Page:Red Rugs of Tarsus.djvu/17

PREFACE heroine city of Paris in wartime have been an unforgettable experience, in which both fatigue and leisure have alike been impossible. The "Ickle One" came into the world last November, to find her mother deep in baby relief work. Her real name is "Hope," because of my belief that the great hope of France and of the world is in the new generation.

Now it is eight years that we have been inhabiting storm centers, and I have come to believe that my function is to create a normal home atmosphere in abnormal conditions.

The book I have dreamed of has never been written. The appeal on my sympathies made by the sufferings of the Armenians of to-day, however, required that something should be done. For this reason I have resurrected the old and yellowed letters which I wrote to my mother during that agonizing time in Tarsus. Portions of them have been rewritten, and certain intimate details in which the public can have no interest have been cut out, and I have