Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 124, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1918 — HUSBAND GONE—SONS GONEHOME AND RELATIVES GONE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HUSBAND GONE—SONS GONEHOME AND RELATIVES GONE

A Fact Story Telling Just What the Red Cross Did for Mme. PeHier.

By an Eye Witness MAUDE RADFORD WARREN

Thia Is the picture I saw last January in France, —and you have mercifully changed It! Color enough there was—-above, the eternal blue; in the hackground, fields of living green, which the German shells could not prevent from creeping back; in the middle foreground, a. long village street so battered and burned that it was merely a canyon of cream-col-osed ruins. In front of one little broken house were four figures in black—an old womans poking among the fallen stones In a vain search for something that could be used; a younger woman, seated on what had once been a doorstop, with her face hidden In her arms; and a little boy and girl, who stared, half frightened, half curious, at the desolation about them. The little boy held in his thin hand a Bed Cross flag. All four were pale and gaunt; the faces and bodies of the children showed none of the round curves that make the beauty of a child. Thia is their history: When the war broke out, Mme. Pellier, her mother and her four younger children were visittag her husband's mother in the north of France. Her husband and two older sons were at home In Lorraine taking care of the summer crops. Thon the war! The mother In-law of Mme. Pellier was ill and could not be left Her old mother was afraid to travel to Lorraine with the fnß care of the four children. Before they could all start together the Germans Invaded. Bad news is allowed to some Into northern France, and so as the months passed Mme. Pellier learned that her village home had been bombarded and that her husband and two sons had boon killed. Except for the Belgian Relief Commission, which operates In northern France also, she and her little ones would have starved outright At the best they were undernourished. Then the great push began, and hopes for France grew high- But as the French soldiers advanced they had to bombard the northern towns. Mme. Pellier begged the Germans to let her go away with her children—even into Germany. This was refused. She tried to seek safety in some cellar whenever there was a bombardment Nevertheless a shell Mllert two of her children. Found Her Home Gone. Home gone; husband gone; bravo soldier sons gone; little, tender .boys torn Into shreds! That.woman's face would have shown you what she had sufferedtrher face against the battered ruins the Germans had made. At last she and her mother and her two remaining children were repatriated. They knew the infinite relief of cross-

Ing into Switzerland and then into Haute-Savoie. From there they went to Lohralne. Mme. Pellier hoped that, even though her village had been bombarded, her home might have escaped. She found nothing except her bare fields. You changed that picture, you Americans, who cad never be bombarded, who can never lose through War five out of the seven dearest to you. It was not your husband and children who died; not your wife who was widowed; not your little ones who came back, bony and tubercular, to a home that had vanished. Not yours, but only the grace of accident saved you; not yours, but It might have been and so you changed the picture. You could not build up with your own hands that heap of stones into a home, nor till the fields, nor bring Mme. Pellier back to hope and the children back to health. But through the Red Cross you saved the remnants of that family that bad suffered as you might have suffered. Things the Red Cross Did. You took the mother of Mme. Pellier to a Red Cross hospital to be treated for anaemia. You took the little girl, who was In the first stages of tuberculosis, to a Red Cross sanitarium. You found a place which could be made habitable for Mme. Pellier near her fields which she was anxious to till. You gave her clothes and furniture; you got her seeds; you lent her implements. You sent a visiting doctor to watch over her health and that of her little boy. You sent nurses, who achieved the mighty victory of making her and the child take baths. Later you persuaded her to let him go to a refuge not far away where he might attend school and where she could often visit him. Through the help of your Red Cross hope and coms age and ambition have come back to that woman, and she Is rebuilding her family life. The biggest thing one human being can do for another you, if you are a helper of the Red Cross, have done for that mother. Red Cross! I saw Its work everywhere In France. In fields and In blasted villages; In hospitals and schools and clinics; In refuges and vestiaries for widows and orphans and for the sick children of soldiers fighting to keep you safe from the enemy. This symbol of help has a double meaning now for Americans, who have always taken for granted the blessing of safety. It stands for your willing ness to pay the price of exemption, of pity, of sympathy. A bitter, black road this road of war, but across it, like a beacon of hope, you have flung the Red Cross.