Refugee

“ We, the refugees, having beheld with grief the murders of our brethren, determine not to suffer without taking vengeance, and thus begin; and have made use of Captain Huddy as the first object to present to your view; and further determine to hang man for man while there is a refugee existing. ”

“ Well, I've had a great trip this last time. I went to see refugee work—and saw it. There were barracks full of babies—the youngest only six days' old. There were very many children who have been re-captured from the Huns.
To-morrow I start off for the borders of Switzerland to see the repatriated French civilians arrive. Then I go with the head of the Red Cross for a tour to see the reconstruction work in the devastated districts. When that is finished, I return to London to put my book together. ”

“ Why should I strike those men, who, besides fighting against tyrannous oppression, (such it was, Oran,) are also the children of the same soil—our countrymen and brothers?"
"You are the last of the seven," said the refugee, taking both the young man's hands into his, and looking at him with mingled affection and anger ”

“ It is one of the factors which the Immigration and Naturalization Service must take into account to determine whether a refugee seeks asylum in this country as a consequence of his flight to avoid persecution. ”

“ By this time, all the young men present had grown warm with exercise, and were now waxing valiant, as they began to understand the little danger there was in chasing, so many of them together, a single refugee, who, although desperate and dangerous enough, had shown so little inclination to face them. ”

“ Sometimes one thousand refugees came to the freedmen's settlement in a week, and most of them had travelled on foot for several days, with scant food and clothing. They rejoiced greatly when they arrived at a place of refuge, and became free men and women. ”

“ Certainly many refugees make their escape to freedom from persecution in successive stages and come to this country only after stops along the way. Such stops do not necessarily mean that the refugee's aim to reach these shores has in any sense been abandoned. ”

“ Our attention and sympathies were particularly attracted to the flight of the refugees. In this case we could give no material assistance, as we were able to do in other cases.
For hours and days and weeks the doleful procession passed along the streets; a living stream made up of all ranks and classes of society. Here were seen the poor old farmer’s household, whose sons had gone to the front; and young married women, with small children in their arms or by their sides, whose husbands had to don the soldier’s uniform and go to the war. ”

“ In the case of refugees regularly serving as crew members on board a ship flying the flag of a Contracting State, that State shall give sympathetic consideration to their establishment on its territory and the issue of travel documents to them or their temporary admission to its territory particularly with a view to facilitating their establishment in another country. ”

“ The number of emigrants from fashion or caprice is probably not great; and whom shall we now dare to include under this description, when the humble artizan, the laborious peasant, and the village priest, have ensanguined the scaffold destined for the prince or the prelate?—But if the emigrants be justifiable, the refugees are yet more so. ”

“ He stated that as a refugee on account of religion, he had become dependent upon the practice of physic for his livelihood, and for the support of his large family, his household consisting of thirteen souls. ”

“ And now kind reader, we bid you a last farewell; but ere the pages of this book are closed, let us speak a word to you, for those unfortunates who abandon their homes on the approach of the enemy to [180] seek refuge in the Confederate lines. Many—alas! too many of its citizens consider the term "refugee" synonymous with that of "beggar." In this idea we err. It is true they are in many instances, reduced to penury, but in their poverty are as different from the mendicant as the good are from the bad. ”

“ The royal refugee our breed restores,
With foreign courtiers, and with foreign whores:
And carefully re-peopled us again,
Throughout his lazy, long, lascivious reign,
With such a blest and true-born English fry,
As much illustrates our nobility. ”

“ For meeting with these in public or in private her husband would leave her continually alone with her children, after his day's work was done, and spend in feeding the poorer outlaws the money he had toiled for, and very frequently would bring some hunted refugee home to live, or even to prepare to die, in his house. ”

“ To provide places of temporary asylum to which refugees whom it may be possible to evacuate from European countries may be removed, these refugees to be supported in camps for the duration of the war, with the understanding that they will then be repatriated in their own country or be provided with permanent homes in other ways. ”

“ Four hundred refugees, released by colored soldiers, have just come, empty-handed, into our lines. In the jail-yard, where they once found chains and a lash, all the refugees now find a temporary home. The men and large boys go at once to the Government farms to build huts, and in due season to take their families to the house-warming. Twenty-five refugees came ten days ago; and more will come, from time to time, all winter long. ”

“ When these refugees regained the place of their former farm or town, the houses were burned, plundered or without windows and roofs, the well filled with soil, forest grew on the fields, birds had their nest in the neglected abandoned church. Children asked in vain for their parents and parents after their children. No one knew their unknown fate; only rarely was anyone found to be lost forever. And yet, these poor refugees tore joy when they regained the land of the dear hometown. ”

“ Look at her citizens at any period of her career—her populace or her consuls—in the field of battle or in the forum, you will always find them the true descendants of those blood-stained refugees, who established their den of robbers on the seven hills, and pretended they were led by a man who had been suckled by a wolf. While conquest was their object, this sanguinary disposition enabled them to perform great exploits; but when victory had secured to them the blessings of peace and safety, the same thirst for excitement continued. ”

“ The Contracting States shall use their best endeavours consistently with their laws and constitutions to secure the settlement of such refugees in the territories, other than the metropolitan territory, for whose international relations they are responsible.
CHAPTER IV: Welfare
Article 20. ”

“ The children of the refugees are their most precious possession. They grieve most of all for the children. But the children are almost without clothing.
The peasant men are warmly clad. Almost every one has a warm coat. ”

“ Imagine the feelings of the beleaguered refugees, watching the smoke of their burning farmhouses, and wondering whether they themselves would be slaughtered or starved before any one came to their rescue! ”

