SHATTERED BY WAR

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 28, 27 October 1917, Page 10

SHATTERED BY WAR

PITIFUL VILLAGE CHILDREN OF . NORTHERN FRANCE

The French children found ia the villages of Northern Erance, evacuated by the Germans under the pressure of the British and Trench offensi'es, present' a picture of the savagery of modern warfare as characteristic as tin Somme forest—shattered and broken by jnonths of shell fire. Many of these children, writes the special correspondent of the NewYork "Evening Post," axe orphans without home or relatives, ilany have heen grievously -wounded. Jiost of them suffer from a peculiar speoses of shell-shock, which afflicts them generally with a sort of tremor not unlike St. Vitus dance. They have had life and death., horrors human and inhumar., revealed to them in guises so terrible ttat they will never he quite normal aga:'n. All are underfed nnd frail from confinement in cellars. Cut off suddenly from relatives and friends perhaps two years ago, they have i continued to live within a few hundred yards of the front lines, listening always to the noise of shells and the crashing of explosives, until their idea of heaven is "a place that is very quiet." immediate Gare. The condition of peasant men and women vcho have been living under the shadow of the invader through these long months and years has been bad enough, but the condition of the half-starved, wounded, mentally deranged little children has heen far worse. All the children were collected and shepherded by the first Entente troops into the newlyoccupied areas. Everything that can b9 done to cure and care for them is now being done, constituting one of the most important immediate tasks of the French committees on reconstruction. Tho first step was to remove them well behind the front areas. Those who were orphans were tnken far away from the sight and sound of shells, many of them to the south of France. Tho mildest cases were there put under the care of farm mothers. ■ The move serious cases must be kept -under close medical supervision in special institutions. Children who were not orphans were not usually taken away from the district. Mothers or grandmothers could not bear to part with them altogether, so they were placed in farms nearby, where it is possible for the parents to visit them frequently.

Mere Shadows of Childhood, One French organisation lias a hospital with 400 child patients, all under 12 years of age. Most of them are wounded. Some have lost legs or arms, other's their sight, others are suffering from brain fever, or an anaemia under wmch they rapidly waste away. "They are tlie victims of the ruthlessness of modern warfare," said the head of the hospital, a French woman wearing the uniform of the French Eed Cross. - "There is no better argument against war than to see these mutilated little victims who will never play or enjoy life as other children do. They are mere shadows of childhood. It is difficult to make them talk, and they tremble and start at any noise or-sudden movement. Women are always gentle ' with children, but with these children we need a special gentleness as if we were handling something more fragile than the most delicate china." One of the patients, a five-year-old boy, who had Been rendered dumb from shell-shock, showed no improvement until after he had been in the hospital for seven weeks. Then one day he opened his eyes after a long.sleep, and said with a twisted smile, to the nurse: "It is—very—quiet—here; I—like—it." Cases like that encourage the nurses. But there are many sadder cases—child patients whose wounds must inevitably prove fatal, patients who, despite every effort, grow steadily weaker, patients who are Gradually losing their Teasons, and whom nothing can save.