Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 136, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1919 — Woman Rules Relief [ARTICLE]

Woman Rules Relief

Has Charge of Large Activities in Czecho-Slovakia. Lady Muriel Paget Tells of Urgent Food Needs of Millions of People. Paris. —A woman has been entrusted with the big task of organizing and administering relief work in one of Europe’s new states —Czechoslovakia. Lady Muriel Paget, an Englishwoman whose devotion to the Czecho-Slo-vak cause is well known, arriyed here frdm Prague after a month's tout of the new republic, and outlined to the Associated Press correspondent her scheme for the relief of that country. Her plan, which has the approval of the Czecho-Slovak authorities, is to enlist a body of able and willing social workers to train the women of Czechoslovakia in social welfare work. Her ambition is to Interest patriotic Czech women in America in the welfare of their native land. “There are, roughly, 5,000,000 people in Czecho-Slovakia today who have just enough to keep body and soul together,” Lady Muriel said. “Against these who may be described' as the rural population, there are 7,000,000 who are below the line of bare existence. They are, broadly speaking, the industrial and mining population. “Food, most of it from America, is now coming into the country through Trieste at the rate of about a hundred carloads a day; yet 400,000 people in eastern Slovakia are starving, and even in the better-situated paris the flour ration is only three pounds a head per month.”

Lady Muriel explained how this situation is utilized by the Magyars in Hungary to sow discontent among the Slovaks. “Practically all the intelligent classes have left Slova/kia,” Lady Muriel continued, “and it is during the present crisis and until their own people can be trained to do constructive and administrative work that the Czecho-SloVak government and the people have asked me to organize temporary assistance and provide advice.” Lady Muriel win establish her relief headquarters at Pressburg, from which center the sixteen necessitous Slovakian districts will be fed, clothed and medically assisted.