LIFE AND DEATH

Tarsus, 
Saturday, 
April seventeenth, 
Sometime in the morning.

Mother dear:

Once that wind changed, we slept. Mary and I slept from one to three. Baby Rogers is a good little chap. Yes, my dear, "I laid me down and slept. I awaked, for the Lord sustained me." This is the way to learn a text—live it.

When we got awake, it was daylight. Shouting again at the gate. I ran to my study window that looks down into the street outside of the gate. Excited men were pushing and struggling. Their cries were shrill. My heart sank. Was the killing to be renewed under our eyes? Then Mary said, "They are selling bread, and want six metallics a loaf." The business of life goes on in spite of cataclysms. Selling bread! In the midst of life we are in death. Yes, but in the midst of death we are in life. The family goes home to dinner after the funeral. When you are living the cataclysm, however, your vision is not adjusted to the small events. The matter-of-fact things are happening because they always happen and must happen.

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A door outside slammed. Then the door into Mary's room opened. In came Mother Christie, looking as though she hadn't slept. The steel-rimmed spectacles used indifferently by herself and Daddy Christie, were pushed away up on her forehead. She said briskly: "Another baby! a dear little boy, and not a rag to put on him!" I went to my steamer trunk to fetch three little flannel petticoats and two kimonos. Down jumped the spectacles without her putting her hand on them. "No, no, my child, I cannot take them." Before I had pressed them into her arms, she had finished her protesting. Away she went, murmuring: "Give and spend and the Lord will send. That's what you think." Well, there may be time for me to make more petticoats.

They say that eight hundred houses have been burned. Many people were still in the houses. If they showed themselves, or tried to get out by windows or roofs, they were shot. It was death either way. We fear that few Armenians are alive in Tarsus outside of our compound and in the Catholic Mission nearby. The whole Armenian quarter, right up to my windows, is burning. The bright blaze persists in many places where there is yet much to feed upon.

Saturday afternoon.

We did not think of breakfast. Mary had fallen asleep again after nursing the baby. I munched biscuits in my bedroom, and then I undid on the bed the bundle I had made up in the night. The piece of flannel might be needed sooner than I could use it. So I stretched it out on the mattress, and cut four flannel petticoats. With the blinds barricaded, my only light was what filtered through the slits in the shutter of the side window. I had to keep doing something, and I did not want to go out to talk to any one. So I found my thread and thimble, and began to make up the petticoats.

It may have been minutes or hours. I shall never know, for I had not looked at the clock when I woke. Suddenly I heard cries outside, that were taken up by the thousands in the college yard. In the mingling of voices I caught my husband's name. "Steady now," I thought. "Is this life or death?" Then Jeanne's golden head appeared at my door.

"Herbert's here," said Jeanne.

I hurried out into the study, and ran to the window with Mary and Jeanne. Daddy Christie and Herbert were at the gate, surrounded by regular soldiers. But we did not see the tall figure of Miner Rogers. Joy and apprehension were strangely mingled. I ran first to the door leading to the balcony. Up the steps came Daddy Christie. Herbert and Henri were behind, evidently trying to keep people from following them. Daddy Christie said, "Thank God, you're safe: where is Mary?" I led him to our study. People seemed to rise up from nowhere, crowding about us. Jeanne had instinctively taken Mary into her own room, and Daddy Christie followed.

It may have been minutes or hours. I shall not know. After the lapse of a few hours, it seems to me that I am writing fiction. Perhaps I make it up as I go along. Never again shall I believe in the accuracy of testimony given on the witness-stand about what happened in moments of stress.

Turning so that I looked towards the double-doors, I saw Herbert standing there. Surging thoughts went through me. One was that I must not let these emotions reach the baby. I clinched will and muscles to safeguard the little thing. The other thought was to get over beside Herbert. As I made my way through the crowd toward the door, I thought: have I died and Herbert too? What was that I suffered last night? How can I know? Then the brain in my head told me: touch him, and if he is warm, it is not death. I took his left hand in my right and with my other hand touched his face. It was warm.

"Where is Miner Rogers?" "He is dead," came the answer. Herbert's free hand reached back of him for the door-knob. He went slowly out on the balcony, closing the door behind him, as if he did not know what he was doing.

Herbert has no recollection of this meeting. We figure out that it is because he had already been reassured about me, for he distinctly remembers seeing me at the study window as he came through the street below. The second his anxiety was relieved about me, his mind concentrated on the terrible news he and Dr. Christie were bringing to Mary.

