1915–1916
Taking Action
The 1910s were a time of massive global upheaval. World War I ravaged Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. As reports of the Ottoman government’s genocidal acts reached Europe and North America through diplomats, missionaries, and journalists, a group of concerned citizens organized an unprecedented relief effort that soon became Near East Relief.
1915
Henry Morgenthau’s Urgent Telegrams
Henry Morgenthau, Sr., U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1914 to 1916, initially turned down the appointment because he had hoped to serve in President Wilson’s cabinet. Once he arrived in Constantinople, Morgenthau quickly established himself as an advocate for the roughly 2 million Armenians living under oppressive Ottoman rule.
When he received word of the deportations of Armenians from the Turkish interior, Morgenthau exhausted diplomatic channels to avoid further casualties. He met with Ottoman officials, but made no progress. Through the summer of 1915, he sent a series of urgent telegrams to the U.S. Secretary of State, reporting that “a campaign of race extermination is in progress” and pressing Washington to act on behalf of the Armenians.
While still in Constantinople, Ambassador Morgenthau was responsible for distributing the funds raised by Near East Relief. Morgenthau returned to the United States in 1916. He continued to speak openly about the plight of minorities in Ottoman Turkey.
September 3, 1915
The Ambassador’s Call to Action
Ambassador Morgenthau recognized that many lives were still at stake. On September 3, 1915, he sent a telegram to the U.S. State Department requesting that the Secretary of State ask Cleveland Dodge, Rabbi Stephen Wise, and other prominent men to form a committee to raise funds for Armenian refugees. The telegram effectively called upon private citizens to intervene where the U.S. government had not.
Morgenthau’s September 3, 1915, telegram called for the formation of the committee that would become Near East Relief.
September 16, 1915
Forming the Committee
Cleveland Hoadley Dodge was an official of the Phelps Dodge Corporation, an American copper mining company. Dodge was connected with the Near East by way of academics: he served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Robert College in Constantinople. Dodge’s son Bayard was active in the American University of Beirut, later serving as its President.
Cleveland H. Dodge and President Woodrow Wilson had been friends since their days at Princeton University. It was natural that the President would contact Dodge with Morgenthau’s request. Dodge called the first meeting of the group that would become Near East Relief in his office in Lower Manhattan on September 16, 1915. Dodge was chosen as Treasurer. He informed Secretary Samuel T. Dutton that he would cover all Committee operating expenses. Every dollar raised would go to direct relief.
Dr. James L. Barton was a missionary and educator with firsthand knowledge of the Near East. Barton had spent eight years supervising missionary-run schools in Harput, Turkey. He also brought years of experience at the Boston office of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, where he worked as Foreign Secretary.
The original Committee also included Rabbi Stephen Wise, a progressive voice in the Reform Judaism movement and founder of the Free Synagogue. Dr. Samuel T. Dutton was a former school superintendent and Columbia University professor. He offered his office at 70 Fifth Avenue as headquarters. Charles R. Crane would later investigate the disposition of non-Turkish Ottoman lands as part of President Wilson’s 1919 King-Crane Commission to Turkey.
The deportation as carried out at present is merely a polite form of massacre. Unless the whole movement be stopped at once there is, I am firmly convinced, not the slightest chance of any of the exiles surviving the coming winter, except possibly the very wealthiest among them.
October 1915
$100,000 Wired to Constantinople
At the first meeting, the group secured pledges totaling $60,000. They prevailed upon their acquaintances for additional funds. They wired $100,000 to Morgenthau in Constantinople in October 1915. In November 1915, the group adopted the name American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (ACASR). The Committee appealed to trusted friends in the press to publish eyewitness accounts from missionaries.
February 1916
The Ambassador Asks for More
Ambassador Morgenthau returned to the U.S. in February 1916. He provided the Committee with a detailed report on conditions in the Near East, based on observations and communications. Morgenthau estimated that one million Armenians had survived. The survivors were mainly women and children, and they were all destitute. He estimated that $5,000,000 was needed to relieve the suffering of minorities in Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine. ACASR voted to make a public appeal for this amount.