the sister of her who had not. There should be a sharing of individual
with individual. She did not think of green boxes or sections, but of
person linked with person in the spirit of Fraternity. But the number
of the desperate grew too rapidly, her first idea of direct individual
help had to be abandoned, and one after another distribution centers
were organized. An investigator was put in charge of each center who
reported personally on all the cases that were brought in, either
directly or indirectly to the committee. The Relief Committee granted
a subsidy of 10,000 francs a month, which, one sees at a glance, can
not nearly cover the need. So day after day the directors of each
section canvass their districts for money and food, and by dint of an
untiring devotion raise the monthly 10,000 to about 28,000 francs.
But, unfortunately, every day more of war means wretched ones forced
to the wall, and this sum is always far from meeting the distress. We
have only to divide the 30,000 francs by the 5,000 on the lists, to see
what, at best, each family may receive.
I went with Mademoiselle ..., an investigator, to visit one of these
families. A charming old gentleman received us. I should say he was
about seventy-three. He had been ill, and was most cheerful over what
he called his “recovery,” tho to us he still looked far from well.
The drawing-room was comfortable, spotlessly clean; there was no fire.
We talked of his children, both of whom were married; one son was in
Italy, another in Russia—the war had cut off all word or help from
both. He himself had been a successful engineer in his day, but he
had not saved much, his illness and two years of war had eaten up
everything. He was interested in Mexico and in the Panama Canal, and
we chatted on until Mademoiselle felt we must go. As we were shaking
hands, she opened her black velvet bag and took out an egg which
she laughingly left on the table as her visiting card. She did it
perfectly, and he laughed back cheerily, “After the war, my dear, I
shall certainly find the hen that will lay you golden eggs!” Outside,
I still could hardly pull myself together—one egg as a precious gift
to a dignified old gentleman-engineer! Could it be possible? “But,”
explained Mademoiselle, “if I had not given him that egg, he would not
have any egg!” Eggs were costing about ten cents each. “Of course, we
never even discuss meat,” she added; “but he has been quite ill, and he
must have an egg at least every two or three days!”
The woman we visited next did not have a comfortable home, but a
single room. She had been for many years a governess in a family in
Eastern Belgium, but just before the war both she and the family had
invested their money in a savings concern which had gone to pieces,
and from that day she had been making the fight to keep her head above
water. She had come to Brussels, was succeeding fairly well, when she
was taken ill. She had had an operation, but after months there was
still an open wound, and she could drag herself about only with great
difficulty. I found that Mademoiselle takes her to the hospital, a
matter of hours, three times a week for treatment, and, besides that,
visits her in her room. As we were talking, a niece, also unfortunately
without funds, came in to polish the stove and dust a bit. Mademoiselle
reported that she was pretty sure of being able to bring some stockings
to knit on her next visit. These would bring five cents a pair. And, as
we left, she gave another egg, and this time a tiny package of cocoa,
too. I discovered that every morsel this governess has to eat comes to
her from Mademoiselle. And yet I have never been in a room where there
was greater courage and cheerfulness.
So it was as we went from square to square. In some homes there were
children with no father; in others, grandfathers with neither children
nor grandchildren; and between them, people well enough, young enough,
but simply ruined by the war. Mademoiselle was going back to spend the
night with an old lady we had visited the week before, and had found
reading Anatole France. She had felt she must make her last testament,
and looking at her we agreed. That week she had received word that her
only son, who was also her only kin, had been killed in the trenches
three months before.
Of course, every city has its hundreds of unfortunates; there must be
everywhere some form of “Assistance Discrète,” but most of those on the
lists of this war-time organization would in peace time be the ones to
give, rather than receive, and their number is increasing pitifully as
month follows month.
Every one permitted to be in Belgium for any length of time marvels at
the incredible, unbreakable spirit of its people. They meet every new
order of the military authorities with a laugh; when they have to give
up their motor-cars, they ride on bicycles; when all bicycle tires are
requisitioned, they walk cheerfully; if the city is fined 1,000,000
marks, the laconic comment is: “It was worth it!” All the news is
censored, so they manufacture and circulate cheerful news—nothing
ever breaks through their smiling, defiant solidarity. One thing only
in secret I have heard them admit, and that is the anguish of their
complete separation from their loved ones at the front. Mothers and
wives of every other nation may have messages; they, never.
The thing that has bound them thus together and buoyed them up is
just this enveloping, inter-penetrating atmosphere of mutual aid, so
beautifully exprest every day through the work of the “Assistance
Discrète.” It was this vision of Fraternity in its widest sense that
gave it birth, and every day the women of Belgium are making that
vision a blessed reality.
XXIV
THE “MOTHER OF BELGIUM”
Mr. Hoover’s visits to Brussels are crowded with conferences, endless
complications to be straightened out, figures and reports to be
accepted or rejected—with all the unimaginable difficulties incident
to the relief of an occupied territory.
