Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

arty on the Special until the train rolled in at Buchs, just about supper time. Early the next morning the convoy train, from Vienna, with some 650 Austrian children arrived. A very light lunch—weak tea and sandwiches—was served, the children with their “ruck-sacks” on their backs were put on the Swiss train and off we speeded, feeling that at least these unfortunate youngsters were now saved. The day previous two large convoys had passed us coming into Switzerland, which made matters of finding homes for the PERSONAL REMINISCENCES 355 children appear all the more serious. The Austrian train personnel assisted in getting everything ready but they also looked so undernourished that we thought it a pity that we could not help them as well. Our youngsters, very much delighted to be in dream- land, began singing their old school songs and merrily told tales of their almost fabulous suffering at home. At every station hundreds of handkerchiefs would wave to greet the kind Swiss people who were showing such extra- ordinary hospitality to them and their parents at home. About an hour after dusk our train pulled into the mag- nificent new station at Lausanne where thousands and thousands of people were awaiting the arrival of the undernourished foreign children. Quite different from the usual large gatherings— such as festival, burial or political, They had never seen anything like this before and the effect on them seemed strange. They came not to cheer, nor to mourn, nor to listen to a professional lecturer, but to get a glimpse of what war, misery, and despair meant to the poor innocent children so cruelly gripped by it. First, the thought of it and then the reality—darling children ragged, pale, weak, deathly sober, gone through the agony of starvation, freezing and neglect. This all aroused deepest sympathy which the observer can never forget. After the lengthy parade to the public schoolhouse the youngsters were given a bowl of rice soup, bedded on loose straw and the next morning the volunteer adoptive parents called for their little boy or girl—to learn to love and care for, during the 6 to 12 week vacation period, after which they were collected and returned similarly, but each child now restored to robust health and with a face so bright, full and fresh and clothes so tidy and new that mothers often would not recognize their own sweet- hearts on returning home. 356 FEEDING THE HUNGRY What a splendid work this was! I hope that every- body who participated in this work of charity, at home or abroad, enjoyed it as much as I did, and I know they would if they only could have been there to witness it. G. G. Hiebert, traveler, philanthropist, and re- lief-worker was born at Rosenhof, Morris, Manitoba, October 15, 1881. He set sail from New York on July 4, 1922, with the special duty of overseeing reconstruc- tion work in Russia. The years of war and famine there had reduced the num