By Sir Gilbert Parker.
_Sir Gilbert Parker, M.P., went to Holland at the request of the
American Committee for the Relief of Belgium a week ago to inquire into
the work of the committee and the needs of the Belgians._
_Sir Gilbert visited frontier towns and the camps of the refugees for
the purpose of making a personal investigation into the conditions. That
he is deeply impressed by the desperate need of the Belgians may be
gathered from the following graphic statement and appeal, dated Dec. 5,
1914, to the American people:_
Since the beginning of the war the hearts of all humane people have been
tortured by the sufferings of Belgium. For myself the martyrdom of
Belgium had been a nightmare since the fall of Liège. Whoever or
whatever country is to blame for this war, Belgium is innocent. Her
hands are free from stain. She has kept the faith. She saw it with the
eyes of duty and honor. Her Government is carried on in another land.
Her King is in the trenches. Her army is decimated, but the last
decimals fight on.
Her people wander in foreign lands, the highest and lowest looking for
work and bread; they cannot look for homes. Those left behind huddle
near the ruins of their shattered villages or take refuge in towns which
cannot feed their own citizens.
Abyss of Want and Woe.
Many cities and towns have been completely destroyed; others, reduced or
shattered, struggle in vain to feed their poor and broken populations.
Stones and ashes mark the places where small communities lived their
peaceful lives before the invasion. The Belgian people live now in the
abyss of want and woe.
All this I knew in England, but knew it from the reports of others. I
did not, could not, know what the destitution, the desolation of Belgium
was, what were the imperative needs of this people, until I got to
Holland and to the borders of Belgian territory. Inside that territory I
could not pass because I was a Britisher, but there I could see German
soldiers, the Landwehr, keeping guard over what they call their new
German province. Belgium a German province!
There at Maastricht I saw fugitives crossing the frontier into Holland
with all their worldly goods on their shoulders or in their hands, or
with nothing at all, seeking hospitality of a little land which itself
feels, though it is neutral, the painful stress and cost of the war.
There, on the frontier, I was standing between Dutch soldiers and German
soldiers, so near the Germans that I could almost have touched them, so
near three German officers that their conversation as they saluted me
reached my ears.
I begin to understand what the sufferings and needs of Belgium are. They
are such that the horror of it almost paralyzes expression. I met at
Maastricht Belgians, representatives of municipalities, who said that
they had food for only a fortnight longer. And what was the food they
had? No meat, no vegetables, but only one-third of a soldier's rations
of bread for each person per day. At Liège, as I write, there is food
for only three days.
What is it the people of Belgium ask for? They ask for bread and salt,
no more, and it is not forthcoming. They do not ask for meat; they
cannot get it. They have no fires for cooking, and they do not beg for
petrol. Money is of little use to them, because there is no food to be
bought with money.
Belgium under ordinary circumstances imports five-sixths of the food she
eats. The ordinary channels of sale and purchase are closed. They
cannot buy and sell if they would. Representatives of Belgian
communities told me at Maastricht yesterday that the crops were taken
from their fields--the wheat and potatoes--and were sent into Germany.
No Work, but Taxes Continue.
There is no work. The factories are closed because they have not raw
material, coal, or petrol, because they have no markets.
And yet war taxes are falling with hideous pressure upon a people whose
hands are empty, whose workshops are closed, whose fields are idle,
whose cattle have been taken, or compulsorily purchased without value
received.
In Belgium itself the misery of the populace is greater than the misery
of the Belgian fugitives in other countries, such as Holland, where
there have come since the fall of Liège one and a half million of
fugitives. To gauge what that misery in Belgium is, think of what even
the fugitives suffer. I have seen in a room without fire, the walls
damp, the floor without covering, not even straw, a family of nine women
and eight children, one on an improvised bunk seriously ill. Their home
in Belgium was leveled with the ground, the father killed in battle.
Their food is coffee and bread for breakfast, potatoes for dinner, with
salt--and in having the salt they were lucky--bread and coffee for
supper. Insufficiently clothed, there by the North Sea, they watched the
bleak hours pass, with nothing to do except cling together in a vain
attempt to keep warm.
Multiply this case by hundreds of thousands and you will have some hint
of the people's sufferings.
In a lighter on the River Maas at Rotterdam, without windows, without
doors, with only an open hatchway from which a ladder descends, several
hundred fugitives spend their nights and the best parts of their days in
the iron hold, forever covered with moisture, leaky when rain comes,
with the floor never dry, and pervasive with a perpetual smell like the
smell of a cave which never gets the light of day. Here men, women, and
children were huddled together in a promiscuous communion of misery,
made infinitely more pathetic and heartrending because none complained.
At Rosendaal, at Scheveningen, Eysden, and Flushing, at a dozen other
places, these ghastly things are repeated in one form or another.
Holland has sheltered hundreds of thousands, but she could not in a
moment organize even adequate shelter, much less comforts.
In Bergen-op-Zoom, where I write these words, there have come since the
fall of Antwerp 300,000 hungry marchers, with no resources except what
they carry with them. This little town of 15,000 people did its best to
meet the terrible pressure, and its citizens went without bread
themselves to feed the refugees. How can a small municipality suddenly
deal with so vast a catastrophe? Yet slowly some sort of order was
organized out of chaos, and when the Government was able to establish
refugee camps through the military the worst conditions were moderated,
and now, in tents and in vans on a fortunately situated piece of land,
over 3,000 people live, so far as comforts are concerned, like Kaffirs
in Karoo or aborigines in a camp in the back blocks of Australia. The
tents are crammed with people, and life is reduced to its barest
elements. Straw, boards, and a few blankets and dishes for rations--that
constitutes the ménage.
