The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-03-09

1 complimentary, no charge being made to
 attend the meeting next Friday evening"
 when Mrs~ Patterson. Mrs. Mebane and Major DuPont will speak, while moving
 pictures of the devastated French dis
 tricts will be shown, which are official
 government pictures. of the down trod-
 den and ruined districts.
 Mrs. Patterson was a visitor to Bir-
 mingham a couple of weeks ago and
 made most favorable impression upon
 all those who met her by her charm and graciousness. She also received the
 hearty cooperation of all those she met
 in the splendid work she is carrying on as southern representative of Miss Anne
 Morgans work.
 Mrs Patterson announces that Mrs. Thomas E. Kilby, wife of AIabama's dis tinguished governor, has accepted the honorary chairmanship for this state l for the American committee for devas- tated France Mrs. Thomas M. Owen is chairman for Montgomery, and Mrs. Bre- yard Jones, vice chairman
 The present tour, as has been said be- fore. Is purely educational and is made for the purpose of enlightening the peo- pie as to the present state of affairs Tn our sister country-France.
 Miss Morgan, the director, prefers to call the work rehabilitation" rather than reconstruction as it is purely an "emergency' work-that is helping the people of France to "get on their feet" as it were, by furnishing them agricul- tural implements, temporary shelter, gar den utensils; "a community cow or horse, as the need may be; serviceable, practical things to work with until they can again get their equilibrium and get ha P1s 'nOrmaf' conditions,
 For the benefit of the "unintiated" 1t Is timely just here to give Miss Morgan's 8 views as expressed a few days ago when she was in New York, having come
 over for few days from France, as to
 the object of the work.
 Among other things she said, when the question was asked Miss Morgan as to whether France wanted American re construction" now that the war was over and the ways of peace were left open to the returning soldiers; Do they want it? I should say there was never time when France needed our help so much. But please don't use the word reconstruction in connection with my work. Rehabilitation is what am doing, and it has less to do with houses and towns and structures than it
 has with individual peoples and families. There is a vast problem of reconstruc- ton in France, everybody knows that, but no one, not even the French, knows yet how vast it is going to be, nor how | it is going to be solved.
 ''The French have several commissions | to hantile various sections of the work. 1 but just what will have to be done and who will do it. and how it will be achieved cannot be settled definitely until after the peace conference is over. But i there is no doubt in my mind, and l have | talked with countless people about IL, l but that France is anxious for. and re- lying upon, American assistance. They 1 count on us now just as much as they
 did last summer.
 I But the American. people must re- member that this is no problem to be I approached in the usual American style, with sets of American plans for model | houses drawn up by American architects 1 and housing experts who perhaps have ! been working in some individual centers | here No indeed We must help, 1T we are going to help, after the French fash ] ion and following their lead. They know | better than we, naturally, what the new 1 France must be; they have borne with ] war and put up with sufferings and losses bitter beyond our imagination. It | is for us to help with money and prof. | fered services. Any Americanization of 1 France under the guise of reconstruction lis as ridiculous as skyscrapers on the avenues of Paris
 Continuing Miss Morgan said:
 l toThere are always in every country
 l two great popular voices, those of the horticultural and the industrial workers In France the commercial and the in dustrial classes have held the fore- I ground, but now that the war is over l the agriculturalists are returning rom
 i the trenches and their insistence upon
 1 this thing or that should weigh heavily l with the government For without saying I that this or that class has borne the brunt of the fighting it has only been
 logical that the industrial workers should have been selected out of the army for | the munitions and other war works In large numbers, while the men who live | on the land stuck naturally to the | trenches What they want and wish
 when they come out of the uniform, for
 the new France will have more convey 1 ing power than that of mere opinion ! Meanwhile, before all these things have
 seen the light of realization, Miss Nor gan is going back to France. She is car rying with her as much money and mer- l chandise as she can enlist for the pur- pose of rehabilitation. The merchandise includes some of the marvellous beds