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 Women of Belgium; turning tragedy to triu 
 
 3 1924 014 090 348 
 
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 13 
 
 
WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 TURNING TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH 
 
 By 
 CHARLOTTE KELLOGG 
 
 With an Inteodttction By 
 
 HERBERT C. HOOVER 
 Chairman of Th0 CommiMion for Belief in Belgium 
 
 FOURTH EDITION 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 1917 
 
 1. 1., 
 
COPYBIOHT, 1917, BT 
 
 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 
 
 OEAPTZB FAOX 
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 I. The Leaders i 
 
 II. The "Soupes" ii 
 
 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 loS 
 
 XII. The "Drop of Milk" iii 
 
 XIII. Layettes 117 
 
 XIV. The Skating-Rink at Liege . . .123 
 XV. A Zeppelin 134 
 
 XVI. New Uses of a Hippodrome . . 137 
 
 XVII. The Antwerp Music-Hail . . .149 
 
 XVIII. Lace 158 
 
 iii 
 
iv CONTENTS 
 
 OKAPTXIt FAQE 
 
 XIX. A Toy Factory 167 
 
 XX. Another Toy Factory .... 174 
 
 XXI. The Mutiles 179 
 
 XXII. The Little Package i86 
 
 XXIII. The Green Box 190 
 
 XXIV. The "Mother of Belgium" . . .204 
 XXV. "Out" 208 
 
 XXVI. Farewell 209 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 A "Little Bees" Dining-room for Sub- 
 normal Children . . Frontispiece 
 
 Ready for the Children 36 
 
 A "Little Bees" cantine for sub-normal chil- 
 dren. 
 
 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 Sew- 
 ing-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 
 
 V 
 
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, cour- 
 age, 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 peo- 
 ple were again drawn into the European 
 maelstrom, 600,000 of them became fugi- 
 tives abroad, and the remainder were re- 
 
 vii 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 duced to the state of a city which, cap- 
 tured 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 com- 
 merce; and the cessation of this inflow, 
 together with the destruction and requisi- 
 tion of their meager stocks, threatened 
 the Belgians with an even greater catas- 
 trophe — the loss of their very life. 
 
 With the stoppage of the industrial 
 clock, their workpeople were idle, and des- 
 titution 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 en- 
 deavor has been to help themselves. Not 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 only were all those who had resources in- 
 sistent that they should either pay now or 
 in the future for their food, but far be- 
 yond this, they have insisted upon caring 
 for their own destitute to the fullest ex- 
 tent of those remaining resources — ^the 
 charity of the poor toward the poor. They 
 have themselves set up no cry for benevo- 
 lence, but the American Relief Commis- 
 sion 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 guardian- 
 ship of these supplies to the sole use of 
 the people. 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 des- 
 titute. 
 
 To visualize truly the mental and 
 moral currents in the Belgian people dur- 
 ing these two and a half years one must 
 have lived with them and felt their misery. 
 Overriding all physical suffering and all 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 trial is the great cloud of mental depres- 
 sion, 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 subjec- 
 tion. Belgium is a little country and the 
 sound of the g^ns 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 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 Or- 
 ganization and the demand that it has 
 made upon their exertion and their devo- 
 tion, 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 them- 
 selves 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 per- 
 fection 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 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 300,000,000 pounds of concentrated food- 
 stuffs per month of a character appro- 
 priate 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 distribu- 
 tion to 140 terminals throughout Belgium 
 and Northern France; to control the mill- 
 ing 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 estab- 
 lishments; to give the necessary assur- 
 ances 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 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 the most stedfast courage and high in- 
 telligence. 
 
