A barracks becomes a home for 1,000 boys. Acorne, 16 Oct 1920.

Burke Library (Union Theological Seminary)

Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University Libraries; photographs contributed by Shant Mardirossian

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Masthead: 'The Acorne. Vol. II–N° 41. Edited by the Near East Relief (formerly American Committee for Relief in the Near East). 13, rue des Petits-Champs, Constantinople. Constantinople, 16 October 1920.'

The lead feature describes the opening on Saturday 9 October of the Armenian Central Orphanage for boys in the former Turkish military school at Kouleli on the Anatolian side of the Bosphorus, requisitioned through British efforts to house a thousand Armenian war orphans and equipped with American Near East supplies. Guests came down by the launch Ortho and were met at the water's edge by boys in Armenian Boy Scout uniform playing the national anthem; the Armenian Patriarch Zaven led them in, two hundred small boys marched with flags, and the day closed with the guests sailing away a little after five, leaving a thousand boys waving their white scout hats and singing Hyastan. Mr. Aboulian, the director, gave the opening address. An older boy delivered an address of thanks to the children of America, and Sarkis, aged four, formerly of the Nishan Tash Orphanage, made a speech in Armenian that no one understood and everyone applauded. A group of small boys danced an Armenian folk dance about a lost cow. The Boy Scout drill is traced to the previous April, when Mrs. Heizer, then Chairman of the Orphanage Committee, procured a physical director from the American Y.M.C.A.; the uniform of blue serge trousers, khaki shirt, blue neckerchief and white cap costs four Turkish lira. Puzant Gueuzubukian, Secretary of the Armenian Central Committee, thanked the British for the building and the Americans for supplies, and the Patriarch spoke on the future of the orphanage. 'News from Our Interior Workers' prints two letters from Ismidt. F. Strowger describes two hundred Greeks living outside the town under cornstalks, sixteen hundred people in the ruins of former houses, and people dying of exposure who came from the mountains and cannot stand the lowland climate. Sophie Holt describes bringing her two hundred orphans back from Constantinople about 15 September after three months' involuntary summer outing, the Allied Forces granting free use of cars for the train, the British vacating the old building after a three-month occupation, and the Adabazar orphanage arriving four days later with ninety more orphans when there was room for twenty, met by turning the kindergarten into a dormitory and boarding out forty children at five lira a month. Annie Allen writes from Konia about a barbershop opened for orphans by Miss Cushman, staffed by a young refugee barber who instructs the boys three times a week. 'How the Girls of the Cesarea Near East Orphanage Make «Boulgour» and Native Foods for Winter', signed Susan W. Orvis, follows the wheat from the copper kettle to the roof to the stone mortar and the hand-mills, and describes yarma for yogurt soup, the two native macaronis erishte and mantu, dried eggplant, tomato paste, and cheese salted into earthenware jars at thirty to thirty-five pounds a person for the year. 'Work at Brousa', signed R. Darbishire, records a boat trip to Guemleik by the kindness of Admiral Bristol to distribute cotton, buttons and milk to Armenian refugee families from the Isnek district found housed in disused cocooneries, and Brousa filling with refugees from Yenidje, Jarrah and Kutyeh beyond the Greek lines, fourteen families in one dark cellar, Turkish refugees listed in mosque courtyards for the new Vali, a thousand arshans of cotton given to two hundred families and knitting started for the wives of Nationalist soldiers. 'Personnel Notes' records Emma Cushman leaving the Konia Unit to manage the new Trachoma Hospital in Mrs. Heizer's place, and eight further transfers, engagements and arrivals.