The Mankato Free Press

WAR VICTIMS FIND RED CROSS REFUGE
Great Aid Is Given People Who Suffer From the Bloody Conflict
Bologna, Italy, August 12.-[By Mail.]-Railroad station resthouses, where civilians for whom poverty and wartime difficulties make traveling hard and painful, are a feature of American Red Cross activities in the more important Italian cities.

Bologna, situated as it is almost in the center of the peninsula, is perhaps more than any other place a magnet for the pathetic passage of these persons. The resthouse of the station there has recently moved into new and larger quarters, formerly the second-class waiting room, now converted for this war-time charity.

Here may be found every kind of information regarding traveling, time tables of the ordinary trains, the tradutte (military trains) and the vaporine (local steam tramways), a war map, so that profughi may find where their fathers and brothers are fighting-a beautiful map of Italy, giving every station on every principal railroad (Ferrovvie dello Stato); a map of Bologna, so that any one going into the city may see where to go and how to get there. The workers are ashamed to answer "Don't know" to any question. The two long tables are covered with black oilcloth, which makes a very pleasing and original appearance when adorned with white cupbowls, flasks of fresh water and a few flowers (marguerites, gladioli and asters).

Block Off The Curious.
Small white cottage curtains hide the people from curious onlookers, and on each like heraldic devices, are sewn two little American flags.

A little kitchen opens off the large room where the milk and meat are prepared. This also contains a little cupboard, with some necessaries as needles, cotton, medicines of simple kinds, headache powders, a few towels, soap, children's stockings and writing materials.

In one corner is a stretcher for any poor old woman or paralyzed individual, covered with a knitted quilt which came from America. It is of many brilliant colors, and very plainly makes one feel that loving hands have knitted it, square by square, in the hope that it would cheer the heart of some lonely soldier in a hospital. But instead, it is serving a no less noble end of war's ravages.