Crusade

In 1212 A.D. occurred the most tragic of the crusades to the Holy Land. Thousands of French and German urchins, coaxed into going on a Children's Crusade, trudged across Europe towards Jerusalem, and disappeared for eternity.

More practical was an idea Author Dorothy Canfield Fisher had last October for a Children's Crusade. The idea came to her when a group of Vermont school children, anxious to help refugee children in war-stricken countries, sent $5.69 to her farm, asked her to spend it for them. U. S. children could learn to appreciate "the blessings they enjoy in this democratic land," Mrs. Fisher decided, by following the example of her small Vermont neighbors. So she wrote to educators in 48 States proposing that school children contribute their pennies to a fund for child victims of war in China, Poland, Spain, Czecho-Slovakia, Finland, Norway.*

The idea caught hold. The committee in charge of profits from the sale of Mein Kampf in the U. S. agreed to help pay the expenses of the mite campaign, made Adolf Hitler an unwitting contributor.

Eleanor Roosevelt accepted chairmanship of the committee to distribute the fund. Last week, Mrs. Fisher's Children's Crusade was on the march in 250,000 schools throughout the U. S., and in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Canal Zone. Into 1,000,000 mite boxes children dropped one penny for each year of their age. In New York City's Bronx, 150 moppets (aged five to 16) in the Colored Orphan Asylum raised $3.50 by giving up their Sunday dinner ration of ice cream, though the sacrifice made crusaders quiver (see cut). Said President Roosevelt reassuringly: "Every child in America ought to feel vividly the suffering and loneliness experienced by the children who are victims of a racial and religious intolerance."

*Incorporated fortnight ago in New York was another organization, the Non-Sectarian Foundation for Refugee Children, which will work with the American Friends Service Committee by placing European refugees in U. S. homes. Among its sponsors: Eleanor Roosevelt.

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