New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1921-08-21

Saturday games. So was the sweater elus
suggested by the little girls whose immenuor;.'
occupation, while herding the sheep in a.
mountains, has been knitting. We gave ths,
WOOL and each Of them chose a little no,
conner as protege and knitted stockings .,
sweater for him. After that came the shsbv
club" The first baby appeared as visso,
brought by a rroud eleven-year-old urrI.
There was excitement on the playground ,,a
much Dragging about yother babies, alleged (.
be even bigger and prettier, The visev
course, if we were not to be nun dated VIA
babies, was to suggestvthat they could an r.
brought on certain afternoon Fifty-thr..
babies arrived, painfully washed for the occ,.
sion, and only two passed the solemn insos..
ton which we held in concLave. Next dav Il.
baby club informally asked Us to tell It about
babies, and met to listen while the nurse CIV.
a lecture on baby care and the interprete
translated. The routine now is lsctr,.
every alternate Friday, and baby inspection
on the other Friday. Children who are reslI,
too small to carry babies have been mads {,
leave theirs at home, SO the membership has
been cut to forty-six, and at the last meetiu,
forty-fve of them were clean.
The Children's Clearing House has bean
open for eight months. Our daily ATTENDING.
is three hundred and over. AS soon as chud
has sufficiently recovered from the mental and
physical effects Of refugee life we have En-.
tered him as a pupil in one of the Albanian
schools, continuing to give him luncheon even
day and keeping him an integral part Of orr
community life. Over two hundred childrn
have been SO entered since last fall The re,
naming third are sickly children or recent
arrivals who are in our own school rooms
every day. Every child who has the privilege
of entering our gates must pass the Friday
inspections. Including children no longer IN
need Of our help and those who have returned
to mountain villages, seven hundred and TWEEN.
ty-one children have thus lived for a time IN.
der the influence of the cleanliness-idea. The
house is so arranged that the children are able
in line to pass one by one through the wash
room to wash their hands in running water
before every meal, drying them on paper to
avoid the common towel. Water drinking or
the playground, with the problem of common
cups, was solved in a necessarily primitive but
effective manner. A gasoline bdon was
cleaned and fitted with faucet and cover like
an ordinary water cooler. For it we made a
table of packing boxes with a frame on either
side. Into these frames fit boxes of wire
screen, holding the cups, which are sterilized
in the kitchen by the simple method of i'm
mersing the screen boxes in boiling water.
Two proud monitors are trusted with the task
of seeing that each child uses a clean cup.
Our bathing arrangements consist of d per.
forated pipe run overhead in cement foored
room. Five children at time can-and joy
fully do--bathe beneath the uncertain shower.
Soap must, of course, be imported and is as
precious in the children's eyes as in ours. But
the bathing habit becomes fixed and inexor-
able passion. Families of nine children living
in one room with no furniture except few
rugs on an earth floor tell US proudly that
each one of them has had bath twice week
since leaving our house, and the mountain
children who went back to their villages and
were driven down again by the border war
returned clean. II bathed them as much as
I could,' their mothers say, land you will see
that they have no lice
The value of such clearing station IN
refugee work was unknown to our unit here
when we began it. 1t was an experiment
which has brought results that surprise u.s.
To enter a community of outcasts desperately
in need Of every necessity Of life and to give
them only small rations of food and clothing,
these at the price of incredible effort on their
part, often required courage that we could
hardly have maintained if we had not sus-
tanned each other. But the effect has been
not only to overcome the intellectual and
moral devastation of refugeeism bat TO spread
a new kind Of energy and self-respect among
people whose only'contact with was through
their children.