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                      _THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS_




                            [Illustration:

                            THE BOOK OF THE
                               HOMELESS

                      (_Le Livre des Sans-Foyer_)

                               EDITED BY
                             EDITH WHARTON

                          _New York & London
                              MDCCCCXVI_
                                   ]




                                  THE

                         BOOK OF THE HOMELESS

                      (_LE LIVRE DES SANS-FOYER_)

                        EDITED BY EDITH WHARTON

                   *       *       *       *       *

                 _Original Articles in Verse and Prose
     Illustrations reproduced from Original Paintings & Drawings_

                            [Illustration]

                           THE BOOK IS SOLD
         FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE AMERICAN HOSTELS FOR REFUGEES
                     (WITH THE FOYER FRANCO-BELGE)
           AND OF THE CHILDREN OF FLANDERS RESCUE COMMITTEE

                               NEW YORK
                       _CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS_
                               MDCCCCXVI




              COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

         D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON, U. S. A.




LETTRE DU GÉNÉRAL JOFFRE


_Armées de l’Est_               RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE
_Le Commandant en Chef_

_Au Grand Quartier Général, le 18 Août, 1915_

_Les Etats-Unis d’Amérique n’ont pas oublié que la première page de
l’Histoire de leur indépendance a été écrite avec un peu de sang
français._

_Par leur inépuisable générosité et leur grande sympathie, ils apportent
aujourd’hui à la France, qui combat pour sa liberté, l’aide la plus
précieuse et le plus puissant réconfort._

J. JOFFRE




LETTER FROM GENERAL JOFFRE

[TRANSLATION]


_Headquarters of the Commander-in-chief
of the Armies of the French Republic_

_August 18ᵗʰ 1915_

_The United States of America have never forgotten that the first page
of the history of their independence was partly written in French
blood._

_Inexhaustibly generous and profoundly sympathetic, these same United
States now bring aid and solace to France in the hour of her struggle
for liberty._

J. JOFFRE




INTRODUCTION


It is not only a pleasure but a duty to write the introduction which
Mrs. Wharton requests for “The Book of the Homeless.” At the outset of
this war I said that hideous though the atrocities had been and dreadful
though the suffering, yet we must not believe that these atrocities and
this suffering paralleled the dreadful condition that had obtained in
European warfare during, for example, the seventeenth century. It is
lamentable to have to confess that I was probably in error. The fate
that has befallen Belgium is as terrible as any that befell the
countries of Middle Europe during the Thirty Years’ War and the wars of
the following half-century. There is no higher duty than to care for the
refugees and above all the child refugees who have fled from Belgium.
This book is being sold for the benefit of the American Hostels for
Refugees and for the benefit of The Children of Flanders Relief
Committee, founded in Paris by Mrs. Wharton in November, 1914, and
enlarged by her in April, 1915, and chiefly maintained hitherto by
American subscriptions. My daughter, who in November and December last
was in Paris with her husband, Dr. Derby, in connection with the
American Ambulance, has told me much about the harrowing tragedies of
the poor souls who were driven from their country and on the verge of
starvation, without food or shelter, without hope, and with the members
of the family all separated from one another, none knowing where the
others were to be found, and who had drifted into Paris and into other
parts of France and across the Channel to England as a result of Belgium
being trampled into bloody mire. In April last the Belgian Government
asked Mrs. Wharton to take charge of some six hundred and fifty children
and a number of helpless old men and women from the ruined