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AT HOME AND ABROAD
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A L O O K O V E R T H E F I E L D
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A NEW and unprecedented era o f mar tyrdom has overtaken the Christian Church in the land which we call “ Holy” because it was trodden by the blessed feet o f Christ and His apostles. These are not political persecutions, but religious martyr doms, as is seen by the fact that there is always deliverance by accepting Islam. One’s pen is palsied, says W . T. Ellis in the Sunday School Times, in the presence o f the detailed facts o f the incredible atroc ities which are at this very hour in process. An American, who has spent a lifetime in Turkey, wrote me in a letter received yes terday (October 7), “ Take five, hundred Lusitania horrors and roll them into one, and still they cannot match what is now taking place.” This friend reminds me o f the fact that the Armenian massacres o f 1895-96, which shook civilization, cost a hundred thousand lives. The Adana massa cres, in 1908, took toll o f twenty-five thou sand Christians. These are now eclipsed by the present harvest o f death, both in extent and in refinement o f cruelty. A few lines from this friend’s letter will make clear that these deaths and sufferings are true martyrdoms, the “ witness” which the New Testament exalts (Acts 22:20; Rev. 2:1-13) ; which the early Church rev erenced, and which led to the Crusades of the Middle Ages : “At Marsovan a school o f more than one hundred girls were routed from the buildings, loaded on ox-carts, and driven eastward. At the edge o f the town they were halted, and each one was asked separately if she wished to embrace Islam, and again a second time. Both times they all refused. Two heroic American women begged to be allowed to accompany these girls into exilé, but were refused........The last heard o f these girls was their arrival at Tokat”—the scene o f Henry Martyn’s death.
T T E R E is a description o f the Jewish A f sufferings in Russia which has reached the American Jewish Relief Committee, as told in the Jewish World. The pictures o f distress I saw will never vanish from my mind. Filthy basements and cellars overcrowded with half-naked people, literally bare o f any clothes, unable to walk out into the streets; starving chil dren, the children o f reservists, the wives o f soldiers, destitute old Jews at the doors o f the synagogues waiting and fighting for bread tickets. I saw crazy old Jews mad dened by the horror o f the war. One o f those miserable men' followed me and asked for bread. I gave him some coins and he threw them away. “Bread, bread is what I want.” The Vice-President o f the munici pality told me, “These people will practi cally die unless help comes from outside.” Nor is it in Europe only that the anguish is intense. Here is what Rabbi Solomon Schulman, o f the Zfoth Colony in Palestine, writes: “Our situation is indescribable. W e prac tically are starving. The prices o f food stuffs are unimaginably high. Profound physical and mental depression. Thousands o f Jews are gathered in the streets longing for bread. It would be better for us to die on the battlefield than to die slowly from starvation. Hasten help for us before we starve.” And the Palestinian distress has been wafted in part into Egypt. Quite one-sixth o f the Jewish race is today thrown upon charity. What other people has a more pitiable story to tell? A missionary says, “ I wish I could make you understand the simple faith in prayer o f the Korean Christians. I f they-want a meal or a night’s lodging, they ask for it, and in some way the need is met.”
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