Progress of the Armenian Drive

The campaign for “Relief in the Near East” is well under way in St. Johnsbury.

The various local churches gave splendid assistance in bringing this matter to the attention of the people and the meeting at the Armory Monday night settled all doubts as to the immediate necessity of this campaign.

No one who heard General Azgapetain Monday night could fail to be touched by his description of the terrible conditions which have existed and still exist in these stricken countries and no one who is able can fail to respond for relief funds.

St. Johnsbury’s thirteen teams of solicitors are now busy canvassing the town and beginning tomorrow the Caledonian will publish reports showing the progress of each of these thirteen teams of workers.

This campaign is backed by the great statesmen and prominent men of our country including Hon. William Howard Taft, Hon. Charles Evans Hughes, Charles W. Eliot, James Cardinal Gibbons, Vance C. McCormick, Henry Morganthau, John R. Mott, and many others, and it is urged by the President in the following proclamation:

For more than three years American philanthropy has been a large factor in keeping alive Armenian, Syrian, Greek and other exiles and refugees of Western Asia.

On two former occasions I have appealed to the American people in behalf of these homeless sufferers, whom the vicissitudes of war and massacre had brought to the extremest need.

The response has been most generous, but now the period of rehabilitation is at hand.  Vastly larger sums will be required to restore these once prosperous, but now impoverished, refugees to their former homes than were required merely to sustain life in their desert exile.

It is estimated that about 4,000,000 Armenian, Syrian, Greek and other war sufferers in the Near East will reqwuire outside help to sustain them through winter.  Many of them are now hundreds of miles from their homeland. The vast majority of them are helpless women and children, including 400,000 orphans.

The American Committee for Relief in the Near East is appealing for a minimum of $30,000,000 to be subscribed January 12-19, 1919, with which to meet the most urgent needs of these people.

I, therefore, again call upon the people of the United States to make even more generous contributions than they have made heretofore to sustain through the winter months those, who, through no fault of their own, have been left in a starving, shelterless condition, and to help reestablish these ancient and sorely oppressed people in their former homes on a self-supporting basis.

Woodrow Wilson

The White House,

29 November, 1918

The campaign in Massachusetts had to be postponed because the state committee was not ready, but it is going on splendidly in other parts of the country.

Vermont is ready and working.  Caledonia county is ready. St. Johnsbury is ready.  Watch us deliver the goods.

Have you made your subscription yet?

Now is the time.

Let’s all help.