I turned back toward the room to realize that Dr. Christie was telling Mary. This was too much for me and I went into our bedroom beyond. One sees on the stage, and reads in novels, meetings like this. Ours was not dramatic. It was natural and human. Herbert was entering the bedroom from the other door at the same moment, and when he saw me he asked: "Can you make some tea? I am hungry."

I investigated my washstand to see what I could find in the way of food. Two Turkish officers had followed Herbert into the bedroom. They were hungry, too. I took the lid off the chafing-dish. Inside were bits of bacon. The officers must have wondered why I laughed—Herbert, too. Pent-up feelings were expressed in that laugh. I realized that I had presence of mind enough not to give bacon to Moslems. The pig is an unclean beast to non-Christians. Typewriters have been smuggled into Turkey with perfect ease when packed in the middle of a box of hams.

One officer was the Mutesarif of Namrun, where we spent a honeymoon month last summer. He came, I suppose, to assure us of his friendliness. You ought to see how he drank tea. Just like a Russian! And he stopped eating Uneeda biscuits only when the tin was empty. The other officer was an Albanian who spoke French. Herbert had picked him out in Adana to bring the bodyguard of soldiers that he had compelled the Vali to give him. Herbert says we can trust him. He is under Herbert's orders, with the soldiers, as long as we need him. Herbert had no time to give me details of these days. He went out with the officers as soon as he had eaten, after telling me to stay in my rooms. Miss Talbot came in. Then Jeanne and Mary. I could give them no word of what had happened in Adana. They told me about Miner.

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Herbert came back soon with Daddy Christie. They had been arranging about posting the soldiers of Herbert's guard. But they said that the massacre was over, and no attack against us was to be anticipated. What they had feared was the fire. If that had driven us out in the mob—— But why talk of what might have happened? What did happen was terrible enough. Miner gone, and with him Mr. Maurer, a Hadjin missionary, shot dead. Herbert and Lawson Chambers, a Y.M.C.A. traveling secretary, were down in the town when the massacre started. They did not get back to the Armenian quarter at all. They telegraphed Major Doughty-Wylie. He and Mrs. Doughty-Wylie took the last train that went through to Adana. The Major was shot in the street. His arm held up in front of him saved him. Herbert says he left him this morning in bed, and with a fever. Daddy Christie told us what had happened at the Mission and in the Armenian quarter. Then Herbert began his story. He had just started when there was a knock at the door. Someone wanted Dr. Christie. He went out. In a moment he came back and called Herbert. We waited. That is woman's sphere—waiting.

Young Miner cried in the next room. Mary went to him. What a blessing she had that baby! I told Jeanne she had better go and stand by her. Herbert returned—alone. He had a bit of paper in his hand. He gave it to me, saying that it had just been brought through from Mersina. It read: "No ships yet—massacre expected any minute. Cannot rely on authorities." It had been brought by an Armenian who reported the country full of Kurds. We seemed safe for the moment in Tarsus. Herbert put it right up to me. The Albanian officer and the soldiers were under his command. The train he had seized in Adana was still at the station. He could try to get down the line to Mersina. His coming—with the soldiers—might stave off the massacre for a few hours. The ships were bound to reach Mersina soon.

I had no choice, Mother. It all seemed so simple—the only thing to do. It is still life or death, and we don't know which. But we do know each step as we go along. I put my hands on Herbert's shoulders to hold myself up. For I only pretend to strength and courage. I really have neither. And I said to him: "You are all the world to me, but I must remember that you are only one man to the world." He answered: "Of course. That's the way it is. I shall try my best to get back to-night." He kissed me and went out. We would both have lost our nerve if we had talked longer. I'm glad he hurried. I threw myself on the bed and cried. Then I remembered Mary, and was ashamed of myself.

Just for something to do I have tried to go back over the day and put it down for you. People have come in. When they saw I was writing they went away. Now Mother Christie arrives to tell me that I simply must come and eat. They have managed to get a real meal together—the first in two days. It is way after six o'clock.

April eighteenth.

Herbert did not go to Mersina. He came back last night—or rather I brought him back. At supper—a meal of sorrow—Daddy Christie received a telegram. The lines are working. That has been a mystery these past few days. They stopped the railway, but why didn't they cut the telegraph? And, in the midst of killing and looting and burning, we have received telegrams delivered coolly by an employé who stepped over the dead to get to us. The telegram was from Adana, stating that the British cruiser Swiftsure had arrived at Mersina.

