Transcriber’s Note
Changes made are noted at the end of the book.
[Illustration: A “LITTLE BEES” DINING-ROOM FOR SUB-NORMAL CHILDREN]
WOMEN OF BELGIUM
TURNING TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH
BY
CHARLOTTE KELLOGG
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
HERBERT C. HOOVER
_Chairman of The Commission for Relief in Belgium_
_SIXTH EDITION_
[Illustration]
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
[Printed in the United States of America]
Published in April, 1917
Copyright Under the Articles of the Copyright Convention
of the Pan-American Republics of the
United States, August 11, 1910.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction vii
I. The Leaders 1
II. The “Soupes” 11
III. The Cradles on the Meuse 27
IV. “The Little Bees” 33
V. Mrs. Whitlock’s Visit 49
VI. The Bathtub 55
VII. The Bread in the Hand 61
VIII. One Woman 71
IX. The City of the Cardinal 83
X. The Teachers 93
XI. Gabrielle’s Baby 105
XII. The “Drop of Milk” 111
XIII. Layettes 117
XIV. The Skating-Rink at Liége 123
XV. A Zeppelin 134
XVI. New Uses of a Hippodrome 137
XVII. The Antwerp Music-Hall 149
XVIII. Lace 158
XIX. A Toy Factory 167
XX. Another Toy Factory 174
XXI. The Mutilés 179
XXII. The Little Package 186
XXIII. The Green Box 190
XXIV. The “Mother of Belgium” 204
XXV. “Out” 208
XXVI. Farewell 209
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
A “LITTLE BEES” DINING-ROOM FOR SUB-NORMAL
CHILDREN _Frontispiece_
READY FOR THE CHILDREN 36
A “Little Bees” cantine for sub-normal children.
A MEAL FOR YOUNG MOTHERS 112
ONE CORNER OF THE BRUSSELS HIPPODROME,
NOW A CENTRAL CLOTHING SUPPLY
STATION 144
THE ANTWERP MUSIC-HALL, NOW A SEWING-ROOM 152
Here hundreds of women are being saved by
being furnished the opportunity to work
two weeks in each month, on an average
wage of sixty cents a week.
THE SUPPLEMENTARY MEAL THE RELIEF
COMMITTEE IS NOW TRYING TO GIVE
TO 1,250,000 SCHOOL CHILDREN 160
TOYS CREATED BY WOMEN OF BELGIUM 176
1,662 CHILDREN, MADE SUB-NORMAL BY THE
WAR, WAITING FOR THEIR DINNER 204
INTRODUCTION
BY HERBERT HOOVER
Belgium, after centuries of intermittent misery and recuperation as the
cockpit of Europe, had with a hundred years of the peaceful fruition of
the intelligence, courage, thrift, and industry of its people, emerged
as the beehive of the Continent. Its population of 8,000,000 upon an
area of little less than Maryland was supported by the importation of
raw materials, and by their manufacture and their exchange over-seas
for two-thirds of the vital necessities of its daily life.
When in the summer of 1914 the people were again drawn into the
European maelstrom, 600,000 of them became fugitives abroad, and the
remainder were reduced to the state of a city which, captured by a
hostile army, is in turn besieged from without. Thus, its boundaries
were a wall of bayonets and a blockading fleet.
Under modern economic conditions, no importing nation carries more than
a few weeks’ reserve stock of food, depending as it does upon the daily
arrivals of commerce; and the cessation of this inflow, together with
the destruction and requisition of their meager stocks, threatened the
Belgians with an even greater catastrophe—the loss of their very life.
With the stoppage of the industrial clock, their workpeople were idle,
and destitution marched day and night into their slender savings, until
to-day three and a half million people must be helped in charity.
The Belgians are a self-reliant people who had sought no favors of
the world, and their first instinct and continuing endeavor has
been to help themselves. Not only were all those who had resources
insistent that they should either pay now or in the future for their
food, but far beyond this, they have insisted upon caring for their
own destitute to the fullest extent of those remaining resources—the
charity of the poor toward the poor. They have themselves set up no cry
for benevolence, but the American Relief Commission has insisted upon
pleading to the world to help in a burden so far beyond their ability.
This Commission was created in order that by agreement with the
belligerents on both sides, a door might be opened in the wall of
steel, through which those who had resources could re-create the flow
of supplies to themselves; that through the same channel, the world
might come to the rescue of the destitute, and beyond this that it
could guarantee the guardianship of these supplies to the sole use of
the people.
Furthermore, due to the initial moral, social and economic
disorganization of the country and the necessary restriction on
movement and assembly, it was impossible for the Belgian people to
project within themselves, without an assisting hand, the organization
for the distribution of food supplies and the care of the impoverished.
Therefore the Relief Organization has grown to a great economic engine
that with its collateral agencies monopolizes the import food supply of
a whole people, controlling directly and indirectly the largest part of
the native products so as to eliminate all waste and to secure justice
in distribution; and, above all, it is charged with the care of the
destitute.
