Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 283, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1917 — How the Gypsies of Europe Escaped the War [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

How the Gypsies of Europe Escaped the War

These mysterious people seemed to have foreknowledge of the coming of conflict for they made themselves scarce in the vast danger zone of Europe

D* ARlS.—“Where are the gypsies?” “They have disappeared since the war.” “How could they disappear from France, all frontiers being guarded?” ~ - • i . “They did,” replied the French official, smiling. Such was the result of my first inquiry, and such is the final word of a curious story. Editors in America asked me to discover “what has become of the gypsies.” The French foreign office sent me to the prefecture of police, where I met M. Alfred Harduin. chief of the second bureau of the first division. “Are the gypsies in concentration camps?” I asked. “Those belonging to enemy countries, yes,” he answered, “but almost none of them have any nationality; that is to say, their nationality could never be established. Such was the cause of the law of 1912.” But M. Harduin knows, officially, only Paris and environs, so he sent me to the ministry of the interior, department of the surete general, where I met the great Sebille, controleur-gen-eral of the judicial Investigations services, whose eyes see over all France. “The facts are the more curious,” he admitted, “because France was literally overrun with gypsies immediately before the war. Of forty thousand ‘nomades’ on the lists of the interior twenty-six thousand were Romanichels (Romanys or gypsies), and things had reached a point, in 1912, that France was obliged to make a special law to regulate them.” Two rich and populous tribes, in particular, the Gorgans and the Yankos, seem to have made a considerable stir in the countryside with their v fine horses, gorgeous house wagons, women, girls, bears, apes and a raft of children, dressing loud and living like princes. “At Roisel, in the Somme,” ran a report, “a tribe of so-called Russian gypsies (South Russia and Bohemia) molested the populations.”

They were rich and haughty. They wore brilliant clothing and ornaments and had fine horses. Yet when a French peasant would buy one of those horses his tail would come out, his glossy coat go ringwormed, his plumpness sink in, and even “some teeth came out (says Farmer Cardon), being made of hardened bread crumb.” As for gold (strange detail), they found a massive gold chain of ancient workmanship around* the waist of the prince of the Gorgans. under his embroidered clothes, locked with a gold padlock of which nobody had the key! On it were engraved, “T. I. L.-B. P.1512,” and no explanation could be obtained. The prince said simply, “It’s a "family heirloom." He carried a rich, cruel whip of rawhide, supple oiled leather and small lead thongs, more like a weapon than a whip, Jeweled in its handle to the tune' of some. $6,000, estimated. Finally, among his personal belongings were sixty-seven American gold dollars of 1853! “How could the gypsies get away when the war broke out?” I insisted, “when all frontier authorities were on ♦he lookout for enemy subjects and spies?” Instead of making a discourse the controlleur-general told me a case of some time before the mobilization. A strong band of gypsies (Kakaras-ca-Kralovitch families) had penetrated from France to Switzerland and, at

Moelleusullaz, were thrust back by the Swiss frontier guards. They asked to try Germany. “We have papers from the German authorities at Berne to enter Germany,” they said, “because we are Germans.” And, in fact, they produced such papers. Twenty days they remained oh the frontier Germany refused to receive them; but (on account of those papers) France gave them permission to try again, via Belfort and certain roads of the Doubs. “At Salins* We photographed and measured them,* ? said M. Sebille, “and we tried to learn something of their ■families. They had as hiany names and nationalities as you please, and papers, too (at need), more than you would imagine. They- old gypsy queen, eighty-five years old, called the Boule, or Mother Kakarasca,‘seemed to preside over ten families of other names, the Reinhardts, Heints, Gorman, Laga, Schernots, Meyers, etc. Emile Schernots had a German workingman’s book in the name of Kralovitch, a Bohemian ! At Petit-Croix, on the Alsatian frontier, eight German gendarmes with pointed rifles sail}: “You cannot enter —go!” For three weeks they camped outside Belfort, supported by the French government —“being under arrest.” Later they Sojourned at Suarce (still at the expense of France), where they claimed to know by-roads to enter Germany, and “asked to be allowed to break up and get through,” wagon by wagon. The French let them go. And, now, look—in spite of German frontier organization, they all actually got through into Germany !

