LOST HER BABY IN THE LUSITANIA.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XL, Issue 11405, 23 October 1915, Page 2

LOST HER BABY IN THE LUSITANIA.

BEREAVED WOMAN APPEALS FOR RECRUITS. Seldom iiave the far-reaching tragedies of the war been so directly brought home to a public assemblage as they were to au audience that gathered around the Gladstone Memorial in the Strand, Among the speakers were A lady survivor (Mrs Pye) from the Lusitania, who lost her little baby girl through that dastardly German crime. A Canadian, back wounded from the front, who broke down at the beginning of his speech and excused himself by saying that he had just received news that his brother had been killed in the Dardanelles. A young fellow, who was a stoker on the Formidable, when she was torpedoed in the Channel, and heard when rescued that his father and mother had been killed in the Zeppelin raid on Great Yarmouth.

Mrs Pye, dressed in deep mourning, made a touching speech, t; “I am here,” she said, “to appeal for recruits,” and then she told in simple language how she and her little baby girl were thrown into the water of the Atlantid'when the Germans torpedoed the great liner. Until she became unconscious, she held her baby in her arms, and then she was helpless. She went down and down, but rose, and, after clinging to some wreckage, was taken into one of the ship’s boats. ‘‘My little girl was murdered,” she said, ‘‘and it is not only the right hnt the- duty of you young Englishmen to avenge deeds of that kind done by the Germap pirates.” When the Canadian sergeant was able to resume he made so eloquent an appeal that he secured a good number of recruits, thus adding to his high reputation as a recruiting officer.

The man from the Formidable spoke last. He said: — “I went down in the Formidable, and was rescued, after I had been seven and a half hours in the water. I have only recently been discharged from the City of London Hospital, but I have thought it my duty to reenlist, and I have joined the Royal Naval Division. ”