 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 chil- 
 dren; to provide the machinery for sup- 
 plemental 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 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 these stations, not from committee meet- 
 ings after afternoon tea, but by actual 
 executive labor from early morning till 
 late at night — to go far beyond mere di- 
 rection by giving themselves to the actual 
 manual labor of serving the lowly and 
 helpless ; to do it with cheerfulness, sympa- 
 thy 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 de- 
 votion, 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 Belgiton received a 
 grievous wound, but the women of Bel- 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 gium are staunching the flow — sustain- 
 ing 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 inspira- 
 tion 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 hus- 
 band during his administration of our 
 Brussels office. She has done more than 
 record in simple terms passing impres- 
 sions 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. 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 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 chil- 
 dren, 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 ware- 
 houses should fail, for has the can- 
 tine ever failed in all these two and a 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 
 
 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 sec, 
 1 
 
2 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 thrown into high relief, special aspects ofi 
 an inexpressible experience. 
 
 Ohe 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 com- 
 rade 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 
 
THE LEADERS 3 
 
 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 ex- 
 ceedingly 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 through- 
 out history for her good works — for her 
 clear, clean vision of right, her swift 
 
4 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 courage, and her utter devotion to each 
 and all of her people. Albert and Eliza- 
 beth, 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 ex- 
 ample 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 
 
THE LEADERS 6 
 
 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 cpuld 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 under- 
 taking 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 enduringtyj 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 troublcy she could not neglect 
 her personal appearance, and after the 
 fatiguing journey across the Continent, 
 
6 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 she looked fresh and charming as we met 
 her in San Francisco. The first day at 
 luncheon we were plying her with ques- 
 tions, 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 pre- 
 cious 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 Bel- 
 gium: 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 mar- 
 veled at the directness with which she 
 brought her country and her people be- 
 fore 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 re- 
 
THE LEADERS 7 
 
 turn 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, 191 5, flashed the incredible, 
 the terrible news — ^the greatest passenger 
 liner afloat had been torpedoed! The 
 Lusitania had sunk in twenty-two min- 
 utes, 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. 
 
8 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 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 L wais per^' 
 mitted to enter Belgiiim in July, 1916.' • 
 
 I already knew that this country held 
 3;ooo,ooo destitute; that over one and one- 
 quarter million depended for existence' en- 
 tirely on the daily "soupes" ; that between 
 the soup-^lines and the rich- (who in e/vefy 
 country,' in every ca:tastroiphe, can most 
 easily save themsel-<^es) 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 
 
THE LEADERS 9 
 
 and professional classes, from the nobil- 
 ity itseif',1 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 Her- 
 bert Hoover had seized the apparently 
 unsolvable problem of the Relief of Bel- 
 gium, and with an incredible swif toess 
 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 sie- 
 Gure, 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 through- 
 out Belgium. It meanit the finding of 
 millions of money — ^$250,000,000 to date 
 — ^begging of individuals, praying to^ gov^ 
 ernments, the pressing of all the world to 
 service. 
 
 I realized, too, that the Belgian men. 
 
10 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 under the active leadership of Messieurs 
 Solvay, Francqui, de Wouters and 
 Janssen, with a joint administration of 
 Americans and Belgians, were organized 
 into the Comite National, whose activities 
 covered every square foot of the country, 
 determining the exact situation, the exact 
 need of each section, and who were re- 
 sponsible for the meeting of the situation 
 locally and as a whole. 
 
 But I knew from the lips of the Chair- 
 man 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 chil- 
 dren guarding their precious cards as 
 they wait to be passed in to one of the 
 "Enfants Debiles" dining-rooms, or on a 
 very long line of women in front of a 
 II 
 
12 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 communal store where "identity cards" 
 permit the purchase every week of Hmited 
 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 "supple- 
 ment" to their daily ^ration of carbo- 
 hydrates and fat which will give, them 
 protein — says the C. R. B., and thus we 
 have "Soupes"; — ^but these dry state- 
 ments of engineers now become dieticians 
 convey to no one ,the human story of 
 these dumb, waiting lines. 
 