I felt like a condemned man reprieved at the gallows. But had Herbert started? A little while before he had sent a soldier up from the station with a message saying that he found his locomotive gone, and had been trying to get another out from Mersina by using the railway's private wire. He might still be there. He need not undertake the trip now. Broken viaducts in the dark—rails torn up—Kurds wildly prancing around and shooting from their horses. I said nothing to the others at the table. I slipped quietly out of the room, hurried up to our apartment, put on my riding-boots and Herbert's raincoat (I am glad I am pretty tall—only the sleeves needed a tuck), and made my way to the gate. I had the barn lantern we use in the stable. I did not want to risk Socrates or any of the Armenian boys. They were still killing stray ones—especially at night. The four soldiers left remonstrated. They could not understand me any more than I could understand them. They tried to bar the way. But they did not dare touch me. So they decided to resign themselves to the inevitable. Two of them came along with me.

It was a weird mile with only the lantern to light us. One soldier went in front, finding the path, and the other was beside me. From occasional zigzags I suspected what we were avoiding. Mercifully I could not see. Finally we reached the station. Herbert and his officer and the telegraph operator were in the little ticket office. Herbert was at the end of his patience—he just couldn't get up a locomotive. When he heard my news, he was very happy. The Albanian officer was not. He was for the adventure. Doubted if the news was true. Why hadn't the Mersina operator mentioned it? Just then a message went through for Adana about a special train for the British Government. The operator told us. We knew then that it was true.

Back we went, all of us. I did not ask Herbert any more about his interrupted story of the days in Adana. I did not want to hear. He did not want to tell. We found a funny story that had been sent to us for Christmas, and of which we had read only a few chapters. We reread those—and the rest of the book, laughing ourselves to sleep to save our sanity.

WHY?

Tarsus, April twenty-second.

Dearest Mother:

I have been sewing and helping care for the wounded.

Mrs. Christie gave me the first Relief money that came, a Turkish gold-piece, worth four dollars and forty cents. With it I bought a roll of flannel. On Jeanne's balcony I fixed a hand-run sewing machine. There I basked in the sunshine as I worked on baby night-gowns all day Sunday. When I tell you that I made twelve nighties in a day you know the machine did speed-work. Our caldrons are all in use heating water so that mothers can wash their children and their children's clothes, and take advantage of the sunshine to dry things. Every time I finish a nightie, it means another baby can have a bath. We have contrived sanitary arrangements, and small trenches have been dug for drainage. Queer the Turks never thought of turning off our water. It could have been done easily through the surface pipes.

Dr. Peeples of the Covenanter Mission was the first doctor to come through. He got here before his supplies. I shall never forget his face when I showed him my table with the Red Cross kit. He appropriated the medicine-case and some bandages and marched off with them. Dr. Peeples and I dressed wounds. But Mother Christie stopped that on account of "my condition." Afterwards we compromised. I installed a table inside my door and worked away preparing medicines and dressings. I handed these out to the doctor on a tray, curving my wrist around the door-jamb and so was spared the pain of seeing the patients. I do not take stock in the popular notion that I might "mark the child." Only the pleasant things that happen to me can touch that child.

The arrival of the British battleship Swiftsure has saved Mersina. Yesterday the commander went to Adana by special train. On his return he stopped at Tarsus and invited Dr. Christie and Herbert to accompany him to Mersina. They accepted with alacrity. Early this morning Herbert boarded the Swiftsure and had a chat with the captain. As a result, the captain allowed six officers to come to Tarsus with Herbert by special train to-day. We had them for lunch and took them all over the city, showing them the work of the mob. When the refugee children saw these officers arrive, the poor kiddies were terrified. Many ran and hid, and the wee ones found their mothers as quickly as possible. The officers' uniforms were the cause, according to the kiddies' own words. How is that for proof that Turkish soldiery helped in the massacring!

We believe that one hundred were killed in Tarsus and four hundred in villages nearby. Adana's murders are in the thousands. The killing of Miner brings the tragedy right into our mission family. Mary is supernaturally calm and brave. Not only does she do everything for her baby, but she is in the midst of all the relief work.

While Herbert was in Mersina, Mrs. Dodds of the Covenanter Mission urged him to take me there so as to get me away from the danger of contracting some disease. She also urged that the discomfort of our now crowded quarters at Tarsus was not good for me. We have nearly five thousand refugees on the college grounds. If railroad communication is reestablished before my baby comes, we are going to accept the invitation of Mrs. Dodds. I do not know from day to day and cannot plan.

