Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1918-03-23
BY Marian BonsaI Davis.

SO0eJGlng lett among the wreckage
that speaks intimately to your own
heart 1t may be a broken flower
pct with dried roots still clinging:
an image of the Virgin still stand
ing in her oval niche in a fragment
OF a wall: a baby's broken cradle:
a twisted garden tool All the bayo-
nets and incendiary torches and
guns of the invaders have not been
able TO crush out something of-the-
spirit which fingers there.
Z And they have not been able to
/ crush it out of the tragic process
sions of the homeless, as they are
driven hither and thither-some-
times as slaves by their conquerors :;
sometimes to fee where they will
from violence and destruction. Some
day as you walk briskly on an err
rand through the streets of Paris,
you see a group of them coming in,
slow-moving, bewildered. There is
terrible intimacy about this sight
and most of all about the little ones
: who have seen hideous things and
are too young to know that they
are not common part of life.
Who is going to take care of
them, and their mothers and these
old, bent people, who are such a
detached, trifling part of Frances
million and a half refugees?
For three and a half years France
has been doing the best she could
as they poured in endless streams
from Belgium and from all the in
vaded districts of France, while she
had to pit her strength against that
pushing German line which would
have surged into Paris through any
break. But every day they came
greater numbers, lost and helpless.
from beautiful villages and towns
and cities that now are heaps of
ruins But that "Something-of-th
Spirit" was still not crushed out
it responded to the sunlight Geniu-
sese like Monsieur Peltier, and
Monsieur Mirman and the man who
meets every train that comes into
Evian with the repatriated, knew
this.
The French commission of the
American Red Cross. with the $40
900, 900 war fund behind it. on it's
arrival in Paris consulted with the
/ French government how it could
best help And the glory of the
American Red Cross is the prin-
cipal of cooperation it established
there, and by which it works. The
/ first thing it did for refugees in
I France was to make itself the CO
operator-and never by any chance
+ the rivaI-Of all of the existing
/ agencies official and non-oficial for
+ their welfare. 1t puts grant of
( 000,0 francs (about $1,000,000) in
+ the hands of the French government
+ for it's refugees. And it began to
/ find or prepare decent lodgings for
+ the thousands upon thousands of
( them squeezed into Paris attics.
Also it began to learn everything
that could be learned about the
whole problem of the million and a
[ half of them
There had been wonderful, initia-
tive, Enthusiastically French, in
many cases in meeting these in
pOurings Of the homeless. The case
Of Monsieur Peltier and group of
gendarmes (WhO correspond to our
! policemen is one of the great stor-
I les of the war. Here it is:
( One day-it was early in the war
the gendarmes of two arrondisse-
ments. or wards, in Paris received
an official telegram that about
eighteen thousand refugees would
arrive the next morning for them to
take care of. Soho provision,
no money, no roof, no place to put
( them, no anything, but 1000 of
them. nevertheless, due to arrive
I the next morning and their re
sponsibilityi
Monsieur Peliter. the chief of one
/ Of these wards, called a conference.
First. money These gardarmes, or
: policemen, put each a hand in his
own pocket, and produced two
francs; and after the conference
they told the small shop keepers
along the streets of their wards and
they added to this pooled sum for
the start-off. Everyone's two francs
on the table, there rose the question
of lodgings. That was the rub.
Finally some one timidly suggested
the huge building that had been in
former times seminary for
priests, in the famous old square
OF St. Sulpice. A part of it was
being used for a museum. That
question settled!
The museum pieces were crowd
ed together in a small space and
locked, and the big old keys be
gan opening door after door and
door after door, and hundreds of
windows went up and several hun
unders of rooms that used to domt-
Gle Young priests, took their first
long breath in years, preparatory TO
taking in this pitiful host even then
on its suffering way to Paris.
Mattresses and stoves were rush
ed in. faster than SO many mat
tresses and stoves and dishes, are
lively to have been rushed before.
And when these weak. frightened,
dazed people were brought to the
seninaire the next morning by the
gendarmes, there was water to
wash in. and food TO eat, and mat
tresses TO sleep on. So began the
famous Secours de GueTe, inspired
and directed by keen, kindly Mon
sieur PeItier.
Every day since it has sheltered
and fed between eighteen hundred
and three thousand refugees. Its
godfathers, the gendarmes, are
proud OF it, The huge seminary is
a city in itself now-dormitories,
divided into suites, that the rem
ants Of families may keep their
family life; school rooms; cobbler
shops where little shoes are made
out OF WORKOUT big ones; sewing
for seventy or