To visualize truly the mental and moral currents in the Belgian people
during these two and a half years one must have lived with them and
felt their misery. Overriding all physical suffering and all trial
is the great cloud of mental depression, of repression and reserve
in every act and word, a terror that is so real that it was little
wonder to us when in the course of an investigation in one of the large
cities we found the nursing period of mothers has been diminished by
one-fourth. Every street corner and every crossroad is marked by a
bayonet, and every night resounds with the march of armed men, the
mark of national subjection. Belgium is a little country and the sound
of the guns along a hundred miles of front strikes the senses hourly,
and the hopes of the people rise and fall with the rise and fall in
tones which follow the atmospheric changes and the daily rise and
fall of battle. Not only do hope of deliverance and anxiety for one’s
loved ones fighting on the front vibrate with every change in volume
of sound, but with every rumor which shivers through the population.
At first the morale of a whole people was crusht: one saw it in every
face, deadened and drawn by the whole gamut of emotions that had
exhausted their souls, but slowly, and largely by the growth of the
Relief Organization and the demand that it has made upon their exertion
and their devotion, this morale has recovered to a fine flowering of
national spirit and stoical resolution. The Relief Commission stands
as an encouragement and protection to the endeavors of the Belgian
people themselves and a shield to their despair. By degrees an army of
55,000 volunteer workers on Relief had grown up among the Belgian and
French people, of a perfection and a patriotism without parallel in the
existence of any country.
To find the finance of a nation’s relief requiring eighteen million
dollars monthly from economic cycles of exchange, from subsidies of
different governments, from the world’s public charity; to purchase
300,000,000 pounds of concentrated foodstuffs per month of a character
appropriate to individual and class; to secure and operate a fleet
of seventy cargo ships, to arrange their regular passages through
blockades and war zones; to manage the reshipment by canal and rail
and distribution to 140 terminals throughout Belgium and Northern
France; to control the milling of wheat and the making of bread; to
distribute with rigid efficiency and justice not only bread but milk,
soup, potatoes, fats, rice, beans, corn, soap and other commodities; to
create the machinery of public feeding in cantines and soup-kitchens;
to supply great clothing establishments; to give the necessary
assurances that the occupying army receives no benefit from the food
supply; to maintain checks and balances assuring efficiency and
integrity—all these things are a man’s job. To this service the men of
Belgium and Northern France have given the most stedfast courage and
high intelligence.
Beyond all this, however, is the equally great and equally important
problem—the discrimination of the destitute from those who can pay,
the determination of their individual needs—a service efficient, just
and tender in its care of the helpless.
To create a network of hundreds of cantines for expectant mothers,
growing babies, for orphans and debilitated children; to provide the
machinery for supplemental meals for the adolescent in the schools;
to organize workrooms and to provide stations for the distribution of
clothing to the poor; to see that all these reliefs cover the field,
so that none fall by the wayside; to investigate and counsel each and
every case that no waste or failure result; to search out and provide
appropriate assistance to those who would rather die than confess
poverty; to direct these stations, not from committee meetings after
afternoon tea, but by actual executive labor from early morning till
late at night—to go far beyond mere direction by giving themselves
to the actual manual labor of serving the lowly and helpless; to do
it with cheerfulness, sympathy and tenderness, not to hundreds but
literally to millions, this is woman’s work.
This service has been given, not by tens, but by thousands, and it is a
service that in turn has summoned a devotion, kindliness and tenderness
in the Belgian and French women that has welded all classes with a
spiritual bond unknown in any people before. It has implanted in the
national heart and the national character a quality which is in some
measure a compensation for the calamities through which these people
are passing. The soul of Belgium received a grievous wound, but the
women of Belgium are staunching the flow—sustaining and leading this
stricken nation to greater strength and greater life.
We of the Relief have been proud of the privilege to place the tools in
the hands of these women, and have watched their skilful use and their
improvement in method with hourly admiration. We have believed it to be
so great an inspiration that we have daily wished it could be pictured
by a sympathizing hand, and we confess to insisting that Mrs. Kellogg
should spend some months with her husband during his administration
of our Brussels office. She has done more than record in simple terms
passing impressions of the varied facts of the great work of these
women, for she spent months in loving sympathy with them.
We offer her little book as our, and Mrs. Kellogg’s, tribute in
admiration of them and the inspiration which they have contributed
to this whole organization. This devotion and this service have
now gone on for nearly 900 long days. Under unceasing difficulties
the tools have been kept in the hands of these women, and they have
accomplished their task. All of this time there have stood behind them
our warehouses with from thirty to sixty days’ supplies in advance, and
tragedy has thus been that distance remote. Our share and the share
of these women has therefore been a task of prevention, not a task
of remedy. Our task and theirs has been to maintain the laughter of
the children, not to dry their tears. The pathos of the long lines of
expectant, chattering mites, each with a ticket of authority pinned
to its chest or held in a grimy fist, never depresses the mind of
childhood. Nor does fear ever enter their little heads lest the slender
chain of finance, ships and direction which supports these warehouses
should fail, for has the cantine ever failed in all these two and a
half years? That the day shall not come when some Belgian woman amid
her tears must stand before its gate to repeat: “_Mes petites, il n’y
en a plus_,” is simply a problem of labor and money. In this America
has a duty, and the women of America a privilege.