Mother, if I am not ready for the skeptics, and for those who smile and jeer, yes, jeer is the word, at missionaries! The stick-in-the-muds who thought we came all this long way because we wanted adventure must be wagging their narrow little heads and wagering that we are getting more than we bargained for. I am a great believer in letting every one have his point of view. But generally one finds that the people who boast that they are liberal and broad-minded are the most bigoted people on earth. They assert their point of view, but are unwilling to admit another's right to his. One does not have to believe in missions or want to be a missionary. But one does not have to ridicule missionary effort and missionaries, either. Among the missionaries here, women as well as men, not a single one has shown the white feather. Quite the contrary, I doubt if any other score of Americans in the United States would have upheld better the glorious traditions of our race for coolness, resourcefulness, and ability to grapple suddenly with a crisis. The American women here are made of the same stuff as my several times great-grandmother in Lebanon Valley, who carried the gun around the room together with the broom as she did her sweeping.

I can never think of the Armenians without a stirring of the heart in affection and admiration. How can Americans resist the call to help people who have the courage to die for their faith? One has to be brought to their level of suffering, to be put into the situation in which they have lived during centuries of Turkish oppression, to understand them. Mother, they are heroes—these Armenians, children and grand-children of heroes. It is nothing spectacular that they have done, except in periods of massacre like this. But all along they have kept the faith, they have preserved their distinct nationality, when an easy path lay before them, were they willing to turn from Christ to Mohammed. I see now so vividly what they have been born to, what they grow up from early childhood fearing. Is not the greatest heroism in the world the silent endurance of oppression that cannot be remedied, the bending of the neck to the yoke when there is no other way, the living along normally under the shadow of a constant and justified fear of death and worse?

What saved the Tarsians the other night? Any dread of international complications? Any respect for our Government? What do the Kurds know about us? Nothing. Last summer when we were camping far up in the Taurus mountains above the timber-line, a fellow of the type who has been doing the dirty work for the party in power at Stambul, came along to talk with us. We had chopped down a scrub pine-tree to build a fire and were sitting around the fire after supper. We were eating walnuts. I offered him some. With them I gave salt. He took both walnuts and salt, touched them to his forehead by way of thanks, and began to eat. Socrates expressed satisfaction that the man had done this—said we could be surer now that he would not turn fierce dogs loose the next day, when we broke camp. In talking to the man, I asked him what he knew about my country. He was a shepherd, and had never seen a town bigger than Tarsus. He replied, "There are a great many Americans in America, at least five thousand, all very rich and all very kind."

What saved the Tarsians? St. Paul's College. Those people have had the vision held up before them, and some of its light must have got into their dark hearts. I keep thinking of the way Jesus forgave people because they just didn't know what they were doing. I do not believe for a minute that it was the American flag that saved the Christian population of this town. The Stars and Stripes mean nothing to them. It is the way Daddy and Mother Christie have lived before these Turks all these years that did it.

Listen to this, and you will see what I mean. Three hundred refugees owe their lives directly to one act of thoughtful kindness. Sometime before the massacre, Dr. Christie heard that the only son of a village Sheik had died. He got on his horse and went straight out to comfort the old father. The news came late in the day, so that Daddy Christie was obliged to make the trip in the night. I have seen the Sheik several times myself. He came one day and invited Herbert and me to go hunting with him. He is a superb specimen. In the midst of the heat and hatred of last Friday, the Sheik appeared with some three hundred Armenians. The order to massacre had come, "and a massacre is good hunting, you know," he blandly remarked. "As I was about to go forth, I reflected that the people here were Dr. Christie's friends. Cannot see why you like them," he added, "but seeing you do, here they are." The old man, of course, is a Moslem. He told us he found some of those he brought in hiding in the swamps, not far from his home, "lying in the water, with just their noses sticking out to breathe," he laughingly explained.

ABDUL HAMID'S LAST DAY

Mersina, 
April twenty-fifth.

Mother dear:

I wish you knew right now that we are at the Dodds in Mersina. It would relieve your mind of anxiety that must be weighing on you. But we cannot send an optimistic, reassuring cablegram. In the first place it would not be true. Then no message must go out whose chance publication in the newspapers would tend to make the world believe that danger here is passed. The Powers might relax what diplomatic pressure they are exercising at Constantinople—might even recall warships or stop others that we hear are coming. Herbert is getting out the news by smuggling to Cyprus. He feels the responsibility of every word that is telegraphed. So we send you no message at all. There is still fear of a second and a worse outbreak. The massacre is not over yet.

Early yesterday morning we learned that a train would go down the line to Mersina at the usual hour. I packed what baby things I had left, and a steamer trunk with a few of our clothes. Miss Talbot said she was ready. My Armenian physician saw that the chance was excellent to get to the coast in our company. He had a valid reason for accompanying me. We took his whole family under our wing. His brother, a boy just turning into the twenties, has lost his mind—we hope only temporarily—as a result of the strain we have been under. The boy got it in his head that I alone could save him. He has been camping outside our door, and fumbling with our shutters at night. My Sub-Freshmen kept an eye on him, but I have had to humor him. As he is my physician's brother, and there has been no way of secluding him, I have had to do this. The boy insisted on sitting in my compartment on the journey yesterday. He kept me in sight. Once arrived in Mersina, they were able to take him away to a friend's house.

