The Book of Missionary Heroes by Basil Mathews (young adult books to read .txt) 📕

smashed up his home; others seized the mother and the daughters—the mother had a baby in her arms; the baby was flung on the ground and then picked up dead on the point of a bayonet; and, though the mother and daughters were not bayoneted then, it would have been better to die at once than to suffer the unspeakable horrors that came to them.

And that happened in hundreds of villages and cities to hundred of thousands of Armenians, while hundreds of thousands more scattered down the mountain passes in flight towards Konia.

The Orphan Boys and Girls

As Miss Cushman and her Armenian nurses looked out through the windows of the hospital, their hearts were sad as they saw some of these Armenian refugees trailing along the road like walking skeletons. What was to happen to them? It was very dangerous for anyone to show that they were friends with the Armenians, but the white matron was as brave as she was kind; so she went out to do what she could to help them.

One day she saw a little boy so thin that the bones seemed almost to be coming through his skin. He was very dirty; his hair was all matted together; and there were bugs and fleas in his clothes and in his hair. The hospital was so full that not another could be taken in. But the boy would certainly die if he were not looked after properly. His father and his mother had both been slain by the Turks; he did not know where his brothers were. He was an orphan alone in all the world.

Miss Cushman knew Armenian people in Konia, and she went to one of these homes and told them about the poor boy and arranged to pay them some money for the cost of his food. So she made a new home for him. The next day she found another boy, and then a girl, and so she went on and on, discovering little orphan Armenian boys and girls who had nobody to care for them, and finding them homes—until she had over six hundred orphans being cared for. It is certain that nearly all of them would have died if she had not looked after them.

So Miss Cushman gathered the six hundred Armenian children together into an orphanage, that was half for the boys and half for the girls. She was a hundred times better than the "Woman who Lived in a Shoe," because, though she had so many children, she did know what to do. She taught them to make nearly everything for themselves. In the mornings you would see half the boys figuring away at their sums or learning to write and read, while the other boys were hammering and sawing and planing at the carpenter's bench; cutting leather and sewing it to make shoes for the other boys and girls; cutting petrol tins up into sheets to solder into kettles and saucepans; and cutting and stitching cloth to make clothes. A young American Red Cross officer who went to see them wrote home, "The kids look happy and healthy and as clean as a whistle."

The People on the Plain

As Miss Cushman looked out again from the hospital window she saw men coming from the country into the city jogging along on little donkeys.

"In the villages all across the plain," they said to her, "are Armenian boys and girls, and men and women. They are starving. Many are without homes, wandering about in rags till they simply lie down on the ground, worn out, and die."

Miss Cushman sent word to friends far away in America, and they sent food from America to Turkey in ships, and a million dollars of money to help the starving children. So Miss Cushman got together her boys and girls and some other helpers, and soon they were very busy all day and every day wrapping food and clothes into parcels.

Next a caravan of snorting camels came swinging in to the courtyard and, grumbling and rumbling, knelt down, to be loaded up. The parcels were done up in big bales and strapped on to the camels' backs. Then at a word from the driver the camels rose from their knees and went lurching out from Konia into the country, over the rough, rolling tracks, to carry to the people the food and clothes that would keep them alive.

The wonderful thing is that these camels were led by a Turk belonging to the people who hate the Armenians, yet he was carrying food and clothes to them! Why did this Turk in Konia go on countless journeys, travelling over thousands of miles with tens of thousands of parcels containing wheat for bread and new shirts and skirts and other clothes for the Armenians whom he had always hated, and never lose a single parcel?

Why did he do it?

This is the reason. Before the war when he was ill in the hospital Miss Cushman had nursed him with the help of her Armenian girls, and had made him better; he was so thankful that he would just run to do anything that she wished him to do.

To Stay or not to Stay?

But at last Miss Cushman—worn out with all this work—fell ill with a terrible fever. For some time it was not certain that she would not die of it; for a whole month she lay sick in great weakness. President Wilson had at this time broken off relations between America and Turkey. The Turk now thought of the American as an enemy; and Miss Cushman was an American. She was in peril. What was she to do?

"It is not safe to stay," said her friends. "You will be practically a prisoner of war. You will be at the mercy of the Turks. You know what the Turk is—as treacherous as he is cruel. They can, if they wish, rob you or deport you anywhere they like. Go now while the path is open—before it is too late. You are in the very middle of Turkey, hundreds of miles from any help. The dangers are terrible."

As soon as she was well enough Miss Cushman went to the Turkish Governor of Konia, a bitter Mohammedan who had organised the massacre of forty thousand Armenians, to say that she had been asked to go back to America.

"What shall you do if I stay?" she asked.

"I beg you to stay," said the Governor. "You shall be protected. You need have no fear."

"Your words are beautiful," she replied. "But if American and Turkey go to war you will deport me."

If she stayed she knew the risks under his rule. She was still weak from her illness. There was no colleague by her side to help her. There seemed to be every reason why she should sail away back to America. But as she sat thinking it over she saw before her the hospital full of wounded soldiers, the six hundred orphans who looked to her for help, the plain of a hundred villages to which she was sending food. No one could take her place.

Yet she was weak and tired after her illness and, in America, rest and home, friends and safety called to her.

"It was," she wrote later to her friends, "a heavy problem to know what to do with the orphans and other helpless people who depended on me for life."

What would you have done? What do you think she did? For what reason should she face these perils?

Not in the heat of battle, but in cool quiet thought, all alone among enemies, she saw her path and took it. She did not count her life her own. She was ready to give her life for her friends of all nations. She decided to stay in the heart of the enemies' country and serve her God and the children. Many a man has had the cross of Honour for an act that called for less calm courage. That deed showed her to be one of the great undecorated heroes and heroines of the lonely path.

So she stayed on.

From all over the Turkish Empire prisoners were sent to Konia. There was great confusion in dealing with them, so the people of Konia asked Miss Cushman to look after them; they even wrote to the Turkish Government at Constantinople to tell them to write to her to invite her to do this work. There was a regular hue and cry that she should be appointed, because everyone knew her strong will, her power of organising, her just treatment, her good judgment, and her loving heart. So at last she accepted the invitation. Prisoners of eleven different nationalities she helped—including British, French, Italian, Russian, Indians and Arabs. She arranged for the nursing of the sick, the feeding of the hungry, the freeing of some from prison.

She went on right through the war to the end and beyond the end, caring for her orphans, looking after the sick in hospital, sending food and clothes to all parts of the country, helping the prisoners. Without caring whether they were British or Turkish, Armenian or Indian, she gave her help to those who needed it. And because of her splendid courage thousands of boys and girls and men and women are alive and well, who—without her—would have starved and frozen to death.

To-day, in and around Konia (an Army officer who has been there tells us), the people do not say, "If Allah wills," but "If Miss Cushman wills!" It is that officer's way of letting us see how, through her brave daring, her love, and her hard work, that served everybody, British, Armenian, Turk, Indian, and Arab, she has become the uncrowned Queen of Konia, whose bidding all the people do because she only cares to serve them, not counting her own life dear to her.