SAUVONS LES BÉBÉS
"M-M-M-Madame m-m-must not be f-f-frightened; he said so!"
My Bretonne cook came to me pale and stammering.
"What is the trouble, Rosali?"
"P-p-policeman at the d-d-door s-s-says he m-m-must see you!"
A spick and span _agent_ came into my drawing-room. He took the
cigarette offered him, and explained the reason for his visit.
"My chief sent me around to ask madame to help. It is a baby case. We
came here because the mother said she got a layette at madame's studio.
Her name is Mlle. A----; do you remember her case? If madame could
come--"
In a few minutes we were walking up the Rue Delambre to the police
station of the Fourteenth Arrondissement. Mlle. A---- had come to me for
baby clothes before she went to the hospital. The child's father was at
the front. When the mother appealed to him to recognize the child, with
the desperate way of a man who is in the trenches facing death, he
replied,
"What's the use! How do I know that the child is mine?"
Before going to the hospital the girl begged me to think of something to
do. When the baby was born we had him photographed and a copy sent to
his father, we wrote, "The baby looks like you as you can see from this
photograph. If you tear up the card or throw it away, the next shell
will kill you."
At the police station, in the stuffy little room where the plain clothes
men sit close to the door leading to the office of the Monsieur le
Commissaire, I found Mlle. A---- and her baby.
"O Madame," she cried, "Jean got our card. He was sitting in a little
circle with some comrades eating dinner. The mail arrived. His name was
called. He rose and walked over to the _vaguemestre_ and, oh, Madame,
just then the shell came. It exploded where Jean had been eating his
dinner, and all his comrades were killed. He says the baby, _pauvre
chou_, looks like him and saved his life."
The _agent_ came with papers. "Will madame sign here?" Jean was
recognizing little Pierrot and was applying for permission to marry the
baby's mother.
An old woman sitting nearby held in her hands a _livret de mariage_.
"_Quel beau bébé!_" she exclaimed. "Is it a girl?"
"No, madame, a boy," replied mademoiselle, smoothing the baby's
swaddling blanket and pinning it tighter around Pierrot's little tummy.
"That's it, that's it," cried the old woman. "I came here to get a
certificate myself. My daughter had a baby born this morning. It's a
boy, too. It was like that in Soixante-Dix. Nearly all the babies born
in war time are boys. O la, la, madame, what a baby! His father is
fighting so he won't have to carry a gun." Here she pulled out a
handkerchief.
The poor help the poor, when it comes to _moral_, as in everything else.
I was sitting in my studio interviewing women who came for baby clothes.
A white-faced girl sat down in the chair at the opposite side of the
table.
"What can I do for you?" said I.
"A little white dress--" she sobbed. "Could you give me a little white
dress?"
"Certainly I'll give it to you, and lots of other things too."
"I don't need anything else," she said softly, "My baby died this
morning. They did everything at the hospital to save her. She was born
three weeks ago and they let me stay on. They wrapped her in a little
piece of sheeting. I can't stand it to bury her like that!" She put her
head down on the table and wept.
"Shall I give madame a little white dress?"
The twenty other mothers sitting there answered "Yes, give it to her."
To some the tears had come. Others, dry-eyed, clutched their babies.
"And flowers?" said one.
"Yes, she must have money for flowers." I hardly knew what to say to the
girl, but soon the other mothers were talking to her. They were the best
comforters.
How did amateur relief workers get the strength and energy to face the
awfulness of the situation? What we did was not "wonderful." Relief work
was a debt we owed to life. Fatigue could never be thought of. When my
apartment is in a mess from front door to kitchen, straightening looks
hopeless. It used to be discouraging until I pretended I had blinders on
my eyes and began with the nursery table. I took off everything that
didn't belong there and replaced the things that should be there. I
finished the table to the last detail before making the bed. I tried to
work in a leisurely frame of mind without too many glances at the clock.
After a bit one whole room was tidied. Kiddies were requested not to go
in there "till Mama says so." Then I tackled the next room, and so
on--and so on. In relief work, too, you must begin to work on one atom
of the problem. You must put blinders on your eyes to shut out all the
other atoms. It is fatal to let your imagination run away with you,
fatal to envisage the accumulated woe.