HERBERT HOOVER.
WOMEN OF BELGIUM
TURNING TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH
I
THE LEADERS
The story of Belgium will never be told. That is the word that passes
oftenest between us. No one will ever by word of mouth or in writing
give it to others in its entirety, or even tell what he himself has
seen and felt. The longer he stays the more he realizes the futility
of any such attempt, the more he becomes dumb. It requires a brush and
color beyond our grasp; it must be the picture of the soul of a nation
in travail, of the lifting of the strong to save the weak. We may,
however, choose certain angles of vision from which we see, thrown
into high relief, special aspects of an inexpressible experience.
One of these particular developments is the unswerving devotion of the
women of Belgium to all those hurt or broken by the tragedy within
and without her gates. How fortunate are these women, born to royal
leadership, to have found in their Queen the leader typifying the
highest ideal of their service, and the actual comrade in sorrow,
working shoulder to shoulder with them in the hospitals and kitchens.
The battle-lines may separate her wounded and suffering from theirs,
but they know always that she is there, doing as they are doing, and
more than they are doing.
Never were sovereigns more loved, more adored than Albert and
Elizabeth. All through these two years people have been borne up by the
vision of the day of their return. “But how shall we be able to stand
it?” they say. “We shall go mad with joy!” “We shall not be able to
speak for weeping and shouting!” “We shall march from the four corners
of the country on foot in a mighty pilgrimage to Brussels, the King
shall know what we think of him as man and leader!”
When they speak of the Queen all words are inadequate; they place her
first as woman, as mother, as tender nurse. They are proud, and with
reason, of her intelligence and sound judgment. Under her father,
a distinguished oculist, she received a most rigorous education;
she is equipped in brain as well as in heart for her incalculable
responsibilities. I was told the other day that she dislikes
exceedingly having her photograph as “nurse” circulate, feeling that
people may think she wishes to be known for her good works. But whether
she wishes it or not, she is known and will be known throughout history
for her good works—for her clear, clean vision of right, her swift
courage, and her utter devotion to each and all of her people. Albert
and Elizabeth, A and E, these letters are written on the heart of
Belgium.
If in the United States we have been too far away to realize in detail
what the work of the Queen has been, we have had on our own shores the
unforgettable example of her dear friend, Marie de Page, to prove to us
the heroism of the women of Belgium.
Before she came, we knew of her. After the first two months of
the war she had left her mother and father and youngest boy in
Brussels—realizing that she was cutting herself off from all news of
them—to follow her husband, who had himself followed his King to Le
Havre. She worked her way across the frontier to Flushing, and finally
to La Panne. The whole career of Doctor de Page had been founded on her
devoted cooperation, and one has imagined the joy of that reunion in
the great base hospital at La Panne, where he was in charge. Her eldest
son was already in the trenches, the second, seventeen years old, was
waiting his turn.
She worked as a nurse at her husband’s side, day and night, until she
could no longer bear to see the increasing needs of the wounded without
being able to relieve them, and she determined to seek aid in America.
This journey, even in peace time, is a much more formidable undertaking
for an European than for an American woman, but Marie de Page started
alone, encouraged always by her good friend, the Queen. And how
swiftly, how enduringly, she won our hearts, as from New York to San
Francisco she told so simply and poignantly her country’s story!
She was a Belgian woman; so, even in her great trouble, she could not
neglect her personal appearance, and after the fatiguing journey across
the Continent, she looked fresh and charming as we met her in San
Francisco. The first day at luncheon we were plying her with questions,
until finally she laughed and said, “If you don’t mind, I had better
spread the map on the table—then you will see more quickly all the
answers!” We moved our plates while she took the precious plan from
her bag, and smoothed it across her end of the table. Then with her
pencil she marked off with a heavy line the little part that is still
free Belgium: she drew a star in front of La Panne Hospital and we were
orientated! From point to point her pencil traveled as we put our eager
questions. We marveled at the directness with which she brought her
country and her people before us. We knew that her own son was in the
trenches, but she made it impossible for us to think of herself.
Then, tho there was much more to be done in America, she left. She must
return to La Panne; her husband needed her. She had just received
word that her seventeen-year-old son was to join his brother in the
trenches; she hurried to New York. She did not wish to book on a
non-neutral line, but further word showed her that her only chance to
see her boy lay in taking the fastest possible ship. Fortunately the
biggest, safest one was just about to leave, so she carried on board
the money and supplies she was taking back to her people.
We settled down to doing what we could to carry forward her work. Then,
on May 7, 1915, flashed the incredible, the terrible news—the greatest
passenger liner afloat had been torpedoed! The Lusitania had sunk in
twenty-two minutes, 1,198 lives had been lost. We went about dazed.