Responsible on the one hand to England, on the other to Germany,
dependent always on the continued active support of his own countrymen
and on the efficiency and integrity of the local relief organization,
he fights his way literally inch by inch and hour by hour to bring in
bread for the Belgian mother and her child.
[Illustration: 1,662 CHILDREN, MADE SUB-NORMAL BY THE WAR, WAITING FOR
THEIR DINNER]
It is easy to conceive of such service if the giver is in close
touch with the mother and her need, but when he must be cut off from
her—locked up with the grind, the disillusionment, the staggering
obstacles, this unbroken devotion through the days and nights of more
than two years, becomes one of the finest expressions of altruism the
world has seen.
The two years have left their mark—to strangers he must seem silent,
grim, but every C. R. B. man knows what this covers.
On one visit I persuaded him to take an hour from the bureau to go
with me to one of the cantines for sub-normal children. He stood
silently as the 1,600 little boys and girls came crowding in, slipping
in their places at the long, narrow tables that cut across the great
dining-rooms, and, when I looked up at him, his eyes had filled with
tears. He watched Madame and her husband, a physician, going from one
child to another, examining their throats, or their eyes, taking them
out to the little clinic for weighing, carrying the youngest in their
arms, while the dozen white-uniformed young women hurrying up and down
the long rows were ladling the potato-stew and the rice dessert.
Then suddenly a black-shawled woman, evidently in deep distress, rushed
up the stairs, and by us to Madame, to pour out her trouble. She was
crying—she had run to the cantine, as a child to its mother, for
comfort. Her little eight-year-old Marie, who had, only a week ago,
been chosen as the loveliest child of the 1,600 to present the bouquet
to the Minister’s wife, and who, this very morning, had seemed well and
happy, was lying at home dead of convulsions. The cantine had been the
second home of her precious one for over two years—where, but there,
should she flee in her sorrow?
I turned toward Mr. Hoover, and he spoke these true words: “The women
of Belgium have become the Mother of Belgium. In this _room_ is the
Relief of Belgium!”
XXV
“OUT”
The Rotterdam canals were choked with barges, weighted with freight;
heavy trucks rattled down the streets, a whistle shrieked, telegraph
wires hummed, motors flashed by—men were moving quickly, grouping
themselves freely at corners; life—vivid, outspoken, free—crowded
upon me, filling my eyes and ears. With a swift tremor of physical fear
I huddled back in my seat. After eight months I was afraid of this
thing!
And “Inside” I had thought I realized the whole of the cruel numbness.
Slowly I had felt it closing in about me, closing down upon me,
shutting me in with _them_—with terrors and anguish, with human souls
that at any moment a hand might reach in to toss—where?
XXVI
FAREWELL
I can think of no more beautiful, final tribute to the women of Belgium
than that carried in their own words—words of tragedy, but words of
widest vision and understanding and generosity, sent in farewell to us:
“Oh, you who are going back in that free country of the United States,
tell to all our sufferings, our distress; tell them again and again our
cries of alarm, which come from our opprest and agonized hearts! You
have lived and felt what we are living and feeling; we have understood
that, higher than charity which gives, you brought us charity which
understands and consoles! Your souls have bowed down over ours, our
eyes with anxiety are looking in your friendly eyes. Over the big
ocean our wishes follow you. Oh, might you there remember the little
Belgium! The life which palpitates in her grateful heart—she owes it
to you! _You are our hope, our anchor! Help us! Do not abandon the work
of charity you have undertaken!_
“Our endless gratitude goes to you, and from father to children, in the
hovel and in the palace, we shall repeat your great heart, your high
idealism, _your touching charity_!”
NOTE BY THE AUTHOR
The increase in dependency in less than a year, as shown by a
comparison of the following figures with those in this book, suggests
more poignantly than any written account could, the daily deepening
tragedy of Belgium:
Present total on “Soupes” in whole of Belgium 3,032,089
Present total on “Soupes” in Greater Brussels 401,600
Present total children in Belgium receiving
eleven o’clock meal 985,617
Present total nursing or expectant mothers receiving
canteen meal 14,809
Present total debilitated children receiving
supplementary meal 53,311
C. K.
_December, 1917._
Transcriber’s Note
The changes are as follows:
Page 45—school-children changed to school children.
Page 78—well off changed to well-off.
Page 110—added ” at the end of the paragraph.
Page 118—added ) which was missing, after ‘and many of them pretty),’.
Page 124—near by changed to near-by.
Page 125—Hainault has been corrected to Hainaut.
Page 152—added ” at the end of the paragraph.
In the ‘NOTE BY THE AUTHOR’ at the very end of the book, the dittos
have been replaced with the actual words.