The Seward gateway daily edition, and the Alaska weekly post., 1918-02-02

terial belongings and the financial support usually given them by hus- bands or sons or brothers now serving their country. In two instances refu- gees were observed picking in the fields kind of wild grass, which they eat, but which in America we would think only of feeding to cattle.
 The most pathetic case of suffering and want was witnessed in the little village of Soltiu, in the District of Putna. In a squalid shack of wood and mud were three little children on the point of exhaustion for lack of proper care and food. They were or phans. The mother had lately died of typhus, which has blighted nearly the whole of Rumania; the father was serving at the front, and little girl of 10 was acting as mother to two tiny tots of and z. The youngest child was lying helpless on bag on a stone floor, a tragic spectacle of famine and disease.
 A second case, which was only typi- cal of numberlesS others, was obseiv- ed in a dilapitated house no larger than the ordinary American bedroom. The roof was full of holes. Elsewhere in the house the open spaces were stuffed with rags. Here there were 10 persons crowded together under conditions of squalor and misery. Bags and tattered patch-quilts form ed the only coverings on the make shift beds.
 One of the inmates was an elderly woman who had recently lost her husband, but whose pride it was to have three sons serving in the army. For this solemn contribution to the cause of her country, however, she had not even the small reward from her government of decent existence. She had no food beyond few hand fuls of cornmeal. She was spectre of famine. Her face was drawn and pinched and her countenance so ineX- pressibly sad that it told it's own sill ent tale of the terrible hardships she and her nine companions in the house were enduring.
 One of her children, helpless mite of 3, lay under the clay stove, in which there was a feeble fire, slowly succumbing to pellagra. The other nine occupants, most of them children, were pathetic figures of poverty and misery.
 There probably are thousands of cases equally as extreme or even worse. The observer could easily see, with this tragic picture before him, why typhus had taken such terrible toll of life last winter. The houses visited were in most cases dirty and unsanitary and offered the most fer tile breeding places for vermin. The occupants were so terribly impover- ished that their feeble bodies could scarcely be expected to withstand the invasion of even the mildest of dis eases.
 In these villages, which often are only short distance from the area where military activity is greatest, and which are subjected almost daily to shell fire by the Germans one would think that the inhabitants, following the instinct of self-preseIvation, would go to places at least free from the terrors of actual warfare; but with hope borne of confidence in the bravery of the Rumanian army and it's ability to drive back the Germans, these simple, guileless peasants con- tinuc to finger in the danger zones. believing that soon the German army will be forced to withdraw and that the population will be able to return to their deserted homes.
 On the other hand, there are son.e who realize the great jeopardy n which they are placing themselves by staying within the range of enemy guns, and they have wisely abandon ed their homes for places at least re- moved from the imminence of air plane bombardment end shell fire. h these cases it is a sight deeply ;m- pressive to the American observer to see the poor but saga":ous peasant burying in the cold earth his spare clothes or the household articles which he treasures most, in orGer that they may not fall into the hands of the in- vading Gemans ant that he may re