Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1938, Síða 309

KAREN JEPPE
299
More than anything else it is this feeling of security, of having
a good home, that gives them force and courage.”
Besides home and school, another source of “force and cou-
rage” to the refugees was their church, the old Armenian Church,
which had for centuries been not only the religious but also the
national stronghold of the Armenian people.
* *
*
During the years she was a League Commissioner (1921—
1927) Miss Jeppe came to Geneva whenever she was on leave
in Europe. She had intimate collaboration with Dame Rachel
Crowdy, chief of the Social Section of the Secretariat, and was
also warmly supported by M. Albert Thomas, Director of the
International Labour Office, with whom she discussed her coloni-
sation schemes.
At Geneva she met Dr. Nansen, and took a vivid interest in
his plans for settling Armenian refugees in the Armenian Sovjet
Republic of Erivan, the only place where the Armenians still
have a land they can to a certain extent call their own, the Treaty
of Lausanne having frustrated their hopes of the “National
Home” inside the former Turkish Empire, which they had been
solemnly promised.
More than once Miss Jeppe spoke in the 5 th Committee, and
her reports of the sufferings of the Armenians and her efforts
to help them, as well as her whole personality, always made a
deep impression on the Committee, men and women alike.
Unfortunately, she never had an opportunity to appear be-
fore the 4th Committee, which, together with the Supervisory
Committee, holds the purse-strings of the League. The appro-
priation from the League was always very modest, usually about
40—45,000 gold francs; even that was often very difficult to
obtain, and at last (in 1926), a year before her work was finished,
the contribution was stopped altogether. The 5 th Committee un-
animously proposed the usual 45,000 francs, but the 4th Com-
mittee was this time immovable.
This was of course a disappointment but did not discourage
Miss Jeppe. Her work had attracted the attention of the world.
For several years the financial aid from outside had even sur-
passed the appropriation from the League, thus, in one single