SUCCORING SERBIANS.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 October 1916, Page 10

SUCCORING SERBIANS.

RELIEF ADMINISTERED ON BEHALF OF SALVATION ARMY.

"I was interested in hearing," writes Mrs. Booth, in her notes in'the current issue of A]] the World, "just recently from Colonel Govaars something of his work in Serbia before the second desolation of that unhappy country. On being dispatched by the General to the Ealkaiis, 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, ho felt the instructions rather difficult to carry out. He went as far inland as he could, in order to avoid overlapping with other agencies. Almost everywhere he went lie found unspeakable suffering. "In one village in Serbia—originally of :150 families—fifty -seven families were entirely extinct. He found one woman and one child alone left of a family of forty; 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 oil his desk—a record of 247 children under six years of age, belonging to that district whose had both been killed. He ascertained that four thousand such were known within a small radius, and it is estimated that there must be not less than thirty thousand such orphans in Serbia. "The Serbi an authorities tried to save the boys, and had gathered eighteen thousand of them from eight to eighteen years of ago 'in Nisli. It 'l9 estimated that not two thousand of these are now living. Colonel (Jovaars endeavored to assist, the people principally by supporting them while they worked at the restoration of their own homes. There is ground for hope that some of the homesteads thus rehabilitated have not all been destroved."