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Half a million Spanish refugees: it's such a staggering number that’

it's difficult to get any mental picture of the situation, except in terms of a huge mass of people, _ l a

1 And in order to get Canadians interested enough to help in our re~ lief Work, it's not very effective to simply speak of half a million half~starved raggedly clothed people. “We have to give some good hard~hitting facts that are easier to imagine, in terms of human beings, ‘i ~ '..jJ;R% ‘That's‘why I'm.writing this, since during the five Weeks I was inky France I visited both.civilian and military refugee camps,:saw and heard some of l the heartbreaking things that are happening to the people in them.and realised every mhnute or the time that, although money won“t give them.back their country, it will at least keep them.alive, and that Canada simply can't let up on sending

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money at this time.p p f .

. The general setaup as far as the Spanish refugees is this: the French;government; through the Minister of the Interior, has distributed the» women and children throughout every Department in France, asking the Prefecture of:Pelice of each Department to distribute them in groups in the various mun~ icipalities, according to their ability to support them. Practically every municipality has a group of women and children (together with a small number of old men) housed in all sorts of buildings,:from.extremely ancient factories, foughly built barracks, prisons, to fairly habitable houses. i

The municipalities supply food to the groups to the value of seven francs a day (about 20 cents) for adults and four francs a day (about eleven cents) for children. That's all. oln practically every case the buildings were completely and blankly empty when the refugees moved in, the only exception i being in some sort of cooking equipment and some long trestle tables and benches. to _py Considering that not one woman in a hundred brought anything across the border with her except the clothes she and her children stood up in, and perhaps a blanket or two, the camps are not hOmBlik€e In some cases there's_ just loose straw on the floors and everybody sleeps in arrow, as close as _y possible for warmth. In some cases bolts of seeking have been distributed and the women have made mattresses to stuff the straw into, which is tidier but not much softer. In some cases our International Committee has already supplied

imetal cots and bedding. They can go on doing that just as fast as finances

permit . a

Life in the camps is not pleasant. There's a limit to the amount of time the women can spend on "housework" when the house is just a big old; factory with some straw on the floor. The potato~peeling squads sit around on boxes and sing, because they have something to do. If there’s anything to knit or saw with, the women knit or set, but there isn't very much yet; "Because it's not warm weather yet, they just have to let the children run around dirty; they‘ can't let them go naked while they Wash their only clothesa a M