Ladysmith news-budget. [volume] (Ladysmith, Rusk County, Wis.) 1907-1927, 1918-11-01
THE BLUE TRIANGLE
ON BABEL'S TOWER

-
Lucia pulled hef shawl farther
across her face and shrank down on
the station platform bench as the solid
blue figure suddenly bent down over
her. Excitedly she shook her head in
answer to the question that she could
not understand. She searched through
her red plaid waist for the paper that
Tony had folded into little square
and given to her. The writing on it,,
in the English that Tony knew and she
did not, told the house where she lived.
Tony had explained it all to her that
morning. He had told it to her again
at the station. Then, waving his hat
he had disappeared into the train VIII
the rest of the men, and Lucia had
been left standing oueside the gate.
all about her. They were weeping.
SO Lucia wept, too.
Lucia had been betrOthed to Tony
in the old country. Five years before,
with long ticket for New York
pinned into his inside pocket, her lover
had left her. He wrote in every let
ter that he had made her a home in
the new country. Her dOwry money
had finally provided her own transport
tatiOn. and for two months Tony and
she had been married. Then he had
drawn ticket with a number on it,
and this morning he had gone off to
war
To the policeman Lucia told all these
things in rapid Italian. But the po-
liceman only talked back to her as
rapidly in language that was not
Italian. She followed him dumbly to
headquarters. An hour later wOm-
an wearing American clothes gently
began talking to her in beautiful Ital-
ian.
italian Lucia was only one of thou
sands of foreign-born women, Syrians,
Italians, Armenians, Russians, Lithu
anans, Polish, who when the draft
called their men folk to the American
colors, asked in helpless confusion
what it was all about. When would
their men be back? What did people
mean when they told them they would
receive money through the mail?
Where could they find work that they
knew how to do? Was there no one
who could explain 1t all to them in
their own language?
The Y. w. c. A. was ready to offer
assistance, but 1t would be of no value
to offer it in English Consequently
it had to supply corps of women who
could talk to the foreign-bOrn woman
ait her own door in the language that
she was used to hearing in the home
land. To teach her English was as
essential factor in her AmericaniZa-
ton as to find her a job. Therefore
the war council of he Y. w. G. A. set
out to find her English.
A year before the war began in Eu-
rope, the leaders of the Young WOm-
ans Christian association fOreSaw just
such situation, and made ready to
meet 1t. They studied the needs of
the immigrant. They trained skilled
American social workers to become IA
miliar with the home habits and to
speak the language of the Lett and the
Hungarian and the Greek and the 9th
err foreign mothers who brought ba-
bies and bundles over from Ellis island
to Battery park.
The organization into which this ey-
pertinent has developed was named
by the Y w. C. A. national board, 1.-THE
International Institute for Young
Women" In terms which these wOm-
en- can understand, 1t is teaching the
foreign-born how to sew and cook and
care for the baby.
To girls like italian Lucia. who con-