Show THE TRAGEDY OFF OF ARMENIA the plight of 0 armenia about the end of 1919 a condition which has been aggravated by the recent defeat of armenian forces by turkish kurki sli nationalists tiona lists Is described describe in the following communication to the national geographic society from melvi e chater the capital of Ar IroIs provisional loial republic is an inconceivable contrast to the georgian government scat beat at tiflis at brevan one finds no spacious prospect nor palace no smart shops russian opera nor gay night life to behold misery in tiflis one must search it out in erivan one cannot escape it this poor straggling dingy city of the plains whose go eminent offices suggest some hastily extemporized election headquarters and whose parliament chamber Is rigged up alti benches ud and cheesecloth in the auditorium of the second class theater boasts of but one beauty and that to speak in paradox Is forty miles away for in whatever Nhat ever quarter of erivan you may be lift your glance and great ararat of eternal snows is seen brooding distantly oer the mean streets with his aspect of majestic calm ile he Is the armenians Armen ians lans olympus or rather say the stool of a race which lias has known bondage and wilderness wandering aud and for centuries a peoples copies imagination has turned toward him the little erivan republic has lieu been the center of refuge for turkish ar berdans ever since the massacre of fit 1915 and be between teen and of them are camped within its borders As for the city itself its former population of has been doubled by this influx there starvation and have claimed their toll of the death rate fluctuating between fifty and eighty a day though the doctor and I 1 were nere here to observe the worst phases of the situation each of us waited for the other to suggest a trip to the region where we were told starvation aas most acute the town of with its local and nearby near by populations of ar menalaus men laus taus and idis regaled ree aled acme squalid streets w ith but a few people seated here and there as we drove in throughout those tortuous sun beaten byA byways ays no children played and no animal roamed the air was aas heavy with noth dreadful silence such as hangs oner plague ten we ve found alie tile such as they were ere inhabiting an orphanage wherein one sickened at putrid itys horribly horrible odor and were informed ill thai at there neither medicines medicine s nor dis infect ants wherewith to allay the condition of the many little sick beds sick say rather tle the bedridden bed ridden a word which more justly describes those tiny mothered up crone like creatures upon hov ho v imes faces the skin seemed stretched to a drumheads tightness whose peering eyes shot terror and anguish as it if deaths death s presence were already perceptible to them an and who nho lay there at famines climax oil of physical exhaustion in those loung yet grotesquely aged faces dacra we seemed to see a long lifetime of tragedy packed into eight or ten childish years the mud buts ats which we visited presented an invariable picture a barren cave like interior lacking one I 1 I 1 stick of furniture or household uteri 1 sll sit and with a dev bleached hones bones j scattered here and there |