 1 We can have .little conception of; what 
 it means for just one city, the Agglomera- 
 tion 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 
 
THE "SOUPES" 13 
 
 include the soup made by the "Little 
 Bees," an organization which cares espe- 
 cially 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 
 -TT-and do not; think of soup as an Ameri- 
 can 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 
 slaughterrhouse has been concerted into 
 a mighty kitchen, in charge of a famous 
 pre-war maitre d'hotel. Ninety-five cooks 
 and assistants from the best restaurants 
 of the capital have been transferred from 
 the making of, pates, and souffles to the 
 daily preparation of 25,000 quarts of 
 soup! And they, use the ingenuity born 
 of long experience, to secure an appetiz- 
 
14 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 ing 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 re- 
 member 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 com- 
 mittee 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 b^ 
 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 
 
THE "SOUPES" 15 
 
 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 pro- 
 cesses, 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 pur- 
 chasing 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, 
 
16 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 is that which cares for the meat and un- 
 smoked bacon or "lard" thei 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 tp. find a few pieces 
 in the pint of soup! Then, there is the 
 great kitchen proper, with the one hun- 
 dred 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 
 yraghing of foqd and receptacles ' and 
 premises. 
 
 The first shift of cooks arrives at two- 
 thirty, in the morning to start the gas 
 luider 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 seqond works from 8 till 5, 
 on an average wage of four francs a day 
 and soupe! , . , . 
 
THE "SOUPES" 17 
 
 There are ten of the large trucks and 
 500 of the fifty-quaitr 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 steam- 
 ing 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! disicpvered, "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 man- 
 agers who were preparing the big hall for 
 
18 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 the women who would arrive in a few 
 minutes to fill the pitchers with soup, and 
 the string bags with bread. These com- 
 munal 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 heart- 
 breaking 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 sta- 
 tioned toward the rear, and the great 
 
THE "SOUPES" 19 
 
 bread-racks of either side. The commit- 
 tee 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 repre- 
 sented 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 re- 
 veal 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 sad- 
 dest were the very old^for them the 
 men had always a kindly "How is it, 
 mother? How goes it, father?" 
 
 The "Merci, Monsieur, merci beau- 
 coup," of one sweet-faced old woman was 
 so evidently the expression of genuine 
 
20 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 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 worjc.; 
 A little Spanish woman had lost , her hus- 
 band 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 i too feeble to bow low as he said 
 "Meirci,!' was an unforgettable figure. 
 
 Some of the very : old and very weak 
 are given supplementary tickets which 
 entitle them to small pprtions, of white 
 bread, more adapted to their needs thari 
 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 f oUpwing < her 
 mother and grandmother, and slipt/OUt 
 of the line to, offer a tiny hand. Then 
 
THE "SOUPES" 21 
 
 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 congrat- 
 ulated the pretty girl of fifteen, who had 
 won all the term's prizes in the com- 
 munal 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 end- 
 less 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 — 
 20O,ooOi 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 
 
22 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 meat never passes their lips but in soup. 
 
 The questions were always swift, ad- 
 mitting no delay in the reply, and know- 
 ing the hearts of the questioners, I won- 
 dered a little at this. Till in a flash I 
 saw: if the directors wished to know 
 more they would go to the homes repre- 
 sented — ^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 rep- 
 resenting 2,5CX) pints of soup and por- 
 tions 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 be- 
 fore served on the soupes ofifered her 
 services to the seasoned workers. They 
 were grateful, but smilingly advised her 
 to go home, fill her bath tub with water, 
 
THE "SOUPES" 23 
 
 and ladle it out — to repeat this the fol- 
 lowing 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 ten- 
 derness 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 chateau 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 un- 
 measured is the friendship offered us, but 
 I also knew that Belgian etiquette and 
 
M WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 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 tKree women, who, 
 I felt instinctively, had not come in wel- 
 come. 
 
 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 sur- 
 prizing 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 mem- 
 bership in the C. R. B. — and I uncovered 
 my pin. 
 
THE "SOUPES" 25 
 
 It was as if I had revealed a magic 
 symbol — ^the door swung wide! They 
 took my hands and drew me inside, over- 
 whelming me with apologies, with en- 
 treaties 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 mem- 
 bers of the family, and in pages I could 
 not recount their beautiful efforts, indi- 
 vidually 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 
 
26 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 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. 
 