One by one the recovered bodies were identified, and among them was
that of Marie de Page.
We have found some little consolation in endowing beds in her memory
in the hospital for which she gave her life. She is buried in the sand
dunes not far from it; whenever Doctor de Page looks from his window,
he looks on her grave.
“IN”
As the only American woman member of the Commission for Relief I was
permitted to enter Belgium in July, 1916.
I already knew that this country held 3,000,000 destitute; that over
one and one-quarter million depended for existence entirely on the
daily “soupes”; that between the soup-lines and the rich (who in every
country, in every catastrophe, can most easily save themselves) there
were those who, after having all their lives earned a comfortable
living, now found their sources of income vanished, and literally faced
starvation. For this large body, drawn from the industrial, commercial
and professional classes, from the nobility itself, the suffering was
most acute, most difficult to discover and relieve.
I knew that at the beginning of the war the great organizing genius
of Herbert Hoover had seized the apparently unsolvable problem of
the _Relief of Belgium_, and with an incredible swiftness had forced
the cooperation of the world in the saving of this people who had
not counted the cost of defending their honor. That because of this,
every day in the month, ships, desperately difficult to secure, were
pushing across the oceans with their cargoes of wheat and rice and
bacon, to be rushed from Rotterdam through the canals to the C. R.
B. warehouses throughout Belgium. It meant the finding of millions
of money—$250,000,000 to date—begging of individuals, praying to
governments, the pressing of all the world to service.
I realized, too, that the Belgian men, under the active leadership
of Messieurs Solvay, Francqui, de Wouters and Janssen, with a joint
administration of Americans and Belgians, were organized into the
Comité National, whose activities covered every square foot of the
country, determining the exact situation, the exact need of each
section, and who were responsible for the meeting of the situation
locally and as a whole.
But I knew from the lips of the Chairman of the C. R. B. himself, that
despite all the work of the splendid men of these organizations, the
martyrdom of Belgium was being prevented by its women. I was to learn
in what glorious manner, in what hitherto undreamed of degree, this was
true—that the women of Belgium, true to the womanhood and motherhood
of all ages, were binding the wounds and healing the soul of their
country!
II
THE “SOUPES”
I shall never think of Belgium without seeing endless processions of
silent men and black-shawled women, pitchers in hand, waiting, waiting
for the day’s pint of soup. One and one-quarter million make a long
procession. If you have imagined it in the sunshine, think of it in the
rain!
One may shut himself up in his house and forget the war for a few
hours, but he dare not venture outside. If he does he will quickly
stumble against a part of this line, or on hundreds of little children
guarding their precious cards as they wait to be passed in to one of
the “Enfants Débiles” dining-rooms, or on a very long line of women in
front of a communal store where “identity cards” permit the purchase
every week of limited rations of American bacon or rice and a few other
foods at fixt prices (prices set by American efficiency below those of
America itself); or on a group of black-shawled mothers waiting for the
dinner that enables them to nurse the babies in their arms.
The destitute must have a “supplement” to their daily ration of
carbohydrates and fat which will give them protein—says the C. R.
B., and thus we have “Soupes”;—but these dry statements of engineers
now become dieticians convey to no one the human story of these dumb,
waiting lines.
We can have little conception of what it means for just one city, the
Agglomeration of Brussels, for instance, to keep 200,000 out of its
1,000,000 people on the “Soupes,” not for a month or two, but for over
two years! Nor does this include the soup made by the “Little Bees,”
an organization which cares especially for children, for the thousands
in their cantines; or the soup served to the 8,500 children in sixty
communal schools of central Brussels at four o’clock each afternoon,
which is prepared in a special kitchen. These quantities are all over
and above the regular soup served to 200,000—and do not think of soup
as an American knows it, think more of a kind of stew; for it is thick,
and, in the words of the C. R. B., “full of calories.”
To make it for central Brussels the slaughter-house has been converted
into a mighty kitchen, in charge of a famous pre-war maître d’hôtel.
Ninety-five cooks and assistants from the best restaurants of the
capital have been transferred from the making of pâtés and soufflés
to the daily preparation of 25,000 quarts of soup! And they use the
ingenuity born of long experience, to secure an appetizing variety
while strictly following the orders of directing physicians. They had
been doing this over 700 days when I visited the kitchen, but there
was still a fresh eagerness to produce something savory and different.
And one must remember that the changes can come only from shifting
the emphasis from our dried American peas to beans, from carrots to
cabbages, from macaroni to rice. The quantity of meat remains about
the same, 1,200 pounds a day, which, tho the committee kills its own
cattle, costs almost fifty cents a pound. There must be, too, 10,000
pounds of potatoes. The great fear has been that this quantity might
be cut, and unfortunately, in November, 1916, that fear was realized
to the extent of a 2,000 pound drop—and then remedied by the C. R. B.
with more beans, more rice, more peas!
