LONE SENTINELS 
 IN THE NEAR EAST 
 
 WAR STORIES 
 OF AMERICAN WOMEN 
 IN TURKEY AND 
 SERBIA 
 
 BY ETHEL DANIELS HUBBARD 
 
 1920 
 
J^one Sentinels in 
 the J^ear East 
 
 MYRTLE SHANE, BITLIS 
 MARY MATTHEWS, MONASTIR 
 OLIVE CRAWFORD, TREBIZOND 
 MARY GRAFF AM, SIVAS 
 
 By 
 
 ETHEL DANIELS HUBBARD 
 
 Author of "Ann of Ava," "The Moffats," Etc. 
 
 WOMAN'S BOARD OF MISSIONS 
 503 Congregational House 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 AMERICAN women who have remained alone at 
 their posts in the Near East, after the men connect- 
 ed with the mission were obliged to withdraw, may- 
 well be referred to as lone sentinels for Christianity. In 
 Turkey we can point to seven stations which for long or 
 short periods during war years have been staffed only by 
 women. At times an American woman has been quite 
 alone, as in the case of Miss Vaughan at Hadjin, Miss 
 Graffam at Sivas and Mrs. Christie at Tarsus. Some- 
 times there have been two or three women who have 
 shared the loneliness and the responsibility as in the case 
 of Miss and Mrs. Dewey with Miss Graf at Mardin and 
 Miss Shane with Miss McLaren at Bitlis. 
 
 It has not been possible to tell the stories of all the 
 women who have maintained their stations and stood by 
 the people of their adoption. These four have not been 
 chosen because of their preeminence over others but be- 
 cause they may be considered typical examples of mis- 
 sionary achievement in Turkey and Serbia during the War. 
 Three of them are on the field today and the fourth is 
 now on her way to the Near East. 
 
 Acknowledgment is gladly made to Miss Grace 
 Knapp, author of "The Tragedy in Bitlis," from which 
 volume data for the story of Miss Shane has been largely 
 culled; to Mrs. Olive T. Crawford for a two hours' conver- 
 sation which supplied the facts of her five years in Treb- 
 izond; to Dr. James L. Barton for significant touches here 
 and there; and to Miss Anne L. Buckley for her untiring 
 alacrity in supplying access to all the material employed. 
 
 E. D. H. 
 
< 
 
 MYRTLE SHANE 
 Bitlis, Turkey 
 
"Self-sacrifice is not doing without something, but doing 
 without that which is of less value than something else. A 
 life of self-denial is one in which things that are best are put 
 in the first place." 
 
 Myrtle Shane. 
 
MYRTLE SHANE, BITLIS 
 
 BITLIS is a name to conjure up vivid memories. For the 
 student of general history it suggests a line of Kurdish 
 princes who lived in their fortress castle and gaily defied 
 both the Shah of Persia and the Sultan of Turkey. Theirs 
 was a long and dramatic dynasty culminating less than a cen- 
 tury ago when the last and most famous of the princes was 
 trapped by the Turks and carried prisoner to Constantinople. 
 Once in the twentieth century the unvanquished Kurds tried 
 to regain the old stronghold of their clan, a fantastic and futile 
 attempt, foredoomed to inglorious defeat. 
 
 For the student of missionary history, Bitlis means the 
 scene of pioneer endeavors and rugged personalities. It evokes 
 the name of the Knapp family whose history is written into 
 the destiny of Bitlis with as much distinctness as that of the 
 Kurdish chieftains of old. It recalls also the oft-heard name of 
 the Ely Sisters whose story is one of the choicest in missionary 
 biography. Today, Bitlis connotes the diabolical deeds of the 
 Turks during the Great War, as well as a commanding act of 
 diplomacy and devotion performed by the young American 
 woman whom this sketch portrays. 
 
 Miss Myrtle Shane is a teacher of the finest calibre, having 
 the teaching faculty supplied by nature and disciplined by 
 training and by personal educational standards of a high order. 
 A graduate of the University of Kansas, she taught for eight 
 years in high schools in Kansas and in South Dakota. 
 Her department was English and in it she made an enviable 
 record among her educational colleagues. She was succeed- 
 ing unquestionably in her profession but professional success 
 alone did not satisfy the reach of her spirit. She turned upon 
 herself the burning question, "Am I making of my life all that 
 I should make. Am I growing in usefulness?" And from 
 that time the prayer of her life was that she might find her work 
 and that service to the world which would demand all she was 
 capable of giving. 
 
At this spiritual crisis a letter reached her from one of the 
 largest teachers' agencies, the American Board of Commission- 
 ers for Foreign Missions in Boston, asking if she would consider 
 a teaching position in Turkey, probably in Bitlis. Now Bitlis 
 was a name of compelling associations to Miss Shane for a 
 friend of hers, Miss Mary Uline, was a teacher there in the "Mt. 
 Holyoke Seminary" which the Ely Sisters, themselves Holyoke 
 alumnae, had developed. It seemed as if this opportunity in 
 Turkey and her unrest of spirit had met and answered each 
 other. Bitlis had made the irresistible claim upon her life. 
 
 In the fall of 191 5 Miss Shane reached this historic city in 
 the heart of Kurdistan, near the western shore of the blue salt 
 lake of Van. She took up her abode with Miss Charlotte Ely, 
 in the house where she and her sister had lived more than forty 
 years — a house located, unfortunately, outside the high walls 
 and barred gate of the mission compound. The American 
 mission was situated upon a high bluff on the eastern side of the 
 city, looking straight down two hundred feet upon a medley 
 of mosques, minarets and the ancient fortress of the Kurds 
 which towered incongruously above the low-roofed bazaars. 
 Sound and flash of water were everywhere perceptible, for a 
 mountain torrent raced zigzag through the city, beneath arched 
 stone bridges, under the old drawbridge of the fortress, turning 
 primitive grindstones and irrigating the gardens of squatter 
 Kurds on the western side. The city had twisted itself into 
 the mountains so successfully that it could not be seen entire 
 from any one of the surrounding heights. From Kansas to 
 Kurdistan, from the Missouri to Lake Van, from orderly Ameri- 
 can life to the freaks and frenzies of Turks and Kurds, — surely 
 it is a far and startling call. 
 
 In October of that sinister year, 1914, Turkey entered the 
 war, and with her entry came the usual problems and emer- 
 gencies for a nation at war. The missionaries at Bitlis felt the 
 pinch chiefly in shortage of funds and teachers, but for the 
 Armenians a war with a foreign foe, a war in which they were 
 patriotically fighting, seemed, by comparison with the past, 
 
 8 
 
a very tolerable burden. The governor of Bitlis vilayet was 
 more than usually efficient and maintained a fair degree of 
 order within his territory. The situation seemed in no way 
 menacing and three missionaries of the Bitlis staff, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Maynard and Miss Uline, decide to take their already 
 belated furlough in America. On Armenian Ascension Day 
 when the streets were gay with people in holiday mood and at- 
 tire, they left the mission for the first stage of the long jour- 
 ney homeward. 
 
 True to their native custom, hundreds of Armenians es- 
 corted the travelers some distance out of the city. After they 
 had turned back, Miss Ely, Miss Shane and Mr. Knapp, son of 
 the pioneer Knapps, prepared a picnic lunch by the river and with 
 laughter and jest tried to hide the inevitable regret. Then they 
 separated, three returning east to Bitlis and three proceeding on 
 their way west, little dreaming, either travelers or sojourners, 
 that in their sister mission at Van, ninety miles away across the 
 lake, Americans and Armenians were in a besieged city which 
 had already held out nearly four weeks against the onslaught 
 of the Turks, but was now at the final verge of endurance. The 
 story of the siege of Van is one of the classics of missionary and 
 military history, an inimitable tale of human bravery at which 
 this sketch may no more than hint, but which may be sought in 
 full upon some other printed page. 
 
 Scarcely was the Armenian holiday over when the reign of 
 terror began. The first sign of its approach was the appear- 
 ance of bedraggled women and children in the streets of Bitlis, 
 looking piteously about for a place to lay their heads. They 
 had fled from villages in the province, where already the official 
 massacre had begun, though done under the guise of Kurdish 
 deviltry which the government pretended to condemn. Seven 
 hundred of these refugees appealed to the American mission for 
 shelter and their appeal was not denied. 
 
 About this time came a telegram announcing that two of the 
 Van missionaries, Miss Grisell McLaren and Fraulein Marthe 
 Kleiss would reach Bitlis the following day. What could be 
 
 9 
 
the meaning of their journey from Van to Bitlis at such a criti- 
 cal period? No one could surmise until the travelers arrived 
 and told their story, a story of barricades and sharpshooting 
 and bombardment, desperate and prolonged righting between 
 Turks and Armenians, then — the approach of the Russian army 
 and the hurried flight of all Turks from the city, an exodus, 
 which, curiously enough, carried an American and a German 
 woman in its train. 
 
 Not long after Turkey entered the war, the governor of 
 Van had asked the Americans to assign one of their number for 
 service in the Turkish military hospital. They complied and 
 Miss McLaren, though not a trained nurse, was selected for the 
 task. Fraulein Marthe Kleiss, or Sister Martha as she was 
 more often called, was also asked to leave the German Orphan- 
 age for Armenians and give the Turkish soldiers the benefit of 
 her professional skill as nurse. The achievement of these two 
 foreign women who brought cleanliness and sanitation and sen- 
 sible discipline out of that dirty, ill-equipped, savagely managed 
 Turkish institution is another of the honor records of the war. 
 
 Hence, when the migration across the lake to Bitlis took 
 place, hospital patients and nurses were transported with the 
 rest. At Bitlis, Sister Martha and Miss McLaren, though 
 living at the American mission, continued to nurse wounded 
 Turkish soldiers who were at first billeted in an old monastery 
 outside the city, and later in evacuated Armenian houses, near 
 the mission as well as in the mission church itself. 
 
 Meanwhile crowds of old men, women and children swarm- 
 ed daily into Bitlis from the outlying villages. Eight thousand 
 were allotted to the Americans for shelter and provision — 
 eight thousand stupefied, abandoned human beings of all ages, 
 sick, exhausted, some cruelly wounded, all dependent upon Miss 
 Shane, and her two associates, Miss Ely and Mr. Knapp, for 
 continued existence. They appealed to the governor for re- 
 dress, but he continued to assert that the outrages were com- 
 mitted by a lawless Kurdish brigand whom he was trying to 
 circumvent. 
 
 )o 
 
In early June the refugees were coralled by Turkish gen- 
 darmes and driven in droves through the street. From a bluff 
 overlooking the valley there could be seen on the road leading 
 south crowds and crowds of people, waiting — for what? For 
 the order to march and for the Kurds who were in turn, waiting 
 for them further along the road! 
 
 In the city proper an epidemic of typhus broke out, as was 
 to be expected under the conditions. In the mission compound 
 five or six died every day. At first they were buried in a garden 
 across the street, but presently this was forbidden and graves 
 were dug on the mission property, graves where the bones of 
 Armenian victims of the massacre of 1895 lay beside the newly 
 dead of 191 5. 
 
 On the twenty-second day of June the first overt act of the 
 government against the Armenian residents of Bitlis was com- 
 mitted. The pastor of the Protestant church was seized and 
 carried off to prison. The day following, the American mission 
 was surrounded by soldiers and every Armenian man and boy 
 above ten years of age marched away to prison. In all sec- 
 tions of the city men and boys of the Armenian race were arrest- 
 ed and led away to jail. Any who resisted were promptly shot. 
 Those who hid in their houses and refused to come out were 
 burned to death and their families shared their fate — a fate 
 preferable, had they but known, to what was to follow. In a 
 few days the report was circulated that the men prisoners had 
 been cast into an underground dungeon. Then, that they had 
 been taken out on the road and killed. And finally, a well-veri- 
 fied tale to the effect that 700 had been led six miles out of the 
 city, lined up on either side of trenches already dug and 
 butchered there by the Kurds! 
 
