Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 278, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1920 — WAITING FOR US TO SET THE TABLE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WAITING FOR US TO SET THE TABLE

A table twenty-four miles long is plainly an extension cable and that la just the length that would seal all of the orphans now being fed by the Near East Relief. Thia table la set lu sections sll over the hills of Asia Minor, Syria. Armenia and In Northern Per ■la It la aot Id one piece. The Turks, who etlU keep the Armenians la a stalo of do not alloy IL But the table la, seated on both aides with orphans— Syrian and

Assyrian, Greek and Armenian, Jew and Christian —all rescued from the fear of the Turk and under the care of American men and women. Most of the children are cared for in 229 American supported orphanages. The drat ceremony In receiving these starved, almost naked children, Is to clean them up. They are not only emaciated, but dirty with sores and vermin—69 hospitals and over 6,000 beds are kept full of the little sufferers. But the children keep changing. Last year they were all thin and pitiful; now it is the newcomers who are thin. The orphans who have been from six months to a year in American care are well fed and well clothed. Best of all for a new Near East which surely must come out of all this distress, every child old enough is being taught a trade which will make him self supporting. They are a thrifty lot, those little parentless exiles. From their scant store of bread they always carry, a portion tn a small bag about their necks —they fear the day of another killing, another drive Into the desert. They horde the shoes sent from America until snow files —they remember their barefoot pain In the snows Inst spring. They cling to their new found friends. Every day other little waifs find a place in the orphanages and are told of the generous people of the United States Soon the entrances will be crowded with children frozen out from their temporary summer quarters. Thon the table of the Near East Relief must be extended—many, many new leaves will be needed, and Amerca la asked to set the table.

The Table Is Now 24 Miles Long.