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♦ * THE PRESS AN£> ETANDARD;;WA1TERSORO, S. G arm ^ ■sas |75v" /' '. ! • 5 *• . BELGIUM f •/ ■•lit to tnuMport ttem to tko MMd rtf oooa «■ it eoold cot tko BtsssMf Yo« wosld hcsr BOW ssd then the toot of so sutomobllo hors, sad tko «tpsld msko way tor the of s motor-car losdod to with tko v white-faced Tko ear would go os, sad tko rofSfOM would cIom thoiv gsys sod resume their weary, senre- At the eoseestratioa yard! they eat la family grpups, the children huddled about their mothers sad graadmothen like chlekeaa around hoou No Child among the laughed or played; they wer« too weary tor tkat; hut ao child cried. I wua trylag to hare speech with sad iudlag them te giro any account of their adventures when an ambulance arrived. ▲ aurue sad a phyaldan descend ed. A woman roee from a distant group and Joined them. She car ried In her arms a bundle wrapped la rags. The slant of her back •bowed that the handle contained n child—there Is an attitude of moth erhood which none can mistake. The women in the nearest group followed the pantomime with their tearless, hopeles H eyes. “What Is tt? M I asked. v For a time none of the women answered. Then one spoke in a dead tone. “Her baby is dead,” she Said. “She bad no milk in her.” All that happened on the fringe of Belgium, to the refugees who had made their way out and were nearing safety, and enough com fort to keep soul and body together. I could multiply instances from the observation of others. There for an example, the group of two hundred /afagues who arrived In Holland earty in November. They carried with them four dead, new- fcorn babies."— ‘ It was the same story which one hears everywhere. -The mothers wer« so reduced by privation that they had no milk of their own. As for cowf’ milk, it was not to be had for any money. Add another picture, brought out by an Americsnirohi Belgium. He stood ose irtarffing by the back door of a German cook camp, Watching n group of Belgian women grubbing through the trash-heap piled up be hind the camp. All these women cafried b%bles. „ . , “What are they doing?” he asked a German sergeant with whom ho had struck up acquaintance. * “Scraping our condensed milk cans,” said the sergeant. “It's the only way to get milk for their babies. I've seen them run their Angers rousd a can which looked as bright as a new coin, apd hold them Into th« babies’ mouths to suck. My company,” he added, “has been v getting along without milk in Its coffee nnv giving-It to these women. We’ve received no mostly family men. But we're mostly family men. But' we've an exception; and it doesn’t go very far.” Here is another recent picture from stricken Brussels, that gay t dainty, lively city In old times—the city whose smiling people called it petl Paris. The scene is the once busy, pleasant boulevard Bischofshelm. A .woman collapses bn a bench set along the sidewalk af'er the fashion of the Greater Paris. In |»er arms is a baby. A child stagers along, clinging to hnr apron. The worn*, i’.i futc is blue and yellow; she is on the verge of collapse. The baby, surely not over five months old, has a pale, lead "colored akin. Its mouth is open a* though set that way. Its eyes are dosed. . ' , Two women of Brussels paaa this uphappy group. They hurriedly ex changed some words tu.rn back to the wqmea on the bench. Then one stands gUgrd while the other hastens for some milk and bread—such as Is to be found In the Brussels of to day. , They force a little milk be tween the teeth of the mother They let the baby drink/ Jt drinks us though it had" never drunk otherwise, \ To the face of the mother corals '■ U feW patches of color. She slowly recovers until she Is able to .eat a bit of bread. The baby opens its mouth, drinks more greedily. ••It has not fed since two days," the . mother whispers. The mother trlep to rise from the beprh but she cannot. The elder child dHnks the milk that is left It looks curiously at the piece of bread as 1/ It did not* know what it Was. The mother forces it to ea». A crowd has gathered, mdrmuring. This sight ls*ot new. yet each lima it draws a little crowd. Every ono would like to give—but no on-? can. Who Is not 'poor at tbi« moment? Many of them have children at home who today weigh less than the day they were born. France and England and Ger many 4ad '‘Austria are issuing their lists of tho dead, which are mount ing up day by day to a ghastly mil lion. But these take account only