We reached Mersina in time for lunch, where Mrs. Dodds—the soul of kindness and solicitude—had kept rooms for us in her apartment. Mrs. Dodds' little daughter, Mary, is a wonderful child—just like her mother in wanting to be constantly doing things for other people. The atmosphere of this home is so sweet and wholesome that it makes me proud of my Covenanter ancestry and wonder if certain religious beliefs I have always thought were narrow and absurd have not their place and their reason. I asked Herbert about Covenanters last night, and found that he knew less than I did. For a parson just out of Princeton Seminary, my husband is astonishingly ignorant of theology. He doesn't seem to know or care any more about doctrines than I do. Until last night, we had never talked about theology, and then the conversation languished after a few sentences.

Just after lunch two Turkish transports appeared off Mersina. They came inside the line of warships, and began to disembark troops in the barges that went out immediately to greet them. From the windows of the Dodds' living-room we could see the barges returning laden with soldiers. My eyes would not shut tight enough to dim the flash of the sunshine on the waves and on the blood-red fezzes. Herbert declared that he must go down to the scala to see them land. I did not want to prevent him, for I felt just as he did. Why couldn't I go too? It didn't seem to be "just the thing for one in my condition," but you know, Mother, that I can't live without exercise, and I have been impressing now for nearly a year upon Herbert two things: that I need out-of-doors as much as a fish needs water; and that I can go anywhere and do anything he does. I shall never let him get the idea into his head that I am barred from phases of his life just because I am a woman! Not a bit of it! Herbert had to take his wife along.

A disreputable looking lot they were, wretchedly clad and shod, and topped off with mussy, faded fezzes. We were told that they had come from Beirut to restore order in Cilicia. They had taken part in the Macedonian movement last summer, and were regiments whose officers adhered to the "Young Turk" movement, and could be relied upon to check any attempt to renew the massacres. There was much effervescence in the town. Groups were talking excitedly. Herbert and I were crazy for news. The last we heard was that Mahmud Shevket Pasha's army was moving on Constantinople. The regiments lined the main street on the way to the railway station. Something was going on—we could not tell what. Suddenly they cheered—all together. The cheering was taken up by the crowd. The band began to play. The regiments wheeled from attention, and continued their march.

We went into a Greek shop. "What does all this mean?" we asked. The proprietor eyed us in astonishment. "Don't you understand?" he answered. "Abdul Hamid has been deposed, and his imprisoned brother proclaimed sultan. The soldiers are cheering for Mohammed V. The authorities here kept back the news. They didn't want to make the announcement until the troops unquestionably loyal to the New Régime were landed."

There was much anxiety during the rest of the afternoon. The Christians were nervous, Greeks and Syrians as well as Armenians. The British have landed a few marines, and established a wig-wag station on top of a house near us. People began to come for refuge to the American mission at nightfall.

We have rumors of a second massacre at Adana this morning.

THE YOUNG TURKS AND THE
TOY FLEET

Mersina, 
April twenty-ninth.

Dear Mother:

I suppose that baby doesn't come because I'm too busy and the time is not propitious. There are more important things to think about and to do. Sounds unmaternal and abnormal, doesn't it? But just like other girls I had my dreams of how these days of waiting would be. And up to several weeks ago I plied the needle vigorously, and thought a lot about how many of each wee garment would be necessary, and what sort of blanket would wash best. I hesitated a long time before deciding which dress was the prettiest for IT to be baptized in. Now I don't know how many garments I have. I haven't even made a complete inventory of what we brought from Tarsus. We are too engrossed in the duties and problems that each day brings forth to think at all about the morrow. Honestly, Mother, during the four days we have been in Mersina, maternity hasn't had much of a place in my mind—I mean, of course, my own maternity. Heaven knows we have the babies coming in abundance all the time around us, and there is everything to be done for them.

I wrote you of the landing of the Turkish regiments from Beirut on the day we learned of Abdul Hamid's deposition. They went to Adana the same day, and started that night a second massacre more terrible than the first. The Armenians had given up their arms. On the advice of the foreign naval officers—trusting in the warships here at Mersina—they accepted the assurance of the Government that the "rioting" was over. So they were defenseless when the Young Turk regiments came. The butchery was easier. I spare you details. I wish to God I could have spared them to myself. Most of our Adana friends who escaped the first massacre must have been killed since last Saturday. The few who have reached Mersina are like the messengers that came to Job. Adana is still hell. The soldiers set fire to the French Mission buildings, and are going each night after other foreign property. The American Girls' Boarding School was evacuated. The teachers and some girls who were saved arrived yesterday, and are with us. One of our American teachers has typhoid, and reached us on a stretcher.

