RELIEF FOR SERBIA

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2894, 5 October 1916, Page 3

RELIEF FOR SERBIA

SALVATION ARMY WORE. "I was interested in hearing," writes Mrs. Booth in her notes in the current issue of "All the World;' 1 "just recently from Colonel Govaars. something of hip work in Serbia before the second desola- | tion of that iMappy country. On being ) dispatched by the General to the Balkans, his instructions were to administer the relief .upon Salvation ■■ Army lines as far as possible. But seeing the Salvation Army is not yet known in; the Near East, he felt the.instructions rather difficult to carry out. He went as far inland, as he ; could, in order toavoid ■ overlapping with other agencies. - Almost everywhere ha went he - found unspeakable suffering. "In one village in Serbia—originally of 350 families—s7 families were entirely extinct. He found one .woman and one child, alone left of, a family of 4Q; and another a young woman, the only survivor of a family of thirty. In one town he found the responsible head of the district looking mournfully at a long list of names on his desk—a record of 247 children under six years af age belonging to that district whoso parents had hoth been killed. He ascertained that'4ooo. such were known within a small radius, and it is estimated that there must ho not. less than 30,000 such orphans in Serbia. , "The Serbian authorities' tried to save tho hoys, and had gathered 18,000 of them from eight to eighteen years of age, in Nish. It is estimated that not 2000 of these' are now living. Colonel Govaars endeavoured to assist tho people principally by supporting them wliilo they worked at the restoration of their own homes. There is ground .for hope that some of the homesteads thus rehabilitated have not all hcen destroyed."