Read Ebook: The American Red Cross Bulletin (Vol. IV No. 3 July 1909) by American National Red Cross

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Officers 1

Preface 3

Relief in Eastern Turkey 5

Earthquake Relief in Portugal 26

A Testimonial to the American Red Cross from Italy 28

Financial Report of American Committee at Rome 30

The Red Cross and President Taft's Inauguration 33

Story of the Red Cross 45

First-Aid and Relief Columns Department--California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey 47

Tuberculosis Department --Christmas Stamps, Cleveland, New Hampshire 53

Notes 57

Entered at the Post Office, Washington, D. C., as second-class matter.

PREFACE Hardly had our Red Cross work for the Sicilian and Calabrian earthquake sufferers come to an end when a new field for help opened before our American Society. This time it was not some great catastrophe of nature's doings, but man's inhumanity to man that brought about the need of aid and as from Macedonia of old again arose the cry, "Come over and help us." In Eastern Turkey lay this field of suffering, and of the Red Cross help the July BULLETIN gives a brief statement, hoping later to receive a fuller report from the field itself.

So great was the devastation wrought by the earthquake in Italy that later the less serious one in Portugal almost escaped our attention, but among a number of villages there has been much suffering and distress so that our Society was glad to send some small but tangible expression of our sympathy in its relief work to the Portuguese Red Cross. We have not forgotten the contributions it sent to the American Red Cross in 1898 for our sick and wounded during the war with Spain.

Two special departments will be noted in the Bulletin, one of the Relief Column and First Aid and the other on Tuberculosis, lines of work along which our Red Cross has plans for large and earnest development.

The Red Cross is needed. It is a blessing in many ways to the peoples of the world. It brings them closer together in the days of trouble and teaches them that nations, like men, are brothers. In America our Red Cross should aim to make itself one of the strongest and most helpful in this brotherhood of nations.

MASSACRES IN ASIATIC TURKEY

The spirit of unrest was seething in Turkey and the old antagonism that from the time of the crusades has existed between the cross and the crescent was ready to break out into action. On the 10th of April, at Adana, a town in Eastern Turkey, not far west of Alexandretta, an Armenian and a Turk were killed. This kindled into life the flames of hatred and on the 14th they burst forth in ferocious massacres. The Moslems being in the majority the Armenians suffered terribly. Throughout that part of the country it is estimated that some twenty-five thousand persons have been massacred during this reign of terror. Their houses and shops were pillaged and burned, and those who escaped fled in terror for their lives. The Government, in the person of the Vali, was either unable or unwilling to put a stop to this appalling destruction of human life and property. Once started the scenes of horror were repeated in town after town in the eastern provinces. At Tarsus several hundred Armenian houses were burned and in the yard of the American College were sheltered and protected 4,000 refugees. At Antioch, forty miles south of Alexandretta, the Armenian population of 7,000 was nearly annihilated. Kurds, Arabs and Circassians besieged the small Armenian villages, pillaging and burning the houses, killing the men and carrying the women into captivity. At Adana and Tarsus 15,000 and at Mersina 5,000 refugees were in dire distress and need while many more women and children escaped from the villages and were hiding in the mountains. The atrocities perpetrated reduced the people to a state of terror and despair. If some small village of Armenians succeeded in resisting the besiegers its inhabitants were soon reduced to the verge of starvation. Mr. Kennedy, an American missionary, secured some 450 Turkish soldiers and went to the relief of Deurtyul, an Armenian village of 10,000 inhabitants, on the coast, which was being besieged by hordes of Kurds and Circassians. The water supply having been cut off, the people were dependent upon the rain that fell, the children drinking from the water that collected in the footprints of animals. Frantic appeals for help and protection came down from scores of villages and the foreign consuls at Aleppo cabled to their Governments word of the great distress of thousands of refugees.

Thanks to the efforts of our Consul General, Mr. Ravndal, at Beirut, assisted by the French Cruiser "Jules Ferry," Latakia in Syria was relieved. Thousands of women and children, most of the men having been killed, were being besieged there. Appeals to the Vali of Adana continued useless. Conflagrations were continually breaking out and often the entire city was threatened. Thousands of the refugees were homeless and without any means of earning their livelihood. Bodies of the dead were scattered through the streets and the pedestrian who ventured forth had to pick his way so as not to step upon them. One writer says in half an hour he counted twelve wagon loads of Armenian dead being carried to the river and in the Turkish Cemetery graves were being dug by the wholesale.

