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Show 11 l(t"1 iiWWA J&' Russian Cities; . "&J4 js tf 'k( fi UP JiSmmMlk.A mKWM Like Vast . J'feti siif S IH fW0niWMmsmmkm orPha ASyiums x---,f ;,4 By MRS. CHARLES ANDREWS CARVER. (Executive Chairman Russian Refugee and War Relief Committee.) IKE a peasant mother a war ( f refugee herding her bewildered TIT Y brood along strange roads, New 1 Russia Is stumbling forward on ,fc n e L, the road of freedom with half a A IF" mil-"on homeless, helpless little (fS children clinging to her skirts. These half million children are the waifs of war. Most of them are motherless and fatherless. Flung back by 'the tidal wave of death and destruction that swept their borderlands, they crept by the thousands Into the central cities, seeking seek-ing shelter. Many died, because in the early days of the war and even now there is not proper accommodation ac-commodation for them. Only the best and strongest survived, and these instead of growing up as burdens upon the state are to be given an opportunity to become be-come the standard bearers of civilization In the new republic. For instead of considering, them merely as halt a million hungry mouths to be fed and half a million sturdy little bodies to be clothed from public funds the leaders of New Russia have had their eye3 opened to the possibility of welding these waifs into a great second line of reserves for the republic. They realize that if properly educated now, with their ideals and romantic love of country fostered, It is these children who will help to carve Russia's future! fu-ture! Mere peasant orphans, yet they are potential pillars of state. It is planned, therefore, to bring great numbers of these children at least 50,000 to the United States to be educated.' Here they will learn some of the principles of democracy and then return home to spread these doctrines and to take an active part in teaching Russia of tomorrow to govern herself. The plan has the hearty approval and sanction of Professor Paul X. Milyoukov, minister of foreign affairs for the new Russian government, as well as of officials and leading members of war relief so cieties both here and in Petrograd. A campaign to help secure tie necessary funds for this project has been launched in New York by the Russian Refugee and War Relief Committee. In a short time It is hoped to have subcommittees working work-ing in every large city. On this committee, and taking an artive part In the financial and transportation arrangements necessary neces-sary to the success of the plan are many of the leading lead-ing representatives of New Russia in this country. Among them, Professor Nicholas Kousnetskoff, Ivan Narodny, A. Roshkowsky, Professor Mikas Petraus-kas, Petraus-kas, J. M. I'ksila, Dr. Thomas Darlington and Professor Pro-fessor M. N. Grattan of the Russian railway commission. com-mission. Within the year it Is hoped to have a fund of $50,000, which sura will enable the committee to bring over as a first consignment some 10,000 chll-dren. chll-dren. Already $11,000 has been paid into the fund "nyi large sums are pledged by philanthropists and by Big., business concerns which are interested in Russian trade and therefore In her future. As many teachers and caretakers will be needed to look after the children upon their arrival here a number of prominent American women have already al-ready volunteered to help organize such staffs. Some of the women now at work on the plan are Mrs. Randolph Guggenheim, Mrs. Eugene Hale Douglas. Miss Mary Vail Andrews, Miss Emma FTohman and Mrs. Phillip Lewisohn. The children to be brought to this country will rango from S to 18 years of age, and any difficulties which may arise because of this country's immigration immigra-tion laws will be gotten over by philanthropists and prominent persons co-operating in the venture, who will be responsible for the welfare of the children while they remain here. It Is planned to distribute the children in rural districts along the Pacific coast and not in New York or any other of the congested eastern cities. Partly for this reason, but mainly to avoid the dan-1 dan-1 gers of a trans-Atlantic trip while the war lasts, the tiny apostles of freedom will be broughi. from central , Russia by rail through Silieria and thence by steam- ship across the Pacific, finally to be landed at west- ern coast ports. They will be distributed principally In the sparsely settled agricultural districts, being placed in the homes of citizens In sympathy with the movement move-ment as well as In various institutions where they will be given from two to five years' schooling in American thought and methods. When impossible to place the children In either of these two ways camps will be leased and established for them. Both Russian and American teachers will e provided for their dally instruction. The former ' o that they will not forget their mother tongue nor l-;se the great love and devotion for their own eoun-Vy eoun-Vy which is one of the chief chnrncterist !cs of these Va.int.i, who In the past have learned to hate not sla but her ' rue! bureaucracy. J Most of the children were driven from the rnv- ! farm lands of Poland aiid Gallola. They are rrh s J TJfe' : ''JPrJlA' y .