The Olney Enterprise. (Olney, Tex.), Vol. 9, No. 26, Ed. 1 Friday, October 18, 1918 Page: 2 of 8
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THE OLNEY ENTERPRISE
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UTSIDE the railroad station at Evian-
M \ les-Bains they had gathered together,
B a group of some 50 or 60. They were
' women and children, with a scatter- -
® m ing of old men. Each bore a tag
printed in German and with a large
number on it. Some carried bundles,
others were empty-handed; their
clothing was nondescript. Their faces
were drawn and pinched in the evening.sun that
came over the waters of the lake of Geneva, and
the children among them clung to the knees of the
women in that pitiful, frightened way so many
children of France have of doing- these days.
Inside the station I could hear the Chasseurs
Alpins, three drummers and three buglers, loudly
playing “Le Savoyard.” There were some cheers
as the band, leading-the main body of the convoy
which had just come in from Switzerland, marched
out through the station to join the group I.was
watching. Great camions of the American Red
Cross stood waiting to receive the infirm among
them. Otherwise it was very quiet, not at all the
scene I had expected to find here.
There were some women and children in the
group who fascinated me by their dazed, hopeless
expression—the still, numb way in which they
stood, almost trembling, it seemed to me. I turned
my camera toward them to take a picture, when,
as they caught sight of my action, there was a cry
from them. A very
old woman raised her
shrivelled hand and
tried to hide her face
from the lens. The
children shrunk fur-
ther into the folds of
their women folks’
skirts, and an old
man gasped: “For the
Prussian. He is go-
ing to send our pic-
tures back to Ihe
Prussians, and they
—•” A Red Cross
nurse at my side ex-
plained that I did not
wish to do ahy such
thing—that they were
safe back in France,
their France, again,
and that the Prus-
sians could never
touch them. She point--
ed to the arch across the street, a few feet away,
through which they would soon pass, with the
American and French flags intertwined and the
motto in big scrawly letters, “Soyes les Bienvenus.”
She explained that I was an American. They
seemed to understand/and their faces lighted up,
for this was in early June, and even these pitiful
ones, who had been where little news had reached
them for nearly four years, knew that the Ameri-
cans were in France in good numbers now, and
were their allies.
So the group ceased to shrink from my camera.
A woman even thrust her child forward and
smoothed its hair so that it would look well in the
picture. But, just as I was about to snap the
shutter, another woman in the group, standing a
little back, looked at me with an expression that
was full of condemnation, full of appeal, as she
said: “Yes, my friends, let us stand up straight,
so that he can get a good photograph of misery!”
Then she laughed bitterly, and I—well, I did not
take the picture.
At this moment the rest of the convoy began to
come.out of the station, led by the Chasseurs’ lit- “
tie band. With them came Red Cross men and
nurses, carrying or helping those who could not
walk into the waiting camions and ambulances.
I put up my camera and hurried ahead to reach
tiie casino, whither the procession was bound, be-
fore their arrival there. Someone struck up “La
Marseillaise.” some woman with a high, shrill
voice. As I climbed upon the front seat of an
ambulance and we started to pass the crowd I
thought for a moment that I was now going to
see, going to hear, what I had come up from Paris
for—tin' glad burst of enthusiasm, of happiness
from these people now that they fully realized
that they were in France, among their own, free
from the German yoke, which had lain on their
necks since 191-1. But as our ambulance went by
the procession there were no other voices raised
to join that of the singing woman, and after a few
bars she, too, stopped singing and the procession
went on, silent, shuffling, except for some small
boys, town boys, who trudged ahead of the Chas-
seurs, still playing their tune on drum and bugle.
I reached the casino ahead of the procession
and waited at the door for them to come down the
Rue du Casino. The narrow, steep street was
crowded along its sidewalks with townspeople,
and from windows was flung the tricolor, while the
American flag waved here and there, too. As the
procession came around the head of*the street the
people hailed it with cheers and the waving of
flags. The Chasseurs played more loudly—now
it was “Vive l’Armee” they were tooting. A few
of the children raised their heads and looked with
glad eyes on the enthusiastic natives who were
trying so hard to cheer them home. An old man
in the procession straightehed up and shouted,
“Vive le General Joffre.” But otherwise there
were no cheers, no thrills of happiness, nor any-
thing but just -that down-bent attitude, that shuf-
fling walk, that dazed, whipped, cowed expres-
sion. It was, as the woman at the station, had
said, misery. For Evian is the clearing house of
misery th; se days.
