly not a dainty morsel to eat.
What fingers longest in the memory.
however, was not this bread nor the gen
eral condition in the city, but the appal-
ling plight Of approximately 1900 Ar
menian refugees, sheltered in sixteen
wretched buildings, once barracks, but
now designated as the refugee quarter. -
The people they shelter are mostly from
the villayet of Bitlis, IN Turkey, adjudi-
Gated to Armenia by President Wilson s
arbitration. They have been refugees
since the Turks took Erzinjan three
years ago, and are waiting execution Of
the Treaty of Sevres to return home.
since they fed Bitlis during the war, thSI~
have been tramping the rough reads
across the mountains, riding on freight
cars, and otherwise moving about from
place to place, now and then ordered by
the Government Of the Armenian ne
public back into their own proviace Of
Armenia, only to fee again upon 1e-
newed anti Armenian activities of the
Turks.
Their rotting rags, their filth. their
specter-like emaciation is almost beyond
description. l found three born ba-
bies, born of mothers who had never
been able to nurse them, sucking bits of
rags. in which was knotted up a paste
of water and maize -four.
THE soviet official who took me
through the quarters said, Lefore we
entered, We call this place He'll Do
you really want to see it I don't Won
der that he asked the question In the
cavern like darkness of these crazy,
rotten buildings-your feet sank through
holes in the floor. if you were not care
ful-these unfortunate wretches were
herded Ike beasts. dumb under the suffer
ing Of that semi starvation that had be
come second nature to them.
There was food for about three hun
dred. less than l per cent of the total.
This number was all for whom there was
work, and only those who work. accord
ing to soviet rules, can receive food from
the governments NIercifully, spring has
arrived and with it the grass roots upon
which the great bulk Of these people have
suhsisted for a long time
when I came out l found group
of refugees gathered about a dead man.
He had just been stabbed In a quarrel
over the possession of a tuft of mean
roots Now. the American Near East
Relief organization has opened up a
soup kitchen and some food has been
brought in. Conditions are beginning to
improve but there is room for vast
amount of work. American aid seems
70 be the only hope of these people"