Once in the Rue Servandoni days an Englishman came to ask Herbert to
bury his baby. He told me the story of how the baby died, and I cried
all night thinking of the mother. Herbert remonstrated with me for
trying to bear the whole of another's grief. Christ did that and it
broke His heart. His broken heart could save humanity; but as for little
me I could do nobody any good by breaking my heart over them. Relief
work must be constructive with respect to the patient and instructive
with respect to the worker. You have to exercise self-control of emotion
and help yourself to poise by quickly concentrating your mind on what
details of the problem you are fitted to cope with. You learn after a
while that your enthusiasm and sympathy will not do it all. You accept
the fact that you are not indispensable. You realize that you can put a
person on his feet but that to carry him is beyond you. You are not the
only influence for good that is touching his life. This attitude keeps
you both happy and humble. And so you develop confidence in life and
confidence in time. In relief work both life and time are good allies.
My work started in a modest way in my studio in September, 1914. I
wanted to help mothers of newborn babies, and so I called my _œuvre_
SAUVONS LES BÉBÉS. I wrote to friends for money and layettes, and
depended--as all American women in France did--upon the personal
correspondence with individuals and organizations in America to maintain
and develop the work started. I had no committee, and, during the three
years I worked for the babies, only one associate. The French wife of an
American artist joined me in 1915. From Princeton, Germantown,
Philadelphia, Pittsburg, New York, Brooklyn and Boston people I knew and
my readers sent me money and boxes through the American Relief
Clearing-House. My best aids were always and invariably the police, who
sent cases to me and guarded me against imposition. It soon became known
in the Fourteenth (my own) Arrondissement, and the neighbouring Sixth,
Fifth, Thirteenth and Fifteenth Arrondissements, that an American woman
in the Rue Campagne-Première gave layettes to expectant mothers, and
sometimes helped with medicines, milk, vacations, clothes and shoes for
other children. I did not need to advertise or hang out a sign! In less
than three years four thousand mothers of five thousand babies found
their way to the Rue Campagne-Première. Sometimes I was swamped, badly
swamped, but I managed to get around to all in the end. I remember one
time, however, that babies were several months old before I could give
their mothers a complete layette.
There was nothing unusual about my œuvre, in its size, its
singlehandedness, or its spirit. Every American woman in France did what
she could from the very beginning by taking up work as she saw it at
hand--in her own home or neighborhood. Many did much more than I. There
were others in Paris looking after the new-born babies.
In the summer of 1917 we Americans resident in France had to give up,
all of us, the individuality of our _œuvres_. This meant that most of
them went out of existence. When the rumor ran from mouth to mouth in
the American colony that the Red Cross insisted on taking over
everything and would starve out the stubborn individualists, there was
consternation. Since the Red Cross was a Government organization and
controlled shipping, it was possible for them to tell us that we should
receive no more cases of supplies after September first, even if friends
at home kept on sending them. Some were furious; some were offended;
some would give a generous slice of their fortune to fight the
injunction; some laughed. But the charities' trust had come to stay, and
started in to handle things and ride rough-shod over people in a way
that I fear is typically American.
In the early stages of war fever, the Y.M.C.A. and the Army showed the
same symptoms as the Red Cross in France. There was the idea that the
American way is always and exclusively the right way; impatience with
and resentment against existing organizations; a thirst for sweeping
reforms; and the determination that Americans who had been on the ground
from the beginning must be eliminated. The way our splendid Ambulance
at Neuilly was absorbed by the army is a story of Prussianism pure and
simple. The Red Cross men and their wives did not seem to get it into
their heads that we had been at war for three years. I attended a
drawing-room meeting one day, where a hundred women were gathered who
had been sacrificing themselves in relief work ever since the day France
mobilized. More than one had lost her son in the war. A new Red Cross
woman, fresh from America, lectured on what the Red Cross was going to
do. She smiled at us, and her peroration was this: "Now you must realize
that we are at war, and that we are going to put you all to work, all to
work!"