Before mobilization there was so much complaint against them that a .special law had to be made to regulate them. The law of 1912 had scarcely got to working when the'war broke out —and ail complaints against the gypsies ceased! How? Why? “The complaints stopped. That is all.” The law of 1912 gave to the head of each gypsy family a formidable booklet, full of blanks to be filled up by mayors of each town or commune where they stopped—and a number. This family number (printed on each blank) was repeated in white enamel on handsome black sheet-iron plates, as many as each band had wagons. Gift of the French government. They must be attached to the tailboard of each wagon, so that countryside gendarmes might jot them down, running, though the band be in flight! It was a beautiful system. It will make a good foundation, again, after the war .....

Often (it is repeated) they were grand, in their way. They would sell fine horses to French peasants, cheap, horses which gave complete satisfaction. The Coesre, or prince, would order their copper utensils and kitchen wear to be repaired by his artisans for a trifling sum; and the work would be well done. They gave amusing shows, with trained bears and great apes and dancing girls. Their women, telling fortunes, bamboozled country wives. Yet the same band, in another commune, would obtain all they needed by threats of fires ;' h and small municipalities vvould buy them off, in considerable sums, to take themselves elsewhere. Then the war broke out —and it all ceased. ' “None arrived at the Saintes-Maries, on May 25 last,” volunteered a minor police official. “A striking Indication.” It is, perhaps, the strangest detail of the story. Every five years (though you did not know it) the chief gypsies of America sailed back to Europe—before the war. Together with the gypsies of Syria, the Danube, Germany, Italy, Spain and all the world, they assembled outside a long fishing village

in South France, on the Mediterranean. There they chose the gypsy king. Why there? Because a servant woman of Judea, in the days of our Lord Jesus lived the last years of her life in this French fishing village —and became the patron saint of all the gypsies. Alone, amopg the lagoons, with the antique village grown round it, rises the venerable edifice which has existed, in some form, since the dawn of Christianity. Good old King Rene of Provence gave it its present aspect in 1448. Histpry and legend tell how two of the Marys o*the Gospels were cast on this shore by a tempest. The Gentiles of Antioch had put them in a boat without sail or oars. They were women who had wept at the foot of the cross and visited the tomb and found the Lord had risen. Mary Salome and Mary the mother of James lived on this spot with their Egyptian servant, who was wrecked with them and whose name was Sarah. Here they built the church, died and were buried in it And because of Sarah (she who became the gypsies’ patron), these sands, each year, and greatly every fifth year, were strangely peopled. Over the roads came processions of bizarre vehicles, prehistoric stage coaches, prairie schooners, gypsy vans and rich house wagons mounted and surrounded by a dusky people, Some had dragged for months, and some for years! “Three times May has slipped found since the war,” said a minor official, “and no gypsies have appeared at the Sts. Maries. In May, 1914, there were three thousand in the German-Aus-trian-Danubian camp, while the Ital-ian-Spanish-Greek Gitanos were less numerous but richer. Without quarreling they met in not very good friendship, the Germanos being jealous of the Gitanos’ newer* finer wagons.” “Was there any triith in the rumor,” I asked, “that the Gitanos had made a ‘find’ of some great treasure about eight years ago, which all the gypsies had been seeking for three hundred years?”

The French official professed ignorance. Did they really elect a king? “They elect a queen,” said M. Sebille. “Local opinion judges the election to be a kind of play, as on Holy Innocents’ Day or Twelfth Night , . . but as no order was given to penetrate to the crypt, of which the Romanichels are very jealous, exactly what happens is hot known. . . . There is no complaint. The pilgrimage amuses the peasants and brings sightseers and money. The crypt is turned over to the gypsies on the night of May 24-25.” What can we kdow? When the chiefs go down the winding stairs to the subterranean arched hall, what signs from Memphis and Thebes do they mark on the wall? What sudden gleam of light (perhaps) joins the scattered descendants of the magnificent, accursed race which pretends to know the future of the world? “Not so united as all that . . murmured an official. I do not bring the controleur-general into this romantic part of it. But I have come across queer mentions of “The Song of Pharaoh,” which they sing down in the crypt, the reading of the gypsy gospel, and the “oldest magician” who, each time, “foretells the future of the world for the next five years.” “Did he foretell it in May, 1914?” I suggested. One of the French officials equivocated politely. “They got away from the war,’ 2 he said. “The gypsies disappeared!” Most people will tell you they went to Spain. :