 After that came the spoliation of Armenian women and 
 children, the next step in the official program to ruin or efface 
 the entire Armenian race. Turkish soldiers broke into Armen- 
 ian houses and with kicks, blows and jeers forced women and 
 children into the street and down the road. Now and then a 
 woman or girl escaped and came back — pitiable, mutilated 
 
 1 1 
 
beings who stood at the gate and received a morsel of food or 
 money or a kind word, more than which the Americans were 
 forbidden to do. Guards stood at the gate to enforce this de- 
 cree. 
 
 Although government sanction was upon these outrages, 
 nevertheless Miss Shane planned an opposition move, resolving 
 to fight to the end for the lives of her schoolgirls and the women 
 and children whom she had sheltered in the building. Her first 
 step was to go to the Vali and entreat him to allow her protegee's 
 to remain. His reply was evasive. Take your pupils to Har- 
 poot, he said, and place them in school there. But the Harpoot 
 buildings, she knew, had already been appropriated by the 
 government for a hospital. Moreover, the road between Bitlis 
 and Harpoot was covered with bodies of the dead. That fact, 
 too, she knew. 
 
 No, was her rejoinder, if the governor were sincere in his 
 proposal that they remove to Harpoot, why would he not allow 
 them to remain quietly in Bitlis until travel should be safer? 
 
 But government orders could not be gainsaid, he replied. 
 Not an Armenian was to be left in Bitlis. Thus read the proc- 
 lamation from Constantinople. He, the Vali had no choice nor 
 responsibility in the matter. 
 
 "In that case I will not give them up," retorted Miss Shane. 
 In her mind revolved a scheme of defense, barricades about the 
 building and resistance to the last gunshot. 
 
 Perceiving her determination the governor was moved to 
 compromise, and finally agreed to leave the girls in the school 
 "until the last." Not satisfied with this concession, Miss Shane 
 inquired to whom she might apply for assurance of their final 
 safety. The name of the military commandant at the front was 
 given, and to him Miss Shane wrote, forwarding to the Vali a 
 copy of the letter together with a list of her women and girls for 
 which he had asked. Reply to that letter was never received. 
 
 It should be remembered that Myrtle Shane had been in 
 Turkey less than two years, in which time she had learned to 
 speak the Armenian but not the Turkish language. To man- 
 
 12 
 
oeuvre one's way with Turkish officials is no simple matter for 
 one long inured to the caprices of the Ottoman government, but 
 for a newcomer it would seem a staggering proposition. In this 
 young woman, however, there was a quality of personality or a 
 strain in her Scotch-Irish and French ancestry which enabled 
 her to carry her point even with officials of the Turkish empire. 
 
 On the fourth of July, when danger and death were on every 
 hand and each day brought some new alarm, Miss Shane was 
 stricken with typhus, that dreadful disease to which she had been 
 continually exposed. With temperature soaring, she lay in her 
 room in the school building while Sister Martha took charge of 
 her case. 
 
 Exactly a week later Miss Charlotte Ely passed out of that 
 doomed city of earth into the City which is above, where the 
 terrible problem of life which had pressed so hard is resolved at 
 last into understanding. She was seventy-six years of age, and 
 forty-seven years of her life had been given to missionary service 
 in Turkey, with only two visits to America in all that period. 
 Bitlis was a home community to her and her sister who had died 
 two years before. For Miss Ely the agony of 191 5 was all the 
 more acute since many of the victims of torture and death were 
 old pupils or men and women she had known from their child- 
 hood. It was no wonder that bodily strength failed under the 
 strain of so great sympathy. 
 
 By the middle of July a new menace hung over Bitlis. The 
 Russian army was drawing steadily near, and before the Rus- 
 sians sped the Kurds, intent upon looting and killing and es- 
 caping to the mountains before the alien host should occupy the 
 city. The governor's message to the missionaries bade them 
 leave Bitlis at once. Civilians and officials were fleeing before 
 the advancing army. But how could a typhus patient rise up 
 and journey forth? For Miss Shane's sake they decided to re- 
 main and indeed their hands were full of work, for new refugees 
 flocked daily to the mission, seeking protection from the Kurds 
 who were already sacking the city and threatening even Ameri- 
 can lives and property. For a week the danger was imminent, 
 
 13 
 
then came a shift in the fortunes of war and the Russian army 
 turned in retreat. Moslems who had fled were summoned back 
 and by the end of the month the Turkish government was again 
 domiciled in Bitlis and the old terrorism resumed. 
 
 At this point a new personage emerges in the story of Miss 
 Shane and her school at Bitlis, a personage who remains in the 
 foreground until the end. It was the Turkish doctor in charge 
 of the military hospital, Mustafa Bey by name. An Arab by 
 birth, he had received his education in France and Germany and 
 was a reluctant subject of the Ottoman empire. By every 
 means in his power he aided and abetted Miss Shane in her effort 
 to save the lives of the girls and women in her school. His was 
 no easy role to play for, had his part been suspected, govern- 
 ment wrath would have fallen upon him and upon those who 
 had benefited by his strategy. Before Miss Shane recovered 
 from typhus the battle for the preservation of the schoolgirls 
 began in earnest. An exciting affair in the school building it- 
 self was the match which kindled government hostility. 
 
 Gendarmes had arrived at the mission demanding the Ar- 
 menians who had taken refuge there during the brief Turkish 
 evacuation and Kurdish pillage. With them had come a reas- 
 suring message to Miss Shane that her girls were not to be 
 molested. Unable to endure inaction at such a crucial moment, 
 Miss Shane rose from her sick bed, dressed hastily and crossed 
 the hall to the room where the women and girls were assembled. 
 
 Suddenly a shot rang out above the commotion. Who had 
 fired that unlucky shot and where was he? Mr. Knapp and two 
 gendarmes rushed upstairs and down until a broken window in 
 the kitchen gave the clue. The preceding week a young man, 
 disguised in woman's clothes, had begged admission to the com- 
 pound and had been received upon surrender of his firearms, 
 and upon condition that he would not enter the girls' school. 
 When the soldiers appeared, some of the women had allowed 
 him refuge inside the forbidden building and in a mania of 
 fear, he had snatched a gun and fired upon a Turkish soldier. 
 
 That shot was signal and source of unlimited trouble. It 
 
 14 
 
was enough to infuriate the gendarmes and to kindle suspicion 
 against Mr. Knapp as perpetrator of the mischief. No sort of 
 explanation would suffice then or later. They closed around him 
 in the small entry leading to the kitchen. Learning of his danger, 
 Miss Shane made her way downstairs, clinging to the rail at 
 every step. Upon seeing her, Mr. Knapp called out for her to 
 go back, adding, by way of explanation, that they were forcing 
 him into the kitchen to disarm the Armenian. A gendarme 
 ordered her away but she refused to go. Then the officer in 
 charge motioned angrily and when she did not obey, raised his 
 gun to strike. Reluctantly she turned toward the stairs, when 
 the officer sprang in front of her and barred the way. He mut- 
 tered rapidly in Turkish some order or explanation which of 
 course she could not understand, then called a soldier and indi- 
 cated she was to follow him. At that moment another shot 
 pierced the air and Mr. Knapp opened the kitchen door to find 
 the young man shot dead by his own hand. 
 
 Miss Shane was helped across the street to a house which 
 had been converted into a hospital. There she dropped into the 
 nearest chair and waited in utter exhaustion until the turmoil 
 was over. Later in the day permission was given for her re- 
 turn to the school, as the building was not to be burned now that 
 the Armenian was dead. It had been their intention to fire the 
 building in order to ensure the Armenian's capture, which had 
 led the officer to insist so vigorously upon her removal. 
 
 Meanwhile an impromptu trial was being held in the Ely 
 house outside the gate, a trial in which grave issues were at 
 stake. Turkish officers decided it was revolution they had 
 scented in the American camp. Mr. Knapp had secreted the 
 Armenian on purpose to shoot them, they announced to Miss 
 McLaren. Every American must leave the city. 
 
 At this psychological moment Mustafa Bey walked into the 
 room and inquired the cause of the trouble. Upon being en- 
 lightened he pointed to Miss McLaren with the question, 
 
 "Is she going, too? I need her in my hospital. I cannot 
 run my hospital without her." 
 
This threw new light upon the situation and after a whis- 
 pered parley it was agreed that Miss McLaren might remain. 
 The doctor then interceded for Miss Shane who was totally- 
 unfit for travel, and his shrewdness wrung a reluctant consent 
 for her to wait until the fever was gone. But there was no clem- 
 ency for Mr. Knapp, only distrust and hostile plotting, as the 
 gendarmes withdrew, leaving the customary guard for the 
 night. 
 
 In the morning Miss Shane's first concern was for her girls 
 who had been moved to the hospital across the street. They had 
 passed the night in safety but it was rumored they would be 
 taken captive before the day was gone. She was permitted to 
 spend fifteen minutes in their company, and again she struggled 
 downstairs and across the street, accompanied by two women 
 who supported her. No sooner had she been seated in the room 
 when the girls crowded around, one kneeling and burying her 
 head in her lap. Miss Shane gave them her one morsel of hope, 
 her appeal to Mutafa Bey for intervention. If his succor failed, 
 the old, terrible fate was in store, and that fate every girl knew. 
 
 There was an extraordinary calmness upon that group as 
 they faced the future in the presence of their young teacher who 
 thus far had been solely responsible for their preservation. 
 Prayers, brief and searching in their reality, arose from girls and 
 teacher as they knelt together. Before the allotted time had 
 passed, three soldiers came in and urged the girls to do some 
 work for them in another part of the building. They refused 
 and, strangely enough, the soldiers did not press their demand. 
 
 One girl, more urgently entreated than the rest, turned upon 
 the soldiers with flashing eyes: "You may kill me here," she 
 cried, "but I will not go." Such was the spirit of Miss Shane's 
 pupils upon this and subsequent occasions when their mettle was 
 tried. 
 
 That evening Mustafa Bey came to Miss Shane with a mes- 
 sage from the governor, expressing regret for her anxiety and 
 inconvenience and avowing that he had never intended to allow 
 her girls to be molested. But as this unfortunate shooting was 
 
 16 
 
likely to bring about an investigation from Constantinople, he 
 could now permit her girls to remain upon one condition only, 
 that they become assistants in the hospital. It was easy to de- 
 tect Mustafa Bey's shrewd hand in this well-played game. 
 
 Troubles of a different nature now befell Miss Shane and 
 Miss McLaren. They were called upon to face the death and 
 exile of their two colleagues, Sister Martha and Mr. Knapp. 
 The former died of typhus after ten days of terrible delirium 
 and suffering, with no chance of recovery from the first onset of 
 the disease. In broken health herself she had nursed Turkish 
 soldiers uncomplainingly and, though a German subject, hailed 
 by Turkish officers as an ally, she had championed the cause of 
 Armenians from first to last. When Germany's implication in 
 the great crime was forced upon her belief the shock was too 
 great for endurance. "I want to go home," she used to cry, 
 "not to my home in Konigsberg but to my Father's home." 
 On July 29, the desire of her heart was answered. 
 
 For some years Turkish officials had nursed a secret enmity 
 for Mr. Knapp, because of his fearless championship of the 
 Armenians. Now that hostility found vent in his abrupt dis- 
 missal from Bitlis. Late one night he came to say good-by, 
 knowing that his departure was imminent. He was greatly cast 
 down in spirit, fearing not so much for his own safety as for the 
 welfare of the two women whom he must leave undefended in 
 Bitlis. They had prayers together and then he went out into 
 the darkness of the night and the darker dealings of the Turks. 
 After midnight Miss Shane heard the soft tread of camels in the 
 street below and knew that Mr. Knapp had begun his lonely, 
 perilous journey. 
 
 As Miss McLaren rightfully belonged in Van, Miss Shane 
 was now the only member of the Bitlis staff left on duty, and 
 upon her devolved the entire responsibility for the station. 
 After Sister Martha's death, Miss McLaren resumed her care of 
 the wounded soldiers, visiting ten or twelve hospitals daily until 
 in September she took her turn as a typhus patient and Miss 
 Shane, her turn as nurse. 
 
