The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1917-12-28
Rich New York Woman Is
Doing Her Bit In France
CHEERING UP The PEOPLE
Makes Tour of Twenty-Six VIII
lagos Daily; Number of
Assistants
w. S. FORREST.

With the French Armies In The
Field, December Icy Mail.1-A
big limousine today rambled into
what was once village of the Aisne
in Northern France-now two piles
of jumbled stone separated by road.
A woman stepped out of the car. She
wore horizon blue tunic neatly tai
lored and with pockets cut after the
fashion of French officers. Her skirt
was of the same material as well as
the manniSh untrimmed hat. In her
hand she carried walking stick.
"Sylvie, how's that cow" she ques-
toned an old French woman. Sylvie
avowed that the COW was fine and Civ
ing more milk every day. Then the
conversation drifted to pots and pans
and other things Sylvie needed in her
new home built where the old home
used to be before the war. The woman
of the uniform made some notes on
writing pad, climbed into the car,
waved eau revoir" and disappeared up
the road
She Was Miss Anna Morgan.
The woman of the limousine and
uniform was Miss Anna Morgan,
daughter of the late J. P. Morgan,
and now guardian angel over some
twenty-six ruined villages of the
Aisne where the war has reached the
stage of reconstruction.
Like the cat who refuses to desert
the ruins of a burned farmhouse, the
people who inhabited those villages
before the Germans drove them out
and burned or blew up everything that
stood, are beginning to come back one
by one
Old Sylvie was one of the first to
return The COW she spoke of was a
community COW. Except for the fifteen
cows brought into the district by the
civil section of the American fund for
French wounded headed by Anna
Morgan in the field the entire twenty
six villages are cowless Five of these
cows are now in the various ruined
villages-sold to the community at
cost price. Ten cows remain at Miss
Morgan's headquarters-fve new
wooden barracks and what remains of
the ancient chateau, destroyed during
the French revolution but today keep
ing company with the ruined houses
of Blerancourt village. Sixty families
get their milk morning and night at
the chateau even though in some
cases it means walk of several
miles.
Has Number of Assistants.
Assisting Miss Morgan are nineteen
young American women who with five
auto camions make daily visits to all
of the twenty-siX villages. Each young
woman looks after a village and some
of them have two
If the returning villagers have
money they are enabled to buy ne
cessities Of every description deliv-
cred by the Americans with their
camions. If the villagers return des-
titue it is only necessary to tell the
American millionairess and her
young assistants.
The barracks contain everything
from cows, goats and chickens to pots,
pans, knives, forks, food, clothing and
agricultural implements necessary in
the procedure Of beginning life all
over again.
The scope of the work carried on
may be judged by the fact that aside
from building homes and furnishing
them for the most needy villagers,
the American millionairess and her
nineteen assistants have provided the
wherewithal to place 5000 acres of
the Aisne region back under cultiva-
ton.