Great Falls tribune., 1921-08-22

Washington, d. c., Aug. 17.-The
post office department has been the
recipient Of hundreds of letters from
postal employees in Austria and Hungary
ever since the armistice was signed,
and even before that, begging assist
ance that they might not starve. Real
ising the futility of appealing to their
own city or national governments for
assistance, these people have turned in
despair to others in the same business.
even though they had been engaged on
| opposing sides in the greatest clash
| of arms the world has ever known
One of these letters, addressed
| Main Post Officer" written in labori-
Gus English by an orphan girl employed
in Hungarian postoffice, enclosed
several stamps of her own country. and
asked the postmaster general to buy
| them and send her the few dollars the
ed to the Principal of the Post and
Telegraph Office" at Washington, set
forth first that only want and despair
drove him to writing the appeal for aid
This man said he had been stationed
at a point in what is now Jugo Slavia.
and that the Serbs exiled him. He
| secured a position in the postal service
| in Budapest eventually. His small
salary scarcely sufficed for medicines
for his aged and sick mother, this man
| wrote:
In my great need" his letter said
II know of no other way out except
| America"
! From German Austria a letter came
to the postmaster general which after
extolling the dear fatherland'' at some
| length, said his government was not
| able to help him or his wife and baby,
therefore he was turning to his col
| leagues in the postal service of the
| United States.
MY wife and my child are ILL.," he
! said, 1--WE have little and bad to eat,
it is wanting us on the clothings. foods.
and on the ready money to buy those
things" At the end of the letter this
| young man asked that he might be rec
ommended for any kind of job any
| where else, just so there was food ea-
tainabIe for his ailing baby and his
| wife.
Another cry of distress came to
| Washington. addressed to the Union of
Postal Employees, from the widow of
| former Austrian postal employe. Ex-
| lied from Marburg when it was incor-
! porated into the new nation of Jugo-
| HSIdFid, lulS WbludI anu ACI tHiVS ,hii
! dren fled to Graz, in German Austria.
Begsars Among Beogars.
with no pension, destitute of all
means, having sold all my furniture and
articles of value to buy food. complete
ly exhausted by trouble, sorrow and
want. I am plunged into the deepest
despair" she wrote. 'All pensioners
get assistance, but we get nothing. We
| are beggars among beggars."
| Another appeal, from man too
proud to ask for outright aims, came in
| letter which got into the hands of
the postmaster general. This man,
| though for 25 years an employe in an
| iron works. had been struggling all of
| his life to get a start as musician.
| The letter had an enclosure asking that
it be forwarded to some orchestra in
| Washington, and asked for work in
transcrbing Austrian music. The man
said that in his 25 years of work he
had managed to save up a little money.
| but that the whole little saving had
! been swept away by the war. His
children had been without proper cloth
| ing for months.
Necessity is already claiming my
musical instruments" the letter said.
my sacred possessions from which only
| the grave should separate me, so !
| come as last resort to strangers in
| strange part of the world. Here in this