Personal inspection of this marvelous kitchen is the only thing that
could give an idea of its extraordinary cleanliness. The building
offers great space, plenty of air and light and unlimited supply of
water. The potato rooms, where each potato is put through two peeling
processes, are in one quarter. Near them are the green vegetable
rooms with their stone troughs, where everything is washed four or
five times. The problem of purchasing the vegetables is so great that
a special committee has been formed at Malines to buy for Brussels
on the spot. One of the saving things for Belgium has been that she
produces quantities of these delicious greens. In the smaller towns a
committeeman usually goes each morning to market the day’s supply. For
instance, the lawyer who occupies himself with the vegetables for the
Charleroi soup, makes his own selection at four o’clock each morning,
and is extravagantly proud of the quality of his carrots and lettuces!
The most important section, naturally, is that which cares for the
meat and unsmoked bacon or “lard” the C. R. B. brings in. The more
fat in the soup, the happier the recipient! With the little meat that
can still be had in the butcher shop, selling at over one dollar a
pound, one can imagine what it means to find a few pieces in the pint
of soup! Then there is the great kitchen proper, with the one hundred
and forty gas-heated caldrons, and the dozens of cooks hurrying from
one to another. There seem to be running rivers of water everywhere, a
perpetual washing of food and receptacles and premises.
The first shift of cooks arrives at two-thirty in the morning to start
the gas under the one hundred and forty great kettles, for an early
truck-load of cans must be off at 8 o’clock. That shift leaves at noon;
the second works from 8 till 5, on an average wage of four francs a day
and _soupe_!
There are ten of the large trucks and 500 of the fifty-quart cans in
constant use. As soon as the 8 o’clock lot come back, they are quickly
cleaned, refilled, and hurried off on their second journey. Mostly they
are hurried off through rain, for there are many more rainy than sunny
days in Belgium.
One passes a long line of patient, wet, miserable-looking men and women
with their empty pitchers, then meets with a thrill the red truck
bringing the steaming cans. The bakers have probably already delivered
the 25,000 loaves of bread, for a half loaf goes with each pint of soup.
By following one of these steaming trucks I discovered “Soupe 18,” with
its line of silent hundreds stretching along the wet street.
I was half an hour early, so there was time to talk with the local
committee managers who were preparing the big hall for the women who
would arrive in a few minutes to fill the pitchers with soup, and the
string bags with bread. These communal soupes are generally directed
by men, tho women do the actual serving. The enthusiastic secretary,
who had been a tailor before the war, said regretfully that he had been
obliged to be absent three days in the two years.
At the left, near the entrance, I was shown the office with all the
records, and with the shelves of precious pots of jam and tiny packages
of coffee and rice which are given out two or three times a month—in
an attempt to make a little break in the monotony of the continual
soup. No one can picture the heartbreaking eagerness in the faces of
these thousands as they line up for this special distribution—these
meager spoonfuls of jam, or handfuls of chopped meat.
We reviewed the army of cans stationed toward the rear, and the great
bread-racks of either side. The committee of women arrived; we tasted
the soup and found it good. I was asked to sit at the table with
two men directors, where I might watch them stamp and approve the
ration-cards as the hungry passed in.
One may hate war, but never as it should be hated until he has visited
the communal soupes and the homes represented by the lines. The work
must be so carefully systematized that there is only time for a word
or two as they pass the table. But that word is enough to reveal the
tragedy! There are sometimes the undeserving, but it is not often that
any of the thousands who file by are not in pitiful straits. That
morning the saddest were the very old—for them the men had always a
kindly “How is it, mother? How goes it, father?”
The “Merci, Monsieur, merci beaucoup,” of one sweet-faced old woman was
so evidently the expression of genuine feeling, that I asked about
her. She had three sons, who had supported her well—all three were
in the trenches. Another still older, said, “Thank you very much,” in
familiar English. She, too, had been caught in the net, and there was
no work. A little Spanish woman had lost her husband soon after the war
began, and the director who investigated the case was convinced that
he had died of hunger. An old French soldier on a crutch, but not too
feeble to bow low as he said “Merci,” was an unforgettable figure.
Some of the very old and very weak are given supplementary tickets
which entitle them to small portions of white bread, more adapted to
their needs than the stern war bread of the C. R. B.; and every two
days mothers are allowed additional bread for their children. One
curly-haired little girl was following her mother and grandmother,
and slipt out of the line to offer a tiny hand. Then came a tall,
distinguished-looking man, about whom the directors knew little—except
that he was absolutely without funds. They put kindly questions
to the poor hunchback, who had just returned to the line from the
hospital, and congratulated the pretty girl of fifteen, who had won
all the term’s prizes in the communal school. There were those who had
never succeeded; then there were those who two years before had been
comfortable—railway employees, artists, men and women, young and old,
in endless procession, a large proportion in carpet slippers, or other
substitutes for leather shoes. Many were weak and ill-looking; all wore
the stamp of war. Every day they must come for the pint of soup and the
bread that meant life—200,000 in Brussels alone; in Belgium one and a
half million! These are the lowest in the scale of misery—those who
“must have a supplement of protein,” for meat never passes their lips
but in soup.