 17 
 
With Miss McLaren disabled, Miss Shane lost her only- 
 medium of communication with the Turks, as Miss McLaren 
 could speak Turkish and always acted as interpreter. But in- 
 ability to use the language did not silence Miss Shane's attempts 
 to preserve her girls from capture. Again and again during that 
 summer and autumn the Turks tried to snatch Miss Shane's 
 prize from her resolute grasp. That her schoolgirls were a 
 prize, no one would dispute. Military officers stationed in 
 Bitlis urged their deportation that they might choose the fairest 
 among them. They were an especially comely group of girls, 
 well educated and with a dignity of deportment the Turks rec- 
 ognized and valued. 
 
 Mustafa Bey was made the butt of censure and ridicule 
 because he kept these girls so securely beyond the clutch of the 
 greedy Turks. At times he was so sorely pressed that he ques- 
 tioned Miss Shane's judgment in refusing to allow the girls to 
 become wives of officers. She argued by way of reply that there 
 was not a girl in the school who was not free to marry a Turk if 
 she chose, but that she herself was staying in Bitlis for the ex- 
 press purpose of preventing forced marriages into Turkish 
 homes. 
 
 Finally, in desperation, he asked for seven girls to assist in 
 the operating room of the hospital and Miss Shane was obliged 
 to yield. Hitherto the girls had sewed, washed and cooked for 
 the soldiers under her supervision in the school building. She 
 had many fears for their safety if removed to this exposed posi- 
 tion in the Turkish hospital. 
 
 "The real test has now come to you," she said to the seven 
 she had chosen. "If you cannot make the Turk realize there is 
 a vital difference between your religion and his, your principles 
 and his; that there is something in you which makes it impossible 
 for you to descend to his plane of living and thinking, and that 
 you do not shrink from death when the question of principle and 
 loyalty to your religion is at stake, your only means of protec- 
 tion is gone, and any breaking down of barriers means danger 
 for yourselves and all the others." 
 
 18 
 
The outcome reflected credit on both sides, for the girls 
 in the hospital received fair and respectful treatment from the 
 Turks, and incidentally secured some valuable training. 
 
 In November of that year Miss Shane was compelled to 
 leave Bitlis, an exile as loath to depart as was Mr. Knapp, 
 though under circumstances quite divergent. In Constantino- 
 ple, in American official and family circles, there was deepening 
 anxiety for her fate in that remote Turkish city which for a long 
 time had been cut off from communication with the outside 
 world, and which was rumored to have been partially destroyed 
 by fire. When at last a telegram came through from Bitlis, 
 its authenticity was doubted. Inquiry was made through the 
 State Department and Ambassador Morgenthau which elicited 
 a reply telegram from Miss Shane unmistakable in its genuine- 
 ness. Despite her assurance of safety and desire to remain, 
 the ambassador deemed it unwise for two women to be left alone 
 in Bitlis and instructed the consul at Harpoot to send his 
 kavass (consular servant) to escort them to that city. 
 
 Unwelcome injunctions from the Turkish government might 
 be evaded, if possible, but who would choose to disregard the 
 mandate of one's home government? Though revolting bitterly 
 against the decree which wrenched her from her girls when their 
 fate was still unsettled, Miss Shane had no recourse but to jour- 
 ney forth with Miss McLaren and their escort over the death- 
 labelled highway to Harpoot. There they remained, hard at 
 work, until the summer of 1917, when diplomatic relations were 
 severed with the United States and they were obliged to leave 
 Turkey for America. 
 
 Home could not solace Miss Shane for the loss of her 
 cherished work at Bitlis. It was her work and nothing could 
 really detach her from it, though they might enforce her bodily 
 removal. Grief over the separation from her girls was unceasing 
 and was not to be silenced by home associations or interesting 
 opportunities for study, only by the summons to return to Tur- 
 key which came early in 1919. She joined the first expedition 
 of the American Commission for Relief in the Near East, volun- 
 
 19 
 
teering for the most difficult and dangerous post, the Caucasus. 
 There she is at the present time, near Alexandropol, known 
 officially as orphanage director, with 5,000 orphans under her 
 care. Ten of her assistants are Bitlis women, who shared with 
 her the tremendous joy of reunion after the unforgettable ex- 
 periences of the past. 
 
 From the Caucasus Miss Shane writes in jubilant strain: 
 "Oh, this missionary work pays. These Armenians who have 
 been under missionary influence are looked up to by others 
 because of their honesty and reliability." 
 
 Of course it pays, and of course life pays for one of Miss 
 Shane's motive and temper. 
 
 But what of Bitlis and the sixty or more girls and women 
 left without their teacher and champion in the fall of 191 5? 
 Thrown upon his honor by the absence of his American co- 
 worker, Mustafa Bey rallied all his resources to save the girls 
 entrusted to his care. But the time came when strategy and 
 perseverance failed and they faced the usual doom of Armenian 
 women. At just this desperate crisis, the tide of war turned 
 again and the Russians advanced victoriously toward Bitlis, 
 occupying the city in January, 1916. It was then that Moslems 
 became victims of the fate they had themselves so long imposed 
 upon others. Those who failed to escape were put to death by 
 the Russians, but when Mustafa Bey's turn came, the school 
 girls whom he had defended sprang to his rescue and by their 
 intercession saved his life. 
 
 In all the dramatic history of the old Kurdish city of Bitlis 
 no more dramatic or vital events have marked its course than 
 those which centred about Miss Myrtle Shane, her school girls 
 and the Arab doctor, Mustafa Bey, in the summer of 191 5. 
 
 The fate of Miss Shane and her Armenian orphans hangs at 
 this moment in a balance as crucial as in the summer of 1915m 
 Bitlis. Under date of May 10, 1920, the Associated Press gives 
 out the news that women workers of the Near East Relief have 
 been withdrawn because overthrow and starvation threaten the 
 new-born Armenian republic. On one side are the fighting 
 
 20 
 
Turks and on the other the Georgian republic, the latter of which 
 refuses to transport foodstuffs to Armenians, and there is no 
 other ingress. Only one American woman refuses to leave 
 Armenia, Miss Myrtle Shane, once of Bitlis, now of Alexandropol. 
 She has resigned from the Commission rather than obey its or- 
 der to depart. "I shall stay here and face starvation with the 
 Armenians." This is the latest challenge of Myrtle Shane to 
 the republic of America and its Christian citizens. What shall 
 the answer be ? 
 
 21 
 
MARY MATTHEWS 
 Monastir, Serbia 
 
"W e are in the place of duty and that is always the safest 
 place for any one." 
 
 Mary Matthews. 
 
MARY MATTHEWS, MONASTIR 
 
 ANOTHER and different challenge comes from the career 
 of Mary Matthews of Monastir, Serbia. Her life demon- 
 strates how a quiet, unobtrusive, matter-of-fact personality 
 may possess elements of greatness more secure than the brilliant 
 and imaginative attain in their more spectacular flights. 
 
 To begin with, she had a Christian mother, the almost in- 
 variable "first cause" of men and women who have given vital 
 Christian service to the world. Then she was a student in 
 Mount Holyoke Seminary in the early eighties when the stress 
 upon missionary service was especially direct and convincing. 
 Subsequently she taught two years in Fisk University, Nashville, 
 Tennessee, a school which was in itself a practical embodiment 
 of democratic ideals. From that environment she applied to the 
 American Board for appointment in one of the missionary out- 
 posts of the world. And in 1888 she left her home in New York 
 State for the journey to Monastir, Macedonia, where she was to 
 become a teacher in the American School for Girls, founded 
 exactly ten years before and comprising in its registration pupils 
 from five or more nationalities. 
 
 In 1908 it was said of this school that it never graduated a 
 girl who was not a member of the Protestant Christian Church 
 at the time of leaving school. Presumably this record has been 
 kept intact to the present time and unquestionably its mainte- 
 nance has been largely due to Miss Matthews who has been teach- 
 er and principal for more than thirty years. It is a school of 
 strategic importance for, though disavowing all political aims, 
 it has been set in an environment of political ferment and race 
 friction which only Christian education can hope to transform. 
 
 The city of Monastir has the usual assets and trials of a 
 frontier town magnified by the inflammable temper of the 
 changing nationalities involved. Situated in the mountains, 
 fifteen miles from the boundary between what is now known as 
 Serbia and Greece, 115 miles from Salonica, it has long been the 
 
 25 
 
coveted booty of Bulgarians, Greeks and Serbians. Besides its 
 direct access to Salonica by rail and motor road, it has railroad 
 communication with Albania and Western Serbia and, via Gidia 
 and Larissa, through connections with Athens. In the center of 
 this populous and strategic city is located the American Mission, 
 comprising three buildings, the Essery Orphanage, a dwelling 
 house and the American School for Girls. 
 
 One can easily conjecture the routine and eventfulness of 
 those school years between 1888 when Miss Matthews first 
 arrived and 1908 when came the thrill and expectancy aroused 
 by the Turkish revolution. One can catch in imagination the 
 stir of those days when the constitution of New Turkey was read 
 from the military barracks of Monastir in the hearing of thou- 
 sands of people, when prisoners were released from long confine- 
 ment and Turks and Christians embraced and kissed one an- 
 other, talking ecstatically of freedom, equality and brotherhood. 
 
 In disillusionment one spans the next three years of history 
 when the indiscretion of the Young Turk party, backed by ages 
 of tyranny, brought about the Balkan Alliance against Turkey, 
 the united offensive of Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bul- 
 garia aginst Turkish domination. This conflict is known in 
 history as the first Balkan War and, as usual, Monastir was in 
 the thick of the fight. In November, 191 2, Serbians and Turks 
 fought a four days' battle ending in the rout of the Turkish 
 army and the occupation of Monastir by Serbian troops. 
 
 In a home letter Miss Matthews described the triumphal 
 procession of Serbian soldiers through the city, which for four 
 and a half hours passed the spot where she sat and watched. 
 She was spectator and participant in these dramatic scenes, 
 catching the spasm of rejoicing which swept over Monastir be- 
 cause a Christian nation had come to govern the city, and shar- 
 ing the labor of providing clothes and food for hospital patients 
 and refugees from buildings destroyed by fire. Her girls' school 
 maintained an unbroken session through the upheaval, increas- 
 ing its enrollment to eighty or more because other schools in the 
 city were closed for lack of supplies. Roumanians, Bulgarians 
 
 26 
 
and Greeks came as pupils to the American school. It was dur- 
 ing this first Balkan War that Miss Matthews manufactured 
 with her own hands a United States flag, using Turkey red, white 
 and blue cotton for the purpose. Hoisted upon the mission 
 buildings, the home-made flag proclaimed the identity of the 
 nation represented and gave definite protection from attack. 
 
 Scarcely had the war against Turkey been concluded when 
 the flimsy league of Balkan states split into its natural warring 
 elements and the allies of one year became the enemies of the 
 next. Bulgaria was arrayed against Greece, Serbia and Mon- 
 tenegro, with Roumania making incursions into Bulgarian terri- 
 tory. The treaty of Bucharest, signed in August 1913, secured 
 only an artificial peace, leaving the Balkan States in a situation 
 described by the historian as "more unnatural and more beset 
 by dangers than had been the case even during the worst years 
 of the reign of Abdul Hamid." 
 
 At the termination of the second Balkan War, Miss Mat- 
 thews came to the United States, remaining two years for neces- 
 sary recuperation of strength, a Providential provision for the 
 supreme strain to come. From a safe but unwelcome distance 
 she knew of the increasing jealousy between Austria and Serbia 
 and of that notorious ultimatum which enlisted, in rapid suc- 
 cession, almost every nation of Europe in combat. 
 
 In August, 191 5, she was allowed to return to the inflam- 
 mable war district where her school was located. At that time 
 Miss Delpha Davis was her American associate in the school 
 and Rev. and Mrs. W. P. Clarke were members of the mission. 
 There were some seventy girls, sixty boys and eight teachers to 
 greet their "much loved directorka," as she had been called. 
 "How much she means to us," wrote one of her teachers at the 
 time of the twenty-fifth anniversary of her connection with the 
 school, an occasion aptly celebrated by pupils and teachers. 
 The schoolgirls in Monastir would be the pride of any teacher— - 
 wide-awake, attractive girls with their musical names, Vasilka, 
 Magda, Didovitza. The fall term of school opened auspiciously 
 despite the unsettled and ominous condition of the country. 
 
