Cablegram poster - Jaquith from Constantinople, July 1921

Context

Color poster combining a painterly headline panel - two children's faces above a circular vignette of a long refugee feeding line under a tree, with the cut line "The table is now 24 miles long. Thousands still starving" -with a facsimile reproduction of a Pacific–Atlantic Commercial Cable Company cablegram below.

The cable, dated Constantinople, July 20, 1921 and signed JAQUITH, asks the New York office: "Your cable indicating inadequate funds for present emergency received. What shall we eliminate? Shall we turn out children? Close hospitals? Stop feeding refugees? Give us orders. We are afraid to assume the moral responsibilities involved!" A red handwritten reply runs across the lower portion: "Neither can WE assume the responsibility - The individual American Contributor must decide. Near East Relief."

Harold Clarence Jaquith (1888–1947) served as NER's Director-General at Constantinople during the Anatolian crisis years and signed many of the field cables that the New York office repurposed as appeal material. The poster is the published format of the cablegram held separately as a single sheet. Together they show the editorial pipeline by which internal correspondence became public publicity within weeks of receipt.