It was nut so at first, the American Red Cross
doctor told me, and so the subprefect of the de-
partment of the Haute-Savoie also assured me.
“Which is why we make such a great effort to
cheer them as they come in nowadays,” he said.
“They are crushed, these people; they are like
dead'men and women, and the children, even the
little ones, are scarcely alive to the situation.
Free from Germany once more? They cannot be-
lieve it—there is scarcely enough strength left in
their poor minds and bodies for them to be able
to understand.”
“Yes,” added the Red Cross doctor, pointing out
a girl of eighteen or nineteen who passed; “look
at^the expression on the face of that girl.’ I
looked, I caught here eye as she turned in my di-
//OJ/VrAL. m m « ■
rection, but I do not think she saw me at all, or
saw anything. Her face was blank for a mo-
ment, then, as in looking aside she nearly collided
with someone ahead of her, she shrunk from him
with a sort of cry, as if she had expected to be
beaten down.
We followed the procession into the large hall,
now, where the people of Evian greet these home-
comers, and where, at long tables, they feed them.
Over the balcony hung the flags of the allies, with
the French and American closely intertwined. The
people were placed at the tables, numbly obeying
the. Red Cross nurses who flitted about assisting
them. They ate the food which was set before
them without a word.
As they ate and drank—there was some S50 of
these people—I walkep about with the Red Cross
doctor and studied their faces, their demeanor.
Occasionally as one saw us he or she smiled, but
for the most part it was like walking through the
halls ol' an asylum for the mentally deficient—the
eyes were dazed, the expression empty, vacant.
By now some young women had passed among
the crowd giving to each a little French flag. I
noticed a boy of about twenty, tall, well put to-
gether. The girl had to thrust the flag into his
hand and explain to him what it was.
“That boy hasn’t always been an idiot, I would
say offhand,” said the doctor at my side. “He
looks beaten, whipped. That’s .the sort they are
sending back to us, nowadays.”
The boy still holds the firfg, looking at it as if
trying to recall where'he had seen that combina-
tion of colors before. I.recollected that^he would
have been about fifteen or sixteen when the war
broke out, when he, with these others and so many
thousands like them, were caught in that first
southward rush of the German horde through the
towns of northern France.
The subprefect was mounting the platform to
speak to the diners. The Chasseurs played their
tunes loudly. The the subprefect began to talk
to them. He told them they were safe among their
friends once more, that never again would they
be slaves of Germany, that homes would be found
for them and an effort made to find the friends
and relatives whom they had not seen nor even
heard from for four years. He told them that
France soon would conquer, that she was now
joined by America with her millions of young men,
and then he gave the signal for the band to start
“Marseillaise.” This it did.
As the first notes were heard some of the faces
lighted up. There was an effort to sing the won-
derful song, and after a fashion it succeeded. But
-hough before the refrain had been finished there
were many voices hushed, many hands that could
not wave the little French flags—for a moment
patriotism, love of country, hope and trust had
been awakened. A few minutes later I followed
the Red Cross doctor into the big room where he
examines every child who comes into Evian with
these convoys of repatriated people. So far he
the
has examined nearly: 50,000. I saw 280 little chil-
dren examined. They ranged in age from three to
twelve, years, and of them all there were barely
re than 50 per cent whom fie could pass as be-
ing even fairly well nourished.
“They have been fed mostly on turnips and
black bread for months,” he explained, “and with
each convoy there are more undernourished ones
and more likedhis little fellow.” He indicated a
thin wisp of a boy—lie was ten years of age—it
was tuberculosis.
