Collections
157,000 fed daily in the Caucasus. Acorne, 17 Jan 1920.
Location
Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey
Year
1920
Item Detail
Hugh S. Miller's survey of the Caucasus, written as an eyewitness, is the center of this issue. He found 23,000 refugees in one group of buildings at Alexandropol and 157,000 people supplied daily from that station, a bread line at Etchmiadzin where half the crowd was barefoot, and about 300,000 Russians, Greeks, Jews, Assyrians and Ezids in similar want across Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. He sets out the seed wheat plan that followed, under which 7,000 tons stored by 1 April would secure Armenia's food supply. Orphans of the Syrian Orphanage in Jerusalem also began printing the city's first English-language daily.
Context
The Acorne was the weekly bulletin of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, produced in Constantinople for private circulation among the Committee's own staff. By January 1920, it printed a thousand copies a week for station directors in the field and for supporters in America.
Issues ran to four pages of short field dispatches and unit reports: orphan care, medical work, refugee feeding, education and workshop programs, with operational notes on supplies, rations, transport and exchange. Personnel notices recorded arrivals, transfers and departures. The bulletin took the title Near East Relief with Vol. II, No. 42 on 23 October 1920.
No complete run is known to survive. NERHS holds seventeen issues of Volume II, drawn from the Harry Pratt Judson records at the University of Chicago, the Martin Weaver Documents at the Mennonite Historical Library, and the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary.
These ten issues open Volume II in January 1920 and resume in September and October with the Robert College conference, the Greek-Turkish fighting around Ismid, and the opening of the Kuleli orphanage.
-
Holding Institution
Burke Library (Union Theological Seminary)
-
Attribution
Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University Libraries; photographs contributed by Shant Mardirossian
-
Rights
No known copyright restrictions. Based on available information, NERHS is not aware of copyright restrictions on this material. Items are presented for non-commercial research and educational use. Users are responsible for determining rights status and compliance with applicable law. If you believe you hold rights in this material or have information about rights holders not currently reflected, please contact [email protected].
-
Notes
Masthead: 'The Acorne. Vol. II–N° 3. Edited by Near East Relief. 13, rue des Petits-Champs. Constantinople, 17 January 1920.'
-
Document Contents
'Near East Relief Orphans Print Daily Paper' on the first issue of the 'Jerusalem News' of 9 December 1919, printed by orphans of the Syrian Orphanage and the first English-language daily in Jerusalem; the orphanage, founded in 1856 by a German missionary and under Committee direction for over a year, has the best industrial equipment in the Near East and over 200 boys learning trades, with an account of it by its former director Mabel D. Mac Intosh promised in later issues. 'Conditions in the Caucasus', signed Hugh S. Miller, contrasts the two fields: in Turkey and Syria the need for emergency feeding is less and the work is industrial, orphanage, rescue-home and medical across a far larger territory, while in the Caucasus the refugees are more numerous but concentrated near the railway and emergency feeding is nearly the whole of it — 23,000 refugees in a single group of buildings at Alexandropol and 157,000 people supplied daily from that station. Miller writes as an eyewitness: four refugees found sleeping in a doorless freight car at Erivan; the bread line at Etchmiadzin below Ararat where half the throng was barefoot and the rest had their feet tied in rags, among them a girl of about sixteen appealing for clothing with one arm bare from the shoulder; a village thirty miles out where children stood in the snow in thin cotton shirts and his own hands were too cold to work a camera shutter. He records typhus and smallpox, about 300,000 Russians, Greeks, Jews, Assyrians and Ezids in similar want across Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, Russians stranded by the separation of the republics from Russia, and orders expelling some 100,000 unemployed from Tiflis by 1 December and about 40,000 from Baku. He then sets out the seed wheat plan: Col. William N. Haskell's inquiry to the Armenian Government at Erivan, the reply concurred in by Alexander Khatissian, Minister President of Armenia, that 7,000 tons of seed wheat stored by 1 April would secure the nation's food supply, the 4,000 tons held near Novorossisk until General Denekin allowed them through Georgia, and a scheme of exchanging flour with farmers for their seed wheat. 'Further Gift to Tokat Orphanage' recording a second donation of 500 liras from l'Union Armenienne de Tokat; 'Gift to Shishli Orphanage' on the Sultan's gift of 15,000 arshons of land near Kiahat-Hane, valued at 30,000 liras, to the Armenian Orphanage at Shishli; 'Current Press Notes' on a Turkish women's organization against partition, the Armenian Patriarch's call to observe New Year's Day as a day of self-denial for the orphans, a banquet at Erivan for the American relief workers, and ceremonies on 8 January honoring Boghos Nubar Pasha, called the Venezelos of Armenia; an account of the Armenian New Year party at St. George's Hospital with two Christmas trees and a stocking for each child, assisted by men from the Galveston; 'News Notes' on transfers to the Caucasus Branch and Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Miller's return from two months there; and two poems on the city, 'The Walls of Constantinople' and 'Sunset, Constantinople', the latter signed O. D. A. Stevenson.