My wife attributes our success (so far) in the entertainment of Belgian
Refugees solely to the fact that we have not, and never have had, a
vestige of a committee. We all work along in the jolliest possible way,
and we have no meetings, or agenda, or minutes, or co-opting of
additional members, or remitting to executives or anything of that kind.
We just bring along anything that we think will be useful. Some of us
bring clothes and others butter or umbrellas, or French books, or
razor-strops or cigarettes. Hepburn, the dairy farmer, keeps sending
cart-loads of cabbages; old Miss Mackintosh at the Brae Foot sends
threepence a week. And when we are short of anything we just stick up a
notice to that effect in the village shop. I issued a call for jam
yesterday and ever since it has rained pots and pots. We have three
large families of Belgians and we have already got to the stage where
the men are at work and the children at school--though no one really has
the least idea what they do there.
But although I admit that it is magnificent to be without a
committee--we escaped from that by the simple plan of getting the
Belgians first and trusting to the goodwill of the Parish to take care
of them afterwards--there are other important factors in our success.
There is our extraordinary foresight--of course it was a pure fluke
really--in obtaining among them a real Belgian policeman. You can have
no idea what a fine sense of security that gives us in case anything
goes wrong. We have already enjoyed his assistance in a variety of ways,
and we have something still in reserve in the very unlikely event of his
being professionally called in--his uniform. When we put him into his
uniform the effect will be tremendous.
Then again we have the advantage of being Scotch. I simply don't know
how English country people are going to get on at all. Here we find that
by talking with great emphasis in the very broadest Scotch--by simply
calling soap _sape_ and a church a _kirk_ you can quite frequently bring
it off and make yourself understood. I had a most exhilarating hour of
mutual lucidity with the one that makes furniture in the carpenter's
shop. It seemed to me that he called a saw a _zog_, which was surely
quite good enough; and when he referred to a hammer as a _hamer_ it
might surely be said to be equivalent to calling a spade a spade.
Still the language difficulty remains, and the worst of it is that it
gives an altogether unfair advantage--where all are so anxious to
help--to the few select people in our neighbourhood who happen to be
able, fortuitously, to talk French. They are--(1) Dr. Anderson, whose
French is very good; (2) my wife, who is amazingly fluent in a crisis,
though her constructions simply don't bear thinking of; (3) the
school-master, who is weak; (4) the joiner, who is bad; (5) myself, who
am awful. Several of our Refugees talk French.
Of course we all have pocket-dictionaries, but even they don't always
help us out. I found my wife once engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand
encounter with the one who does the cooking about some household
necessity that was sadly lacking. She was completely baffled. It was
pure stalemate, a deadlock. I pulled out my dictionary and suggested to
the cook (by illuminative signs) that she should look it up and point to
the English word. There was some rejoicing at this, and she at once
called upon the collective wisdom of her whole family. At last they got
it with much nodding of heads and exhibited the book, buttressed with an
eager finger at the place. And we looked and read "A young gold-finch;"
so you will see that that didn't help us much. It was only by the almost
miraculous emergence of the word _Fat_ in the course of their own
private conversation shortly afterwards that light came to us.
That they are quite at a loss to understand the meaning of honey in the
comb did not greatly surprise us--though it was rather queer--but the
Parish is deeply distressed at their total ignorance of oatmeal. They
are quite at sea there, and so far have only employed it for baiting a
bird-trap: and that touches us closely, for the very foundation of our
being in these parts is oatmeal. Even their beautiful devotion to
vegetables of all sorts cannot, we feel, compensate for their attitude
of negation towards this very staple of existence. There is a strong
party among us bent on their conversion. We hope with all our hearts
that they will be comfortable and contented among us till the day comes
when they can return to their own country; and we feel that their exile
will not have been entirely wasted if they have learned to appreciate
the purpose fulfilled by porridge in the Divine Order of things.
* * * * *
Illustration: WORD PERFECT.
_Sentry_ (_on duty for first time_). "'ALT! WHO GOES THERE? ADVANCE TO
WITHIN FIVE PACES, AND GIVE THE COUNTERSIGN 'WATERLOO.'"
* * * * *