Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 133, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1918 — Marcel Gets His Bam Mended [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Marcel Gets His Bam Mended

Red Cross Helps This 15 Year Old French Boy—and His Family. Marcel is a man. He is Just fifteen years old, but yet he is a man. 1 say be is n man been use in the last tour years’ time has burned into his child heart marks that.should wait for sterner maturity. He is a man because tie has the responsibility of a woman. He has no father. The Germans .saw to that. Marcel has had to stand b.v and see his small brothers and baby sister ask in vain for food while he fought off the pressing call from his growing boy’s stomach. He has had to see tears from Ills mother s eyes drpp on the plowed ground as she worked the soil his father would have tilled had he not gone away out of the peacefulness of .the Marne valley into the iron hail of the Aisne and on into the hererfter. The boy, who was now a man. worked hard, yes. too'hard. With his hairless hands and his boy’s strength he fought almost alone the unequal fight against want with what little help his frail mother could give. Mother Can Keep Children.

One of the 70 or 80 local societies tn France, handicapped by lack of funds because deluged by calls for help, tried to releive the family by taking away the children, But to the torture twisted brain of the woman thia seemed like losing all she had. And then when everything seemed lost and despair came they heard the news: “No, It could not be true. They would help them with food and clothing? They would till the soil? Mend the barns and stay near by to see that things went well?" Yes. and the children could stay, said the Red Cross, as they had said to hundreds of others. That was tw’o years ago. Today this family is self supporting and has some to spare for the more needy ones, who still are being helped. Little Jean is taller. He looks well fed —and he Is well fed. The baby is so roily pojy that the dimples have come again. They are tn good spirits—on thelf feet once more. And Marcel. He has finished the course that the Red Cross gave him in an agricultural school. It is he who has been running the farm so well. He did It all. At least they let him think so, for heaven knows he has seen the bottom of the hitter cup. And I know that the Red Cross will want me to say he did It. for that is the way tney work —quietly, earnestly, efficiently, without stint, without waste, without boast