When the excitement cooled down a bit, we realized that these Red Cross
volunteers meant well, that they were devoted and capable, and that we
could not take too tragically their ignorance and inexperience. We
realized that we were tired, that we needed a rest and change, and that
the Red Cross, with its enormous funds and abundant personnel, was in a
position to realize many of our dreams. Our initial resentment was in
part dismay at seeing newly arrived compatriots making the same mistakes
some of us had made in the beginning, and partly their obtuseness in
failing to get the French point of view. Contact with suffering such as
they had never seen before soon mellowed most of the Red Cross
volunteers and they realized that America was coming, as my husband put
it, "not to save France, but to help France save the world."
Outside of hospitals, where there was a reason for it, we had never worn
uniforms: but we got accustomed to seeing them as the A.E.F. grew
although we never could master the meaning of many of them. One morning
a woman in uniform, with service cap and Sam-Browne belt (not forgetting
the nickel ring for hanging a dagger from), appeared in my studio. From
her pocket she took a crisp new loose-leaf notebook, the like of which
could no longer be indulged in by ordinary folks. As she unscrewed and
adjusted her fountain-pen, she said,
"I've been sent to inspect your relief organization."
"You come from the Children's Bureau?" I asked.
"No, Civilian Relief. How do you handle the matter of investigation?"
"Well," I answered, "I cast my eye over the person, size her up, and
give her what she needs. I cannot afford to investigate. You see, I have
no overhead charges and I need all the money I can get for materials and
all the time for handling them. The only expense is for sewing. Even
that money goes to my own women. I give the sewing out to mothers on my
list so they will not have to go out to work. This encourages them to
nurse their babies themselves instead of sending them to a _nourrice_."
"People begging," said my visitor, "are splendid actors, you know."
"Few women who are just about to have a baby are likely to act the
impostor," I answered, "and then I do not consider my women as beggars.
I'm sure that nine out of ten are not. They wouldn't need any aid if
their husbands were not in the trenches earning five sous a day. For the
first two years it was only one sou a day. You can generally tell the
difference between a shifty woman looking for a chance to get something
for nothing and the shattered little mother, unaccustomed to charity,
whose children would go without winter clothes were it not for some form
of outside help. Most of the women who come here look on me as a
neighbor who loves babies and who keeps flannel in her cupboard. I'd
rather give away an occasional layette to a dead beat than bruise the
feelings of timid souls at bay. If you could see them as they come in
here!"
"But you know really that there can be an immense amount of waste of
good material if you don't investigate."
"I may have wasted material, but I've never failed to help. Nobody
investigated me when my baby was born in a Turkish massacre. If they
had, I couldn't have stood it. Of course I have faced the question. I
figure that if I put in one column the number of layettes I give out and
their cost, and beside it what I would spend in time and taxi fares to
investigate, I should find that the price of a badly-placed layette or
two would be less than the cost of investigation."
The inspector took full and rapid notes. Folding them neatly into her
pocket with one clap of her notebook, she left me.
Three days later a young man appeared. He said, "I am here to represent
the Red Cross. Would you mind telling me about your baby work?"
"Are you from the Children's Bureau?"
"No, I am Vital Statistics."
After the Refugees Bureau sent two inspectors to look into my
activities, the Children's Bureau finally did come. They "took over" my
work, which meant that no more babies in my quarter of Paris received
layettes from the United States.
When I finally handed over my _œuvre_ to the Red Cross, the interview
with the husky well-fed football player of a doctor was refreshing. He
was full of enthusiasm, and I felt instinctively that he was an able man
with broad vision and an open mind. But, like all the men at 4 Place de
la Concorde, he did not give the French credit for having already
thought of and worked out many of the problems he wanted to solve. His
attitude towards the French put them in what Abe and Mawruss would call
the "new beginner" class in the matter of baby welfare. He cheerfully
told me of organizing plans for saving French babies, plans which,
compared with what we had been doing, were Kolossal. But the plans
included some things which I knew would not go and others which the
French had already worked out more successfully than my own
compatriots. Puericulture is an advanced science in France, where baby
lives are more precious than anywhere else in the world. I had tried
some of the things he wanted to do and had run up against a stone wall.
So had other American women. I started to sputter, but stopped short of
speech. For I had a lightning vision of how parents must feel when their
children, grown to manhood, plunge into work and do things they might be
saved from if only--. I felt motherly towards this capable young man who
was as old as myself. But something about him gave me confidence that he
would work it out all right. And I knew that he was in no frame of mind
to benefit by my experience.