 27 
 
When Miss Matthews arrived in September, the Serbian flag 
 waved over Monastir, but it was only two months before the 
 flag of another nation was raised over the disputed city. 
 
 By Thanksgiving Day every school in the city, including the 
 Jewish and French, was closed except the American School for 
 Girls. Every day and hour brought fresh evidences of the 
 Bulgarian approach toward Monastir, until the army was re- 
 ported only four hours removed. Refugees arrived from Nish 
 which had been seized by the northern division of the Bulgarian 
 army. On November 25 a contingent of British doctors and 
 nurses staggered into the city, having walked fifty miles and lost 
 all their baggage. Tired as they were, they had to take train 
 next morning for Salonica, as the English and Bulgarians were 
 diplomatic enemies. The Italian consul and British vice-con- 
 sul had already deposited their personal belongings with Miss 
 Matthews in expectation of hurried exit from the scene. Five 
 hundred residents were demanding passports to leave the city. 
 
 In the midst of this excitement, on that snowy evening 
 when the Bulgarians were almost at the gate, Miss Matthews 
 sat at her desk writing to a friend at home. At the close of the 
 letter she says: "The city seems quiet and I think I will go to 
 rest, but I sleep in such clothing that I can be ready quickly 
 in an emergency. I am glad I am here. There is much satis- 
 faction in being where one is needed. Address, care of the 
 American Mission, Salonica, Greece, unless this is Bulgaria 
 soon, then Monastir, Bulgaria." 
 
 The city fell into the hands of the Bulgarians and their 
 allies in November, 1915, just three years after the Serbian oc- 
 cupation in 191 2. Three wars in three years and the end not in 
 sight! A year later, again in the eventful month of Novem- 
 ber, Miss Matthews writes to her brother of the impending cri- 
 sis in Monastir. Another government was about to fall and a 
 new one to be established. In the United States it was face- 
 tiously remarked that the fall and rise of Monastir was reported 
 in every issue of the daily paper, and that a really live paper 
 would print two conflicting stories in the same issue. 
 
 28 
 
On the nineteenth of November, 1916, four years to a day 
 since the Serbian entry in 191 2, the last of the Bulgarian and 
 German armies withdrew and Serbia returned with her allies. 
 This return was heralded by the thunder of artillery from the 
 mountains, and the flight of aeroplanes above the city, dropping 
 shells which sent people scurrying into underground shelter. 
 Monastir continued in possession of the Allies, with the French 
 in actual command, until, by decree of the Allied Council, the 
 city was allotted finally to Serbia. In that fateful interim be- 
 tween Allied occupation and the end of the war Monastir was 
 in a perpetual state of bombardment, shelled for two years by 
 German batteries stationed in the mountains surrounding the 
 city. It was during these two years that Miss Matthews' ex- 
 periences ran almost into the fabulous, so marvellous seemed 
 her deliverances from injury or death. 
 
 In December, 191 6, by order of the French military com- 
 mand, the Clarke family was removed to Salonica, and Miss 
 Matthews was the only American left in Monastir, Miss Davis 
 having returned to America to recuperate from a long illness. 
 In many missions in the Near East American women were per- 
 mitted to remain when the men were forced to leave. With 
 school discontinued, church services abandoned, save for a 
 French Protestant service for soldiers, with seventeen orphan 
 girls in her care and three families living in the compound, thir- 
 ty-eight persons in all counting upon her leadership, besides 
 valuable American property to defend, Miss Matthews began to 
 adjust life to the tormenting, nerve-racking conditions of daily 
 bombardment. 
 
 Usually the batteries did not begin fire until late forenoon, 
 and during that brief morning respite she would hurry forth on 
 errands and rush back to shelter before the first shells fell. 
 Once a week she had to go to the Nachalnik for orders for flour, 
 a bag a week for her family of thirty-eight. The official in 
 charge as well as all others with whom Miss Matthews had to 
 deal, treated her with a degree of consideration which was 
 notable. Often in early forenoon or at night when the thunder 
 
 29 
 
of the day was spent she would visit the sick and needy in their 
 homes, bestowing gifts of hope and encouragement as well as 
 material succor. Within the compound she was always busy, 
 organizing work and directing its execution at safe times and 
 places, raising vegetables on the school grounds, planning house- 
 work and needlework and keeping the financial accounts of the 
 station with minute accuracy. She was an expert manager, 
 thrifty, far-sighted, sagacious. 
 
 Once during the bombardment, the French military com- 
 mander requested the mission house for personal occupancy. 
 Miss Matthews demurred on the ground that if he came there to 
 live the premises would be shelled immediately. The general 
 replied that he should come anyway and come he did and as 
 promptly began the attack. Underground telephone wires were 
 supposed to connect the enemy lines with the city and an officer's 
 change of residence was reported instantly. Miss Matthews' 
 judgment was vindicated and the general withdrew. 
 
 To minimize the peril, all occupants of the school building 
 moved their sleeping quarters to the first floor and basement. 
 In the latter place they were fairly immune, as shells seldom 
 break through more than two floors, and the lower walls were 
 solidly built of stone, thanks to the pioneer missionary who 
 planned the structure. At first, Miss Matthews slept in a corner 
 of the schoolroom, the teachers occupying the reading-room 
 and meals being served to all in the cellar. "That is a nice 
 little dining-room," she remarked in a letter, "and I do not have 
 to jump and run when we hear the shells." 
 
 One Sunday, early in the siege, a German shell fell in the 
 garden, shattering the wall of the printing house and smashing 
 nine window panes. A fragment shot across the street into an 
 alley opposite the gate and wounded a boy. Five minutes be- 
 fore the shell struck, the orphan children had left the yard and 
 gone indoors! On another day a shell landed near the school 
 annex, and a portion tore through window and shade and 
 dropped beside Miss Matthews' desk. One afternoon, while 
 taking tea with Mrs. Hartley, sister of Sir John French, a piece of 
 
 30 
 
shrapnel struck her hostess, killing her instantly. Under falling 
 shells Miss Matthews ran out of the house, seeking for help. 
 
 In all, thirteen high explosive shells fell upon the mission, 
 all but one exploding and tearing great jagged holes in the walls. 
 That one ineffectual shell buried itself in the garden where it lies 
 to this day too deeply imbedded to respond to rake or hoe. 
 Beside the gaping shell holes there were thousands of smaller 
 rents here and there, the work of shell fragments and shrapnel. 
 At the end of the siege Miss Matthews had collected more than 
 a hundred pounds of pieces of shell and shrapnel, extracted from 
 walls and picked up in garden or house. Yet under this daily 
 deluge of explosives not one of her girls or women, nor any of the 
 Protestant community received the slightest injury, though 
 escapes were petrifying by their narrow margin. "There is no 
 way to account for it," said Miss Matthews, "except that it is 
 a special Providence watching over us." 
 
 Her next experience was a bad case of articular rheumatism 
 which kept her in bed in the cellar six weeks and off the streets 
 eleven weeks. Sometimes, in quiet intervals, two people would 
 carry her outdoors to lie in the sunshine in the garden, but this was 
 a luxury too hazardous to be frequently secured. On one occa- 
 sion she had scarcely been borne indoors when a shell struck the 
 precise spot where she had been sitting. Incendiary shells were 
 often fired upon the city, starting fires which sometimes came 
 perilously close to the mission. In her helpless condition Miss 
 Matthews was reassured by the promise of the British doctor 
 who had offered to provide means for her removal, if fire threat- 
 ened the school. Ordinarily her underground chamber was too 
 dark for reading, but by a clever device, she arranged a mirror 
 so that it reflected sufficient light into her corner for a few hours 
 a day. By contriving an exit for the pipe through the floor 
 above and out the front hall window, a stove had been set up 
 to heat the cellar bedroom. Miss Matthews used to insist that 
 her "little basement den was as cosy a place as could be found 
 in the city," but Dr. Barton received a contrary impression 
 when he visited Monastir in 191 9, for he afterwards remarked 
 
 3* 
 
that his "basement at home was a sun parlor compared with her 
 cellar." 
 
 Yet in all these grizzly experiences Miss Matthews was often 
 heard to express satisfaction with her lot. "I should not be 
 contented to be anywhere else than in Monastir in these times." 
 And again, "I am thankful to belong to a Board that does not 
 call its missionaries away from their work when they are most 
 needed." 
 
 Late in the year 1917, after recovering from her illness, she 
 had a fortnight's respite from shell and shrapnel, when Mr. 
 Grey, director of the Serbian Relief Fund, carried her to Salonica 
 in his car for a visit and needed dentistry. Upon her return 
 she became engrossed in a new form of relief work quite unique 
 in character, and "really satisfactory" in results, according to 
 her own verdict. 
 
 It seems that in years past many Bulgarians had emigrated 
 to the United States to escape Turkish or Greek oppression. 
 By industry and thrift they had accumulated income sufficient 
 to aid families and friends left behind in the Balkans, but in 
 process of transmission these funds had palpably diminished. 
 Unscrupulous agents had charged commissions as high as twenty 
 per cent and by other devices had defrauded the recipients of 
 thousands of dollars. In conjunction with the United States 
 consul in Salonica, Miss Matthews became trustee for Bulgarian 
 families of Monastir and vicinity who received money from 
 America. Her list registered 238 families in the first few 
 months, 553 before the end of the first year, and over 800 by the 
 next summer. Frequently the women were unable to write and 
 endorsed the checks with a mark which Miss Matthews validated 
 with her own signature and sent to the bank in Salonica for 
 collection. By breakfast time she would find her piazza packed 
 with women waiting for the business transaction which meant 
 such incalculable relief to them. 
 
 In this employment she was acting as United States consul 
 for Monastir, as Mr. Crawford did for Trebizond, and as other 
 American missionaries in other cities took up the diplomatic 
 
 32 
 
task which official representatives had been obliged to lay down. 
 When in 191 9 it was proposed that she return to America, the 
 consul in Salonica declared he did not see how he could get along 
 without her. But no consul's protest was needed to keep this 
 missionary-diplomat in Monastir for she had no intention of 
 leaving until the tangled Balkan puzzle should show signs of 
 solution and re-enforcements should arrive from America to take 
 up the loosened threads and weave them into a straightforward 
 pattern. 
 
 After the Armistice was signed and the batteries were 
 silenced in the mountains of Monastir, and the problem of read- 
 justment was the immediate issue, then Miss Matthews paused 
 from her tasks to welcome no less a guest than Dr. James L. 
 Barton, known to the Christian world as one of its potent lead- 
 ers, and to Miss Matthews as an honored and cherished friend. 
 He had accompanied the first relief commission to the Near 
 East and had taken time for the trip over the motor road from 
 Salonica to Monastir, to behold Miss Matthews in the midst 
 of her battered environment and to spend one day in the city 
 of such checkered history and of such unique promise for the 
 future of Christian work. The day's engagements included a 
 call upon the mayor, who received them with marked courtesy, 
 placing Miss Matthews at once in the place of honor and de- 
 ferring to her judgment at every turn of the conversation, 
 offering at the end of the interview to escort them to the house 
 of the governor-general. 
 
 Both mayor and governor gave unstinted praise to Miss 
 Matthews' work for women, and were urgent in their plea that 
 the missionary work in Serbia be enlarged to include other and 
 more central places than Monastir. "Serbia needs what your 
 missionaries and their institutions bring," they affirmed with 
 conviction. And so the American Board in Boston received 
 confirmation in official circles in Serbia of the constructive work 
 its missionary had been doing in Monastir, work which govern- 
 ment leaders desired to perpetuate and extend in their newly 
 organized nation. 
 
 33 
 
Upon Dr. Barton's insistence, Miss Matthews was induced 
 to take a vacation of two months in England and France, a sub- 
 stitute for the longer vacation in the United States which he 
 had proposed and she had declined. "Of course I couldn't go 
 away so long," she had answered emphatically. In the fall of 
 1919 she was back in Monastir, confronting an entirely new set 
 of problems, but with a new associate from America to help in- 
 terpret the signs of the times, Miss Beatrice Mann of Illinois. 
 
