peared since the Germans
passed through Quievrechain (Nord). There it is a mother and her
children taken by the French near Guebwiller; the children were sent
back, but not the mother. A French captain, wounded by the bursting of a
shell, saw his wife also wounded by German bullets at Nomeny
(Meurthe-et-Moselle); since when she has disappeared, taken he does not
know where. An old peasant woman of sixty-three is taken away from her
husband near Villers-aux-Vents (Meuse) by a company of Germans. A child
of sixteen is seized at its mother's house at Mulhouse.

Such action shows an utter lack of human feeling, and is almost more
absurd than cruel. It really appears as though people had been
deliberately separated from all who were dearest to them; and of those
who have so disappeared no trace remains by which they can at present be
found. I am not speaking of Belgium; there the silence is as of the
grave. Of what is taking place there nothing has been heard in the
outer world for three months. Are the villages and towns still in
existence? I have before me letters from parents (in some cases
belonging to neutral nations) begging for news of their children of
twelve or eight years of age, detained in Belgium since hostilities
broke out. I have even found in the lists of these vanished
children--doubtless prisoners of war--youthful citizens of four or two
years of age. Are we to understand that they too could have been
mobilized?

We see the anguish of the survivors. Imagine the distress of those who
have disappeared, deprived of money or the means of obtaining any from
their families. What misery is revealed in the first letters received
from such families interned in France or Germany! A mother whose little
boy is ill, although rich, cannot procure any money. Another, with two
children, requests us to warn her family that if after the war, nothing
more is heard of her, it will mean that she has died of hunger. These
cries of misery seemed in the noise of battle to fall on deaf ears for
the first two months. The Red Cross itself, absorbed in its immense
task, reserved all its help for the military prisoners, and the
Governments seemed to show a superb disdain for their unfortunate
citizens. Of what use are such as cannot serve! Yet these are the most
innocent victims of this war. They have not taken part in it, and
nothing had prepared them for such calamities.

Fortunately a man of generous sympathies (he will not forgi