“ During the fine weather, the poor refugees arrive daily, in their national dresses, all travel-soiled and worn. The night they pass in rude shantees, in a particular quarter of the town, then walk off into the country — the mothers carrying their infants, the fathers leading the little children by the hand, seeking a home where their hands may maintain them. ”

“ In the towns where they could gather, the refugees huddled, clutching the few poor possessions they had been able to save—dazed and bewildered, while the doctors worked day and night, tending their burns, and kindly homes gathered in the sick who had fallen by the way. ”

“ Hence the Enchanted Isles become the voluntary tarrying places of all sorts of refugees; some of whom too sadly experience the fact, that flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home. ”

“ Soldiers coming in for a lodging, for breakfast, for supper, for drink, etc. Sometimes refugees from Boston, tired and fatigued, seek an asylum for a day, a night, a week. You can hardly imagine how we live ”

“ By Emigrants, I mean all who, without being immediately in danger, left their country through apprehension of the future—from attachment to the persons of the Princes, or to join companions in the army whom they might deem it a disgrace to abandon.—Those whom I think may with truth be styled Refugees, are the Nobility and Priests who fled when the people, irritated by the literary terrorists of the day, the Brissots, Rolands, Camille Desmoulins, &c. ”

“ More refugees were arriving, little groups of bewildered creatures, muddy, travel-stained, dog-weary, yet wonderfully patient and resigned. There are no sanitary arrangements of any kind in the building, there is not a basin, nor a towel, nor a cake of soap of which the refugees can make use. ”

“ For the children nothing is made.
And the refugees' children die like flies.
—They lie with their stomachs to the fire, and their backs are as cold as ice. They turn their backs to the fire and their stomachs freeze. ”

“ Towns, villages, hamlets, and lone farms were unprepared to house or to feed the scores of millions who descended upon them—rich refugees in limousines piled high with canned foods and guns—slum masses in rags and on foot, with nothing but fear and hunger to drive them ahead. ”

“ Not a few of the refugees have obtained food and shelter in your barracks, and whole communities without means of existence have been provided by you with the necessaries of life. Everywhere and from all your conduct has gained you loud applause. ”

“ Beaches and camps and cottage towns, trailer-camps and mountain hotels and lakeside resorts, all hummed and boomed with refugees from the cities, while the cities themselves were like cities of death. ”

“ For a month past I have met hundreds of thousands of such refugees, who wander on aimlessly from town to town, driving flocks and herds before them, always trying to keep a couple of days march in advance of the invader. ”

“ Refugees somewhere back of the British lines, working on the roads if strong enough, helping France in any way they could, not murmuring, even smiling, and praying for victory, which would let them return to their homes and daily duties. ”

“ The condition of the refugees and repatriates, thrust into communities to which they came as paupers and crowded into buildings which were never planned for domestic purposes, has been far from enviable. ”

“ These barren aërolites, these famished and ruined people, these footballs of destiny, are known as refugees, émigrés, adventurers. If they sojourn among strangers, they are tolerated; if they depart, there is a feeling of relief. ”

“ There is nothing left in the House for the aged refugees whom we admitted, for the soldiers we nurse; our doctor has been made a prisoner and taken away, and we are without medical help. This is nothing for the Sisters and myself, but all these unfortunate creatures ... they must have food.... ”

“ A group of refugees, a younger son of a royal house with his retinue, a band of adventurers, would found a colony, sometimes conquering the natives, sometimes attaching them peacefully to their leadership, and soon a little kingdom was flourishing, which in time sent out other offshoots or absorbed its rivals until its name commanded respect and tribute for long distances across the sea. ”

“ Within three weeks of the signing of the Armistice, unarmed pedestrians travelled alone and unafraid through all the land. On every road were to be seen throngs of refugees returning to their ravished homes, accompanied by carts piled high with household goods. ”

“ The rich and the poor became converted into one crowd of ragged, hungry refugees, almost wild with suffering and privation. It is impossible to describe the horrors of the hasty preparations for leaving, and the flight itself. ”

“ The men, of course, had some of them been going out more or less all the time, hunting, or—as we have said, stealing, but the accounts they had brought back had been not only imperfect, but often so contradictory that it was hard for the refugees to form any clear idea of what had really been going on, and, naturally enough, they were intensely eager to hear. ”

“ Of these there are great numbers within the last few years, being refugees from Spain, Italy and even Poland, driven to seek shelter where they can find it by the political convulsions of their countries. ”

“ The refugees had no English settlement, and consequently no claim upon the poor-rate. Self-reliant by nature, they started friendly and provident societies to provide for the necessities of sickness and old age. ”

“ The former is populous and stirring, but the latter has [Pg 319] more mounds already than the other has living souls. The refugees are widely scattered; some are in the hospital, some are packed as closely as the logs and dead bodies at the stone bridge in the houses yet tenable, and the rest are at Camp Hastings. ”

“ Occasional vehicles were seen on the road, bringing in black and white refugees. The country is in such confusion that many seek the safe shelter of the cities, solely from the blind instinct that where there is force there must be protection. ”

“ Where the train stopped in the dark at half-lit stations, people of the Red Cross came asking help, "Pour nos blessés, pour nos refugiés."
Somehow, in my little rooms, it is the refugees I see the more plainly. There is the young woman with the wheelbarrow, and the old woman, the grandmother, with the baby, the young man carrying the old man on his shoulders, the little brother and sister with the bundle. I see them toiling down the white road, turning back wild looks toward the smoke of their home. They had to leave the cow, but the old dog followed them. ”

“ Harry observed, "although I agree with Miss Emma, that our people do not pay as much attention to refugees as they should; but the unfortunate exile will always find a sympathizing heart among our people. ”