The Oskaloosa herald. (Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, Iowa) 1885-1919, 1917-06-28
IN THE WAR ZONE.

So many thrilling stories are DelnS
told by correspondents in the war
zone, that they pass unheeded by
many readers. The Associated Press
dispatches the other day, however,
carried a story that appealed to hu-
mainly, and once read cannot be for
gotten. 1t Is the most vivid picture
of conditions in the war zone that has
come in months. The dispatch says:
THE French children found in the
villages of northern France evacuat-
ed by the Germans under the pressure
of the British and Fench offensives
present a picture of the savagery of
modern warfare as characteristic as
the Somme for bodies shattered and
broken by months of shell fire.
Many of these children are orphans.
without homes or relatives. Many
have been grievously wounded. Most
of them suffer from a peculiar species
of shell shock which afflicts them gen.
orally with a sort of tremor not un-
like st. Vitus dance.
They have had life and death hor-
rors human and inhuman, revealed to
them in guises so terrible that they
will never be quite normal again. All
are underfed and frail from confine-
ment in cellars. Cut off suddenly from
relatives and friends perhaps two
years ago, they have continued to live
within a few hundred yards of the
front lines, listening always to the
thud of shells and the crash of ex-
plosives until their idea of heaven is
place that is very quiet"
The condition of peasant men and
women who have been living under
the shadow Of the invader through
these long months and years has
been bad enough, but the condition
mentally deranged little children
has been far worse. All the children
were collected and shepherded by the
first entente troops into the newly &C
cupied areas.
| Everything that can be done to
cure and care for them is now be-
ing done, constituting one of the most
important immediate tasks of the
French committee on reconstruction
The first step was to remove them
! we'll behind the front areas. Those
who were orphans were taAen far
away from the sight and sound of
shells, many Of them to the south of
France. The mildest cases were there
put under the care of farm mothers.
| The more serious cases must, Of
course, be kept under close medical
supervision in special institutions.
Children who were not orphans
were not usually taken away from
the district. Mothers or grandmoth-
ers could not bear to part with them
altogether, so they were placed on
farms nearby where il is possible for
the parents to visit them frequently.
One French organization has a
hospital with 400 child patients, all
under IL years of age. Most of them
are wounded. Some have lost legs
or arms, others their sight, others are
suffering from brain fever of puz-
zling anaemia under which they rapid
ly waste away.
They are the victims of the
ruthlessness of modern warfare"
said the head of the hospital, a
French woman, wearing the uniform
OF the French Red Cross. There is
no better argument against war than
to see these mutilated little victims
who will never play or enjoy life as
other children do. They are mere
shadows of childhood. 1t is difficult to
make them talk and they tremble and
start at any noise or sudden move
ment. Women are always gentle with
children, but with these children wei
need handling something more fragile
than the most delicate china"