Suffer Little Children

The children never smile. Their dread of cold is so great that, when brought into warm rooms, they fight desperately for the spot nearest the fire. They draw their heads into their coat collars, their hands into their sleeves. There they sit silently for hours. Music and the laughter of others irritate them. Someone asks a little girl why she is so silent. She answers: "Why do you smile?" From London last week came such reports of what two years of starvation, cold and horror had done to the children of Nazi-besieged Leningrad. To some chil dren it had caused mental damage so severe that "Soviet authorities feared it would be permanent." Some children cry at the slightest disappointment -- for example, when they can not button their coats. Others cry when they see trinkets such as earrings, because they are reminded of their parents who wore such things, and whom they had seen die of exhaustion.

Instead of gobbling their meager food, the Leningrad children hoard it. They slowly drink the liquid part of their soup first, then slowly eat the bits in the bottom of the dish. Often they crumble their bread into matchboxes to be munched furtively later.

To rehabilitate these children, Leningrad last year established a chain of kindergartens where special teachers tried every treatment they could think of. The teachers soon found that "no manner of persuasion has any effect until the children become [physically] stronger." The best that can yet be said of the kindergartens is that they are "almost successful."

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