-till: Ch J'CK iKfk Russian Cities, IfWBy -m' ''' ' A A Orphan Asylums '-- V;?,)M Today With Half' ? j SJ SY , Ty Motherless and AllT a Fatherless . ? Z?JZ MmmMm Children From the Overrun 1 : '"- ST,: Vj 1 1 Western Provinces-First Troop JX ,5- ffC of 10,000 Due in America ;.- .'" ri1S lUJ IllTrrrl III This Year rlands, they A &?7 k II I ' I' ( 4 mm r r L n izlz 1 off m -" ; :a:.b"rfr.s LI i l LJ m, -. $J I mm a Million v - ;$; ;V; i V IliP7 Motherless and :0j t'CA t ' Fatherless . fA&i J Children From the Overrun Zf&S H Western Provinces First Troop ;:i2rfr ' of 10,000 Due in America 'r. : " AXfn I his Year : f.t U . . i" j 1 m v ' ''.'i "J T,,, .M.n,ri"iinriii niMi 'n ff S T'fl w III ' .- i h.UtA Wit 4 ' - f t' , w 1 . INum JT ';v '-' s,--f-x-:-i,i'f -x vl :- " - -f .4 ' 1 . - inS. r- .r; - i , , 1 --!. - -r ' A x, ' I rC. Vf ' : : -: s , ( , ? . I m ! r H J . I ' ') I " mWfWM Miss 1 atiana Romanoff, second daughter to the one-time Czar of all the Russias and in that position organizer of much of the relief re-lief work among the refugee Slav children. simple children of the soil, to whom fertile Cnll-foruia Cnll-foruia will be both a drlight and an inspiration. While learning the rudiments of American ideals they will also be taught useful pursuits for which they are naturally fitted and which they can put to practical use immediately upon their return to their own country. The older boys, for instance, will be taught modern methods of agriculture and oiml-neering, oiml-neering, while the girls will he given lessons in tjue-wrlting tjue-wrlting and stenography. None of them will ho under obligation to return to their own country If they prefer to remain here, and while svimo inny be so ntlraeted by the American Ameri-can Idea afl to wish to remain it Is firmly believed During the many raging drives into Russia and out of Russia the peasants have suffered suf-fered terribly and congregated in homeless herds, as in this photograph, losing members of their families and particularly their little children. by these who have studied the Russian peasants that the majority when t lie time comes will answer an-swer their country's call and will eagerly return j to help in the great work of regeneration. j The first 10.0HO children, whom it is expected will be brought to America before the end of the year, probably will be recruited In Petrograd and Moscow, for both of these cities are literally swamped Vlth from 50.1HJ0 to 100,000 tiny war refugees. In Petrograd the committee In charge of the project, which has an American, among its members, mem-bers, Thomas Whlttcmore of lioston, has already selected and listed 5,000 children who will be among the first sent over. They are to be given first chance because they have been observed to be of a superior type both physically and mentally. These innocent victims of war, although they come from the poorest of peasant families, are true representatives of New Russia in so much as they have a wonderful although sadly undevel oped native intelligence, behind which lurks an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. One cannot realize this fully until one has worked among them and lived among them under the most trying try-ing conditions and thus had on opportunity to probe beneath the stolldness which rural Russia has adopted as a shield after years of brutal oppression. Iteneath their passive, often bovine, bo-vine, exterior they are alert, eager and virile. They are quick to learn and eager for opportunity to apply their learning, but so long as the war lasts, and probably for many years afterward, the only hope of these forlorn children for the education and Meals they seek will be In this opportunity to come to America. At the present time cities like Petrograd and Moscow seem more like huge disordered orphan asylums than anything else. What few relief agencies there were v hen the vir began were totally unprepared for the sudden avalanche of refugees, men, women and children, that was hurled upon them when the exodus from Poland began. Almost without warning great trainloads of these pitiful people were dumped down in the capital. There eauie women with babes at their breasts packed in freight and box cars with less room than cattle would have. There was no provision en route for warmth and little If any food, and those who had occasion afterward to retrace the route of these trains say that one could easily tell each place a train had stopix'd by the graves, shallow and hastily filled in, that dotted the right of way. Oddly enough, it was largely to the efforts of the Grand Duchess Tatiana, second daughter of the czar, that thousands of these little refugee childreu were saved to gladden again the hearts of their poor, broken