About this ebook
There, she witnessed the ravages of World War I, especially the hardships endured by refugees. In response, she established two major relief organizations: The Children of Flanders Relief Committee and The American Hostels for Refugees. To raise money for her charities, she edited this collection of poems, essays, and pictures.
The contributors list reads like a who's who of the early 20th-century literary and artistic world: Joseph Conrad, Jean Cocteau, Paul Claudel, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Maurice Maeterlinck, George Santayana, Igor Stravinsky, and W.B. Yeats. Theodore Roosevelt provided the introduction, in which he wrote:
"We owe to Mrs. Wharton all the assistance we can give. We owe this assistance to the good name of America, and above all for the cause of humanity we owe it to the children, the women and the old men who have suffered such dreadful wrong for absolutely no fault of theirs."
Edith Wharton (1862–1937) is the author of The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. For her charitable work during the war, she was awarded the French Legion of Honor and other decorations.