Herbert brought me here from Tarsus to get away from the contagion that might come from the crowding of refugees in our compound. It is now worse here than it was in Tarsus. And this morning word came to us that we must be ready at any moment to move to the French Consulate. The captains of the warships had a meeting last night, and decided to defend the French and German consulates in case of trouble. They notified the local authorities that if killing began in Mersina three hundred German, French and British sailors would be landed with machine-guns to protect foreigners. The idea is to gather the foreigners together, and let the Armenians and other native Christians shift for themselves. Of course we could not enter into any such scheme as that. The Dodds would under no circumstances desert those who have taken refuge with them. Anyway, we Americans are invited only by courtesy. Ships of the other Great Powers are here. American ships are supposed to be en route. But we have not seen them yet. We wonder if the new Administration is going to continue the supine policy of Mr. Roosevelt, who always refused to do anything for Americans and American interests in this part of the world. I used to think that missionaries looked to Washington for help and protection. Now I know that the United States is known in Turkey only by the missionaries. If our flag has any prestige or honor, it is due to men like Daddy Christie, and not to the Embassy in Constantinople or the few Consuls scattered here and there.

At the station, soldiers are turning back the Armenians who have managed to slip into trains at Adana and Tarsus. From a long distance one can see, when riding in the train, the warships in the harbor, flying the flags of the "protecting" Powers, whose obligation to make secure life and liberty for Armenians was solemnly entered into by the Treaty of Berlin. One does not expect much of Russia: the treaty was imposed upon her. But England, France, Germany, Austria, Italy—they all have warships at Mersina. Armenian refugees, fleeing from the massacre at Adana, which occurred right under the nose of the English, French, Germans, Austrians and Italians, see these warships as the train draws into Mersina station. Turkish soldiers, of the same regiments who massacred them three days ago, bar the way. Back they must go to death.

Herbert and I meet the trains. We look for the chance to smuggle friends through. We got H—— B—— through yesterday. The Swiss stationmaster, Monsieur B——, remonstrated hotly with Herbert about allowing me to come to the station. "It is no place for your wife," he declared. "There might be bloodshed any minute, if a refugee resists." But I held my ground. I knew H—— B—— was going to try to get on this train. He had money to bribe with, and could travel first-class. Mother, I managed to slip into the first-class coach just as the train stopped, and came out the other end leaning heavily on H—— B——'s arm. We left the station through the waiting-room, and none said a word or stopped us. H—— B—— was safe. Herbert couldn't have done it. The Turks, for all their cruelty, have a curious chivalry upon which I banked. I was not mistaken. H—— B—— kept my arm all the way to the Dodds. The poor boy is in agony. He has just heard that his father, a wealthy merchant of Alexandretta, was killed, and his mother and sister—well, I'll leave it to you to guess.

But this adventure is nothing to one I had late in the afternoon of the twenty-seventh. Herbert had gone for news to the wigwagging station the British have established on a villa just in front of Major Doughty-Wylie's. I thought there might still be some oranges in the bazaar. It was an excuse to walk. I cannot stay indoors—no matter what happens. It wasn't far, anyhow. Just a little way down our street. As I was returning, I heard "Won't you come home, Bill Bailey," coming from somewhere. It struck me as curious. I stopped. The whistling continued staccato and insistent. It came from a narrow side street. I waited until the patrol had passed along, and then whistled in turn, "Every night the papers say," and stopped. Immediately it was taken up: "There's a robbery in the park." I decided to investigate. Several houses along, I heard a whisper, "Mrs. Gibbons." Under the stoop was an American Armenian, whom I had met during the winter in Adana. He had been waiting for some one he knew to pass on the main street. He was in rags—had worked his way overland somehow from Adana. He would be arrested if he tried to make the Mission. Patrols were passing constantly. I told him to wait where he was. I went back to the Dodds, put on Herbert's raincoat, stuffed a cap in the pocket, and returned to the side street. The Armenian refugee could cover himself completely in the coat. I told him to pull the cap well down over his ears. He walked back with me. It was no trouble at all. The young man has money, and an American passport. The latter is no good to him. As he can pay, we think it possible to smuggle him somehow aboard a ship.[5]

Almost all who have reached Mersina, however, are women and children. For the men are killed on sight. The refugees in the Dodds' compound are of my sex. They are husbandless, fatherless, sonless. Now we know that the only difference between Young and Old Turks is that the Young Turks are more energetic and thorough in their massacring. None would succeed in escaping the dragnet were it not for the fact that Armenians look and dress—and many of them speak—just like Turks. Refugees are not easily detected.