of the strong young men who have died In the fighting. They, do not take account" of mere non-com be tan ts. They do not* list the women who, toollshlr or ignorantly sticking ‘to their homei. have died under the shell-fire of enemies or friends They do not list the week and helpless who have dropped out . the pathetic caravans of refugees to perish alohg the edge of the roads. They do not list wfce are beginning to die by hanger In stricken Belgium. And finally, they do not list these babes of Belgium, dropping off before thoir lives have fairly began, be cause there ts n omilk. Let us view the situation In cold blood. Belgium ip shut off from the world—ringed with steel. Her own food supply was used up long ago, either by the people or by their con querors. The cattle were first of all to go; even in August I law the German killing milch cows for ra tions. A cow or a small dairy he.* Is left here or* there; but they are the exceptions. The supply of rondensed milk ran short long ago. Now milk Is a ne cessity to most civilized children between the ages of one and two years. Some ehlldren. It is true, pull through, under exreptiopal cir cumstances'of privation, without it, hut these are the unusually sturdy, •hey stand apart from the rule. The average young child must have milk or he will die. And there is no milk. Again, the suckling baby must have mother’s milk or a substitute. There Is, of course, no substitute to be had in Belgium and equally there Is little mother’s milk. ■ — -• - Every wdman knows that n dvl- ised nursing mother must “keep up her strength.” She must have nourishing food-*-In ^ many cases special food. Every wolhan knows that a certain proportion of civilised mothers cannot feed their own babies even at that. Nourishing ^food—special food. The news which filters out jb>1 that locked, ptrttken ^country to . The Commission for Relief dn Belgium makes a sarcasm apd a mockery of those phrases In many, If^in not most Belgian cities, the populance is down to one large baker’s bun a day. Issued by the municipal authorities. In some places, the authorities have been albe to supplement that ration with one bowl of cabbage soup a^day. One bun and one bowl of cabbage soup a day—for a nursing mother? Yet that is all they have and all they will have this winter at tho heat American can do. The Com mission hopes at most- to transmit ten ounces of food a day to each Inhabitant of Belgium—and to do that the people of the United States must strain every resource of charity. How little that is for a civilised human being, and espe cially for a nursing mother, be- comejt plain when one learns that the average inhabitant of Greater New York consumer forty two ounces of food a day. The mothers of Belgium can hope only for <« quarter ration this winter! W Even allowing for the reduction of the birth rate duo to Jthe war. ;her*» must have been forty thou- '’nnd births ^n Belgium since the dormant came. There will b« forty •housand more in this winter o.’ hardship and privation. How many of the newly-arrived forty thousand have already died rnneeessarily— urdecorated, unsung victims of this war—no one will ever know^f How many of the coming forty thousand will die this winter de fends upon us. in America— upon how much food we send to the nurf'r.e mothers, how much m'lk to the babies. ■ FICTION IN BIS FORTUNES Matter That Shows How Extremely Thorough Are the German Mili tary Preparations. In all the irorld there is only one army—the OewBan—that carries Its war preparations to such a state of completeness as to have a special corps of gravediggers, who accom pany the army In the field for thla grim task alone. They were formed for the Franco-German war of 1870, and their appearkneo Was a source of issement to the older generation of soldiers in Europe who eould not un derstand such “specialization.” Another feature of the German mili tary system is the requirement that all soldiers on active service should wear around their necks labels with their names, regiment and rank. In the event of death these are useful for purpose# of identification, and in case of injury the reveae side Is used as a form on srhlfih the surgeons at tached to the field hoapitals Jot down details of the patient's injuries and any special Information for the guid ance of the surgeons at the base hos pitals.