Quake News

When infidel newsgatherers sit down to describe The Day of Judgment, their accounts may perhaps resemble those which trickled over improvised wires last week from the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia, recently earthquake smitten (TIME, Nov. 1).

At Leninakan, once Alexandropol, Dr. Joseph Beach, Director of Near East Relief in the Caucasus, described the catastrophe, now thought to have caused 1,500 deaths and wrought $60,000,000 property damage. Said he:

"I was at dinner when a terrific rumbling, surging noise rent the air. A thousand windows crashed, and the building oscillated. . . . The floor reeled under my feet. All the lights failed. We expected momentarily the roof to fall and smother us.

"Scarcely had we emerged from the building when another and more violent shock seemed to cleave the earth asunder, throwing every one to the ground. Here we remained prostrate and stunned, expecting death at any moment.

"A hurricane of wind swept everything before it. ... Through the jet black night only the majestic contour of vast Alagoz, the volcanic mountain with its dome of eternal snow standing out like a beacon on the broad Leninakan Plain, could be perceived.

"The piercing cries of the population groping in the dark added the element of agony to the scene. Great fissures appeared in the fields, discharging water, sand and silt.

"The terrible subterranean roaring, cracking, quaking continued spasmodically, with violent surface undulations, the terror of which can be imagined only by those who have experienced it or who have read Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii.

"At this juncture, when we seemed to be looking into the very abyss of death, we knelt down and with eyes toward heaven asked Divine mercy. It came. We were saved.

"I verily believe that our small band of relief workers was spared so that we could rescue the 9,000 helpless Armenian orphans in Leninakan. The terrific seismic forces ceased temporarily, and we succeeded in reaching the Near East Relief orphanages.

"Due to three years of systematic drill and discipline by relief workers, who envisaged just such a calamity,. the children had already begun to dress and to form lines. Within a few minutes we marched them all out in orderly formation to the adjacent fields."

Subsequently Mme. Andree Violis, correspondent of Le. Petit Parisien cabled:

"The Soviet authorities, with the help of the American Near East Relief committee, are performing marvels. There is no disorder, no looting. Soldiers carry out police duties. An open-air city is being rapidly organized. There is a continuous supply of food. On the hillside 400 injured are being attended in tents. An operation room is working day and night. There Dr. Walter Sisson of Wauseon, Ohio, has already performed 130 operations by candle light, since the electric plant is in ruins. The population is full of courage and hope."

The commanders of the Red army have pledged 3% of their pay for five months to aid the relief work, and the Soviet Government has appropriated some half million rubles ($250,000) for the same purpose.