Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 67, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1918 — THE BLUE TRIANGLE ON BABEL’S TOWER [ARTICLE]

THE BLUE TRIANGLE ON BABEL’S TOWER

Lucia pulled bet shawl farther across her face and shrank down on the station platform bench as the solid blue figure suddenly bent down over her. Excitedly she shook her head tn answer to the question that she could not understand. She searched through her red plaid waist for the paper that Tony had folded into a little square and given to her. The writing on it, tn the English that Tony knew and she did not, told the house where she lived. Tony had explained It all to her that morning. He had told It to her again at the station. Them waving his hat, he had disappeared into the train with the rest of the men, and Lucia had been left standing oueside the gate. There were crowds of women pushing al) about her. They were weeping. So Lucia wept, too. Lucia had been betrothed to Tony in the old country. Five years before, with a long ticket for New York pinned into his inside pocket, her lover had left her. He wrote in every letter that he had made her a home in the, new country. Her dowry money had finally-provided her own transportation, and for two months Tony and she had been married. Then he had drawn a ticket with a number it, and this morning he had gone off to war. To the policeman Lucia told all these things in rapid Italian. Rut the policeman only talked back to her as rapidly in a language that was sot Italian. She followed him dumbly to headquarters. An hour later a woman wearing American clothes geatly began talking to her in beautiful Kalian. Italian Lucia was only one of thousands of foreign-born women, Syrians, Italians, Armenians, Russians, Lkhuauians, Polish, who, when the draft called their men folk to the American colors, asked in helpless confusion what it was all about. When would their men be back? What did people mean when they told them they waald receive money through the mail? Where could they find work that they knew how to do? Was there no one who could explain it all to them in their own language? The Y. W. C. A. was ready to offer assistance, but it would be of no value to offer it In English. Consequently it had to supply a corps of women who could talk to the foreign-born woman at her own door in the language that she was used to hearing in the homeland. To teach her English was as essential a factor in har Americanization as to find her a job. Therefore the 'war council of the Y. W. C. A. set out to find her English. A year before the war began In Europe, the leaders of the Young Woman’s Christian association foresaw just such a situation, and made ready to meet it. They studied the needs of the immigrant. They trained skilled American social workers to become familiar with the home habits and to speak the language of the Lett and the Hungarian and the Greek and the other foreign* mothers who brought babies and bundles over from Ellis island to Battery park.

The organization into which this experiment has developed was named by the Y. W. C. A. national board, "The International Institute for Yeung Women.” In terms which these weensn can understand, it is teaching the foreign-born how to sew and cook and care for the baby. To girls like Italian Lucia, whe eonfusedly lingered on the static® platforms when the draft trains pulled out, the W. Y. C. A. Is giving direct assistance. Educated European westen, appointed to the regular staff of ers at the camp Y. W. 6. A. Houses are able to talk to the drafted men in their own language, assist them in writing letters home, and lu. »r----ranging furloughs and little vieata to the camp. “The Home Information Service.fer Foreign Families of Enlisted Meu” is doing practical relief work fiw she wives and mothers. The purpose of the board Is to help the women folk left behind to understand where their boys are and how they are being treated; how they need home support and cheer, how to send them comforts, and to keep pace themselves by learning English and other things, so that when the boys come home they will not find their women still very un-American and out of sympathy with them. Food conservation bulletins have been translated into 18 or 19 languages. At the factories, and mansion plants interpreters are available for the nonEnglish speaking women by whom the real war industries of the country are being largely carried on. In 25 important cities Internationa] Institute Bureaus are training American and foreign women for full, time social service work vjith foreigners. Twentyfour trained women are employed on the national and district fie,ld staff of the Y. W. C. A. On June 15 th ere’were 105 trained women working at Americanization. When more than 75,000 Chicago men filled out their blue cards for ths September 12 draft. Gang,Luo Writ appeared at one precinet bringing with him Mrs. Gang Wong and the three, children. All five wished to The enrolling clerk explained, hut the Gang Luo Wongs make many broken Chinese remonstrances before the master of the family was induced to sign a card without his wife. Mrs. Wong could not speak English. What would his family do in a strange country if Gang Luo went"to war? All over the United States Chinese and Poles aad Serbs were asking the same question. It is to just such needs that the War Council of the Y. M. C. A. is organized to give assistance.