TRAGEDY OF FRENCH CHILDREN

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21220, 17 September 1940, Page 3

TRAGEDY OF FRENCH CHILDREN

Wisdom of Compulsory Evacuation

“ What P rice wili your children pay for the love you have for them? Because of this love—and the pleasure they give you—will they pay with their lives ? Will they pay with an arm, or both legs, or with digestive and nervous systems so shattered that they must live for ever weaklings ? Would you, through “ love ” and torpor sentence them to starvation so that they might pick up a bone from the dust and gnaw at it like a dog ? ” wrote a woman reporter of the Sunday Dispatch, -who was one of the last to leave Paris.

“I saw one child do that in France. It was one of a hundred reminders that love and brutality narrow down almost to the same thing in active warfare.

“One midnight one of the volunteers whispered to me: ‘Something wrong with that woman; doesn’t speak to me.’

“After twenty hours back home here on our green and gentle island, these sights I saw in France begin already to grow unreal. Looking out on the trees and romping dogs and children of a Chelsea square. I can’t believe ... I can’t believe . . . But in Paris my windows looked on a similar square. Only One Conclusion “There is only one conclusion to be drawn. For parents too blind to see the tragedies, there must be compulsory evacuation of families. If they will not save themselves, they must be saved. Let the objectors shout. Soon they will agree. “To disperse the children, to clear them out of the crowded areas immediately is not only humanity. The military experts have said that it is a strategic necessity. “No nation loved its children more, took more pride in them, than the French. When the French went out to the cafes for an aperitif or a coffee, tli u children went too. Every park in Paris had stands for selling whirligigs on sticks, ponds for sailing toy boats, donkeys for giving rides, and children’s books could be bought wherever books were sold. “ That was the tragedy of the French children, that they were loved—too much to be sent away to safety. “I- will tell you only of the things I saw and heard myself during the days and nights after May 10 when I worked at the Gare du Nord and the Gare Montparnasse in Paris. Tidal Wave of Human Beings “That tidal wave of 5,000.000 human beings started rolling southward on that day. Two days later not a scrap of bread remained along the long, hot roads and railways leading to Paris. And at the Paris stations no aid was waiting, no plans for aid even. “At the Gare Montparnasse an English girl, Eileen Forbes, found a vacant hall, cabled to England for money, and with her sister and volunteers from among their friends, set up the same sort of establishment.

“Hunched like a bundle of rags with a few dirty blankets under her arm, was a woman no more than 25 years old. “A nurse took her in charge, finally managed to give her soup and bread and to wash her face. We heard her story from another refugee who had come with her from her village on the Belgian border. “Struggling over a difficult pass, the young woman had handed her bundle of blankets to some outstretched. helping hand. A mile or two further on they were returned to her. and gradually she had become aware how light they felt. They had lost her baby, two weeks old. Children of the Lost “I saw a little girl of about five, two yellow pigtails hanging down her back, climb off a train clinging to her mother’s skirts, carrying a heavy bundle; but the mother had a baby to carry along with her own bundles. No different from the 5,000,000 other refugees, except that this little girl was crying. “An hour later when I saw her again in the Welcome Centre she was still crying, and then I knew this was a special tragedy, because this little girl made no sound, no grimace with her mouth. Just the tears, flooding evenly down her cheeks and her blue eyes bloodshot. “ ‘She lias done this for two days.’ her mother told me. ‘I can't spot her. It must be something wrong inside. Her little friend, the young daughter next door, was killed.’ “At least, those children, and the little boy with the head of bandages and only a nose sticking out. and a grimy teddy bear dangling from one hand, had their mothers. Thousands of others, many of them too young to remember their surnames or their home towns, were lost. “Some mother has probably given up hope by now that she will ever find her little boy with the brown eyes and one front tooth missing. I saw him when I was a refugee myself the other day in Blois. He straggled down a street behind a group of women busily looking after their own children. Suddenly he stooped in the dust, picked up a bone left by some tired dog, and gnawed it feverishly.”

“At both centres I helped ladle out. coffee, bouillon, bread; washed blistered feet, searched for luggage, and nursed babies.