The sun., 1919-10-11
PLEADS FOR AID IN
REBUILDING FRANCE
DIR. Marie Lafort Says Tales of
Suitability Are German
~ Propaganda.
BRINGS PLEA OF RHEIMS
Overseas Hospital Worker
Tells Woman Suffragists
49, the Need Is Great.

'France still needs you. Don't desert
her."
This was the message which DR.. Marie
Louise Lafort, director of Unit No.
OF the women's Overseas Hospitals Of
the National American Woman Suffrage
Association, gave yesterday to America.
She spoke at the breakfast which the
executive committee of the hospitals
gave to it's demobilized units In the
women's University Club in East Fifty
second street. DR.. Lafort returns to
France to-day to take charge of the
American Memorial Hospital which the
American Fund for French Wounded Is
establishing at Rheims.
German propaganda, DR.. Lafort said,
was responsible for feeling here that
France no longer needs us, and that 1t
is time for US to pull out and leave
her TO settle her problems. Anne lean
soldiers who had served with the Army
of Occupation, she added, were too often
the unthinking carriers of that propa-
ganda.
As to Frances need, DR.. Lafort said
she brought a message from the elderly
Mayor of Rheims, the beautiful wrecked
& city where her unit established itself In
the ruins of a monastery hospital she
! wished, she said, that the women before
her could see the look in the eyes of
the Mayor as he gave her his message
4 to America.
"He said to me Speak with all the
s sincerity of your soul. Say France does
need you; France wants you now as
much as ever. France is grateful tc
America. She is speechless; she can mol
tell all she feels. but she appreciates
what you haze done and she asks you
, not to desert her
II am telling you this because
hear, to my dismay, from certain
groups; that they feel that their WORK
in France may be discontinued now.
am sure the women who worked witt
; the Overseas Hospitals will bear me out
in the statement that this Is the result
of German propaganda. Perhaps the
French blood in me makes me feel more
deeply for that country. but l cannot
help resent talk of Americas pulling
out when I remember what Germany
did. l think OF the ruined buildings il
& Rheims, of the hopeless desolation we
encountered when we searched FOR Q
} building in which to establish our hos
pital. The people there said they woult
rebuild their city. but the task of re
facilitating France is one in which We
should not desert her."
DR.. Caroline Finley, director of Uni
+ No. 1, who was one of the first to 81
across and the last to leave, came t.
the breakfast in her overseas uniform
having just landed. She told stories O.
the units work with the Army of Occu
patton. The unit had much to do fo
E British prisoners, many of whom hat
been in Germany for from two to tou
years.
"Our being at Metz gave US a grea
opportunity to get the German point o
view" said DIR. Finley. "The genera
impression among them seemed to b
that there would be another war-per
haps in twenty, perhaps in thirty year
and that Germany would win."
Mrs. Charles L. Tiffany. who pre-
sided, said the Overseas Hospitals, nov
demobiized, had $4,000 of its fun
still in the bank and all debts were paid
The money probably will be used t
found scholarships in medicine 70
women.