e cause of France. It was founded
by its treasurer, Mr. Frederic Coudert. Mr. August Jaccaci, of New
York, is President; Mrs. Cooper Hewett, Honorary President; Mrs.
Robert Bliss, Vice-President; and the Committee consists of the
Comtesse de Viel Castel, Mrs. Francis G. Shaw, and Mrs. William H.
Hill, of Boston. It is called "The Franco-American Committee for the
Protection of the Children of the Frontier."

This Committee, which in May, 1916, had already rescued twelve hundred
children, was born of one of those imperative needs of the moment
when the French civilians and their American friends, working behind
the lines, responded to the needs of the unfortunate, with no time for
foresight and prospective organization.

In August, 1914, M. Cruppi, a former Minister of State, told Mr.
Coudert that in the neighborhood of Belfort there were about eighty
homeless children, driven before the first great wind of the war, the
battle of Metz; separated from their mothers (their fathers and big
brothers were fighting) they had wandered, with other refugees, down
below the area of battle and were huddled homeless and almost starving
in and near the distracted town of Belfort.

Mr. Coudert immediately asked his friends in Paris to collect funds,
and started with M. Cruppi for Belfort. There they found not eighty
but two hundred and five children, shelterless, hungry, some of them
half imbecile from shock, and all physically disordered.

To leave any of these wretched waifs behind, when Belfort itself might
fall at any moment, was out of the question, and M. Cruppi and Mr.
Coudert crowded them all into the military cars allotted by the
Government and took them to Paris. Some money had been raised. Mr.
Coudert cabled to friends in America, Mrs. Bliss (wife of the First
Secretary of the American Embassy) and Mrs. Cooper Hewett contributed
generously, Valentine Thompson gave her help and advice for a time,
and Madame Pietre, wife of the sous-prefet of Yvetot, installed the
children in an old seminary near her home and gave them her personal
attention. Later, one hundred were returned to their parents and the
rest placed in a beautiful chateau surrounded by a park.

Every day of those first terrible weeks of the war proved that more
and more children must be cared for by those whom fortune had so far
spared. It was then that Mr. Jaccaci renounced all private work and
interests, and that Mrs. Hill, Mrs. Shaw and the Comtesse de Vie