Williams news., 1917-12-27
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Where are the gypsiesf' r
 '"They have disappeared since D the war;"
 "How could they disappear
 from France, all frontiers being guarded?"
 They did," replied the French official, smiling.
 Such was the result of my first in- Quiry, and such is the final word of a curious story. Editors in America ask ed me to discover "what has become of the gypsies." The French foreign of flee sent me to the prefecture of police, where I met M. Alfred Harduin, chief of the second bureau of the first di- vision
 ."Are the gypsies in concentration camps?'' I asked.
 ''Those belonging to enemy countries, yes," he answered, ''but almost none of them have any nationality; that is to say, their nationality could never be established. Such was the cause of the law of 1912"
 But M. Harduin knows, officially, only Paris and environs, so he sent me to the ministry of the interior, depart ment of the surete general, where met the great Sebille, controleur-gen- eral of the judicial investigations serv- ices, whose eyes see over all France.
 "The facts are the more curious" he admitted, because France was literal ly overrun with gypsies immediately before the war. Of forty thousand 'nomades' on the lists of the interior twenty-six thousand were Romanichels (Romanys or gypsies), and things had reached a point, in 1912, that France was obliged to make a special law to regulate them"
 Two rich and populous tribes, in par ticular, the Gorgans and the Yankos, seem to have made a considerable stir in the countryside with their fine horses, gorgeous house wagons, women, girls, bears, apes and raft of children, dressing loud and living like princes.
 "At Roisel, in the Somme," ran a report, ga tribe of so-called Russian gypsies (South Russia and Bohemia) molested the populations.'
 They were rich and naughty. They wore brilliant clothing and ornaments and had fine horses. Yet when a French peasant would buy one of those horses his tail would come out, his glossy coat go r1ngwormed, his plump ness sink in, and even "some teeth came out (says Farmer Cardon), being made of hardened bread crumb."
 AS for gold (strange detaiD, they found a massive gold chain of ancient around the waist of the prince of the Gorgans, under his em- broidered clothes, locked with a gold paddock of which nobody had the key On 1t were engraved, "T. I. L.-B. P.- 1512," and no explanation could be ob tained. The prince said simply, Its a family heirloom" He carried a rich, cruel whip of rawhide, supple oiled leather and small lead thongs, more like a weapon than a whip, jeweled in it's handle to the tune of some $6O00, Finally, among his person. al belongings were sixty-seven Amer lean gold dollars of 1S53l
 "How could the gypsies get away when the war broke outT insisted, when all frontier authorities were on the lookout for enemy subjects and spies2"
 Instead of making a discourse the | general told me a case of some time before the mobilization.
 A strong band of gypsies (Kakaras- families) had penetrated | from France to Switzerland and, at | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-~---~