Children are born in the hugger mugger of such conditions, but the good
Holland citizens see that the children are cared for and that the babies
have milk. Devoted priests teach the children, and the value of military
organization illuminates the whole panoply of misery. Yet the best of
the refugee camps would seem to American citizens like the dark and
dreadful life of an underworld, in which is neither work, purpose, nor
opportunity. It is a sight repugnant to civilization.
The saddest, most heartrending thing I have ever seen has been the
patience of every Belgian, whatever his state, I have met. Among the
thousands of refugees I have seen in Holland, in the long stream that
crossed the frontier at Maastricht and besieged the doors of the
Belgian Consul while I was there, no man, no woman railed or declaimed
against the horror of their situation. The pathos of lonely, staring,
apathetic endurance is tragic beyond words. So grateful, so simply
grateful, are they, every one, for whatever is done for them.
None of the Refugees Begs.
None begs, none asks for money, and yet on the faces of these frontier
refugees I saw stark hunger, the weakness come of long weeks of famine.
One man, one fortunate man from Verviers, told me he could purchase as
much as 2s. 8d. worth of food for himself, his wife, and child for a
week.
Think of it, American citizens! Sixty-six cents' worth of food for a
man, his wife, and child for a whole week, if he were permitted to
purchase that much! Sixty-six cents! That is what an average American
citizen pays for his dinner in his own home. He cannot get breakfast, he
can only get half a breakfast, for that at the Waldorf or the Plaza in
New York.
This man was only allowed to purchase that much food if he could,
because if he purchased more he would be taking from some one else, and
they were living on rations for the week which would represent the food
of an ordinary man for a day. A rich man can have no more than a poor
man. It is a democracy of famine.
There is enough food wasted in the average American household in one day
to keep a Belgian for a fortnight in health and strength. They want in
Belgium 300,000 tons of food a month. That is their normal requirement.
The American Relief Committee is asking for 8,000 tons a month,
one-quarter of the normal requirements, one-half of a soldier's rations
for each Belgian. The American Committee needs $5,000,000 a month until
next harvest. It is a huge sum, but it must be forthcoming.
Of all the great powers of the world the United States is the only one
not at war or in peril of war. Of all the foremost nations of the world
the United States is the only one that can save Belgium from starvation
if she will. She was the only nation that Germany would allow a foothold
for humanity's and for Christ's sake in Belgium. Such an opportunity,
such responsibility, no nation ever had before in the history of the
world. Spain and Italy join with her, but the initiative and resources
and organization are hers.
Around Belgium is a ring of steel. Within that ring of steel are a
disappearing and for ever disappearing population. Towns like
Dendermonde, that were of 10,000 people, have now 4,000, and in
Dendermonde 1,200 houses have fallen under the iron and fire of war.
Into that vast graveyard and camp of the desolate only the United States
enters with an adequate and responsible organization upon the mission of
humanity.
No such opportunity was ever given to a people, no such test ever came
to a Christian people in all the records of time. Will the American
Nation rise to the chance given to it to prove that its civilization is
a real thing and that its acts measure up with its inherent and
professed Christianity?
I am a profound believer in the great-heartedness of the United States,
and there is not an American of German origin who ought not gladly and
freely give to the relief of people who, unless the world feeds them,
must be the remnant of a nation; and the world in this case is the
United States. She can give most.
The price of one good meal a week for a family in an American home will
keep a Belgian alive for a fortnight.
Probably the United States has 18,000,000 homes. How many of them will
deny themselves a meal for martyred Belgium? The mass of the American
people do not need to deny themselves anything to give to Belgium. The
whole standard of living on the American Continent, in the United States
and Canada, is so much higher than the European standard that if they
lowered the scale by one-tenth just for one six months the Belgium
problem would be solved.
I say to the American people that they cannot conceive what this strain
upon the populations of Europe is at this moment, and, in the cruel
grip of Winter, hundreds of thousands will agonize till death or relief
comes. In Australia in drought times vast flocks of sheep go traveling
with shepherds looking for food and water, and no flock ever comes back
as it went forth. Not in flocks guided by shepherds, but lonely,
hopeless units, the Belgian people take flight, looking for food and
shelter, or remain paralyzed by the tragedy fallen upon them in their
own land.
Their sufferings are majestic in simple heroism and uncomplaining
endurance. So majestic in proportion ought the relief to be. The Belgian
people are wards of the world. In the circumstances the Belgian people
are special wards of the one great country that is secure in its peace
and that by its natural instincts of human sympathy and love of freedom
is best suited to do the work that should be done for Belgium. If every
millionaire would give a thousand, if every man with $100 a month would
give $10, the American Committee for the Relief of Belgium, with its
splendid organization, its unrivaled efficiency, through which flows a
tide of human sympathy, would be able to report at the end of the war
that a small nation in misfortune had been saved from famine and despair
by a great people far away, who had responded to the call, "Come over
and help us!"