Ill 
 
 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 fac- 
 tories, it is true, at either end of the 
 town; but they had not marred it. Every 
 year thousands of visitors, chiefly Eng- 
 lish and Germans, had stopt there to for- 
 get 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, 
 sr 
 
28 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 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, Hus- 
 band, 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 
 
THE CRADLES ON THE MEUSE 29 
 
 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 tem- 
 porary 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 
 facades and ragged walls in sight, when 
 suddenly from the midst of the devasta- 
 tion I heard the merry laughter of chil- 
 dren. I pushed ahead to look around the 
 
so WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 Other side of a wall, and there was a most 
 incredible picture. In front of a low tem- 
 porary 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 re- 
 lief center is too discouraging to be at 
 once transformed into something cheer- 
 ing, even beautiful. The babies had on 
 bright pink-and-white checked aprons. I 
 let myself in, and they dashed for me, 
 pulling my toat, 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 call- 
 ing, "Madame, mon pere est morti" 
 "Madame, my father is dead, my father is 
 
THE CRADLES ON THE MEUSE 31 
 
 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 Httle ones went on with their romp- 
 ing while I passed inside to see the equip- 
 ment 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 w6re 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 
 
82 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 daily given the nourishing food provided 
 by the relief committee. In fact, they 
 had the splendid care common to the 
 1,900 creches or children's shelters in 
 Belgium. But this creche was alone in 
 its strange, tragic setting. 
 
 In the midst of utter ruin are swung 
 the white cradles. In front of them, un- 
 der the guardianship of gay cocks and 
 lions, golden-haired babies are laughing 
 and romping. Further on more ruins, 
 desolation, silence ! 
 
IV 
 'THE LITTLE BEES" 
 
 MADAME has charge of a 
 Cantine for Enf ants Debiles (chil- 
 dren 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 vic- 
 tims 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 
 
 S3 
 
34 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 cellar, a private home, a garage, a con- 
 vent — 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 reliedf center. In some the 
 kitchen is siihply 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 yearn- 
 ing over, hundreds of thousands of more 
 
"THE LITTLE BEES" 36 
 
 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 food- 
 stuffs 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 val- 
 ues, and follow strictly physicians' instruc- 
 tions. One day there are more grammes 
 of potatoes, another more grammes 
 of macaroni in the stew; one noon 
 
36 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 there is rice for dessert, the next phos- 
 phatine 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 examin- 
 ing and stamping of cards by the thou- 
 sand, day after day, is in itself a most 
 arduous piece of work, but women ac- 
 complish it cheerfully. 
 
 On the second floor, between two large 
 connecting rooms, I found Madame, in 
 white, superintending the day's prepara- 
 tion of the tables for 1,662. That was 
 the size of her family! Fourteen young 
 women, with bees embroidered in the 
 
^ 2 
 
 o ■» 
 
 « S 
 
 H V 
 
 « .3 
 
 ° = 
 
 P r 
 
 <! M 
 
 
"THE LITTLE BEES" 37 
 
 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 de- 
 posited 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 un- 
 told 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, as- 
 sisting in every department. 
 
38 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 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 win- 
 dow: 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, push- 
 ing. 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 
 
"THE LITTLE BEES" 39 
 
 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." Every- 
 body 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 every- 
 where 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 
 
40 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 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 devour- 
 ing their bread and soup. 
 
 Then began the cries of "Dessert, 
 Mademoiselle, dessert!" Tired arms car- 
 ried 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 court- 
 yard, and the hundreds started back to 
 school. 
 
"THE LITTLE BEES" 41 
 
 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 prac- 
 tically 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 can- 
 tine 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." 
 
42 WOMEN OF BELGItJM 
 
 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 fete 
 day. Throughout the city, those for- 
 tunate 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 Bel- 
 gium, 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 
 
"THE LITTLE BEES" 43 
 
 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. Lit- 
 tle 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 be- 
 low the sidewalk, in rooms that are known 
 as "caves." I was prepared for some- 
 thing 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 im- 
 maculate — shelves for shining vessels, 
 others for the sacks of sugar, boxes of 
 
44 WOMEN OP BELGIUM 
 
 macaroni. On a table stood the inevitable 
 scales — Thursday is weighing day, when 
 one of the best physicians of Brussels ex- 
 amines the children, recording the weights 
 that form the basis for judgment as to 
 the success of the ration. 
 
