Evening star., 1937-10-10

in scores of similar colonies I visited.
Children forget easily. and children
should forget But even the best-run
colonies are short of milk and fats.
And even among the happiest children
there are traces of the past.
Tragic Losses at 10.
Little Rufino Fernandez, for in
stance, will never be able to forget the
war. however much he may wish it.
For this boy of 10 is limping along on
one leg. War took from him his
father, who was killed at the front.
War took also his sister. killed as
nurse at the front. He himself was
riding in Madrid street car when a
bomb fell on it. When he regained
consciousness he lay among several
bodies and had lost a leg.
But still have a mother" he told
me. "She works in Madrid. She says
when 1 grow up I shall go abroad to
study and get an artificial leg. 1 am
too little now for an artificial leg.
since am still growing and it wouldn't
keep on fitting me as I grew"
What will you be when you grow
up?" I asked him.
"A maker of arms" he firmly said
His teacher sighed. "It's psychology
ical compensation, I imagine, for
being forever deprived Of normal power.
He wants to make power, the great
power which destroyed him. Some
day, perhaps, he will have saner
aim"
Twelve-year-old Jaime Castellanos,
on the contrary, seemed to have taken
no mental harm from his past. Yet
his story was the most appalling Of all
1 listened to-the more appalling for
the calm with which he told 1t. In a
seven-day fight from Malaga he had
lost his father and mother and seven
brothers. He remembered 1t all quite
coolly, with incredible accuracy of de-
tail. If ever child was born to be
q scientist, Jaime Castellanos is he.
Horror From Young Lips.
Sitting in bathing trunks on SUM-
baked marble bench in a children's
colony, Jaime told the terrible tale to
me. I have heard grown-up people
tell Of that Malaga flight, but they
always gave way to hysteria. Jaime
didn't give way.
ION Sunday morning there was . lot
Of bombing, and they ordered us to
leave that day. So at that evening
my father and mother left with us
seven brothers. leaving two older ones
- D. a~lH% kN~ IL
but we carried baskets of food. There
we're great crowds on the road We
walked all night. At in the morning
we came to Tore del Mar, and rested
and went on.
cat noon that day some airplanes
J came and machine-gunned the road.
So we hid in the woods till they went
by and then we went on. At 3 o'clock
the gunboats Cerbere and Canaries
sent shells against the bridge to cut
our flight. They shot at the people
and again we fled to the woods. We
lost some members Of our family in
those hills, but we all came together
at Nerja little before midnight.
I'VE slept two hours and then got
up &IlO WcIlt OIl. TUI tIlCIC was
precipice face ahead called Caracollilos,
with no woods for shelter, but only the
bare rock and the road and the sea.
We must pass this at night when the
shelling was lighter. We crept by and
saw lots Of dead around the base
Then I was tired and took q short
cut in the woods and lost my family.
cried and ran along the. road, but
didn't see them again.
Food-And Death.
II now had no food basket, so l got
very hungry, till saw sugar cane and
oranges and lettuce in the fields. And
think all this should be ours anyway,
and 1t Is not wrong to take 1t. So I
sucked sugar cane and oranges and
lived like this for three days. All the
time was going onward. There came
10 planes. When came back from
the woods that time there were very
many bodies"