Such a procession!  They had slept in fields, eaten berries, carrots dug from the earth by their hands; drunk from muddy pools, always with those beings behind them who had driven them at the point of their bayonets from their poor homes.  Looking back, they had seen flames against the sky, heard screams for pity from those too ill to leave, silenced by bullets.

Here are some of the tales, which our Mayor vouches for, which I heard: 

One young mother, who had seen her husband shot, tried to put aside the rifle of the assassin.  She was holding her year-old baby on her breast.  The butt of that rifle was beaten down, crushing in her baby’s chest.  It still lives, and I heard it’s gasping breath.

Another young girl, in remnants of a pretty silk dress, hatless, her fragile shoes soleless, and her feet bleeding, is quite mad from the horrors of seeing her old father shot and her two younger brothers taken away to go before the advancing enemy as shields against English bullets.  She has forgotten her name, town, and kin, and, “like a leaf in the storm,” is adrift on the world penniless.

I saw sitting in a row on a bench in the shed seven little girls, none of them more than six.  Not one of them has now father, mother, or home.  None can tell whence they came, or to whom they belong.  Three are plainly of gentle birth.  They were with nurses when the horde of Prussians fell upon them, and the latter were kept—­for the soldier’s pleasure.

There is an old man, formerly the proud proprietor of a bakery, who escaped with the tiny delivery cart pulled by a Belgian dog.  Within the cart are the remains of his prosperous past—­a coat, photos of his dead wife, and his three sons at the front, and a brass kettle.

I heard from an aged man how he escaped death.  He, with other villagers, was locked into a room, and from without the German carbines were thrust through the blinds.  Those within were told to “dance for their lives,” and the German bullets picked them off, one by one, from the street.  He had the presence of mind to fall as though dead, and when the house was set on fire crawled out through a window into the cowshed and got away.

Now, these stories are not the worst or the only ones.  Nor are these 300 refugees more than a drop of sand on a beach of the thousands upon thousands who are at this moment in like case.  They are pouring through the country now, dazed with trouble, robbed of all they possess.

Who can help them, even to work?  No one has money.  Even those rich villa people, Americans, are unable to pay their servants.  There is no “work” save in the fields garnering crops, for which no wages are paid.  Their country is a devastated waste, tenanted by the enemy, who spread like a tidal wave of destruction in all directions.  We take the better class into our homes, clothe them and feed them gladly, that we may in a minute way repay the debt civilization owes their husbands, sons, and fathers.  France, too, is invaded, and now thousands more of French are homeless and penniless.