 The 430 bowls of milk were already on 
 the tables. Madame . . . was hurrying 
 about among her helpers — ^twelve faith- 
 ful Belgian women. They had all been 
 there since eight o'clock, for this was a 
 viande day (there are three a week) and 
 when there is meat that must be cut into 
 little pieces for between four and five 
 hundred children, it means an early start. 
 Two women were still stirring (with long 
 wooden spoons) the great tub full of 
 savory macaroni and carrots — a test in 
 itself for muscle and endurance. The 
 meat was in separate kettles. The bread 
 had been cut into over 400 portions. The 
 phosphatine dessert (of which the chil- 
 dren can not get enough) was already 
 
"THE LITTLE BEES" 45 
 
 served at a side table. The "Little Bees" 
 originated this phosphatine dessert, which 
 is a mixture of rice, wheat and maize — 
 flour, phosphate of lime and cocoa. They 
 have a factory for making it, and up to 
 August, 19 16, had turned out 638,cxx) 
 kilos. 
 
 A gentleman in black frock suit and 
 large hat came in to look about, and then 
 went back to the lengthening line. Madame 
 explained that he was the principal of the 
 communal school of the quarter, and that 
 he came every day to keep the children 
 in order. I learned, too, that on every 
 single day of the vacation, which had be- 
 gun and was to continue until the middle 
 of September, he and one of his teachers 
 went to the school to distribute to all the 
 school-children the little roll of white 
 bread that they are allowed at eight- 
 thirty each morning. Many of these have 
 but little at home. This roll helps them 
 out imtil the cantine meal at eleven- 
 
46 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 thirty, which can be had only on a phy- 
 sician's authorization. From now on a 
 larger meal is to be given in the schools 
 — a joy not only to the pupils but to their 
 teachers, who everywhere are devoting 
 themselves to this work of saving their 
 children. Several of the younger women 
 helping Madame had been working 
 wearily all the year in the professional 
 schools, but as soon as their vacations 
 arrived, begged to be allowed to give 
 their time to the cantines. They were 
 all most attractive in their white aprons 
 and caps — most serious in their attention 
 to the individual wants of that hungry 
 family. 
 
 A few minutes later the principal ap- 
 peared again — all was ready now. Then 
 the little ones began to march in. They 
 came by way of an anteroom, where they 
 had their hands washed, if they needed 
 washing — and most of them did — and 
 quite proudly held them up as they passed 
 
"THE LITTLE BEES" 47 
 
 by us. They were of all sizes between 
 three and fourteen. One pale little fel- 
 low was led in by his grandmother who 
 was admitted (tho no mothers or grand- 
 mothers are supposed to come inside), be- 
 cause he wailed the minute she left him. 
 It was easy to see why mothers could not 
 be allowed, tho one was glad the rule 
 could be broken, and that this sad, white- 
 faced grandmother could feed her own 
 charge. It was terrible, too, to realize 
 what that plate of savory stew would 
 have meant to her, and to see that she 
 touched no morsel of it. Even if there 
 had been an extra portion, the women 
 could not have given it to her: the fol- 
 lowing day the street would have been 
 filled with others, for whom there could 
 not possibly be extra portions. 
 
 If a child is too ill to come for its din- 
 ner, a member of the family can carry it 
 home. Practically all the cantines have 
 a visiting nurse who investigates such 
 
48 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 cases, and keeps the number much lower 
 than it would otherwise be. 
 
 When I asked Madame how she was 
 able to give so much time (from about 
 8 A.M. till I or 2 P.M. every day of the 
 year), she smiled and shrugged her 
 shoulders : "But that is the least one can 
 do, the very least! One never thinks of 
 the work, it is of the children — and we 
 know they love us — ^we see them being 
 kept alive! Some of them are getting 
 stronger — these weaklings. What more 
 can we wish?" 
 