 Together they face a work which must be largely pioneer in 
 character for the mission has to be newly nationalized to become 
 truly Serbian. Native teachers have to be trained, for hitherto 
 Serbia has not admitted missionaries, and no leaders are in 
 readiness. Some of the former teachers of the school cannot be 
 re-employed because their nationality is unacceptable to the 
 present government. Additional American teachers are imme- 
 diately needed to widen this opening in a nation which, for the 
 first time in its history, welcomes the Christian missionary. 
 Eventually mission stations should be located at the capital 
 and other places, where it will be easier to prove our real friend- 
 liness with Serbia than it is on the edge of the country where the 
 population is so mixed. This is Miss Matthews' forecast of the 
 type of enterprise to be developed in the new Serbia. 
 
 It was once said of Mary Matthews that she understands 
 how to serve without notice. A discerning person made that com- 
 ment for it is a trait too rare for casual recognition. There are 
 many persons who serve their generation constructively, but 
 there are only a few who escape the insidious craving for notice. 
 It is with those few, however, that the finest fruitage of Christian 
 living is found, the clearest demonstration of the efficacy of the 
 Christian principle. If there is any group of workers which 
 merits the characterization awarded Miss Matthews, it is the 
 group to which she belongs, the Christian missionaries, for will- 
 ingness to serve without notice might be considered the pass- 
 port of their order. 
 
 34 
 
MRS. OLIVE T. CRAWFORD 
 Trebizond, Turkey 
 
"All hope but that great hope of prayer had been given up." 
 
 Olive T. Crawford. 
 
MRS. OLIVE T. CRAWFORD, 
 TREBIZOND 
 
 TREBIZOND was one of the first Turkish cities to be 
 drawn within the actual fighting zone of the war. Sit- 
 uated upon the Black Sea, not far from the Russian fron- 
 tier, she was inviting prey for Russian battleships, whose 
 assaults began in November, 1914. From that day until the 
 Russian occupation in the spring of 191 6, there was a series of 
 bombardments, two of which were especially furious. In every 
 instance the damage to life and property was enormous. Thus 
 early in the war, the people of Trebizond shared the terror which 
 fell upon so many non-combatant populations in the widespread 
 war area. 
 
 Panic-stricken by the first burst of shells, Armenians, 
 Greeks, Turks, the varied nationalities the city contained, fled 
 for refuge to the American mission. The prevailing temper was 
 so inflammable that the merest streak of smoke upon the hori- 
 zon was enough to assure battleships and bombardments and to 
 send people flying out of shops and houses to the shelter of the 
 American property. Sometimes these false alarms occurred as 
 often as three times a week, and proved almost as demoralizing 
 to community life and personal equilibrium as genuine attacks. 
 
 Behind the outward fluster caused by daily dread of enemy 
 ships, there was a grim problem of holding life together which 
 every one had to face and the missionaries, in particular, to 
 solve. From the time the soldiers were mobilized, business in 
 Trebizond came to a standstill. Relief work in Turkey began 
 almost simultaneously with the beginning of war. That first 
 year relief funds were used for the babies of Armenian soldiers, 
 those very youngsters who a few months later were seized by 
 the Turks and their precious lives thrown away. In the year 
 1 914 the missionary staff comprised only Mr. and Mrs. Lyndon 
 S. Crawford, as their associate, Miss Nellie Cole, had returned 
 to the United States. Both husband and wife were experienced 
 missionaries having given more than thirty years to the service. 
 
 37 
 
Mrs. Crawford's maiden name, Olive Twitchell, affords a 
 clue to her splendid New England heritage and perhaps suggests 
 that interesting older brother, Dr. Joseph Twitchell, who was 
 known as the beloved pastor of Hartford and intimate friend 
 of Mark Twain. Olive Twitchell was a graduate of Abbot 
 Academy who began her missionary career in the Brousa school 
 in 1 88 1 and was later transferred to city mission work in Gedik 
 Pasha, Constantinople. In 1890 she married, later with her 
 husband returned to Brousa and finally was assigned to Trebi- 
 zond. In this city their distinctive work has been a large and 
 effective school for day pupils, and that school they were able 
 to keep in operation during the first deranged year after war be- 
 gan, even through successive bombardments and the consequent 
 removal of many families to interior villages. 
 
 In the spring of 191 5, the new terror, more ghastly than all 
 the battleships of the Russian fleet, began to take shape in the 
 minds of Armenian residents. Rumors of the horrible fate of 
 Armenians in inland cities began to drift north to Trebizond. 
 The Armenian population was unnerved by suspicion and fright, 
 but the Americans could not credit the tales they heard. They 
 were tales past belief save for those whose nation had already 
 experienced the ferocious enmity of the Turk. Even when the 
 official proclamation was received and Armenians were ordered 
 to make ready for departure a week hence, the missionaries 
 still believed they were to be removed only to an inland town 
 some three days' journey distant and in course of time would 
 return. But the Armenians themselves knew they were marked 
 for death. 
 
 Before the fatal day set for deportation, July first, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Crawford and the American consul, who was then living 
 in the mission house, took counsel together. The edict had al- 
 ready gone forth that he who harbored Armenians or the pro- 
 perty of Armenians should be guilty of treason. Yet these 
 three Americans decided they would try to save the schoolboys 
 and girls and, if possible, all others who naturally came to them 
 for protection. The two hundred pupils were summoned to 
 
 38 
 
the school and with them came former students, relatives and 
 friends until 450 were crowded into the one mission building. 
 Sleeping arrangements and food supply became at once an acute 
 problem for Mrs. Crawford, since the building was unadapted 
 for dormitory purposes. 
 
 As she lay awake at night trying to shape plans, signs and 
 sounds of the great distress broke the stillness. One Armenian 
 girl under her roof had gone mad and kept reiterating in a sing- 
 song the Armenian words, "God will help us, God will help us, 
 He will come and save us." One day during that week of con- 
 sternation, Mrs. Crawford was in an Armenian house where, 
 two or three hours later, a man threw himself from the balcony 
 to his death. In the American consulate, an Armenian shot 
 himself. There were suicides on every hand. Girls in the 
 school building talked of securing poison to end their lives. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Crawford contrived an interview with the 
 Vali and begged permission to keep the boys and girls who had 
 come to them for shelter. When asked how many the mission 
 Jiouse could accommodate, he replied 200, an overestimate of 
 the capacity of the building. The Vali answered that he might 
 choose 200 and the rest would be placed in nearby houses. Up- 
 on his return to the mission, Mrs. Crawford was given the task 
 ■of deciding who should stay and who should go. The soldiers 
 were to come at two o'clock to remove the 250 whom she should 
 reject. 
 
 It was a cruel question to settle. Mrs. Crawford was 
 adapted by nature and the discipline of a missionary career to 
 meet emergencies, but this was the most discomposing task 
 ever inflicted upon a human being. How could that list be 
 reduced? All the forenoon she sat with the names before her, 
 and was still struggling with the bitter problem when her hus- 
 band burst in to the room with the news that the soldiers had 
 come and all Armenians were ordered to go. Not one could 
 remain. In the intervening hours the Vali had reversed his 
 decision and his command was now irrevocable. 
 
 The scene which followed was indescribable. Women 
 
 39 
 
tried to secrete themselves in the house, boys clung to Mr. Craw- 
 ford with all their bodily strength. It was agony to unfasten 
 those clinging hands and refuse those pleading voices. Little 
 children, even babies, were driven away with the rest. That 
 night they were crowded into the largest of the houses from 
 which Armenian occupants had been ejected. 
 
 In the mission house, which they had abandoned, desola- 
 tion and disorder prevailed. One sole remnant of the Armenian 
 group remained, a six-months' baby, child of a former teacher 
 who, two years before, had left school to be married. Among 
 the memories of the first Russian bombardment Mrs. Crawford 
 carried in mind the pale face of that young woman who came in 
 fright to the mission because her own house had been damaged 
 by shells. Six weeks later her baby was born. Once or twice 
 during that spring of apprehension, she had asked Mrs. Craw- 
 ford to keep her child in case she herself should be sent away or 
 killed. There were near relatives in America who would provide 
 for the baby if only she could be saved and taken to them. At 
 the very last, when her own deportation was imminent, the 
 mother came to the mission gate, asked for Mr. Crawford, placed 
 the child in his arms and went away. It was this baby girl 
 whom the missionaries were resolved to save. Knowing that 
 concealment was impossible, Mrs. Crawford went herself to the 
 Vali and asked permission to keep the baby. Her insistent 
 plea, enforced by the sweet graciousness of her bearing, led the 
 Vali to give an unqualified consent and that consent was never 
 withdrawn. 
 
 After the Armenians had gone, the loneliness of the neigh- 
 borhood was appalling. Houses were empty and a sinister 
 spirit seemed to haunt the place. Across the street a secret 
 policeman in civilian clothes had been stationed to watch the 
 American premises. Sometimes a returning Armenian would 
 be permitted to enter and sometimes forbidden. From that 
 very first night Armenians began to come stealthily back, only 
 to be driven away again later. Continually they came and 
 went, those pitiful refugees whose only haven, even temporarily, 
 
 40 
 
was the American mission. Sometimes a group of schoolgirls, 
 escorted by soldiers, would be allowed twenty minutes to collect 
 their belongings left in the mission house. They would rush 
 around, snatching up their possessions and trying to circumvent 
 the guard and secure a few words in private with Mrs. Craw- 
 ford, always their teacher beloved, but now in adversity ap- 
 praised at her true value. Almost every day Turks came with 
 motor trucks and carried away loads and loads of Armenian 
 property deposited with the missionaries — property which they 
 had received without being able to guarantee its security. 
 
 The days were hectic with their varied demands and 
 problems. Soon they became ghastly with the knowledge of 
 what was happening out on the road whither Armenians were 
 being driven, and upon the Black Sea where boats, laden with 
 human cargo, went out to sea and returned empty. Later 
 there were eye-witnesses who told of babies dropped overboard 
 while the boat sailed ruthlessly on. Down the road where 
 Armenian girls and women were driven by Turkish gendarmes, 
 a halt would be made for the night, a certain number chosen 
 from the group and led away to a spot beyond sight but within 
 hearing distance. By this means those who were left discovered 
 the fate that was in store for themselves. Gunpowder was ac- 
 counted too precious for such waste, and the sword the only 
 weapon to be used. Tales like these came perpetually to the 
 ears of Mr. and Mrs. Crawford, as refugees, one by one, stole 
 warily back. 
 
 In the woods, not many miles away, a hundred or more 
 Armenians were in hiding. In the nearest village lived a Ger- 
 man woman, wife of a Greek who had formerly kept a hotel in 
 Trebizond but had moved inland after the first bombardment. 
 Knowing her to be friendly and reliable, an Armenian came to 
 her by night and told of the desperate plight of his companions 
 in the forest. It is said that she fainted upon hearing the 
 story, but quickly rallied and resolved upon action. She sum- 
 moned Mr. Crawford who went up and spent a night in her house, 
 during which time the messenger came with his tale of need. 
 
There in the night they worked out a plan of relief. All the 
 refugees asked was a supply of cornbread upon which they could 
 sustain life. Mr. Crawford had relief funds to dispense, but 
 how to transport such quantities of cornbread without detec- 
 tion? That was the question. It was the German woman who 
 saved the situation by her ingenuity and pluck. She received 
 the money from Mr. Crawford, went to the Greek farmers in 
 the village, all of whom were sympathetic with the Armenians, 
 and assigned to each the portion of cornbread he must supply, 
 furnishing small sums of money at a time that suspicion might 
 not be aroused by unusual expenditures. All that winter the 
 Armenians in the forest were kept alive by the efforts of this 
 intrepid German woman. 
 
 Appeals for help from other Armenians in hiding came by 
 surreptitious means to the missionaries. Greek women would 
 come to the mission, glance furtively about, and produce a slip 
 of paper from shoe or girdle. Upon this paper would be written 
 in Armenian a desperate cry for succor. Throughout that year 
 relief was administered in secret to many Armenians who had 
 managed to elude the Turks. 
 