The questions were always swift, admitting no delay in the reply, and
knowing the hearts of the questioners, I wondered a little at this.
Till in a flash I saw: if the directors wished to know more they would
go to the homes represented—but the line must not be held back! Every
ten minutes’ halt means that those outside in the rain must stand ten
minutes longer. On this particular day the committee put through a
line representing 2,500 pints of soup and portions of bread in fifty
minutes, an almost incredible efficiency, especially when you remember
that every card is examined and stamped as well as every pitiful
pitcher and string bag filled.
That day a woman who had not before served on the soupes offered her
services to the seasoned workers. They were grateful, but smilingly
advised her to go home, fill her bath tub with water, and ladle it
out—to repeat this the following day and the following, until finally
she might return, ready to endure the work, and above all, not to
retard the “Line” five unnecessary minutes! Two and a half years have
not dulled the tenderness of these women toward the wretched ones they
serve.
AT HOME
Belgium is small. Until now I had been able to go and return in the
same day. But on this particular evening I found myself too far south
to get back. I was in a thickly forested, sparsely settled district,
but I knew that farther on there was a great château belonging to the
family of A., with numerous spare rooms.
Tho I had been in Belgium only a short time I had already learned how
unmeasured is the friendship offered us, but I also knew that Belgian
etiquette and convention were extremely rigorous, and I hesitated.
It was thoroughly dark, when, after crossing a final stretch of
beechwood, I rang the bell and sent in my card, with a brief line.
After what seemed an endless time I saw the servant coming back through
the great hall, followed by three women, who, I felt instinctively, had
not come in welcome.
But there was no turning about possible now—some one was already
speaking to me. Her very first words showed she could not in the least
have understood. And I swiftly realized this was not surprizing since I
had been there so short a time, and there had not before been a woman
delegate. I explained that my sole excuse for sending in my stranger’s
card at that time of night was my membership in the C. R. B.—and I
uncovered my pin.
It was as if I had revealed a magic symbol—the door swung wide! They
took my hands and drew me inside, overwhelming me with apologies, with
entreaties to stop with them, to stay for a week, or longer. They would
send for my husband—as Director he must be sorely in need of a few
days’ rest—we should both rest. Their district in the forest had many
relief centers, they would see that I got to them all. A room was all
ready for me on the floor above—if I did not like it I should have
another. I must have some hot tilleul at once!
In the drawing-room I was presented to the other thirteen or fourteen
members of the family, and in pages I could not recount their beautiful
efforts, individually and together, to make me forget I had had to wait
for one moment on their threshold.
Still later, two American men arrived. They were known, and expected at
any hour of the day or night their duties might bring them that way.
One of them was ill, and not his own mother and sister could have been
more solicitous in their care of him than were these kind women.
Do Americans wonder that it hurts us, when we return, to have people
praise us for what we have given Belgium? In our hearts we are
remembering what Belgium has given us.
III
THE CRADLES ON THE MEUSE
Dinant made me think of Pompeii. It had been one of the pleasure-spots
of Belgium; gay, smiling, it stretched along the tranquil Meuse, at
the base of granite bluffs and beech-covered hill-slopes. There were
factories, it is true, at either end of the town; but they had not
marred it. Every year thousands of visitors, chiefly English and
Germans, had stopt there to forget life’s grimness. Dinant could make
one forget: she was joyous, lovable, laughing. Before the tragedy of
her ruins, one felt exactly as if a happy child had been crusht or
mutilated.
I came to Dinant in September, 1916, by the way of one of the two
cemeteries where her 600, shot in August, 1914, are buried. This
burial-ground is on a sunny hill-slope overlooking rolling wheat
fields, and the martyred lie in long rows at the upper corner. A few
have been interred in their family plots, but mostly they are gathered
in this separate place.
Up and down I followed the narrow paths; the crowded plain white
crosses with their laconic inscriptions spoke as no historian ever
will. “Father, Husband, and Son”; “Brother and Nephew”; “Husband and
Sons, one seventeen, and another nineteen”; “Brother and Father”;
“Husband and Brother”; “Brother, Sons and Father”; “Father and
Son”—the dirge of the desolation of wives and sisters and mothers! War
that had left them the flame-scarred skeletons of their homes, had left
them the corpses of their loved ones as well!
Dinant was not entirely destroyed, but a great part of it was. A few
days after the burning, people began to crawl back. They came from
hiding-places in the hills, from near-by villages, from up and down the
river, to take up life where they had left it. Human beings are most
extraordinarily adaptable: people were asked where they were living; no
one could answer exactly, but all knew that they were living somewhere,
somehow—in the sheltered corner of a ruined room, perhaps in a cave,
or beside a chimney! The relief committee hurried in food and clothing,
hastily constructed a few temporary cottages; a few persons began to
rebuild their original homes, and life went on.