My doctor has gone. The day after we reached Mersina, he had a chance to get passage with his family to Cyprus. I urged him to go. I had Miss Talbot, and I could not have on my mind the responsibility of his remaining just to take care of me. I am glad he left when the going was good. Now it is practically impossible. The scala, from which the little boats go out to the ships, is carefully guarded. The Young Turks are taking "strict measures" to put down "the rebellion"! Armenians who try to escape from the Adana butcher's pen are hauled before the court-martial. According to the Turkish reasoning, attempting to avoid death is proof of an Armenian's guilt.

As I write these awful things—a few weeks ago I should have called them incredible things—I see from my window the half-moon of warships a mile out to sea. They ride quietly at anchor. Launches are all the time plying to and fro between ships and shore. That is the extent of their activity.

A NEW LIFE

Mersina, 
May twelfth.

Grandmother dear:

I think it was old Thales (I'm nearer the Greek philosophers out here than I ever was at college) who held that the earth was nothing but certain elements in a state of constant change. Everything is changing all the time. And the inhabitants of the earth have the same chance and luck as the earth, and follow the same law. It is well expressed from the standpoint of the moment of time in which one is placed by the favorite Turkish proverb: "This also shall pass!" Typically Turkish, that proverb: for the Turk never interprets any event, never tackles the solution of any problem, except in terms of himself and the present. Yesterday is like to-morrow. It is a waste of time to worry over either. In crises Turkish philosophy is excellent. It helps a lot to create nerve and maintain fortitude if only you can keep saying to yourself with conviction: "This also shall pass!"

Scrappie is beside me as I write, in the reed basket we bought from the Fellahin. I am propped just high enough on the pillows to keep my eye on her. I watch her all the time to see if she is really breathing. I have heard of wives making husbands get up in the night to see if baby was breathing, and scoffed at the folly of it. But I'm going to confess to you that I've had two panics. Each time I assured Herbert that this happens only with first babies, but that doesn't seem to mollify him. There never was such a fellow for sleeping as Herbert. However, wouldn't it be awful if the baby's covers got up over her head? You understand how I feel, don't you?

Miette, "bread-crumb," is the name Jeanne Imer gave Christine in prospect. It also means a little scrap of anything: so Herbert and I translated it into Scrappie. The name had the advantage of being non-committal on sex. So Scrappie she is to us. Perhaps you will give her another pet name in Paris. But we rather like ours—I never heard of another kiddie having it.

The birth of your grandchild was not a whit less dramatic than the events preceding. There was a "situation" right up to the last. I wrote you about the plan to gather foreigners in two defended consulates if there was a new massacre at Mersina. The massacre didn't come off. We shouldn't have gone anyway. Miss Talbot was as game as we were to stay on with the Dodds. The improvised hospitals in Adana called for all available medical men. The ship surgeons, with their pharmacists, all went to Adana. The Mersina mission doctor was working among our Tarsus wounded. I was altogether doctorless. At daybreak of Scrappie's birthday, Mr. Dodds swept the horizon of the sea with his telescope. We were expecting every day relief ships, with Red Cross units, from Beirut. A speck developed into a steamer. Without waiting to ascertain more, Mr. Dodds threw himself into his rowboat. Two husky servants of the mission were at the oars.

It was lucky Mr. Dodds did not hesitate longer. But he is not that sort. It was a ship from Beirut, and there was an American surgeon aboard. Doctor Dorman walked into my room just in time.

Everybody in the Mission feels that the placid little baby, with her great blue eyes, is the symbol of hope. Scrappie knows nothing of what the wicked world is doing and how all around her are dying and suffering. She is unadulterated joy. Miss Talbot tried her best, but there were no drawn blinds and pale wan mother. Folks came in to offer congratulations, and make a fuss. I was glad they did. The refugees in the compound celebrated by gathering on a roof below and singing. Some were sorry for us, because it was not a boy, but, after all, if Madama wanted a girl—how queer of Americans to be glad to have daughters!