 In the spring of 1916 the Russians captured Trebizond and 
 the Russian regime began. This was the signal for the Armen- 
 ians to emerge from hiding and to piece together the broken 
 threads of existence. But in less than two years the compara- 
 tive freedom under Russian rule came to an end. The revolu- 
 tion took place in Petrograd, spread through the armies until, 
 with the breakdown of military discipline, the Russian forces 
 retreated from Trebizond and the Turks re-entered the city. 
 
 With the return of the Turk, most of the foreigners took 
 their departure. The American consul withdrew and the vice- 
 consul transferred the archives of the consulate to Russia. On- 
 ly the Belgian consul remained, as consul for Denmark, but he 
 was an old man and feeble and quite unequal to the tangled 
 situation in diplomacy. Although not officially appointed, Mr. 
 Crawford was compelled to assume many responsibilities not 
 only for the American consulate but for the English, French and 
 
 4 2 
 
Italian as well. Relief work had grown to enormous dimensions 
 and there were almost none to share the burden. Throughout 
 that summer of 191 8 the husband and wife were overwhelmed 
 with work and anxiety which in early autumn brought one of 
 the twain to the final boundary of human endurance. 
 
 In September, Mr. Crawford was taken sick and grew 
 rapidly worse. At the last an operation was performed by the 
 Greek surgeon as the only hope of prolonging life. Two hours 
 after the operation he died, one of the twenty-eight American 
 missionaries who gave their life blood for Armenia during the 
 Great War. His death left Mrs. Crawford in a situation of 
 loneliness such as only foreign missionaries are likely to expe- 
 rience. No Protestants were left in the city, only Moslems and 
 Catholics. It was the bishop of the Greek Church who conduct- 
 ed the funeral service. One single foreign family — Italians, 
 who were Austrian subjects and could thus remain — lived in the 
 neighborhood and befriended Mrs. Crawford in her affliction. 
 But for human solace she turned principally to the little Armen- 
 ian girl named Grace, who had been with them since babyhood 
 and had crept irresistibly into their lives. They had not meant 
 to love this little child so well for there were grandchildren with 
 prior rights, but inevitably her baby confidence had brought its 
 return of affection. Some months later Mrs. Crawford alluded 
 to this period of exigency in her life and the manifest power 
 that had sustained her: 
 
 "It was an unspeakable blessing when the 'last enemy' came 
 close as it did, that I was overwhelmed with responsibilities 
 which I could not escape. There was an immediate and abso- 
 lute necessity of doing the 'nexte thynge,' and so, from hour to 
 hour, the familiar promises that came to me over and over, were 
 fulfilled. So, while I would not boast concerning the future, 
 fear has gone. There has been such an upholding power at 
 every step that I cannot be afraid." 
 
 In the desolate and problematic months which followed her 
 husband's death, the Armenian child was a literal Godsend to 
 Mrs. Crawford. During the winter her strength failed com- 
 
 4,! 
 
pletely and she was sick with fever, attended by her Greek wash- 
 erwoman. For some weeks she managed the financial accounts 
 from her sick bed, while the wife of their Armenian pastor, who 
 with her family had returned to the city, administered the relief 
 funds. The financial accounts had been a bugbear to Mrs. 
 Crawford, for she was unused to bookkeeping and difficulties 
 were multiplied by the currency situation, Russian and Turkish 
 money both in circulation, gold, silver, paper, and values con- 
 stantly shifting. In November Mr. Getchell came, at great 
 sacrifice, from Marsovan and stayed two weeks clearing away 
 many difficulties as well as teaching Mrs. Crawford a simple 
 system of bookkeeping which was an incalculable help. 
 
 All this while communication with the outside world was 
 almost nil. One or two messages were received from Con- 
 stantinople, but from beyond no word came. Repeatedly Mrs. 
 Crawford tried to send dispatches to her children in the United 
 States, telling them of their father's death, but there was no 
 assurance that the information had been received. In point 
 of fact they obtained their first knowledge of what had happened 
 in the newspaper the night before Thanksgiving. Two months 
 after the missionary's death in Turkey the Associated Press had 
 been able to give the news to his relatives in America. 
 
 Besides the complicated money matters connected with 
 relief work, the consulates, and Armenian funds entrusted to 
 their keeping, Mrs. Crawford struggled with domestic problems 
 of no ordinary pattern. Armenian refugees, girls and women, 
 were all the time returning and seeking shelter at the mission. 
 The household was always expanding in size and varying in 
 demands and naturally the servants, especially the Greek or- 
 phan girl who did the cooking, rebelled at such irregularities 
 in their daily schedule. To keep everybody in good temper 
 and the domestic machinery in running order was no light or 
 enviable task. Only a person of Mrs. Crawford's good sense and 
 forbearance could cope with so tangled a situation in human 
 contacts. It was remarked by one of her associates that her 
 sweet spirit brought out the best in every life she touched. 
 
 44 
 
As the problems thickened, premonition of relief to come 
 grew correspondingly. As early as November there was definite 
 official news that a large relief party would be soon on its way, 
 but only meagre reports followed. For six months (except for 
 the visit from Mr. Getchell already referred to), Mrs. Crawford 
 remained at her post alone, isolated from the outside world. 
 In March came some mail, brought as far as Constantinople, and 
 forwarded from there by an American consul en route for Odessa. 
 Soon after, a friend from Samsoun, a Black Sea port farther 
 west, called to say that he had seen American travelers, with 
 Rev. Mr. Pye (a missionary) passing through Samsoun on their 
 way to Marsovan. This was reassuring news for it meant that 
 American help would come in time to Trebizond also. Still no 
 message to confirm her expectation and to set a date for the ar- 
 rival of reinforcements! 
 
 One day, later in the month, Mrs. Crawford was busy up- 
 stairs in the mission house when there was a sudden commotion 
 below and voices were heard calling her name. She hurried 
 down and there in the hall stood two travelers just arrived, Mr. 
 and Mrs. Stapleton, formerly missionaries in Erzroom, but now 
 freshly dispatched from America to relieve the critical situation 
 at Trebizond. 
 
 They were the first contingent of relief workers from that 
 company of volunteers who were never more welcome in any 
 land, the American Commission for Relief in the Near East, 
 which sailed for Turkey in January, 191 9. A week later seven 
 more arrived in Trebizond, making a staff of nine who had been 
 assigned to do the work one woman had carried six months 
 alone. The work was, of course, rapidly enlarged, for they were 
 a group of experts with equipment to correspond. A soup kit- 
 chen and medical clinic were established, garden work and 
 street cleaning organized and assigned, cloth distributed among 
 the women for sewing, and other industrial work developed. 
 
 After remaining six weeks to help initiate the new workers, 
 Mrs. Crawford and little Grace left for Constantinople and the 
 United States, reaching New York in early summer. There the 
 
 45 
 
two parted company, for Grace was to make her home with 
 her own mother's sister who had lived for some years in this 
 country. It was a difficult separation for the little four-year- 
 old, as well as for the older woman who had mothered her 
 through such peculiar circumstances of isolation. 
 
 Mrs. Crawford made only a brief stay here, visiting her 
 children and quickening the lives of scores of people in public 
 meeting and personal contact by the sweetness and fine restraint 
 of her Christian character. Before 1 920 is past she will probably 
 again climb the hill to the mission house in Trebizond, and look 
 out of the window across the Black Sea to the Caucasus, those 
 lofty mountains where only the summer mists dissolve the 
 perennial snows. Her former co-worker, Miss Nellie B. Cole, 
 awaits her coming with lively expectancy, almost counting the 
 days and hours until her arrival. 
 
 "It seems as if with her return," she writes, "I should have 
 double the courage and strength to work, for we have the same 
 interests and purposes, and co-operate with whole heart and 
 hand, for she is like a mother and elder sister to me. Her broad 
 interests, level judgment and beautiful living out of the true 
 Christian principles, make her a great blessing to all. There 
 seem so many lines of work into which Mrs. Crawford could 
 enter so well, that I'll want her everywhere!" 
 
 46 
 
MARY LOUISE GRAFFAM 
 Sivas, Turkey 
 
I 
 
 << Who knows but this tragedy to the Armenians will be the 
 one thing which^will change their fate! Perhaps this 
 tragedy of today will mean the beginning of a new future." 
 
 Mary Louise Graffam. 
 
MARY LOUISE GRAFFAM, SIVAS 
 
 AN official of the American Relief Commission was travel- 
 ing across Turkey in the spring of 1919, when an Arme- 
 nian came running toward his automobile as if with intent 
 to deliver a message. The car halted while Armenian refugee 
 and American official entered into conversation, the one eager to 
 relate the grievances of his people, and the other solicitous for 
 fresh facts concerning the Armenian situation in different 
 localities. 
 
 "And how are the Armenians of Sivas?" asked the Ameri- 
 can. "What is their plight?" 
 
 "Oh, the Armenians are safe at Sivas," was the unexpected 
 rejoinder. 
 
 "How so?" queried the American with quickened interest. 
 
 "Why, Miss Graffam is in Sivas," came the reply. "The 
 Turks are all afraid of Miss Graffam." 
 
 A sufficient explanation for the American official, for he 
 had known Mary Graffam in the past, but for those of us who 
 have had no personal knowledge, how shall we account for the 
 staggering statement of the Armenian talebearer? An Ameri- 
 can woman, unmarried, without official prestige, her nation at 
 war with Turkey's allies, a simple school teacher by profession, 
 what could she have done to check the flaming race hatred of 
 Turk against Armenian? What could one solitary human being 
 do "against the principalities, against the powers, against the 
 world rulers of this darkness?" Read this tale and you will find 
 revealed a psychology of action and reaction significant in its 
 implications. 
 
 The city of Sivas has long been reckoned a strategic site in 
 Asia Minor and accordingly pioneer missionaries chose it for 
 settlement some seventy years ago. Not far from the mosque, 
 the pulsating center of every Turkish city, in the best section of 
 the Armenian quarter, was located the American compound, 
 covering less than an acre of ground, enclosed by walls. Within 
 this small compass are three buildings, hospital, dwelling house 
 
 49 
 
and girls' school, with garden and playground dividing the re- 
 maining space. This is the original mission property of Sivas, 
 which has been extended gradually to comprise houses outside 
 the walled area and a splendid new site for college and schools 
 on Hoktar Hill in the outskirts of the city. In the moving 
 panorama of daily life within the compound, doctors, nurses, 
 patients, missionaries, teachers, tradesmen, visitors coming and 
 going, the school for girls is a lively and significant feature. 
 Two hundred Armenian girls pass in and out of that building 
 every day, or rather were wont to pass before the War, were 
 wont also to practise on their one piano, sing their school songs, 
 romp and sport on the playground and, in the High School 
 grade, study their curriculum of science, mathematics, history 
 and English. 
 
 Of this live and interesting school Mary Louise Graffam 
 became principal in 1901, as well as supervisor of all schools for 
 girls in the Sivas mission, comprising a total of 700 pupils. 
 She was a graduate of Oberlin in the class of '94, and a teacher 
 of mathematics in high and private schools before she went to 
 Sivas, where her sister, Mrs. Ernest C. Partridge and husband, 
 were already established. 
 
 Acquisition of new languages was sport for Miss Graffam. 
 Less than a year gave her ease and pungency in the Armenian 
 speech, a summer in Geneva mobilized her French, and four 
 months of another year — a decisive, terrible year — gave her an 
 opportune knowledge of Turkish. Regular teacher of algebra, 
 geometry and Bible in the girls' school, of trigonometry in 
 Teachers' College, substitute teacher of any and al lsubjects no 
 one else happened to want, church organist, mission treasurer, 
 director of Y. M. C. A. relief work for widows, itinerant mission- 
 ary, traveling on horseback — a mode of travel she detested — to 
 distant villages, sometimes through mountain blizzards and 
 deep snows, frequent visitor in Turkish harems, a leading figure 
 in social, musical and literary events, this intrepid, dominating, 
 irrepressible personality was Mary Graffam in the years before 
 the War. 
 
