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Sultan gives grain for the starving. Acorne, 3 Jan 1920.
Location
Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey
Year
1920
Item Detail
Near East Relief began 1920 with the Turkish Government's gift of six million kilos of grain, the receipts for it handed to Major Davis G. Arnold in the throne room and filmed for American audiences. The flour fed 9,000 orphans and 7,000 families. Station reports in this issue measure both the work and what a cut in funds would cost. Sivas treated 3,100 clinic patients in November and reduced its hospital from 120 beds to 82, while the Syria-Aleppo district helped 31,899 people in October through eight hospitals and fifteen orphanages.
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.
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Holding Institution
Burke Library (Union Theological Seminary)
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Attribution
Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University Libraries; photographs contributed by Shant Mardirossian
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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].
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Notes
Masthead: 'The Acorne. Vol. II–N° 1. Edited by Near East Relief. 13, rue des Petits–Champs. Constantinople, January 3 1920.'
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Document Contents
'Circulation of “Acorne” to Be Increased' raising the weekly print run to 1,000 copies and asking directors for fuller station reports touching the political, humorous and human sides of community life; 'Message from Dr. McCallum', who arrived in Constantinople on 22 December to take up his duties as Treasurer, on the National Committee's Christmas appeal to twenty million American Sunday School members, hoped to bring in at least $2,000,000, and the nationwide drive planned for the first three weeks of February with an objective of thirty-four million dollars, described as the last large appeal to the American public; 'Interesting Movie of Work Accomplished by Near East Relief Sent to America' on the Sultan's request that the Committee distribute six million kilos of grain to the starving peoples of Eastern Turkey and Armenia, the receipts presented in person to Major Davis G. Arnold and filmed in the throne room, and flour supplying bread to 9,000 orphans and 7,000 needy families; 'Sivas Report for November' recording 3,100 clinic patients, 27 operations and 216 discharges, the hospital reduced from 120 to 82 beds to meet a cut in appropriation at the cost of the children's and convalescent wards, a month's output from the carpenter, blacksmith, shoe, tin and moulding shops, and a statement of what a further halving of the appropriation would mean for the 200 women in wool work, 70 in weaving, 150 rescued girls knitting and 30 babies in the day nursery; 'Harpoot Report for November' on an orphanage tailor shop of thirty-two sewing machines and sixty workers, a shoe shop working overtime after shoes were burned in a train fire on the Bagdad railway and burglars took fifty pairs and half a ton of leather, and government grain in Malatia being brought in by Mr. McDaniels on a three weeks' horseback trip, with a soup kitchen opened at Malatia for Kurdish refugees; 'Closing of Our Work at Smyrna' listing the reassignment of nine workers; 'Progress Made at Hadjin, Cilicia', where three American workers hired oxen and bought seed, started a weaving factory and gathered 142 orphans from families into a mission building; 'Wireless Flashes' on Bolshevism in the American press, Japanese policy in Siberia and Joffre at Geneva on the first battle of the Marne; 'Constantinople Bakery Increases Production' recording 46 orphanages, 8,474 orphans, 7,000 cases and an average 13,646 half-oke loaves a day between 8 and 22 December; 'News Notes' on Major Davis G. Arnold's inspection trip through Eastern Turkey and Syria, Major J. P. Coombs acting as Managing Director in his absence, and seven women who reached Constantinople on 22 December and left for the Caucasus on the 29th under Miss Mary Vail Andress, the only woman in France to receive the Distinguished Service Medal; and a comprehensive Syria-Aleppo District report for October 1919 tabulating Aleppo, Aintab, Marash, Urfa, Mardin, Diarbekir and Alexandreta — 70 American personnel, 472 native employees, 8 hospitals with 418 beds, 15 clinics, 15 orphanages, 5 rescue homes, 19,533 garments and 36,831 medical treatments, helping 31,899 people including about 5,000 duplications.