mothers. Such women as the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mariekovna, an aunt of the deposed emperor; Princess Prin-cess Mesehervsky and Mine. Ogareova, the wife of a famous senator in Petrograd. threw open their line homes and palaces to t lie hungry, homeless hordes. Since the revolution and the imprisonment of the IH-yenr-old grand duchess along with her father, the czar, the work and the wards of the Tatiana committee commit-tee has been taken over by the Blue Cross Society, which is now directing practically all refugee work in Russia. x In Petrograd alone this society has something like 2,."i'ki clerks busy at work on the seemingly endless end-less and hopeless taid; of trying to reunite separated parents and children. Often it Is found that members mem-bers of a family of eight or nine children, the average aver-age sized peasant family, have been scattered half way across the great country In the various refugee camps that have sprung up almost everywhere. The work of restoring the lost children Is especially espe-cially (UMieult, because many of them are so young thny can only lisp their name and nothing more. One of these stoical little children will be closely qurslloiKd until every bit of Information about him- self and home village that Is possible to obtain has Mrs. Charles Andrew Carver, wife of the well-known American millionaire and financier finan-cier and Yale's famous strong man, who negotiated the Russian trade treaties with America. Mrs. Carver has been the leader in arranging for the borrowing of the Slav children. been gleaned. Tills data is then carefully compiled, -with a minute description of the child. The information is then sent from one refugee camp to another. In each place the heartbroken fathers and mothers are called together while the information is read aloud to them in the hope that some one cf them will recognize It as the description of a missing child. In tills way countless numbers of families have been reunited after weeks and mouths of separation, during which time they have all but given up hope of ever regained lost ones again. What this splendid splen-did work means to the breaking hearts of many of these people is best illustrated by the case of little Sasha. lie came to us at relief headquarters In Petrograd a sturdy little lad of 4. He was exceptionally broad of chest and healthy, else he could not have survived the weeks of cold and terror he had gone through during which he had become separated from his pa rents. For days we took turns in questioning him, only to receive the same answer : "Momischka always calls me 'little Sasha.' " Because he succeeded within a few days in winning win-ning the heart of everybody connected with the Blue Cross headquarters we could not resist giving him Fpcclal attention, and so he was dressed in a trim little suit with a brand new pair of shoes. They were the delight of his heart and caused his dark eyej to sparkle every time he examined thein, which was every few minutes throughout the day. In due course of time little Sasha's name and description went out for identification. As he could tell us nothing but his name a' particularly minute description of the little fellow was made out. Weeks went by and then one day a great bearded, weary faced, heavy overcoated peasant a very giant of a man stepped into the office. Almost before he presented a copy of the boy's description we knew that he was the father and that he had come for little Sasha. After he had explained how he and his wife had been driven from their home near Dvinsk, to live through weeks of terror, during which their youngest boy was lost, we brought out Sasha. Almost. I must confess, with sinking hearts, for we loved the little lad so, we hated the thought of losing him. One glimpse of the big, bearded man and little Sasha rail toward him, crying, "Papa, oh papa '." The father held him in his arms a minute and then, putting him down on the floor, knelt beside him and said : "You must be very happy here, for you are so well cared for by your friends, who must be very rich and kind people, but your mother weeps every day -for her little Sasha." The little boy listened gravely while his father spoke to him and then, turning slowly toward us, he took his new little handkerchief from the pocket of his blouse and said as slowly and earnestly as his father had : "I am awfully happy here, but my mother weeps every day for me, so I must go and wipe away my mother's tears with my new handkerchief." As It was with little Sasha so we believe it will be with the little children it Is planned to bring to Americn. Although they will find much to attract them in this country, and although they probably will experience greater happiness than they have ever known before, yet when the time comes, when they are capable of helping Russia, most of them will want to go back, for with them love of country is almost as strong as love of kin. Coryriglit, 1017, by J. Keelcy. |
