THE LAND OF THE STALKING DEATH 



413 



Photograph by Melville Chater 



ARMENIAN CHILDREN WEAVING RUGS IN THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE SHOPS AT 



EREVAN 



One aim of relief-work is to find some way of saving the self-respect of those who 

 have lost all else, and honest labor does more to engender self-respect than does lavish, but 

 misguided, charity. 



in time. In time, too, the girl will pick 

 up one child, lead the other, and go forth 

 into the streets to beg. Their best possi- 

 ble future is that they may be found and 

 passed through starvation's clearing- 

 house to some orphanage. 



In that dreadful, sun-baked quadrangle, 

 which is surrounded by sleeping barracks 

 containing not one chair, table, or bed, 

 are herded some five hundred children, 

 boys and girls, of from six to twelve 

 years of age. It is doubly a clearing- 

 house, since each morning an ox-cart car- 

 ries off half a dozen of them for burial. 



Here they sit on the earth, bowed like 

 old men and women, or crawl off to die 

 alone. I counted six dead, lying unno- 

 ticed in corners, like so many rats. An- 

 other two or three lay with arms and legs 

 wide-stretched, still gasping faintly. Yet 

 none of the central throng showed the 

 least concern, and there was even a 

 group of them squatting over some game 



with pebbles, a dead child or two lying 

 on the edge of their circle. 



Most of them are too weak to eat their 

 little daily doles of bread, yet still their 

 cry for it goes up, and one often sees a 

 dead child lying with both hands shelter- 

 ing a crust at his breast. 



Somehow a memory of Maeterlinck's 

 ''Blue Bird" and of that exquisite scene. 

 "The Land of the Unborn." came into 

 my mind; and then I no longer saw that 

 hideous ox-cart, whose driver went about, 

 shaking recumbent children to learn if 

 they were dead or not ; for I knew that 

 Father Time was somewhere near, with 

 ln's great golden boat, to ferry these tired 

 little kiddies away for a long sleep in an 

 enchanted land — that of the unborn— 

 where they would awaken to play and 

 romp, while biding their turn to be fer- 

 ried back earthward to their new moth- 

 ers' arms. 



The doctor and I hardly exchanged a 

 phrase over those unforgettable sights at 



