Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1918 — A WALLED CITY OF WOMEN [ARTICLE]

A WALLED CITY OF WOMEN

A little sunny village has grown np Inside a high wall in France within the last year. Its square flat houses stand In straight even rows and along on* side of the city wall is a tong Bonnitory for single women. There are many more of them than of the families in the drab little houses. The village is , full of women—old, young, middleaged—whose faces, hands and hair slowly are turning yellow from the powder which it Is said will eventually affect their lungs. But most of them are refugees and the fact that they are giving up their good looks, their health, and perhaps their lives in the munition factory, is of little moment to them. They have come into the walled town from ruined villages and devastated farms with their frightened little children, their despairing old people, carrying all their earthly possessions in tiny bundles. In their individual lives there is no future; In all their world there Is no Interest but the conquest of the Hun. No one comes into this little war community that centers around the big new munitions plant but those who work. Because of the danger and the blighting yellow powder, the work is highly paid and all the workers are volunteers. The women wear overalls or apron dresses, some of black sateen, some nondescript. The dull garb harmonizes with the yellowing faces and despairing eyes. Into this modern walled city of despair the Blue Triangle has flashed the first message of hope. The Y. W. C. A. foyer is the only recreational center within reach. The cars which find cases at the end erf the line a mile away, stop running at seven o’clock to save fuel. The city is three miles from the factory. “My problem,” writes the Y. W. C. A. secretary in charge, “is to keep the women occupied in the evenings, to give them good healthy amusement so that they will forget their sorrows and go to bed and sleep, physically tired out from playing.” She goes on to tell of some of the women and girls who come to the foyer: “There is a pretty little round, rosycheeked girl here who is just beginning to show the effects of the powder. The roots of her hair and her forehead are a pale yellow. The palms of het hands are a deep burnt orange and her hands and arms a bright yellow. “There is an ex-professional dancer, an interesting girl who enjoys the foyer and helps entertain the other girls. There is a professional pianist who does her bit at the noon and evening hours. There is one 'rough-and-ready girl who speaks English, whose father was an innkeeper in northern France. There is a pretty little girl who is engaged to a French soldier who still is rejoicing over the five minutes she had with him recently during an air raid. His mother is ther’earfe. taker here and he is one of six sons in the war. Two of them are German military prisoners, two are civil prisoners in Germany and two are soldiers in the trenches. Her home in the north of France was destroyed and she escaped with a small bundle of such things as she could carry in her hands.

“There is a sweet-faced girl who was a lacemaker in Valenciennes, who came direct to us from the Germanridden section after a hard experience in getting away.” These are the women the Blue Triangle is helping to forget—perhaps only for an hour at a time—the horrors that have blackened their hearthstones and darkened the world. “My foyer,” the secretary writes, “consists of a hall and two large rooms with cement floors. One has a writing table and paper, pens and ink, sewing machines, a cupboard with teacups in it, a large table with papers and magazines, easy chairs and my desk. The other room has a piano, more tables, chairs, ironing boards and a Victrola. There are unframed French pictures and American and French war posters around the room. The walls are painted. gray and white.” Saturday evenings they sing and dance. “First they have a chorus," writes the secretary, “such as *Le Reve Passe’ or the ‘Hymne des Aviateurs’ or something equally thrilling, and at the final notes of triumph a voice at my ears begs, “Un polka, mees.’ The polka finished, there is a call for the Hymne Amerlcaln’ and we sing the ‘StarSpangled Banner,’ (Le Drapeau Etoile) in two languages.” These foyers have been established in several munition centers In France. Each one has a cafeteria, a recreation hail and rooms fitted up as rest rooms, writing, and sewing rooms. At night these rooms are filled with French girls learning English, bookkeeping or stenography, that they may work in the offices of the American Expeditionary Forces. In connection with each is a large recreation field or park. At the request of the French ministry of war the Young Women’s Christian association has opened dubrooms for the sixteen thousand French women employed In the offices of the war department. So successful has been the foyer work in France that a call has come from England to the American Y. W. C. A. to bring its Blue Triangle huts and foyers across the channel. The English Y. W. C. A. has established centers for munitions workers on a smaller scale, but after Inspection of the American work in France the four English representatives to the Allies’ Women’s congress In Paris In August, officially requested that the American Y. W. C. A. undertake similar work la a England. \