THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



505 



Photograph by Herbert Corey 



how the: refugees leave a devastated town in France 



A tiny dog-cart, piled high with odds and ends of household furniture, represents all the 

 possessions saved by a peasant family which must start life anew in some distant section of 

 France. So suddenly does the order of evacuation come that the civilian population seldom 

 has time to make a choice of the things which can be saved. 



off, the sticks are moved forward to pre- 

 sent a fresh surface to the flames. The 

 fires are all made of little twigs. Each 

 year the peasants lop off the branches of 

 certain trees and make them up into bun- 

 dles for the winter's fuel. The season's 

 provision for a farming family is unbe- 

 lievably small. 



"There are enough stumps in my old 

 man's woodlot to boil soup for all France," 

 a disgusted soldier told me one day. 



"Cooties" can be killed by boiling water, 

 if the water is hot enough and boiled long 

 enough. The women of France rarely 

 use hot water for the washing of clothes. 



the cootie is a hardy insect 



In every village in the north there is a 

 municipal laundry, in which the women 

 kneel and souse the soiled linen in cold 

 water which trickles into a tub, and then 

 thresh the linen upon rough stones. The 

 process is repeated until the cloth takes 

 on at least the appearance of whiteness. 



But this process does not kill the 

 "cooties." The adult cootie is a fairly 

 hardy insect and the eggs are extraordi- 



narily resistant to rough treatment. The 

 scientists who have been inquiring into 

 the louse problem among the armies of 

 the Western Front have found that clean 

 clothes may be infested from these com- 

 munity wash-houses. The eggs remain 

 upon the rough surfaces of the stones on 

 which the linen is scoured and are taken 

 up by the next armful of wet clothes. 



If the scientists had their way they 

 would either have the clothes of the sol- 

 diers washed by army specialists or by 

 the soldiers themselves. They would 

 forbid the men taking their clothes to the 

 village blanchisseuses. 



But the American soldier is a luxuri- 

 ous creature and has money in his pocket. 

 He prefers to have his laundry done by 

 the women, and he can hardly be blamed. 

 If he were to do his own week's wash, he 

 would be forced to do it at the same 

 place and on the same stones over which 

 the peasant laundresses work each day. 



When there is no hot water to wash 

 the men's clothing there is no hot water 

 in which the men themselves may bathe. 

 It is true that one sometimes finds a mu- 