I was walking through a particularly devastated section, nothing but
skeleton façades and ragged walls in sight, when suddenly from the
midst of the devastation I heard the merry laughter of children. I
pushed ahead to look around the other side of a wall, and there was a
most incredible picture. In front of a low temporary building tucked in
among the ruins, was a series of railed-in pens for children to play
in. And there they were romping riotously—fifty-two golden-haired,
lovely babies, all under four! Along the front of the enclosure was a
series of tall poles carrying gaily painted cocks and cats and lions.
That is the Belgian touch; no relief center is too discouraging to be
at once transformed into something cheering, even beautiful. The babies
had on bright pink-and-white checked aprons. I let myself in, and
they dashed for me, pulling my coat, hiding in the folds of my skirt,
deciding at once that I was a good horse.
Then happened a horrible thing. One of the tiniest, with blue eyes
and golden curls, ran over to me laughing and calling, “Madame, mon
père est mort!” “Madame, my father is dead, my father is dead, he
was shot!” I covered my ears with my hands, then snatched her up and
silenced her. There were others ready to call the same thing, but the
nurses stopt them.
The little ones went on with their romping while I passed inside to see
the equipment for caring for them. In a good-sized, airy room were long
rows of white cradles, one for each child, with his or her name and age
written on a white card at the top. After their play and their dinner
they were put to sleep in these fresh cradles.
They were brought by their mothers or friends before seven in the
morning, to be taken care of until seven at night. They were bathed,
their clothing was changed to a sort of simple uniform, and then they
were turned loose outside to play, or to be amused in various ways
by the faithful nurses. They were weighed regularly, examined by a
physician, and daily given the nourishing food provided by the relief
committee. In fact, they had the splendid care common to the 1,900
crèches or children’s shelters in Belgium. But this crèche was alone in
its strange, tragic setting.
In the midst of utter ruin are swung the white cradles. In front of
them, under the guardianship of gay cocks and lions, golden-haired
babies are laughing and romping. Further on more ruins, desolation,
silence!
IV
“THE LITTLE BEES”
I
Madame ... has charge of a Cantine for Enfants Débiles (children below
normal health) in one of the crowded quarters of Brussels. These
cantines are dining-rooms where little ones come from the schools
at eleven each morning for a nourishing meal. They form the chief
department of the work of the “Little Bees,” a society which is taking
care of practically all the children, babies and older ones, in this
city, who are in one way or another victims of the war. And in July,
1916, they numbered about 25,000.
The cantines have been opened in every section of the city, in a vacant
shop, a cellar, a private home, a garage, a convent—in any available,
usable place. But no matter how inconvenient the building, skilful
women transform it at once into something clean and cheery. In the
whole of Belgium I have never seen a run-down or dirty relief center.
In some the kitchen is simply a screened-off corner of the dining-room,
in others it is a separate and excellently equipped quarter. I visited
one crowded cantine where every day the women had to carry up and down
a narrow ladder stairway all the plates and food for over 470 children.
But they have so long ago ceased to think in terms of “tiredness,”
that they are troubled by the question suggesting it. And these are
the women who have been for over nine hundred days now—shoulder to
shoulder with the men—ladling out one and one-quarter million pints of
soup, and cooking for, and scrubbing for, and yearning over, hundreds
of thousands of more helpless women and children, while caring always
for their own families at home. If after a long walk to the cantine
(they have neither motors nor bicycles) madame finds there are not
enough carrots for the stew, she can not telephone—she must go to
fetch whatever ingredient she wants! Each cantine has its own pantry
or shop with its precious stores of rice, beans, sugar, macaroni,
bacon and other foodstuffs of the C. R. B., and in addition the fresh
vegetables, potatoes, eggs and meat it solicits or buys with the money
gathered from door to door, the gift of the suffering to the suffering.
The weekly menus are a triumph of ingenuity; they prove what variety
can be had in apparent uniformity! They are all based on scientific
analysis of food values, and follow strictly physicians’ instructions.
One day there are more grammes of potatoes, another more grammes of
macaroni in the stew; one noon there is rice for dessert, the next
phosphatine and now a hygienic biscuit—a thick, wholesome one—as big
as our American cracker.
It was raining as I entered the large, modern tenement building which
Madame had been fortunate enough to secure. I found on one side a group
of mothers waiting for food to take home to their babies, and on the
other the little office through which every child had to pass to have
his ticket stamped before he could go upstairs to his dinner. This
examining and stamping of cards by the thousand, day after day, is in
itself a most arduous piece of work, but women accomplish it cheerfully.
[Illustration: READY FOR THE CHILDREN
A “Little Bees” cantine for sub-normal children]
On the second floor, between two large connecting rooms, I found
Madame, in white, superintending the day’s preparation of the tables
for 1,662. That was the size of her family! Fourteen young women,
with bees embroidered in the Belgian colors on their white caps,
were flying to and fro from the kitchen to the long counters in the
hallway piled with plates, then to the shelves against the walls of the
dining-room, where they deposited their hundreds of slices of bread and
saucers for dessert. Some were hurrying the soup plates and the 1,662
white bowls along the tables, while others poured milk or went on with
the bread-cutting. Several women were perspiring in the kitchens and
vegetable rooms. The potato-peeling machine, the last proud acquisition
which was saving them untold labor, had turned out the day’s kilos
of potatoes, which were already cooked with meat, carrots and green
vegetables into a thick, savory stew. The big fifty-quart cans were
being filled to be carried to the dining-room; the rice dessert was
getting its final stirring. Madame was darting about, watching every
detail, assisting in every department.