At Adana four hospitals were established; doctors and nurses were sent from Beirut and Tarsus. Women, children and even babies suffered from severe wounds. Among the hundreds in one hospital the average of wounds to each person was four. Thousands of refugees were without food, clothing and bedding. Those sheltered at the American Missions were completely disarmed before being received so that, to obtain as far as possible immunity from attack for the missions. There was not enough water to drink nor to dress the wounds. Garbage and filth collected in the streets and diseases of all kinds began to reap their harvest.

On April 28th, in response to an inquiry if financial assistance was advisable addressed to the American Ambassador at Constantinople by the State Department, at the suggestion of the Red Cross, the following dispatch was received:

"Secretary of State, Washington:

"As distress among population is very great, I am convinced that American Red Cross could not better fulfill the noble purpose for which it was founded than by such a contribution. If desired, money could be sent to the Embassy for transmission to Mr. Peet, treasurer of the American Missions in Turkey, and it would be a most humane act if our charitable organizations could be induced to follow suggestion, as thousands of the poor people are without food and shelter. If American Red Cross will wire amount of draft they are donating, I will hand over immediately such sum, as funds are urgently needed.

"LEISHMAN ."

Immediately upon receipt of the above cablegram the Red Cross appropriated one thousand dollars from its General Emergency Fund which was cabled by the Secretary of State to Mr. Leishman; and the Branch Societies were requested to announce through the press that the Red Cross would receive and forward to the Ambassador at Constantinople any contributions for relief work in Turkey.

On May 6th a further remittance of ,000 was sent by the Red Cross to the Ambassador.

The Relief Committee at Beirut, of which the American Consul General, Mr. Ravndal, is chairman, cabled to the Red Cross on May 10th, requesting that it be permitted to act regardless of source of funds as Red Cross agents, rendering full accounts. This Committee had already raised about ten thousand dollars and had dispatched to Adana for doctors and trained nurses. With the full approval of the American Ambassador this Committee was recognized as its agent with full power to use the Red Cross flag to protect its hospitals and field force.

On May 6th the Armenian Relief Committee organized in New York sent a special Committee, Dr. A. Ayvazian, Chairman, and Col. Mesup Newton Kahn, to the New York Red Cross Branch to ask if the American Red Cross would receive and dispense the funds raised by their Committee. In reply to this inquiry forwarded from New York the National Headquarters telegraphed its consent to receive and administer such funds, stating its desire to be as efficient in Armenia as it had been in other theatres of relief and that in this work it had the co-operation of the State Department and the American Ambassador at Constantinople.

On May 19th, ,500 received from this Armenian Committee was cabled to the Ambassador with the request that it be distributed to Armenian sufferers of all denominations with the co-operation of the Armenian Patriarch in Adana, the Reverend Kevrok Arslandan.

On May 28th a further remittance of ,500 was sent with a like request. This included a second remittance of ,000 from the Armenian Committee, making a total of ,000 sent for the relief in Turkey.

The last dispatch received by the State Department on June 3rd, and transmitted by the First Assistant Secretary of State to the Red Cross, reads as follows:

"Mr. Peet makes the following statement:

"'Relief work prosecuted in nine centers where thirty thousand people are now supported. Present endeavor to rehabilitate refugees thus making possible to earn livelihood and reduce list. Permanent provision for orphans also required. Generous help now will thousands dollars relief and put thousands of people on feet again.'

"I have great confidence in Mr. Peet's judgment, as he is eminently qualified by his long experience to speak authoritatively of such matters and the Relief Committee at Adana, although international in character, is largely composed of American missionaries headed by the British and United States Consuls, which furnishes an unquestionable guarantee that the relief funds will be fairly and judiciously expended. So far, the subscriptions from England and America have been comparatively small considering the enormous number of widows and orphans who, for the moment, are entirely dependent upon public charity, and I am sure that if the generous American public more fully realized the great distress prevailing in the Adana and Aleppo districts it would respond more liberally to the appeals which are being made.

"LEISHMAN."