—London Chronicle. Mail Carriers' Hard is*. If there la a point south of the Ala* kan boundary where the United Statag mall carriers havs to contend with ad verse weather conditions paiallellnc those of the Arctic regions, it Is at Kt-in-Bay, that famous island in Lake Erie where Perry won his victory n century ago. Separated from the Ohio mainland by II miles of open water, the coming of wittier brings hardships to the men whose daily task it £ 40 traverse the distance laden with the mails. A stout sailboat » the usual means of commuqlc|ition. but when the ice closes and boating is impossible, the ice beat la called into play and the distance U traversed in record time. Estimates of the Wealth ef the Lead ing Financiers Greatly Exag- Truth has atormed another , strong hold of fiction. How much did not fiction say /. P. Morgan was dorth? Estimates la yellow magazines and Sunday supplements rarely pat his fortune under $150,000,000. Truth has been able to uAcover lees than $100,000,000, although the digging after a year la still in progress, “Gl- rard” writes la the Philadelphia Ledg er. But the exact amount is certain to be far below what fiction always said it was. . It was ao with H. H. Rogers. It was so with E. H. Harrlman. It was also true of the William Weightman fortune In Philadelphia. Not one of them was over half as great as popu lar Imagination sometimes painted. Men like Morgan. Harrlman and Rog ers can do n groat deal with other people’s mosey, which makes it aeem as If It ware their very own. .Thus Morgan controlled the gthlrs of the New Haven railroad, but hp didn’t own n hundredth part of the stock. Harr!- maa r ruled Union and Southern Pacific, hut bis personal ownership of stock was far la the minority. ' The sad thing about the persistant piling np of big fortunes by fiction la amt It creates unwarranted discon tent Goodness knows, even $100,000,- 000 was quite enough for Mr. Morgan or any other man to possess, hat to pretend that he had about all the money In New York was rearing n monster fiction that frightened peo ple. When the Hat of Mr. Morgan’s se curities is finally published, it will very likely be found that he, like Mr. Rogers and D. O. Mills, had plenty of “pupa." Not even he could guess right every time on what was or was not going to he good. Jay Gould and Jim Keene and oth ers have said that guessing right four times out of seven Vas enough to make any man’s fortune; ao that if these rich men furnish a moral It is thla: Put no faith in a man who always has a “sure thing” and don’t be trou bled when one guess goes awry. - f GRAVEDIGGERS WITH ARMY Activities ef Women. Women who desire vote in Kan sas are not compelled to state their ag« The trade in overalls for women in Manchester, England, Is large and im portant. Mrs Joseph Rublno of Babylon. L. I., has a school for training dogs to trail criminals. Mrs. Boyd Culver of Eureka, Mont., fasted for 45 days to cure herself of chronic indigestion. The National City bank of New York city lias a graduate woman cook whose duty it is to preparp good, w holesojne meals for its 400 employes. Women are running the subway cars in Paris, most of them taking their husbands' places, made vacant by their being called upou to go to war. infidelity in the husband is not suf ficient grounds for a wife to get a di vorce in England. Women stenographers can now take civil service examinations for posi tions in the government service. PERSONAL MKNTlbN Ernent Hukbter Is viaiting his par ents during the holidays. • e e- Paul Lucas is at his home from Morris Hill School. ‘ see Mias Marion Fraser is spending Christmas with her mother. • • • M4qg Ray Jones la at home for Christmas. e e e Stanley Minos is visiting his Bis tre, Mrs. A. P. Barnes. • • • Perry Merriman visited friends Rldgeland and Savannah, this week. • • • Vernon Padgett is visiting rela tives in Gainesville. Fla. ' • • • Mr. Dolph Jones, of Wofford Col- leg* is spending the holidays . with bis pnrents. Julian Detrevllle o? Evansville, Ind., arrived la the city to spend Christmas with hie parents. e e e Geo. W- Hudson la home for the holidays from Bailey Military Insti tute at Greenwood. Mies Mnble Wichman who is at tending school at Ashley Hall, is at home for the holidays. e*e Mrs.. D. A. Sauls,- and grandson, Pierce, left Tuesday for Georgetown to spend the holidays with relatives. * * * James W. Bryan is at hlme from Kilmonarh, Va., to spend the holi days with relatives. • • * R. Estes Smith is expected in th? city from Clemson today to spend the holidays wKh his parents. • • * . , O. Dewey Padgett - will arrive