Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

sed on his memory scores of sights and incidents connected with his work, which time can never entirely erase. One, that I know I shall never forget, had to do with the extreme need and suffering among a mass of people in Constanti- nople, Turkey during November and December, 1920. Some weeks earlier Bro. Kratz and I had made a short trip into South Russia. After some personal con- tact with Mennonites there, I had returned alone: In the meantime on a second trip as far as Sebastopol, I had seen a routed Wrangel army go to pieces. The incident itself begins with the arrival in Constantinople harbor of the 150,000 refugees who fled from Russia after Wran- gel’s defeat. They came across the Black Sea in what was left of the former Russian Navy and such merchant ships as they could lay hands on. These ships began to arrive on November 15. Within a week over a hundred vessels, crowded with refugees, had arrived and made up another city on the water in front of the Bosporus. These people had fled from their homes and could 388 FEEDING THE HUNGRY take along only what they could carry. They had crowded on the ships until every square foot of space was occupied. They stood on deck from bow to stern—thousands of men. The ships were unsanitary and not at all equipped for passenger use. Most of them had no food or water on arrival at Constantinople. On November 20 a steady, drizzling rain set in and continued for several days. The situation soon beggared description. Because of interna- tional complications there was delay in deciding where these people could be landed. From a relief standpoint, the situation baffled the combined efforts of all the relief and government organizations of the city. We were new in such work, but cooperated with the other better equipped organizations as best we could. Buildings were rented as temporary shelters for women and children, clothing was distributed, refugee camps were visited and supplementary relief given there as the need and our supplies warranted. Gradually some order came out of the confusion, and each Relief organization devoted its energies to its own particular field. Thereafter much of our effort was expended on the Russian Mennonites in this refugee army, finding out where they were, devising means to get them from ships and camps, providing food and shelter for them in the two Mennonite Homes, and later to send them to Pales- tine, Germany and America. We appreciate the privilege our Master gave us to be used in that service at that time. Some of His prom- ises became real and precious to us then as they could in no other way. It is our profound conviction that it was alone through the leading of the Lord that the Church and her workers were there just at the time when our brethren from Russia needed this special help. The ex- perience of hundreds of them to-day is vastly different from what it would have been had not the Church met PPHT