 50 
 
It was not long after Turkey declared war, that a cry for 
 help came from the fighting front at Erzroom. Russian and 
 Turkish armies were clashing furiouslyj typhus was running wild 
 in the camp, and hospitals and doctors were insufficient to care 
 for the sick and wounded. Turkish officials urged the foreigners 
 in Sivas to send a contingent of doctors and nurses to the rescue. 
 Dr. Clark, Miss Graffam and Mrs. Sewny of the American colo- 
 ny and Miss Zenger, superintendent of the Swiss orphanage, 
 responded to the call and started at once for Erzroom. It was 
 not altogether humanitarian feeling that prompted Miss 
 Graffam to go, but rather a long look ahead. As she herself 
 acknowledged, she went not particularly to work for the Turks 
 but to work with the Turks to gain the good will and confidence 
 of the pashas against the day of calamity whose coming she 
 foresaw. 
 
 It took three weeks to cross the three high mountains and 
 intervening country between Sivas and Erzroom and no sooner 
 had they arrived before another and more difficult journey had to 
 be undertaken. Dr. Levon Sewny was reported to be dying of 
 typhus in a village near the front and his wife, accompanied by 
 Miss Graffam, sprang at once into the saddle and hastened away 
 to his bedside. With the roar of cannon to direct their course, 
 they forded unfamiliar rivers in the darkness of night, plodded 
 through deep snow and reached the little village at midnight of 
 the second day, too late to check the receding tide of life. Two 
 days later he died and the two women improvised a coffin out of 
 the door of the house and transported his body on horseback to 
 Erzroom. This was characteristic activity for Miss Graffam, 
 adventure, danger and a dilemma which called for inspired in- 
 genuity! 
 
 Back in Erzroom she was promptly assigned to a task of 
 unexpected magnitude. With no professional training and 
 only an incipient knowledge of Turkish, she was appointed 
 matron and head nurse of a Red Crescent Hospital for wounded 
 officers. Her management of this institution would have afford- 
 ed entertainment to a shrewd spectator, for she gathered the 
 
 51 
 
reins into her own hands until her authority was absolute and 
 Turkish officials became nimble subjects of her will. If there was 
 a protest in the kitchen against giving milk to patients, she 
 would cajole the doctor into writing "milk " upon every chart, 
 so that she could administer it at her discretion. If she de- 
 cided a beefsteak was required for a hungry newcomer, and the 
 cook demurred, she would cook the steak herself. An unsala- 
 ried, unofficial foreign woman at the head of a Turkish military 
 institution, an absolute autocrat in method, yet respected and 
 trusted by all her colleagues, and to this day the recipient of 
 grateful letters from former patients! The paradoxes of Miss 
 Graffam's life are indeed an interesting study. It was in the 
 hospital at Erzroom that she deliberately acquired the Turkish 
 language, realizing it would be a handy weapon to possess before 
 the war was over. 
 
 In March the fighting ceased in the neighborhood of Erz- 
 room and the relief party disbanded, Miss Graffam and Miss 
 Zenger starting together for Sivas. They had traveled not 
 quite half the distance when Miss Zenger contracted malignant 
 typhus and died in a German hospital at Erzingan. After the 
 burial Miss Graffam resumed her journey, walking much of the 
 way to relieve the sick or dying horses who could barely pull an 
 empty wagon, and making but a few miles' progress a day. It 
 was a heavily handicapped race with the disease she had good 
 reason to expect might overtake her any moment. The inns 
 were reeking with it, and the roads were scarred with bodies of 
 dead or dying people and horses. She would not ask for escort 
 to be sent from Sivas because of the danger of travel, but wrote 
 to her sister, Mrs. Partridge, saying that in case she was taken 
 sick there would be two days of consciousness and during that 
 interval she would wire for help. 
 
 When her arrival was delayed, two Armenian teachers 
 volunteered to go to her relief, an incomprehensible act to the 
 people of Sivas, who conceived of coercion as the only possible 
 motive for such an errand. They went four days' journey along 
 the pestilential road before they found her, horses spent, wagon 
 
 52 
 
demolished, and her plight so extreme that even Miss Graffam 
 could hardly find a way out. Four days more and she was safe 
 within the familiar, enclosed area in Sivas, over which waved the 
 flag of the United States! 
 
 It was almost time for Commencement when the absent 
 principal returned to her school, but there was no Commence- 
 ment for the class of 191 5 in the girls' school at Sivas. Instead 
 there was the Deportation Decree! The usual program was 
 followed, first the seizure and imprisonment of leading Armenian 
 men, then the expulsion of women and children from their 
 homes and the forced march. When the date of departure was 
 proclaimed, Miss Graffam went at once to the Vali to see what 
 could be done. Previously she had secured permission from the 
 Chief of Police to visit the men in prison, some of whom had been 
 teachers in the mission college and schools. Now she was to 
 obtain another concession from a Turkish official as unexpected 
 to herself as it was to him. When other expedients had failed, 
 she entreated the Vali that at least a few Armenians might be 
 left behind in Sivas. 
 
 "Why keep any behind?" parried the Vali. "They are 
 going safely, why separate families?" 
 
 A sudden resolve formed in Miss Graffam's mind. 
 
 "If the Armenians are going to be safely cared for, I intend 
 to accompany them on deportation." 
 
 The Vali was evidently nonplussed by this announcement 
 but made no comment. Miss Graffam went out from his pres- 
 ence to make preparation for the journey — another inexplicable, 
 voluntary journey into dangers unimaginable! 
 
 Nominally the government provided an ox-cart per family, 
 but no such provision was made for the pupils and teachers of 
 the mission schools and Miss Graffam furnished the equipment 
 herself. She procured two ox-carts, two horse arabas, five or 
 six donkeys and a supply of medicine, food and money. On the 
 seventh day of July the exodus took place, the Armenians con- 
 nected with the mission forming a section by themselves, about 
 three thousand in all. In her wagon Miss Graffam placed the 
 
 Si 
 
aged and feeble women, while she herself set out on foot, leading 
 a reluctant cow, the property of a poor woman, which otherwise 
 must have been left behind. And so the odd, pitiful procession 
 passed out of the city which should have been a "city of refuge" 
 into the "valley of the shadow of death!" 
 
 The first day's journey brought them to the summit of a 
 mountain where they spread their blankets and dropped down 
 in exhaustion to sleep. That night the gendarmes protected 
 them and they received no harm. At dusk of the next day they 
 approached a settlement, and the guards made a suspicious 
 reconnoiter ahead of the party. Presently the Kurdish villa- 
 gers came trooping out and robbed and plundered at will, while 
 the guards stood by and watched. This was the regular proce- 
 dure at every village, each depredation being more thorough 
 than the last. Blankets, rugs, donkeys, cows, anything the 
 pirates happened to want they secured on threat of death. 
 
 "We got accustomed to being robbed," said Miss Graffam, 
 but the next terror never could become familiar. As a special 
 concession to the Sivas Armenians because no revolutionary 
 movements had been detected among them, the men not al- 
 ready imprisoned were allowed to begin the journey with their 
 families. A doubtful boon since it only deferred the hour of 
 parting! In the fields outside a large village the company, as 
 yet unbroken, sat and waited the anticipated doom. Life was 
 stripped to the essentials in those awful hours. The sense of 
 eternity, without its illumination, had fallen upon the group. 
 And yet there was something unconquerably hopeful in the 
 Armenian nature for on the march a man came to Miss Graffam 
 and said: 
 
 "When we come to our last place you will open a school, 
 won't you? We do not want our children to be without 
 schools." 
 
 But now separation was impending, and as they faced its 
 advent, Miss Graffam turned to one of the teachers with a 
 question: 
 
 "How does it feel when death is approaching you?" 
 
 54 
 
"It is nothing," he replied, "but when I think of this whole 
 nation, I cannot stand it or see the right and justice in it all." 
 "How old are you?" she asked. 
 "Thirty-three," came the answer. 
 
 "Ah," said Miss Graffam, "nineteen hundred years ago a 
 Man was sacrificed at that age, and who knows but this tragedy 
 to the Armenians will be the one thing which will change their 
 fate; perhaps this tragedy of today will mean the beginning of 
 a new future." 
 
 Toward sunset, the gendarmes came and singled out the 
 men, two hundred of them, marching them away to the near-by 
 village. The last person to be seen in that vanishing group was 
 the aged deacon of the Protestant church, who slowly climbed 
 the hill behind the others. Only the very old or very young 
 were left, with one man, a teacher in the college, who chanced 
 to be small of stature. He was standing near a schoolgirl at 
 the crucial moment when the gendarmes appeared and, in a 
 flash of inspiration, she reached out and drew him under the 
 folds of her big sheet where he remained until the soldiers had 
 gone and darkness had fallen. Then he disguised himself and, 
 by shaving every night, passed off as a small boy. This role he 
 carried successfully as long as Miss Graffam was with the party 
 and for how long after she did not know. 
 
 At noon of the next day, not knowing what fate had be- 
 fallen their husbands and fathers, the women and children were 
 driven on, those who could not keep up with the prescribed 
 speed being killed or left to die. Miss Graffam counted fifty 
 who dropped from the ranks in one day, and many more escaped 
 her count. She saw them crazed and dying with thirst, she saw 
 them shot down if they went to the river to drink; she saw young 
 girls taken captive by the Kurds; and as far as her eye could 
 reach over the plain, she watched that endless, slow-moving 
 line of ox-carts, toiling along under the July sun. Whenever 
 any disaster befell it was reported to Miss Graffam who was kept 
 running to and fro from one end of the procession to the other, 
 the entire time. Upon her wagon she piled as many women and 
 
 55 
 
children as possible to save them from the incessant attacks of 
 Kurds working in the fields along the way. Her pupils followed 
 her lead and worked undauntedly, one girl lifting a baby from its 
 dead mother and carrying it until evening, another carrying a 
 dying woman until she breathed her last. Like all the rest, 
 Miss Graffam's clothes were torn into rags, and nerves were 
 equally rent with the strain. At the river called the Tokma Su 
 she ran ahead and stood upon the bridge in the midst of a crowd 
 of Kurds, pleading, protesting, until her strength was spent. 
 From the hills along the way they had been flinging stones upon 
 the Armenians as they plodded along in the valley below, help- 
 less victims of any devilish sport Turks and Kurds chose to 
 invent. 
 
 Once across the river and the American's progress was 
 challenged! Gendarmes intervened with orders for her to go 
 to Malatia and report to the governor. She was placed in a 
 wagon with an aged Armenian woman as servant and borne 
 away to the town where pleas and protests were unavailing and 
 she must needs sit in the window of the German Orphanage and 
 watch the girls and women whom she had so eagerly befriended 
 file past without her, as restive a captive as was ever thwarted 
 in her dearest plans. 
 
 For three weeks she was detained in Malatia and, in Miss 
 GrafTam's own words, the place was a counterpart of the worst 
 description of hell. She always kept carbolic acid on her win- 
 dow sill to stifle the odor of dead bodies. Birds and dogs gathered 
 in ravenous hordes at the scene of massacre. Miss GrafTam 
 made one trip to the market place but never went a second time. 
 Every afternoon at two o'clock the procession of doomed Ar- 
 menians, two or three thousand in number, passed her window. 
 Sometimes it took a full hour for them to pass! At the end of 
 the third week in this human inferno she was permitted to go 
 home to Sivas. 
 
 On the way back occurred the one and only event of her 
 career when Mary GrafTam acknowledged fear. She was pass- 
 ing through a village which bore a particularly unsavory repu- 
 
 56 
 
tation. The Armenian men were already dead and the Kurdish 
 inhabitants were "seeing red." A crowd collected about her 
 araba mocking and jeering. The mob spirit was gathering force 
 to spring upon its victim. One stone flung and the demon 
 would be let loose! In the confusion her driver had made a 
 timely disappearance and Miss GrafFam was left alone with the 
 aged woman she had retained as servant. Jumping into the 
 driver's seat she gave the Turks' call to their horses, lashed them 
 with the whip and galloped out of the astounded crowd who 
 stood gaping after her, crying "Aman, Aman Inshalla" and 
 thinking, "What manner of woman is this!" 
 
