The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1921-08-30

ITO Which, -D64olS inv al -ofllS SAS
foreign women had ever penetrated,
the little garments that American wo-
men are making are carrying a new
Idea. Hundreds of children are teach
ling their families new, strange things
and hundreds OF women are keeping
house and taking care of their babies
in different way.
The whole next generation will be
different and better because the Amer
.ican woman made the little grey
Influence is really changing a people
that have resisted change for more
than twenty-five centuries.
There is an American flag over the
tall, carved wooden gate that opens
ion the court yard of the "Children.s
Clearing House" in Scutari, but it IS
the gray sweater that has taken Amer
lea into darkest Albania.
When Miss Cleveland, OF the Red
Cross, came into Scutari, Albania had
been at war almost continuously Tor
twelve years. Turkish, Montenegrin
/ Serbian. Greek Bulgarian and Aus
trian armies had fought the AlbanianS
across then own lands. The fields had
been DESTROYED, the stone houses stood
iroofless and blackened by fire and hun
dreds slept in the streets OF Scutar'.
And Albania is still at war, north and
east OF Scutari, with the Serbs, who
hold the lands of Kastrati and Ipek
and Kossova Albania has been at war
always. north, east, south and west,
since the beginning of history found
her people in. the Balkans.
! No one knows where the AbanianS
I f-o,,, 1Nba,y ,,,ara bara XKyben on
, first began to make records. Greece
took her goods and mythology from
them; Alexander the Great was born
OF an Albanian mother; Rome called
| the country Illyria and conquered her
sea coasts; the Slavs came down upon
! her from the north eight centuries la
! ter. But the Albanians held to the fast.
Inesses of their mountains, kept their
/ and fought off all invaders until thu
| Americans came with the children'S
clothing in their hands.
American Boxes Travel Far.
These boxes packed by women in
| American towns had come across the
Atlantic, across to France and Italy,
tacross the Adriatic, UP from Durazzo
/ to Scutari in motor trucks, crossing
rivers on the most primitive of ferry
RATS. There were not many OF those
boxes in Scutari, and there were
thousands of homeless children who
needed clothing. Albanian children
used to wear clothing made entirely by
hand, from the wool on the sleeps
back to the thick. beautifully braided
white trousers and skirts and little
Jackets. Twelve years of invading
armies had taken the sheep; twelve
wears had worn the clothes to scanty
tatters. And the war had killed moth
ers and fathers and RACED the stone
houses that had been home.
The children needed clothes, food,
baths, shelter, schooling; they needed
everything that would make over
| little, outcast, diseased, soul-devastat
ed child into normal healthy being.
How Miss Cleveland did it | do not
know, but she avoided all the mistakes
she might have made. She opened the
I"Chidren's Clearing House"
1t is today large stone building set
in big gardens that are surrounded, as
all Albanian city houses are, by high
stone wall. Kol Ndoya a tall, old man
in tight black braided white trousers,
short fringed black jacket and barbaric
sash, guards the high gateway. Three
! hundred children go past him daily;
| they come in the morning, stay all day,
and go away to their refugee novels
again at night. All day long they sing
their songs and daily their native
dances in the play ground; they have
| lessons in the school rooms that were
once the drawing rooms of an Eng
! lish generalerthey battle under the
showers that were once part of an
army field bath house, and their sores
are dressed in the small white dispen-
sary. And every one of them wears
the American garments that are so
carefully boarded and thoughtfully Civ
Ell out from the small store room.
Leaves Clearing House.
AS soon as a child is cured of his
war disease, fed and clean and happy
again, he leaves the Children's Clear
ing House. He is entered in the Sou
tart public schools, and as long as he
goes to school every day and keeps
clean he can spend his free time in
side the gates He always comes back
for that But his former place is taken
by another refugee child.
There is only one inhexible rule. Nc
child can continue to come inside tho
gate, no child can wear American gar
ments, unless he keeps himself clean.
That is the lille which is making
over the whole Of northern Albania.
For consider the.sssituation. These
children have no homes they live
crowded in old stables or damp base
ments of wrecked and dirty barracks
They have no soap no way OF heat
ing water, and no changes Of clothes
(For there are not many American
garments in that store room, and there
are no other new clothes in all wal
ravaged Albania.) How can they keeI
themselves clean? Could any ofa u,
keep ourselves clean in such condi
tons?
| do not know how they do it, bu
they do. For there is always befor,
them the vision of the Children's Clear
ing House, and they have always upol
them the pride of that little sweate
or coat that some American woman
somewhere, has made.