CALABRIA AND SICILY TWO MONTHS AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE

BY ERNEST P. BICKNELL, National Director, American Red Cross.

The Italian earthquake occurred on December twenty-eighth and exactly two months later, on February twenty-eighth, 1909, I arrived in Rome. My first duty was to familiarize myself with the working plans of the American Relief Committee. Although Rome is about three hundred and fifty miles from Messina, it was the headquarters of the chief agencies engaged in relief operations. Through the kindness of the American Ambassador, Honorable Lloyd C. Griscom, I was quickly brought into close relations with the American Relief Committee and with the officers at the head of the Italian Relief Organizations. Count Taverna, President of the Italian Red Cross, and Count Somaglia, the Vice-President, showed me every courtesy and gave me all the information possible. The hurried emergency work of the early days had been largely closed at this time. Most of the injured had been discharged from hospitals, the field hospitals had been closed, and the relief operations had settled down to a long, slow struggle to help people of the ruined communities to make a fresh start in life.

Many thousands of sufferers from the calamity had been removed to Naples, Rome, Palermo, Catania and other cities immediately after the earthquake. This made necessary the organization of extensive relief measures in numerous cities which were not themselves sufferers. After two months, this work outside the earthquake zone had been greatly reduced, though still requiring considerable attention. Many public spirited men and women gave important services through these outside organizations without actually going to the scene of the disaster.

At Rome I also met Miss Katherine B. Davis, who had just ended her brilliant relief administration in Syracuse, to which city more than a thousand injured persons had been taken from Messina. Miss Davis had gone to Sicily worn out with hard work as Superintendent of the Reformatory for Women at Bedford, New York, and was looking forward to a long restful vacation. She arrived the day after the earthquake and probably performed the most strenuous and trying work of her life during the following two months. The people everywhere were speaking in terms of highest praise of what she had done, which was not only valuable in itself but which set an example, copied in Palermo. Naples and elsewhere.

Mr. Edmund Billings, of Boston, who, as the representative of the Massachusetts Relief Committee, spent six weeks in Sicily, also reached Rome at this time. Mr. Billings had cultivated close relations with the local relief administrators and in this way had been enabled to apply his relief funds with a personal knowledge of the extent of the need and the method of their distribution in each instance.

The American Committee had occupied a delicate position in the midst of a group of active Italian relief agencies. It was necessary to avoid giving offense to any, as well as to keep out of the special fields of work in which the Italian agencies were occupied. So well did the Committee conduct its operations that I heard of no instance of dissatisfaction or criticism of its efforts. The Committee took no step until it had consulted the men in charge of the Italian relief work. It either appropriated specific sums of money for the use of other of the most efficient Italian organizations or it carefully selected relief tasks which had not been undertaken by others. In fact the American Committee had gained the enviable reputation of having ready cash instantly available for any important piece of work for which cash from other sources was not immediately to be had.

A few days later when the first American ship anchored in the harbor, with lumber for five hundred American houses on board, a new activity began. Teams of great red oxen with horns of tremendous reach, each team attached to a massive two-wheeled cart, blocked the water front while a crowd of noisy, hustling Italian laborers, like ants about an ant hill, carried the lumber piece by piece and stacked it high upon the creaking vehicles. Processions of loaded carts moved sinuously among the ruins, each driver guiding his oxen by ropes attached to their horns and by means of mournful cries which the animals seemed to understand.

At this time Messina presented a strange and sorrowful picture. In the midst of some of the most beautiful scenery in the world the city lay a center of horror and desolation. All the world is familiar, through descriptions and photographs, with the appearance of the ruins of the city. These ruins had not been cleared away at the time of which I write. Certain winding paths had been cleared through a few important streets. San Martino, a street extending straight back from the harbor through the city, was so wide that the heaps of debris on either side left a considerable clear area in the center. Along San Martino all the life and business of the city had gathered. Tiny, shapeless huts of fragments of lumber, sheet iron, blankets, tin and scraps of cloth were crowded into this open space and swarmed with huddling people. Microscopic stocks of food and clothing were on sale in some of these huts. A temporary postoffice occupied a wooden shack in the center of the street and more cabs than one would have supposed could have been saved from the disaster drove madly back and forth through the clutter of huts and throngs of people. The most conspicuous business was the sale of postcards, picturing the results of the earthquake. At midday San Martino was crowded with probably ten thousand persons; at dark the unlighted street was empty. The disappearance of the people at night was a mystery which aroused much comment. The available shelter seemed to be absurdly inadequate to the need. The people in fact slept under the broken arches and in doorways and behind or beneath any projections or rude contrivances which gave protection from the almost incessant rains.

