There is a small but powerful oeuvre in Paris, composed with one exception of Americans devoted to the 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 Viel Castel volunteered.  The organization was formed and christened, Mrs. Bliss provided Relief Depots in Paris, and Mr. Coudert returned to New York for a brief visit in search of funds.