Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1916 — Buy a Flag Saturday and Help Destitute Belgians. [ARTICLE]

Buy a Flag Saturday and Help Destitute Belgians.

F. C. Wolcott, sent by die Rockefeller Foundation to report on the work of the commission for relief in Belgium, says that the commission furnishes the only support of 3,000,000 destitute human beings in Belgium and northern France. If any who cavil at the sending of relief supplies could only visit Belgium and see personally the plight of the suffering people, they would come back as eager for the continuance of the work as he is. Mr. Wolcott said of the 7,000,000 inhabitants in Belgium, 3,000,000 are virtually destitute and drawing daily one meal, consisting of the equivalent of three slices of bread and a pint cif soup. "I have seen thousands of people lined up in snow or arin, soaked and chilly, waiting for bread and soup. I have returned to the distributing stations at the end of the day and have found men, women and children sometdrties, still standing in line, but later compelled to go back ; to their pitiful homes, cold, wet and : miserable. It was not unt’l eighteen | hours afterward that they got the meal they missed. Picture the mental j condition of a people without work jfor more than a year and a half, ! daily face to face with the possibility t of starvation, cut off from communiI cation with the outside world by barb- | ed wire and armed cordons of a conj queuing foreign army.” / There is no other channel by which help can be sent to these stricken people except thorugh the C. R. 8., and but for this they must perish. -Alt the request of the C. R. 8., the society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, numbering 100,000 strong, next Saturday will distribute small flags bearing both the Belgian and American colors, in return for an offering for this cause. Now during this season of Lent, when many are sacrificing luxuries and pleasures, it is a seasonable time for our thoughts to turn to these innocent victims of the war and make a contribution to alleviate their sufferings. The ladies of the D. A. R. of this city have received a share of these flags which they will sell Saturday at 7c each. This is the cost of rations per person per day in Belgium.