This explains, furthermore, why the American
Red Cross hospital, as a part of its war burden,
lias been obliged to extend its work into the foun-
dation and maintenance of homes, here, there and
everywhere throughout France, for these unfor-
tunates whom Germany is sending back by the
hundreds of thousands. For they are unable to
work, unable to make their own homes, and the
civilian population of France, bent double with
the pack of its . own problems, has been increas-
ingly powerless to cope with this, Germany’s in-
•sidious effort to break the morale of France.
It was all new to me when I went up to Evian
from Paris to see the repatriates come in. I had
heard of how Germany had begun sending them
back in 1916, and how, as the numbers of them in-
creased, the American Red Cross stepped in and
undertook to look out for the sick children, finally
extending its work to caring for the hundreds
of tuberculous women whom Germany' returned to
France. But I had heard, also, of how the repa-
triates, sent through Switzerland by the Germans*
arrived at Evian, singing, kneeling down and kiss-
ing the soil of France and gladly taking up their
share of their country’s work in factories and on
farms. I had looked for a scene of joy at the
station there in Evian, for cheers and heart-tliriils
at the casino. Here was a people being returned
to the country that it belonged to; here were ban-
ners of welcome, here were hands and hearts open
to it. But I had seen something entirely different,
and when I inquired it was explained to me. “It
is plainly,” I was told, “part of the German plan
of breaking down French morale, of destroying the
efficiency of the American Red Cross, which it has
learned doing such a large part in the work of
handling repatriates.
“At the same time that Germany is hurling her
big shells into Paris by day and air raiding it by
night; at the same time that she is driving refu-
gees by the thousands from their homes, in towns
along the line of. her proposed advance; at the
same time-she is filling the hospitals with wounded
French and American soldiers, taxing the equip-
ment of the American Red Cross to the limit, as
she believes, she has tried a new trick during this
offensive.
“If this is not so, how can it be accounted for
that each succeeding trainload of repatriates is
larger, contains more sick and completely used up
individuals than the previous one? How can you
account for the large number of young women
with babies born in Germany since they were
taken there—babies whose fathers may be Ger-
man, but whose identity will ever remain a mys-
tery—which are unloaded on us every day?”
Even at that it seemed rather a difficult task.
These people who were coming in—I saw several
trainloads of them—seemed such hopeless things
What could be done with them? What a burden
they would be on the French! How little result
there would be from anything done for them ot
with them!
* “That is far from being the case,” I was*told.
“They respond in an incredibly short time to all
we do for them. Their health improves, their
minds clear. From being liabilities they soon be-
cpme assets. Germany sends these people in,
wrecks, so cowed, so starved, that they can scarce
ly tell where they have been, what has happened
to them in the years of their slavery in the mines,
the mills, the fields of their captor country. Tuber-
culosis seems to have a firm grip on many of them,
and the children are filled with the germs of con-
tagious diseases. But either by happy ability of
the French to rise under difficulties, or the joy of
findin" themselves back in their own land, the
rapidity with which they rally, the quickness with
which their minds clear, is remarkable.”
A French woman, in charge of the casino ves-
tioire at Evian, where clothing is found for these
unfortunates, said: “The more they send, the
better we like it. We can care for all, with the
help of our friends, the Americans. And the faster
they send them back, though their coming so fast
unquestionably taxes our resources to the utmost,
the more quickly'will France get back her own
people.”
THE CLEARING +
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When this tube is inflamed you have a
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when it is entirely closed, DeaYness is the
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In the race for wealth but few men
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If your eyes smart or feel scalded, Ro-
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“Every once In a while,” said Uncle
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what he does to be famous, besides
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With no thought of bursting shrap-
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with one thought only—TO FIGHT
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That is the way our men are going
into battle. When the shrill whistle
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No power on earth can hold them back.
Forward!
The same sharp challenge to battle
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We must lend the way they fight.
We must show the war-maddened
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Get into the fight—with your whole
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Thi* Space Contributed by
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Shuffler, R. The Olney Enterprise. (Olney, Tex.), Vol. 9, No. 26, Ed. 1 Friday, October 18, 1918, newspaper, October 18, 1918; Olney, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1105874/m1/2/: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Olney Community Library.