Editorial

As the newsletter deadline looms again, I'm faced with the task of deciding which of the excellent articles I've received go in this newsletter, and which will be featured in our winter edition.  Thank you to all who write for this newsletter—it's wonderful to have such enthusiastic response!
Thank you to Henry Neufeld who edited the newsletter for a number of years, and has now stepped down from the board and the editorial committee.  While we'll miss seeing him at board meetings, Henry will continue writing for "Roots and branches'.  Thanks, Henry.  Your work is much appreciated!
Lora Sawatsky has agreed to join our editorial team, and has already been hard at work.  Helen Rose Pauls (also chair of the events committee) is the third member of our committee and a frequent contributor to the newsletter.  We invite our readers to continue sending us your stories, letters and articles.      LBP

A Brief Note on Our Swiss Friends
by Dr. John B. Toews

Mennonites, mainly Swiss in origin, settled on the east coast of the United States as early as 1683.  Further immigration soon established many congregations in Lancaster and Franconia counties in Pennsylvania.  The term "Old Mennonites" began to be used around 1800.  By 1900 the term became unacceptable to some and perhaps to avoid confusion with other groups using the term, the name Old was often used in parentheses as in (Old) Mennonite Church.  As already mentioned the group was almost exclusively Swiss, ethnically speaking.  Culturally and religiously it remained German until almost 1900.  The language used in the home was Palatine German to which many English words were added over the decades.  As was often the case in congregationally based Anabaptist groups a significant number of church splits occurred over the centuries.

It is probably fair to say that the Dutch/Russian Mennonites and the Palatinate American Mennonites lived in two solitudes and knew little of one another until the Bolshevik Revolution
of 1917.  The chaos and destruction that ensued brought the prosperous Russian and Ukrainian settlements to their knees.  By 1921-22 a massive famine stalked the land.  Desperate Mennonite leaders appealed to Mennonite groups in Germany, Holland and America for help.  They dispatched a so-called "Study Commission" abroad in January, 1920.  It managed to visit the United States by mid-summer of 1920.  The ravages of WWI had prompted the con-stituency of the (Old) Mennonite Church to organize the Mennonite Relief Commission for War Sufferers.  Already active in relieving suffering in Europe and the Near East the agency, at the urging of Alvin J. Miller, sent three relief workers to Constantinople in September, 1920.  Meanwhile inter-Mennonite co-operation resulted in a meeting of all Mennonite relief agencies at Elkhart, Indiana on July 27, 1920.  This meeting resulted in the creation of the Mennonite Central Committee officially chartered on September 27, 1920.

Working through Herbert Hoover's American Relief Administration, MCC created a special relief branch within the ARA called American Mennonite Relief.  Often confronted by delays caused by the collapse of the Russian infrastructure and a reluctant Bolshevik bureaucracy, MCC feeding operations began in mid-March, 1922 and continued until August, 1923. About 75,000 people, 60,000 of them Mennonites, were fed and clothed.  In addition AMR aided in reconstruction  by supplying some 200 horses and 50 Fordson tractors and plows.  Between 1922 and 1924 American Mennonites spent the then enormous sum of approximately $1,2000,000 in helping the Russian Mennonites survive.  Simply put, without our (Old) Mennonite friends in the early 1920's many of our parents and grandparents would not have survived.  Naturally, other Mennonite groups helped as well, but in the main their economic strength and Christian generosity carried the day.  During our October banquet we want to say a special Thank You to our Swiss friends.