Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 268, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1919 — HAVE NEW SENSE OF DUTY [ARTICLE]

HAVE NEW SENSE OF DUTY

America Probably Has Taught Much to French Women of the Highest Social Position. They were handing out pots and pans to the returned refugees’ at Reims that day. It Was really a very gay occasion, says Blanche Brace in World Outlook. The pots and pans made It so, in spite of the ghosts of dead homes (mere hollow shells of ruined houses) all around the shattered building where the distribution was being made, the broken cathedral over yonder, the miles of desolation everywhere. Sometimes ths refugee women •hugged the cheap utensils to them and crooned over them as if they had been children; sometimes they wanted to pay a few centimes “rent” for them, vo that they might feel the things were their own. These were not just pots and pans, but the promise of comfort and security again, the nucleus for new homes that should rise from the i ruins. ~ A countess with smudged fingers, and half a dozen other French women of prestige, stood behind the counter and handed out the utensils. All at once a middle-aged, homely mere dropped her pan with a clatter. “Mon Dleu I” she gasped, “is she a countess? And I fought with her for a bigger pot! And working so hard—what does it mean?” Wffat It meant was that France learned two new words from America during the war —social service.