1938-03-03 — Page 10

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THE HONGKONG

TELEGRAPH. THURSDAY,

MARCH 3, 1938.

Two Million

People Leave Home

by

Geoffrey Brereton

Tis very quiet in this street, Often machine-gun bullets whistle down it and make holes like the ones in that door we have just passed,

Shells are a commonplace. For that reason none of the houses has window-panes, and there are many round gaps in the brick walls.

Here and there a house is in

ruins the work of bombs rather than shells.

But just now all is quiet. There are no children playing in the road. There is no traffic, for trams could not pass the stone barricades which bar the streets in case of infantry attack.

Yet this quarter of Madrid is in- habited. Look up and you will see two women sitting sewing on the second floor of a house. The whole front has been blown out, so that they sit between three walls ko actors on a stage. No doubt they live in the cellar, and go up in the evening, for air.

THERE

are

children, too, but their games are listless and subdued. They play near the chairs of old men dreaming in doorways.

Farther down a cart is being loaded. A few rush-seated chairs,

a cheap chest of drawers, a mirror,

It is a pathetic medicy.

The people in the street are un- happy. Because their homes are half ruined? Because food is scarce? Because they are living in the shadow of death?

No. The reason is that they have received the final and irrevocablo order to quit.

Some 400,000 people have been evacuated from Madrid. But as this equals the number of refugees who already have come in from the surrounding country, the total population has not diminished.

Because of the shortage of food _and_the_complete_absence of fuel,

-To-day's Thought SURELY "help" must be the most beautiful word in any language.

-MERRICK,

the authorities are now making a supremo effort to evacuate entire Soon It is quarters of the city.

hoped that there will be no civ!- lians living within a mile of the Oring-line.

The problem is to provide for them after they have left their homes. The Government territory is saturated with refugees,

From Malaga alone camo 200,000, from the Basque Provinces 00,000 more. Countless others have moved, either from invaded territory or from regions so near the front that they had become unsafe.

-In Catalonia-alone-they-number 800,000-one refugee to every four of the native population. Murcia, Valencia, and the centre provinces harbour more than this.

No one knows the exact total, for besides tho♬ living in oficial

colonies many are staying with

In parts of Spain

one in four of the Population is

refugee.

#

private families who ungrudgingly share with them already short rations. At the lowest estimate there are nearly two million of

them,

The Government is doing every- thing in its. power to teed and clothe them. In this work it has received the devoted help of the international committees.

But funds, and particularly the supply of suitable foods, are far from adequate. Without increased help from abroad, the plight of the refugees this winter will be almost desperate.

In the town of Ocala four ronds meet. One lends in from Madrid; its opposite number takes you to- wards the south. Two other ronds run due west and south-west, to Cuenca and Valencia respectively. My lorry had stopped in the plaza, While we were refuelling.

=

seven covered lorries went by. Each one carried some thirty women and children sitting on planks that had been laid across to form seats,

An eighth lorry followed piled with luggage, and Anally a ninth which came to a halt beside us.

The driver was arguing with someone, gently but firmly. Two little old women were helped down. In their black shawls and skirts they stood, forlornly on the paye- ment's edge.

They looked helplessly after the lorry as it drove away towards Valencia. I jumped down and spoke to them, Both were going to live with their daughters, in a town whose name they had for gotten. But they knew it was a long way off.

THE lame woman fum- bled in her clothing and It produced a paper, was a pormit authorising her to travel ty road from Madrid. I read her name, which does not matter. Hor age: .83.

Then I saw that on the small sacks which were all their luggage someone had stuck type-written labels. They bore names and full addresses in Cuenca, a hundred miles away.

Bo they were not lost only stranded.

Let us return to Madrid,

This elementary school was once one of the finest not only in Spain, but in Europe.

I inquire for Don Angel Llorca, its headmaster and presiding genius. Don Angel, I am told, is now running a children's colony near Valencia.

A forty-minutes' bus rido took me from Valencia to El Perelló. In El Perelló, half fishing village, half summer resort, was a pleasant house with sunblinds and cool tiled walls.

Don Angel, grey-bearded and benevolent, sat at the head of the table. Twenty children of vary- ing ages were Just finishing lunch. He waved me to a chair beside him.

"Well," he asked, "What news of Madrid?".

I told him, but without mention- ing the marks on the walls,

The children, altting relaxed after their meal, sang in chorus Spanish folk-songs. When they paused, the sound of singing could be heard from other rooms.

"You see," smiled Don Angel. "It's just like it used to be in Madrid."

DON ANGEL had not changed one jot of is He showed methods.

me the well-used library books, the clean, bright rooms which the children themselves looked after, and sheaf after sheaf of drawings in which they had recorded the day's adventures.

They are all right here," he said. "But I wish there were more of them. Far too many are still left in Madrid."

Next day El Perelló was bombed from the air. In that raid I do not think anyone was hurt.

But there will be others. . . .

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2

"The teacher's work," anys the Government, "is vital and must be continued." Here, at a newly-established school at Benicasim, near Valencia, a class of war-orphaned boys and

Tirls have lessons on the veranda of a converted villa.

In a classroom at Benicasim. Theoo boys have lost their mother-but have topna food and shelter as well as sohooling. Not all the rofugees who have swarmed to Catalonia and Bouth-Eastern Spain hava boon as fortunalo.

Children

of Spain

DOWN on the east coast of Spain, near Valencia, are lovely villas that formerly bolonged to wealthy Spaniards. Now they are at once homes and schools for hundreds of orphan children from the front-line towns.

13

Here schooling, so tragically interrupted, resumed. Republican Spain forges ahead with its educational plans for two-fold purpose.

The first is to obliterate from youthful minds the worst horrors of war. The second is to build up a nation of educated people,

1

Already the seven-year-old Republic has estab- ished more than 10,000 new schools... and even now, with war raging, new ones open every week.

Yanga yo de desio.

Lessons done, thejo children play happily on the beach at Benicasim. But they are not allowed to forget the war that has left thei ́ motherloas. Recently they were bombed and machine-gunued by aircraft from Franco's base at Majorca,

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