Norwich bulletin., 1918-04-06
WHAT THE RED
CROSS IS DOING
A Few of It's Activities in Battle Torn
 France,

WHICH YOu Nd1A DCLHCCn 4OWc NA destroyed homes in the ruined villages of France you always find something left among the wreckage that speaks intimeteiy to your own heart It may be a broken fiower-pot with dried roots stiIl clinging; an image Of the Virgin still standing in her oval niche in a fragment of a wall; a baby's broken cradle: twisted garden tool. All the bayonets and incendiary torch es and guns of the invaders have not been able to crush out Something's the Spirit which fingers there.
 And they have not been able to crush it out of the tragic processions of the homeless, as they are driven hither and thither. sometimes as slaves by their conquerors; sometimes to flee where they will, from violence and destruction. Some day, as you walk briskly on an errand through | the streets of Paris. you see group | of them coming in, slow-moving, be- wildered. There is a 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 l they are not a common part of life.
 Who is going to take care of them, | and their mothers and these old, bent | people, who are such detached, trif1- 1 ing part of Frances million and half | refugees?
 The French Commission of the Am | erican Red Cross, with the s20,0O0, ,00O,- l 900 War Fund behind it, on it's arrival i in Paris consulted with the French government how it could best help. | And the glory of the American Red Cross is the principle of cooperation it established there, and by which 1t works. The first thing it did for re- fugees in France was to make itself the co-operator-and never by any chance the rivalEof all of the exist ing agencies official and non-of11cial for their welfare. It put a grant of ; 00o, ,0a0 francs (about $1.o00,009) in the hands of the French government for the refugees. And it began to find or prepare decent lodgings for the thousands upon thousands of them squeezed into Paris atics. Also it be- gan to learn everything what could be learned about the whole problem of the million and a half of them.
 There has been initiative, character isticaliy French, in many cases, in meeting these inpourings of the home less. The case of Monsieur Peltier and a group of gendarmes (who cor respond to our policemen) is one of the great stories of the war. Here it is:
 Ons day-it was early in the war the gendarmes of two arrondissements, or wards, in Paris received an official telegram that about 1900 refugees would arrive the next morning for them to take care of. So!-No pro- vision. no money, no roof, no place to put them, but 1860 of them, never theless, due to arrive the next morn ing-2nd their responsibility
 Monsieur Peltier, the chief of one of these wards, called a conference. First, money. These gendarnes put each 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 someone tirnidly suggest cd the huge building that had been in former times a seminary for priests, in the famous old square of St. Sul pice. A part of it was being used for a museum.
 The museum pieces were crowded together in a small space and locked and the big old keys began opening door after door and door after door and hundreds Of of windows went up and several hundreds of rooms that used 10 domicile young priests. took their first long breath in years pre- paratory to taking in this pitiful host even then on it's suffering way to Paris
 Mattresses and stoves were rushed in faster than so many mattresses and stoves and dishes, are likely to have been rushed before. And then these weak frightened. dazed people were brought to the Seminarie the next morning by the gendarmes, there was water to wash in. and food to eat, and mattresses to sleep on. So began the famous Secours de Guerre, in spired and directed by keen, kindly Monsieur Peltier.
 Every day since it has sheltered and fed between 1900 and 5000 refu- gees. Its godfathers, the gendarTres are proud of it. The huge seminary is a city in itself now-dormitories divided into suites, that the remnants of families may keep their family life; school rooms; cobbler shops where little shoes are made out of orn-oui big ones; sewing rooms; nursery fol seventy or more babies that are ai last having fair chance; an employ rnent agency.-and the lovely garden where refugee children truly play Sometimes they see "Guignol," like T can hear them laugh with joy. There are hower-boxes at all the windows
 Monsieur Peltier is a genius, and the spirit responds to the sunshine
 Monsieur Peltier made a city with in a seminary in Paris, and Monsieur Mifman, perfect of the district oi Meurthe ct Moselle, made city with. in a great military barracks at Nancy The refugees came from neighborine towns which had seen every form oi outradge, and some of them were from Gerberviller-that town which will be immortal through its martyr dom.
 In the school-rooms that "grew up in the barracks little ones learned no to be terrified at any unexpected sound, and soon even began to play on their own initiative skipping ant flying about like 1esh- and blood boy! and girls.
 Mothers, within sound of the gum booming a few miles away on tn Lorraine frontier where their bus bands were fighting found themselve linked to reality again. in work fo their children; the community, il making exquisite embroidery. and fill ing endless bags for the protee ton of precious or yitally necessar buildings in Nancy.
 Girls and young women learned t keep house well and economically, an to make charming clothes that wer also practical, in preparation for
 happy life after the war. A garag was made into e community theatr another into a chapel. It is tn French genius.
 While these gloriously brave peopl were finding themselves. though unde