home this we-A trom Clemnon to spend the holidays with hotnefolks. J now. Mr. Smith has relieved Capt McGee for a few days. • • • M. Smith of EhriiardL-lk-here Miss Caroline Voigt left last Fri day for home in Columbia to spend the holidays. Use for Rickety Vehicles. Tne bicycle has been rehabilitated by the war. It and the horse vehicles too old or rickety to be usable by the military are the main reliance of the Parisians for local transportation and the afternoon promenade. A boule vard observer tells of seeing a widely known actress, in a white blouse and dregs-of-wine skirt, flitting by on a bicycle, performing the duties of a messenger boy. Also of seeing men go by with girls seated on the handle bars. “Que voules-vous?” says the man looking on. ’in these days, if one is going to take a woman out, he has to be mechanician and motor beaides.” * ' * ‘ * ., All States Have Them. -. AA a certain, crossing of the Central Vermont rttilroal the 'view • of the tracks is hiudci until one L wit'aia Jive feet cf the ; ils Tim maker, it a particularly dangerous crossing and the follow lag sisniUccit V.as boon erected: ' Darner! Th' itfilrood erm r- in? is a aril-^csigr. d CrutVtrap a;id of • • • Mr. and Mrs. G. J. Wescoat, * Columbia, spent Friday in town with Mrs. O. C. Brown, on Hampton Street. • • • Miss Ray Jones, who ts teaching school in Aiken, is spending the Holidays with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. E. M. Jones. • • • Miss Chase Black has arrived from Columbia Female College to spend the holidays with her parent* in the city. • • • Baynard Arnett, is at home from the University of South Carolina to spend the holidays with his par ents. • • • Mr. Christoph von Lehe arriv ed in the city Sunday night to spend the holidays iith his mother, Mrs. A. C. von Lehe. • • • Professor Long, principal of the Walterboro High School left Inst week for his home in Port Royal to spend the holidays with relatives. • • • Mr. L. B. Houck’s many friends will be glad to learn that his moth er, who was operated on • several dayg ago at Florence, is rapidly re covering. CAMPAIGN FOR SAFETY FIRST Organization Going at the Work of Ed ucating the People to Realization of Its Importance. The safety first campaign being waged by the Safety First society oi New York, of which society Ogden L Mills is president, received addition al impetus when the “safety first car' started from New York on its tour through eastern and middle western states, in charge of General Secre tary Frederick H. Elliott Mr. Elliott carries with him letters of greeting from Mayor John Purroy Mitchel ef Greater New York to mayors of other cltiea which the car prill visit. The enforcing of street traffic regu lations is being urged by tho society For example, the eight-foot rule in passing trolley cars, uniformity of speed laws, the carrying of fire ox tingulshera, the establishment of ro tary traffic systems at Intersections of wide avenues, muffler cut-out' ordi nances, the use of headlight dimming devices on street cars and automo biles. tire chains in wet weather, etc- are being advocated At first the touf will he through New England and the East, thence to the middle West, and South, and later to the Pacific coast and the Northwest. The>6*a!es to be Included in the tour are N» vv York. New Jersey, Connecti cut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts. Maryland, Pennsylvania,-Ohio, Michi gan, Indiana. Illinois. North Dakota. South Dakota. Kentucky. Tohnesse?. Alabama, Georgia, S-’orth Cnrpliaa. South Gurclma, Virgiaft, Washington, The S. Finn Jewelry Co. fi i mmmmmmmmmmmmBBtamam - • » - \ * -V . \ . \ • ' Wishes all its Customers and Friends a Merry ■ ri:. X m 8S We Wish to Extend to Our Cus tomers and Friends a MERRY CHRISTMAS , " and a HAPPY NEW YEAR * « , s We Appreciate all Past Favors, * * and hope for a continuance of them. SOBEL&BOGOSLGW \ Best WL Res FOR A * I MERRY XMAS The H. W. Cohen Store A. S. KARE.SH, Mgr. .» a disgrace to Uk* t ..:c/ef Con ■ c ! ' uuia Wlirci “ 1 *’ cut."—Yuthfindcr. / i D. C, and later stales farther west. Thanking you for past and hoping for your future patronage dn the ' * *. ** (i ' - . u line of Clothing, Shoes, Hats, Dry Goods and Millinery, I wish you ali a. MERRY CHRISTMAS and a PROSPEROUS YEAR ’ ' v.. ; ’ ' v . ... / y Yours truly, J. FRANK, Mgr. - • * / * v % Chsrtestoa Surprise Bargain House Watch this -space next week for . RARE .BARGAINS, : V ' I- ' 3 ’ m **' wwiia—, -vXjK*. mm I