I have tried to give you a grasp of what we have to meet and how we try to meet it. First, the French system of pensions and rents, then the giving of clothes and the moving of families, then the field work and the work for the blind. I haven’t told about the Ouvroir because I am not well enough informed. We give employment to many women in making clothes for the Vestiaire,—flannel shirts and petticoats, underclothes, dresses, everything. All materials, clothes, furniture, or their equivalent in money, come from America.
Now for our needs. We need shoes (this “we” may be taken editorially, for when my present boots take wings I don’t know what I shall do. I can’t afford French shoes in war-times); large sizes, both men’s and women’s, and all sizes children’s—women’s 5, 6, and 7 lengths, C, D, and E widths, and men’s correspondingly large. Then blankets, diaper material by the yard, men’s overcoats (we had to turn away a blind boy the other day who had had his feet and legs frozen and was lame and was just beginning to get tuberculosis), and women’s shirts and heavy union suits. These are great needs, but if there are any available just plain clothes,—dresses, suits, children’s clothes, boy’s trousers and sweaters, neckties, gloves, ribbons, stockings, caps,—send them. If Mother has any sewing-circle in New York or elsewhere at her command, I should like to use it as a part of the propaganda, if I may. I believe she suggested it. If they want to make anything, make aprons for boys and girls from four to fourteen years, the larger sizes from ten to fourteen being the most important. All the school children wear them, and always black. The stuff is like lining sateen. It is astonishing to me that not only parents, but the children, are eager for anything black. It is more practical, of course, and as it is the custom for all the school children to wear black, any child feels embarrassed and odd to wear a color. Only hair-ribbons do they like bright, and this is because they dress up on Sundays to go to the cemeteries. The apron is an all-over apron with sleeves, and buttons up the back.
My idea is to give always what fits and what is right to each person on the spot. Give her something to take pride in and live up to. I have seen a nice-looking waist for a girl to wear to her work in a paper-bag factory not only transform her looks, but the expression of her face. I consider it as much my duty to tell people at home what we need as to go to work every morning. If you could know how we long for packing-boxes to come from America. Sometimes when they do come they are filled with junk. Old dirty clothes full of holes, pieces of lace, jet passementerie, etc., and how disappointed we are! We are hoping, perhaps, for three dozen heavy union suits for men, and find some worn-out long white kid gloves.
Couldn’t you tell some of our dear friends about the Vestiaire? So often at home I have heard people say, “It is awful how little I do for the war. I would like to do more, but I don’t know just what to do.” Tell them that here’s an opportunity not only to help France, but to back up Americans.
One kind of help that appeals to me strongly, though it is entirely outside of my work here, is adopting “filleuls.” Many soldiers have wives and families who write to them and send packages and warm things, and an occasional bar of soap, cake of chocolate, or package of cigarettes. Then there are many poor fellows whose families are in the invaded provinces or killed. They have no one, no encouragement, no one to write to or get letters from or give them trifling remembrances. These are adopted as “filleuls” (godsons) by “marraines” (godmothers), who take an interest and try and fill the place of family to them. Hundreds have been so adopted in America, as you know, but there are so many more who are quite forlorn. I heard of one boy the other day who was the only one in his regiment who never got anything, but tried to go away by himself when he knew it was time for the mail to come. I adopted him like a shot. I have since taken three more temporarily, as I can’t possibly afford to keep them unless I can get some one in America to support them. Now, many of my friends cannot write French very readily and don’t want to be bothered, and it takes months, anyway, for packages to get from New York to the French front, so I thought that if I could get two or three people to support my boys, I would do the writing and the sending of packages gladly, and then report to whoever was supporting them at home and forward to the supporters the men’s letters.
You spend anywhere from three dollars up for the package and send the package once a month. I shall keep these men from now until I hear from you and make an account of what I spend for them. Please be sure and let me know.
One of our greatest needs is a small motor-car—we take great heavy packages and heavy furniture all over town, and then in the visiting work we have to go everywhere, and we get really more tired than I ever thought it possible to get and we waste so much time walking. There are many places where the trams and subways don’t go and the auto-buses have stopped running. Here they are too expensive to buy and mostly too poor in quality. They ask thirty-two hundred francs for a 1910 Ford.
Affectionately,
Esther.