Esther Lovejoy radio address for the Federation of Churches

Although the Allied countries did not permit women to serve as officers in the military medical corps, there was a desperate need for doctors in the wake of World War I. The desire to advance women in the medical profession and to relieve those suffering in post-war conditions prompted American women physicians to form the first American Women’s Hospital (AWH) in France in 1918 to provide medical care to the people of war-torn France. The AWH subsequently established hospitals in other parts of Europe, continuing to provide medical care to devastated populations after wars and conflicts had officially ended. In the years following the first World War, the Ottoman Empire was dissolved and divided among the Allied Powers, resulting in violent conflicts and chaos. In 1922, AWH president, Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy, witnessed the initial exodus of thousands of ethnic Greek residents from the Turkish city of Smyrna (now called Izmir), which was set ablaze and destroyed. A small group of women from the AWH were among the first aid groups to establish emergency services on the Greek island of Macronissi to care for the refugees who fled Smyrna. Macronissi had no existing sources of food, shelter, water, or medical care. The AWH established camps and provided medical care to an ever-increasing number of homeless and hungry refugees, almost all women and children.

Dr. Esther Lovejoy of the American Women’s Hospitals, wrote this speech to be read aloud on a radio broadcast for the Federation of Churches. A witness to the refugee crisis, Lovejoy vividly describes the chaos, violence, and disease that erupted on the docks as the Greek and Armenian residents tried to board ships bound for Greece as their city burned. Lovejoy intended her detailed descriptions to make the case that the “Christian nations”—meaning the Allied countries of Western Europe and North America—needed to help the Greek and Armenian Christian refugees. She believed that these nations had the resources to alleviate the unstable political and humanitarian situation.