The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1914-09-13
REFUGEES CROWD
FRENCH CAPITAL
Belgian Women. Huddled Like
Sheep, Tell Stories Of
Atrocities.
MOTHER DRIVEN INSANE
Famous Cirque de Paris, Where 1000
of These UnfOrtunates Are Housed.
Presents Piiable Scenes.

Paris. Sept. 12-Personal accounts of
the war are being brought daily to Paris
by refugees and wounded soldiers.
Perhaps the largest Of the refugee en-
campments in Paris is big circus build
ing, situated between the Inyalides and
the Eiffel Tower.
When the humiliation from the northern
frontier began yesterday, and the i'm
possibility of leaving such an emergency
to be dealt with by private societies be-
came evident, the project of police in
tervened, and more than 900 OF the un-
fortunates were gathered together and
conveyed to the Cirque de Paris.
Instead Of children's happy laughter
over cloWnish jokes, the great rotunda
is filled today with a low, ground swell
Of lamentstion, broken here and there
by the sharp cries Of babes
Full of Human Jetsam.
The stalls and boxes, galleries and
corridors, are full Of this human jetsam
from the tempest that has destroyed
Southern Belgium during the last week.
Most of them do not own penny.
Their eyes are red with weeping, their
faces drawn with fatigue. 1t is i'm
possible to speak too highly Of the kind
ness with which they are being fed and
cared for.
my husband is with the Belgian
army" said a woman from Framery,
near Mons, land I was left with my
three babies in our cottage.
IAN was quite until Monday, when
the Germans came. They sacked and
destroyed every house, and there re-
mains nothing Of our poor village but
ruins.
'I saw one of these bandits strike one
of my neighbors in the breast with his
sword, and then flourish the bloody blade
81
women, who had hidden in their cellars,
were shot"
A housekeeper from Chatlet warned on
Sunday by the Chere words are blotted out
by the CENSOR to fly says that she,
with her mother and five children, had to
walk seventy miles forward and about
before they could reach the train that
brought them to Paris.
A woman from Peronne-le-Bincher,
started out with one Of her neighbors
who carried a young babe at her breast.
Suddenly the mother perceived that the
little one was dead.
She could not bear this new shock, and
became mad. When she was helped out
of the train on reaching Paris she still
held and was cooling over the body of her
child.
Smaller bodies of refugees have been
temporarily lodged in police stations and
They are mostly women whose hus-
bands are with the Antwerp garrison or
are asleep forever in the vast cemetery
of the great plain of Flanders. The stupor
in which many of the refugees sit is a
merciful thing, for none could dare TO
wish to live if they could see into the
hungry and desolate years that are to
come.
And let US not forget the German moth
ers. ''Cimay is completely destroyed,
said one woman, land in the streets the
corpses of the Germans have been piled
Up to a height of five yards That is
what they have said" CHere ten lines of
the message have been cut out by the
CENSOR.
Each is at once boarded by cool-headed
nurses and officers Of the Red Cross.
Many of the wounded are not gravely
injured, though effectively hOrs de com
bat One shows a left hand mutilated by
q sword stroke, another has a bail in
his thigh. A young volunteer of the ORA
goons tells proudly how a patrol Of eight !
men, of whom he was one, put to flight
last Friday two squads of Uhlans. max /
ing their lieutenant a prisoner.