 Another exciting journey was finished and Miss Graffam 
 was safe in her familiar quarters in Sivas — familiar indeed in 
 external aspect but how distorted in spirit! Exciting journeys 
 and deranged homecomings seemed to be her common lot. 
 Upon arrival she was promptly informed of the latest official 
 edict, that the girls of the Swiss Orphanage were to be deported 
 the following day. Proceeding at once to the Vali she begged 
 that if the orphans were not wanted in Sivas, the missionaries 
 might be allowed to take them to America, Switzerland or some 
 other neutral country. To her surprise he replied with brusk 
 finality, "Let them stay and you stay with them." 
 
 Her next move was to establish connection with the Ar- 
 menian men in prison awaiting the death sentence. By some 
 shrewd trick of argument she circumvented the official and 
 procured a visitor's permit. There were about a thousand men 
 in prison and one or two hundred were being removed each 
 night to their mysterious doom. Every day Miss Graffam went 
 to the prison to say good-by, sometimes to give reassuring news 
 about their families, and once to share the terrific struggle of 
 one of her teachers who had been offered his freedom and a 
 chance to teach in a Turkish school if he would become Moslem. 
 In the end he decided he must face death as a Christian, since 
 his life represented a principle which he had taught for years and 
 could not abjure at will. There were others who decided differ- 
 ently and, by pretence or outward conformity to Islam, managed 
 
 57 
 
to save hundreds of their race from death. Thus it was an in- 
 tricate question to settle. 
 
 On the third morning after her return Miss Graffam entered 
 the prison to find its inmates vanished and the empty wagon 
 returning, empty save for the Greek driver and the tell-tale 
 heap of clothes ! By this time she herself was worn to a skeleton, 
 resembling a refugee in appearance, and with nerves so lacerated 
 that she was often afraid to be left alone. But there was no 
 time to give way to nerves or depression, for refugees from Mar- 
 sovan and other places came streaming in and their need was 
 immediate. Fifty girls from Marsovan College arrived in one 
 night, having escaped deportation because of a belated decree 
 exempting Protestants and Catholics. 
 
 The Orphanage with capacity for fifty-five, usually housed 
 twice that number. Turkish officials never discovered the 
 exact number of refugees harbored in the mission, for Miss 
 Graffam and her helpers always contrived to conceal them. 
 Large numbers of people came from the Black Sea district and 
 their condition was particularly destitute. Two of them Miss 
 Graffam purchased from the Turks for the sum of three liras. 
 
 The American orphanages were a refuge also for Armenian 
 girls who, by some miracle of deliverance, escaped from Turkish 
 harems. There were little girls of eight, older girls of twelve 
 and fourteen, children in years, who had lived through adven- 
 ture enough for a dozen lifetimes. To conceal these girls from 
 recapture was another chance for the missionary's courage and 
 ingenuity. Once a twelve-year-old girl was hidden in a barrel 
 in the attic, then disguised in a nurse's uniform and sent to a 
 doctor's house to elude the Turkish officer who was in pursuit. 
 
 Although 20,000 were sent into exile from Sivas, and there 
 were no Armenian residents left except a few hundred who had 
 become Moslems, yet in this city depopulated by Armenians 
 there was always work to be done for members of the afflicted 
 race. Miss Graffam's presence was like a magnet to draw the 
 unfortunate from any race group. Besides the orphan girls 
 there were regiments of Armenian soldiers stationed near Sivas, 
 
 c8 
 
mostly in construction camps, whose plight was desperate. 
 They were without uniforms, arms, and sufficient food and 
 clothing. Their suffering from cold, hunger and homesickness 
 was acute. Miss Graffam bought cloth and wool and her or- 
 phan girls sewed and knitted until several hundred under-gar- 
 ments and stockings were ready for distribution. She also 
 knew personally every man in every regiment and they came to 
 see her in such numbers, sometimes 200 in a day, that the 
 Turks were resentful and posted a prohibitory notice outside 
 her house, finally, as a punitive measure, killing twenty who tried 
 to secure access to her. Yet after their liberty was curtailed 
 Miss Graffam still found means of helping the soldiers through 
 the connivance of one of the doctors. 
 
 For a year and a half Armenian soldiers were employed for 
 the military benefit of Turkey, then seized and imprisoned. 
 Again Miss Graffam tried to save them through an appeal to the 
 German consul, but her efforts were unavailing and they were 
 led out of the city and killed along the road. Two thousand 
 Armenian soldiers were sacrificed, in the midst of a war when 
 fighting men were at a premium, the only survivors being con- 
 verts to Islam or those few who eluded the guard and fled to the 
 mountains and caves of the earth. Even in their elusive hiding 
 places Miss Graffam contrived to reach them with food and 
 clothing. 
 
 The story of the "crazy bride" belongs to this period, the 
 Armenian woman who feigned insanity and, with the liberty 
 accorded in Turkey to the mentally unsound, went about un- 
 molested carrying messages and material aid to the men in 
 hiding. After the Armistice was signed she abandoned her 
 role, and the Turks, upon perceiving themselves the victims of 
 her clever craft, became so enraged they seized and beat her 
 almost to death. 
 
 Even before the Armenian soldiers had been removed from 
 prison, the American missionaries had received an eviction de- 
 cree of their own, issued by the military authorities in Sivas. 
 In May, 1916, the mission buildings were commandeered for 
 
 59 
 
military usage and every American ordered to leave the city, 
 except Miss Graffam and Miss Fowle who were assigned to small 
 quarters in the city compound. The orphans were crowded in- 
 to a house near by and left unmolested to the guardianship of the 
 two women. Miss Fowle, as well as Miss Graffam, was a past 
 master in dealing with Turkish officials, having perfect familiari- 
 ty with the language and understanding of Turkish character. 
 Together they made an invincible team and the work they ac- 
 complished that summer and fall was stupendous. 
 
 Grief for the murdered soldiers was still fresh when thou- 
 sands of refugees from the East, Moslems and Greeks among 
 them, came staggering into Sivas, their cry for help expressed 
 in their pinched faces and scantily clad bodies. With no mis- 
 sion property to utilize, Miss Graffam undertook to hire quar- 
 ters for these refugees, sheltering them as best she could in 
 houses, stables and woodsheds. Every day and all day she sat 
 in her office receiving applicants, hearing their stories, instruct- 
 ing her helpers, investigating every appeal, calculating expendi- 
 tures, always cool-headed, sane but nerve-racked by the strain 
 of refusing such elemental needs. She could have spent four 
 times the money at her disposal. In the midst of labors like 
 these Miss Fowle fell at her post, the victim of typhus fever, and 
 Miss Graffam was left alone in the tortured city of Sivas. 
 
 The tale of Mary Graffam's achievement in Turkey reaches 
 its climax in the relief work she organized for the destitute 
 refugees. Originally school principal, then head nurse of the 
 Turkish military hospital, orphanage director, advocate of the 
 helpless, shepherd of an uncounted flock, she became finally the 
 promoter of an industrial undertaking which developed into a 
 many-sided and productive enterprise. She started a factory 
 which employed 200 women in the manufacture of flannels and 
 sweaters for the Turkish army. When the presence of Arme- 
 nian workers in the factory was challenged she was ready with 
 the reply, "They are working for the government," in this in- 
 stance a conclusive argument. 
 
 She leased a farm in the hills above the city and secured an 
 
 60 
 
option on its purchase, valuable land not because it is supposed 
 to have belonged to the former German emperor, but because it 
 controls all the water power in the vicinity, enough to operate 
 five grist mills, and vastly more when it shall be further devel- 
 oped. It was Miss Graffam's linguistic skill that enabled her 
 to secure this prize land, for she was on easy terms of inter- 
 course with the German agents in the city through whom she 
 made the transaction. She cultivated extensive crops upon 
 her farm, and in vision projected an agricultural college upon the 
 former crown property. 
 
 "I could make everybody here in Sivas work," wrote Miss 
 GrafTam, "if I could only get them clothed and in shape to work, 
 for there is a great demand for sweaters and we can get wool." 
 
 The task which Miss Graffam undertook in the chaos of 
 war was carried on and extended after the Armistice was signed 
 and the seventeen relief workers arrived in Sivas. Her war 
 orphanage expanded into several large institutions, harboring 
 more than iioo boys and girls. The industries she created 
 grew into an elaborate project, comprising shops for carpentry, 
 tailoring, weaving, a foundry, blacksmith's shop and shoe shop. 
 Miss GrafTam was appointed director of the American relief 
 unit, and with a more elastic treasury plus a corps of trained 
 workers, the enterprise promptly assumed new dimensions. 
 
 In the summer of 1919 Major-General Harbord and his 
 staff spent two days in Sivas, and the head of the American 
 Mission to the Near East had interesting contact with the 
 woman missionary whom he described as the "outstanding 
 figure in this part of Asia." In The World 's Work for June, 1920, 
 in his article on Turkish Nationalists, General Harbord gives 
 two columns to the narration of Miss Graffam's achievement. 
 
 "Her experiences," he asserts, "have never been duplicated 
 in the history of womankind. Her knowledge of Turkish, Ar- 
 menian and German enabled her to play a part in the stirring 
 events of the last six years which has probably never been 
 equalled by any other woman in the chronicles of missionary 
 effort." 
 
 61 
 
This is the estimate of the American official upon the work 
 of the missionary. What then is the verdict of that contra- 
 dictory country of Turkey upon her ability and value? 
 
 That verdict had already been pronounced for, in 19 17, the 
 decoration of the Red Crescent was awarded Mary Louise 
 Graffam, with the imperial trade, "as a reward for her self- 
 devotion in the cause of the sick and ill-fated ones." 
 
 About the same time prisoners of war interned in Sivas sent 
 a letter to the International Red Cross, commending the "no- 
 ble and unfailing devotion of Miss Graffam to the cause of the 
 destitute and to the prisoners of war without distinction of 
 race or religion. Prodigious her benefactions," the letter reads, 
 "to the sick French, English and Russians, clothing some, giving 
 pecuniary aid to others; no unfortunate one knocks at the door 
 in vain." 
 
 But despite the official tribute of recognition Miss Graffam 
 received, the annoyances she suffered at the hands of the Turkish 
 government form no trifling episode in the history of her career. 
 Repeatedly she was ejected from her living quarters; five times 
 her orphanage was moved; her financial accounts had to be 
 buried first in one place then another to escape the coveted 
 possession of the Turks; jewelry which Armenians had left in 
 her keeping was stealthily transferred from one impromptu 
 safety vault to another. Twice the order was issued that her 
 house should be searched, and once she was tried in court for 
 treason. She was wont to remark that if ever she was in a place 
 where the police did not visit her every day she should be con- 
 tent! 
 
 After Miss Fowle's death the Turks became so menacing 
 that Miss Graffam made up her mind that she should sooner or 
 later die at their hands. She reached this conclusion deliberate- 
 ly and, having reached it, resolved to sell her life as dearly as 
 possible. With death as a definite expectation she became 
 completely emancipated from fear. Willingness to die brought 
 release from bondage unto life's restraints. In their own lan- 
 guage she remonstrated freely with the Turks, appealing to 
 
 62 
 
their religion for condemnation of their deeds. "What answer 
 will you give at the Day of Judgment?" she demanded. To the 
 logic of her demand they began slowly to yield, being well aware 
 that their conduct was contrary to the ethics of Islam. Grad- 
 ually they restored the property they had confiscated, and by 
 other signs showed themselves amenable to the regal fearlessness 
 of her life. 
 
 The mental situation of both parties involved, presents an 
 interesting psychological study. In her own mind Miss Graf- 
 fam had made the final sacrifice, had gone the entire length of 
 consecration. Accordingly she was set free from every personal 
 consideration and the effect upon her own actions as well as 
 upon the minds of others was like an irresistible driving force. 
 
 In the summer of 191 9, two American travelers met Miss 
 Graffam in the city of Constantinople. Concluding by her 
 presence there that she must be on her way to America, they 
 inquired, "How soon are you sailing?" 
 
 "Sailing?" she replied, "for America? I am not down here 
 now to go home; I just came to grind a few axes!" 
 
 "Axes" for Mary Graffam then and always meant just 
 treatment for her afflicted people, the Armenian subjects of 
 Turkey. 
 
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