The Bingham County news. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1918-1930, 1921-07-29
CRAY SWEATERS
WORK MIRACLES
What American Garments Are
Doing for Albania.
CHANGING A PEOPLES LIFE

Clothing Sent by Our Women for Oes-
ttute Little Ones In the Balkans,
and children's Clearing House Es-
tablished In scutari by Red Cross
Chief, Miss Cleveland, Are Exertin0
Tremendous lnfiuence-Ru'e OF
Cleanliness 10. Strictly Enforced.
There is one symbol Of America be-
fore which every American feels
mingling Of pride, affection and de-
votion-the red, white and blue ban
ner that an American woman sewed
together hastily long ago, when
new ideal was being born In few
scattered settlements between the AT.
lantic and the wilderness. There Is
another symbol Of our country which
no American who knows Europe today
will ever forget or fail to feel rever-
ence for. 1t is the little gray sweater
knitted by some American woman at
home and worn today by child some
where-and everywhere-in Europe,
writes Rose Wilder Lane, correspond
ent Of the Buffalo Express, from Amer
lean Red Cross headquarters In Sou
tart, Albania.
=. think the American woman who
has made It does not understand what
It means. She sits on her own porch
in the summer afternoon or with
some Of her friends at Red Cross
chartes r1eeting, sewing or knitting.
chatting about the affairs Of the town
and new recipes and latest books.
while the little garments grow under
her fingers. And she packs them IN
boxes and sends them away to some
where in vague Europe where chill
dren need them. She knows they mean
clean clothes for dirty, half-naked lit.
the bodies starved and crippled by q
war the children are not old enough
to understand. She has turned few
hours into comfort for a child she Will
never see, and so she goes home to her
own children with q more contented
heart, and thinks no more about 1t.
One thing that she has done Is to
change the whole intimate life Of the
Oldest and most interesting people In
Europe. In the interior Of Northern
Albania. among the wild mountain
tribes to which. before the war. only
one foreign woman had ever pene-
trated, the little garments that
American women are making are
carrying a new idea. Hundreds OF
children are teaching their families
new, strange things, 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
American woman made the little gray
sweater. For the first time for
eign influence is really changing a
people that have resisted change for
more than 25 centuries.
There Is an American flag over the
tall, carved wooden gate that opens
on the courtyard of the Children's
Clearing house in Scutari. but it Is
the gray sweater that has taken
America into darkest Albania.
Twelve Years Of Warfare.
When Miss Cleveland Of the Red
Cross came into Scutari. Albania had
been at war almost continuously for
twelve years. Turkish, Montenegrin,
Serbian, Greek, Bulgarian and Aus
TRAN armies had fought the Albani-
ans across their own lands. The fields
had been destroyed, the stone houses
stood rOofess and blackened by fire,
hundreds Of refugee children slept in
the streets of Scutari. And Albania
is still at war, north and east of Sou
tari, with the Serbs who hold the
lands of Kastrati and Ipek and Kos
sova. Albania has been at war al
ways. north, east, south and west,
- tie beginning Of history found
''e in the Balkans.
knows where the Albanians
I'm. They were there when
st began to make records.
-. Gee took her gods and her mythol.
osy from them; Alexander the Great
was born of an Albanian mother;
Rome called the country Illyria and
conquered her seacOasts; the Slavs
came down upon her from the north
eight centuries later. But the Alban-
ans held to the fastneSs of their
mountains, kept their old customs and
accent tribal laws, and fought off all
INVADERS, until the Americans came
with the chldren's clothing in their
hands
These boxes packed by women In
American towns had come across the
Atlantic, across France and Italy.
across the Adratic, up from Durazzo
10 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