It was raining outside, but all was white, and clean, and inviting
within. Suddenly there was a rush of feet in the courtyard below. I
looked out the window: in the rain 1,662 children, between three and
fourteen years, mothers often leading the smaller ones—not an umbrella
or rubber among them—were lining up with their cards, eager to be
passed by the sergeant. These kind-hearted, long-suffering sergeants
kept this wavering line in place, as the children noisily climbed the
long stairway—calling, pushing. One little girl stept out to put fresh
flowers before the bust of the Queen. Boys and girls under six crowded
into the first of the large, airy rooms, older girls into the second,
while the bigger boys climbed to the floor above. With much chattering
and shuffling of sabots they slid along the low benches to their places
at the long, narrow tables. The women hurried between the wiggling
rows, ladling out the hot, thick soup. The air was filled with cries
of “Beaucoup, Mademoiselle, beaucoup!” A few even said “Only a little,
Mademoiselle.” Everybody said something. One tiny, golden-haired thing
pleaded: “You know I like the little pieces of meat best.” In no time
they discovered that I was new, and tried slyly to induce me to give
them extra slices of bread, or bowls of milk.
In this multitude each was clamoring for individual attention, and
for the most part getting it. Very little ones were being helped to
feed themselves; second portions of soup were often given if asked
for. Madame seemed to be everywhere at once, lifting one after another
in her arms to get a better look at eyes or glands. Her husband, a
physician of international reputation, was in the little clinic at the
end of the hall, weighing and examining those whose turn it was to go
to him that day. Later he came out and passed up and down the rows
to get an impression of the general condition of this extraordinary
family. When for a moment husband and wife stood together in the middle
of the vast room, they seemed with infinite solicitude to be gathering
all the 1,662 in their arms—their own boy is at the front. And all the
time the 1,662 were rapidly devouring their bread and soup.
Then began the cries of “Dessert, Mademoiselle, dessert!” Tired arms
carried the 1,662 soup plates to the kitchen, ladled out 1,662 portions
of rice, and set them before eager rows. Such a final scraping of
spoons, such fascinating play of voice and gesture—then the last crumb
eaten, they crowded up to offer sticky hands with “Merci, Mademoiselle”
and “Au revoir.” The clatter of sabots and laughter died away through
the courtyard, and the hundreds started back to school.
The strong American physician, who had helped ladle the soup, tried to
swing his arm back into position. I looked at the women who had been
doing this practically every day for seven hundred days. Madame was
apparently not thinking of resting—only of the next day’s ration.
I discovered later that at four o’clock that afternoon she had charge
of a cantine for four hundred mothers and their new babies, and that
after that she visited the family of a little boy who was absent,
according to the children, because his shirt was being washed.
All attempts to express admiration of this beautiful devotion are
interrupted by the cry, “Oh, but it is you—it is America that is doing
the astonishing thing—we _must_ give ourselves, but you need not. Your
gift to us is the finest expression of sympathy the world has known.”
II
Before Madame ... was made director of the cantine for 1,662, she had
charge of one in a still poorer quarter of the city. I went to look for
it on Assumption Day, the day of the Ascent of the Blessed Virgin. I
knew the street, and as usual, the waiting line of children in front
told the number. Scrubbed cheeks, occasional ribbon bows and cheap
embroidery flounces showed the attempt of even these very poor mothers
to celebrate their fête day. Throughout the city, those fortunate
enough to be called Mary were being presented with flowers, which since
the war have been sold at extremely low prices, for the flowers still
grow for Belgium, who supplied the markets of Europe before she was
besieged.
From early morning we had seen old and young carrying great sheaves
of phlox and roses, or pots of hortensia, to some favorite Mary.
But these little ones had no flowers, yet they were gay, as Belgian
children invariably are—always ready with the swiftest smiles and
outstretched hands, or with a pretty song if one asks for it. Little
tots of three know any number of the interminable chansons familiar in
France and Belgium. They chattered and laughed, caught my hand as I
went down the stairs—for this dining-quarter is below the sidewalk,
in rooms that are known as “caves.” I was prepared for something
dark and cheerless, instead I found the whitewashed walls gay with
nursery pictures and Belgian and American flags. The long tables were
covered with bright red-and-white checked oilcloth. The small windows
opening just above the sidewalk allowed sufficient light and air to
keep everything fresh. The kitchen was immaculate—shelves for shining
vessels, others for the sacks of sugar, boxes of macaroni. On a table
stood the inevitable scales—Thursday is weighing day, when one of
the best physicians of Brussels examines the children, recording the
weights that form the basis for judgment as to the success of the
ration.