The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1918-11-12
REFUGEES NOW
gEk
RETURNING TO
- THEIR OLD HOMES
Coming to Ruined Viii
lagos cling a
Cold VIZ er
THE RED CROSS
HELPS WIN OUT
Peasants Urged to Return
Before Harvests Are
Lost

Paris, Oc:, 20-(Correspondence Of
the Associated Press. )-Ca1rying
their litti bundles of household pos
sessions, the French refugees are re-
turning to their homes in Chateau
Thierry and the little French villages
around it, to Weak, Lucy, Belleau and
the rest, places now a part of Amer
lean history
They are coming back to ruins of
villages and houses demolished by
German o. American artillery, to live
in cellars md in the shelter of totter-
ing walls until they can rebuild their
homes, and their return is a pitiful
spectacle.
Sometimes they find no home at all.
Never DO they find any furniture.
Often they find no food, and then the
American Red Cross steps in and
helps them. The woman who can dig
out her stove from heap of dirt and
plaster and patch it up again so that
it will bum counts herself inordi-
nately lucky. One woman found re-
naming of all her household goods
just one h;2 salt-cellar. Forks are
worth thei. weight in gold, and a
feather bed is priced above rubies,
Five thousand five hundred blankets
the Red Cross shipped out to return
ing refugees in single week.
The people in the Aisne will not
be able to spend the winter in their
own villages. The villages on the
Marine are too utterly battered by
shells to afford human habitations
during the winter weather. How,
while days are warm and skies are
blue, their owners can find some tiny
corner OF ether to live n, but the rain
and mud and chilly damp Of a French
winter will drive them, OF if it does
not a patelral government will send
them, oack to their temporary homes
in the uninvaded provinces to wait
for spring
One purpose in sending them homo
so quickly was to harvest the wheat
crops but there was no food. so the
Red Cross established canteens in
many villages and served two meals
day free 30 those too poor to pay
while Others paid small sums. Forty
carloads of food were sent to the
Marne and the Aisne in a single
month. A grocery store has beer
opened in Chateau-Thierry, which
already is busy town again, though
the walls of its houses have been
shattered end torn by shells. Tc
keep inf1'uders out the residents
scrawl oa their homes in chalk "Pro-
prietor returned" or "House occu-
pied"
Rolling stores on trucks toul
through the villages in the valleys OF
the Oisne and Aisne to supply the re-
turning refugees with food, clothing
and household utensils. Demands
come fo" coffee mills, scrubbine
brushes, r9 lis, knives, forks, spoons
and pots, toI the people taking uT
housekeeping again, as literally al
that they left behind them when they
fed has been destroyed OF carried
away to Germany.
To Amitns the refugees are JUS
ginning TO return but they will como
soon in large numbers, and they viii
! find the Fed Cross ready to receive
them. There is a big building il
Amiens that was a boys school il
those halj-1orgotten days when the
city was not under shell fire 1t be
longs 20 the Red Cross now, and it!
class rooms are turned to strange
uses. There is a big "salle de re
ception,' where the returning refu
gees are sorted out and their need
ascertainel There is a canteen tha
serves two hot, nourishing meals
day. Thee is long dormitory witt
beds for the weary ones who com
back to find empty rooms and roofles
|houses. There are two dispensaries
land dispenSary doctors find much t
,precarlous, hand-to-mouth existences
The Red Cross workers furnis
Iclothing TO the shivering shabby pee
pie, warm flannel shirts and under
wear, stockings and shoes and sabot:
| Twelve thousand garments went ou
from Paris in a single day. An
they furnish work for people wh
must have a little money if they az
to live.
They have an extraordinary wa!
these Pi:2rdy peasants, of acceptin
facts. They 90 back to live unde
impossible conditions as if it were tn
most natural thing in the world
never occms to them to do anythin
else. There may be only one wall {
a house left but it is home. "Thel
l. are few w-.ys in which American II
source aid energy can be better en-
= ploved thar IN strengthening a philo
ophy and courage like that" say
lone Red Cross worker.