Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1918-01-17
RuMANIANS ARE
VERY WRETCHEO
MISERY AND STARVATION STALK
EVERY WHERE PEOPLE SLEEP
ING IN THE OPEN AND LIVING
ON GRASS.

JASSN, ROumania, Jan. LEX
IRENE suffering exists among refugees
and peasants in the little mountain
villages that so numerous just back
Of the Roumanian-Germa battle line.
In a large number of cases the refu-
gees are without shoes and without
shelter Of any kind, many of them
being compelled to live in the fields
prevailing cold winter nights. Often
their clothing consists only OF a few
thin ragged cotton garments that give
scarcely any warmth to the wasted
bodies Their situation is renderd the
more precariOus by the fact that the
districts in which they are living are
subject to frequent artillery fire and
to bombing by airplanes.
Those who are fortunate enough to
have even the poor comfort of shelter
il the shattered adobe houses that
remain standing are in almost every
most wretched misery. Forced sud
denly by the eXigencies of the mill
tary situation to abandon their former
homes, they have fed; for in these
small villages there is neither any
thing to sustain life nor that medical
care which often would save life. All
doctors are needed on the front, and
these unfortunate people, who might
otherwise be useful factors to society
if properly cared for, are left either
to struggle alone with the ravages of
famine and disease CT I'd dieofstarva
ton
III some villages the refugees and
peasants receive bread twice a week;
il. others none at all 1t is true that
d scant supply of corn meal is OBJ
tuinable by application to government
agencies, but this slender staple for
every meal is not calculated to give
strength and slustenance to people al
ready reduced to the last extremity
OF restitution by the loss of their ma
terial belongings and the financial
support usually given them by hus-
bands or sons or brithers now serV
ing their country. In two instances
refugees were observed picking in the
fields of a kind of wild grass which
IN A
would think only of feeding to cattle.
The most pathetic case of suffering
and want was witnessed in the little
village of Seltiu, in the District of
Putna In a squalid shack of wood
and were three little children on the
point of exhaustion for lack of proper
care and food They were orphans.
The mother had lately died of typhus,
which has blighted nearly the whole
OF Rumania; the father was serving
at the front, and a little girl of ten
was acting as mother to two tiny tots
o. 4 and T. The youngest child was
lying helpless on a bag on stone
floor, a tragic spectacle of famine and
disease.
A second case, which was only typi-
cal of numebrless others, was obseTv-
ed in a dilapidated house no larger
than the ordinary American bedroom.
There was no glass in the windows.
The roof was full of holes. Elsewhere
in the house the open spaces were
stuffed with rags Here there were
ten persons crowded together under
conditions of squalor and misery.
Bags and tattered jatch quilts formed
the only coverings on the makeshift
reds
One of the inmates was an elderly
woman who had recently lost her hus-
band, 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 COVE
rnnment of a decent existence. She
had no fod beyond a few handfuls of
cornmeal She was spectre Of
famine He face was drawn and
pinched and her countenance so in
eXpressibly sad that it told its own
solent tale of the terrible hardships
she and her nine companions in the
hous were enduring
One of her children, a helpless mite
OF 3, lay under the clay stove, in which
there was a feeble fire, slowly sue
.cumbing to pellagra. The other nine
occupants. most of them children, were
pathetic figures of poverty and misery.
There are probably thousands of
equally as extreme or even wore The
observer could easily see, with this
ira Dir tDipturp before him why tyDhuS