No one around the Mission had time to celebrate with Herbert, and there was nothing anyway to drink the baby's health in. Herbert went out to send telegrams to the Doughty-Wylies and the Christies, and the cablegram to the Estes. He says he kept saying to himself as he went down the street, "I'm a father!" It's like men to be proud and take all the credit, which just now I think belongs to me. Herbert went to the British wigwag station, but the sailors couldn't leave their post. So he had to order a bottle of beer at Flutey's all alone. Just then a German lieutenant drifted in. Herbert told him the good news, although he had never seen him before, and he drank the toast as sympathetically as a young bachelor could.[6]

On the morning of Scrappie's advent, after a hurried breakfast, my doctor rushed for the Adana train. I haven't seen him since. Nor any other doctor. Miss Talbot is superb. I couldn't have better care. Mrs. Dodds cooks for me herself, and serves my meals. She thinks Miss Talbot is over-careful in prescribing my diet. When Mrs. Dodds brings soft-boiled eggs, she whispers: "Eat half of this quickly. Miss Talbot thinks there is only one, but I'd like to see any one go hungry in Belle Dodds' house!" Until to-day, when I am first able to write you, they kept pillows out of my reach—books, too. Herbert is too busy to be with me. He has had to go to Tarsus and twice to Adana. Two days after Scrappie came, the Major telegraphed for him to come to take the witness-stand before the court-martial. Lawson Chambers had gone on relief work in the interior, and Herbert was the only other foreigner who saw the beginning of the massacre. It was a risky business, but I have got used to letting him go. The tragedy is too great for individuals to count—or to think of themselves.

With Herbert away, and Scrappie sleeping most of the time, and no books, all I could do was to sing. I've gone over all my favorite songs—and many that weren't favorites have been hummed through to the end. I refused to be deterred by the fact that I am under a roof where singing is mostly confined to the metrical version of the Psalms. Mr. Dodds, however, gets away bravely from psalms when he comes to sit beside me of an evening. He loves to hold Scrappie, and sing to her, "Shut Down the Curtains of Your Sweet Blue Eyes." Herbert delights her with "Macnamara's Band."

I have had other visitors in this first week. Most welcome was the chaplain of the British cruiser Swiftsure, of whom we had seen something before Scrappie arrived. (Note how I date everything by Scrappie?) Scrappie was about fifty hours old when he turned up with a bottle of old brandy under his arm. I was glad to have his call—and the bottle—just as Herbert was going off once more. And with my door open—it could not be shut all the time—I could hear those dreadful telegrams being read that kept coming from Kessab, Dortyol, Hadjin and other towns of our vilayet and of Northern Syria. Everywhere it was the same story.

Yesterday a second American battle cruiser arrived. It was the Montana. The North Carolina came in several days ago. The first officer to land from the Montana was Lieutenant-Commander Beach. When he came to the Mission to call, I asked Miss Talbot to bring him in. He stayed some time, and would have cheered me up a lot had he not mentioned that Lili Neumann was dead. He did not know, of course, what Lili was to me, and I managed to say nothing. Under other circumstances it would have been a bad shock, but just now nothing seems to go too deep. However, my face must have told him I was suffering, for he looked down so kindly, and asked if there was anything I wanted. "Because, by Jove! you can have the ship," he declared. I told him I hadn't seen ice for ten months. "Just the thing," he exclaimed. A few hours later, sailors brought a huge rectangle of the most delicious thing in the world. There was also a bottle of Bols curaçao, and a sweet note. People are good.

Mr. Dodds and Mr. Wilson and Herbert got to work on the ice with hatchets. Mrs. Dodds made ice-cream last night and again for lunch to-day.

I must stop this letter, which has been written largely on the inspiration of that ice-cream. Miss Talbot has scolded me twice, and she hasn't seen other times that I got the paper and pencil under the mattress too soon for her.

I cannot leave it, though, without telling you of another invaluable helper. The very day of Scrappie's arrival, a wee, sawed-off Armenian woman came in. I heard somebody say "Sh," but she started in her toothless Jabberwocky. Miss Talbot tried the effect of cool, insistent English, but she couldn't put Dudu Hanum out. For Dudu Hanum squatted down on the floor, and I snickered. Miss T. thought I was asleep. She went to get Mrs. Dodds to interpret. In the meantime, Dudu Hanum addressed me. She rolled up her sleeves and held her arms out and then up over her head the way you do when you want to stop hiccoughs. All the while she talked volubly. It wasn't Turkish. I had learned some of that. As it didn't sound like a gang of wreckers pulling down a house, it wasn't Arabic. Must be Armenian. I recognized Dudu Hanum as the sister of the agent who gets our things out of the custom-house. Finally we learned what it was all about. Dudu Hanum was saying: "I have no gift to give you, but I have these two hands. Let me do your washing. I shall wash all your things and all of the baby's." The blessed old thing comes early every morning. What garments Mrs. Dodds allows to escape from her own capable hands, Dudu Hanum washes, and hangs them to dry upon the sun-baked roof.