INARD, France, Sept. 1, 1914.

_To the Editor of The New York Times_:

This is written in great haste to catch the rare boat to England. The
author is an American woman, who has spent nine happy Summers in this
beautiful corner of France, where thousands of her compatriots have
likewise enjoyed Brittany's kindly hospitality.

Yesterday I saw issuing through St. Malo's eleventh century gates 300
Belgian refugees, headed by our Dinard Mayor, M. Cralard. I try to write
calmly of that procession of the half-starved, terror-ridden throng, but
with the memory of those pinched faces and the stories we heard of
murder, carnage, burning towns, insulted women, it is difficult to
restrain indignation. They had come from Charleroi and Mons--old men,
women, and little children. Not a man of strength or middle age among
them, for they are dead or away fighting the barbarians who invested
their little country against all honorable dealings.

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 bake