Oppressed by the sense of the tragedy of the city a visitor was at first shocked to see the crowds in San Martino engaged in business, haggling and bargaining, quarrelling and jesting in quite a natural manner.

In all directions through the miles of ruins were to be seen knots of people gathered upon the sites of their former homes. Each group consisted of certain members of the family, three or four workmen with shovels and a soldier. The workmen were digging into the ruins to uncover the bodies of victims of the disaster and to recover any property of value which might be buried there. The soldier was assigned to the duty of guarding and directing the work and preventing curious or dishonest persons from interfering or carrying away property. At the side of each group would be observed one or more rough wooden boxes waiting to receive the bodies for which the workmen were searching. At this time it was officially estimated by the military authorities in control of Messina that twenty thousand bodies had been removed and that forty thousand bodies still remained undiscovered. About two hundred bodies a day were being taken out in the month of March. As the larger houses of the city had suffered the most complete destruction, it followed that the loss of life among the resourceful and well-to-do had been greater than among the poor who lived in the smaller structures. It was estimated roughly by Italian officials that ninety per cent. of the dead in Messina belonged to the resourceful class.

Sad and terrible as was the task of disinterring the bodies of the dead and burying them in the cemeteries, it was inevitable that the work carried on day after day should become a commonplace occupation and that the men engaged in it should eventually regard it with something of the same indifference with which any other daily task is regarded. This may be illustrated by an incident which was observed one hot afternoon. Four workmen, carrying upon their shoulders a box containing a body, were hurrying to the burial place in one of the cemeteries. The men were laughing and jesting as they moved rapidly along a rough road. Behind the men followed an old woman in rusty black, struggling painfully to keep up with the box. Under her arm she carried a small cross such as is placed at the head of each grave as the dead are buried. When the burial place was reached the men carelessly placed the box upon the ground and hastened away without a word. No grave was ready to receive the body and the old woman sat down on the ground beside the box, still clinging to the little cross. It would probably be some hours before the over-worked force of grave diggers had prepared a place for this particular body, and the old woman in the meantime sat in the broiling sun beside the rough coffin. She feared that if the body was buried in her absence she would not be able to identify the grave thereafter. So she sat there during the long afternoon, occasionally caressing the rough boards with tender hands.

Carts or groups of carriers bearing other coffins were continually arriving. It was impossible for the grave diggers to keep up with their task and the grass for a long distance about was covered with the waiting boxes.

It is unnecessary here to speak at length upon the extent of the disaster. The earthquake affected a strip of land on each side of the Straits of Messina. The extreme dimensions of the affected area were about fifty miles from North to South and perhaps forty miles from East to West. Within this area no town or village escaped entire or partial destruction. In all more than fifty cities, towns, villages and communes were destroyed. The lowest estimate which I heard of the number of persons made homeless was five hundred thousand. Estimates of the dead range from one hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand. In the course of my travels about the region I visited about twenty-five cities, towns and villages, among them all the larger ones. Wherever I went I inquired of the local authorities, who seemed best informed, concerning the loss of life. Based upon the answers to these inquiries and my own observations, I have reached the conclusion that the estimates of the number of dead have been uniformly too large. When the final estimates are made, after all bodies have been accounted for, I doubt whether the total will exceed seventy-five thousand.

I have seen no estimate of the property loss and it is doubtful whether any approximately accurate estimate can be made. Neither have I seen any figures of the amount of insurance carried on property but the result of inquiries indicates that the total insurance was comparatively small. The Italian people do not seem to have very fully adopted the policy of insuring their property. Unless such insurance as was held covered loss by earthquake, the owners of property can, in any event, collect little, if anything, from the insurance companies. The poverty of this part of Italy, coupled with the overwhelming magnitude of the loss, both of property and life, must make recovery exceedingly slow. The Italian Government is preparing to introduce measures of great liberality intended to help the people re-establish themselves.

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