MRS. WHITLOCK'S VISIT 
 
 T^E second time, I visited Madame's 
 cantine with the wife of the Ameri- 
 can Minister, and I found what it 
 meant to be the wife of the United States 
 Minister in Belgium! From the corner 
 above to the entrance of the court the 
 street was lined with people. At the 
 gateway we were met by a committee 
 headed by the wife of the Bourgmestre of 
 Brussels. Within the court were the 
 hundreds of children — with many more 
 mothers this time — all waiting ex- 
 pectantly, all specially scrubbed, tho no 
 amount of scrubbing could conceal their 
 sad lack of shoes. There were smiles 
 
 49 
 
60 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 and greetings and little hands stretched 
 out all along the line as we passed. 
 
 Inside there was no more than the 
 usual cleanliness — for the cantines are 
 scrupulously kept. Madame and her as- 
 sistants had tiny American flags pinned 
 to their white uniforms. In the corridors 
 the American and Belgian flags hung to- 
 gether. A special permission had been 
 obtained to take a photograph of their 
 g^est at the window. 
 
 The tables were laid, the lines began 
 moving. As the little girls filed in, one 
 of them came forward, and with a pretty 
 courtesy offered Mrs. Whitlock a large 
 bouquet of red roses. The boys followed, 
 and their representative, struggling with 
 shyness, recited a poem as he gave his 
 flowers. All the children were very miich 
 imprest with this simple ceremony, and 
 under the two flags, as the quavering 
 little voice gave thanks to "those who 
 were bringing them their daily bread," 
 
MRS. WHITLOCK'S VISIT 61 
 
 there were no grown-ups without tears 
 in their eyes. 
 
 American flags of one kind or another 
 hang in all the cantines, along with pic- 
 tures of President Wilson, mottos ex- 
 pressing thanks to America, C. R. B. 
 flour-sacks elaborately embroidered — on 
 all sides are attempts to express gratitude 
 and affection. 
 
 That morning, as the Legation car 
 turned a corner, a little old Flemish lady 
 in a white frilled cap stept forward and 
 clapped her hands as the American flag 
 floated by. Men lift their hats to it, chil- 
 dren salute it. In the shop windows one 
 often sees it draping the pictures of the 
 King and Queen! 
 
 This is not a tribute to the American 
 flag alone, but also to the personality of 
 the man who has so splendidly represented 
 this flag and to the men who carried the 
 American soul and its works into Bel- 
 gium through the C. R. B. Belgium will 
 
62 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 never forget its immediate debt to Brand 
 Whitlock and to these hundreds of Ameri- 
 cans whose personal service to this coun- 
 try in its darkest hour is already a matter 
 of history. Just as Mrs. Whitlock was 
 leaving, Madame fortunately discovered 
 a shabby little girl who still squeezed a 
 bedraggled bunch of white roses — and 
 made her happy by bringing her forward 
 to present it. 
 
 These children, as I have said, are all 
 in need of special nourishment, they are 
 those who have fallen by the wayside in 
 the march, brought down by the stern 
 repression of the food supply. One of the 
 most striking effects of the war has been 
 the rapid increase in tuberculosis. Many 
 of the thousands in the cantines are the 
 victims of "glands" or some other dread 
 form of this disease. 
 
 However, in some respects the children 
 of the very poor are better off than they 
 have ever been. For the first time they 
 
MRS. WHITLOCK'S VISIT 53 
 
 are receiving nourishing food at regular 
 hours. And this ration, along with the 
 training in hygiene and medical atten- 
 tion, is having its good effect. 
 
 One hundred and twenty-five phy- 
 sicians are contributing their services to 
 the "Little Bees" in Brussels alone, 
 where, during the first six months of 
 191 6, infant mortality had decreased 19 
 per cent. It would be difficult to estimate 
 the time given by physicians throughout 
 the whole country, but probably half of 
 the 4,700 are contributing practically all 
 their time, and almost all are doing some- 
 thing. It is a common sight in the late 
 afternoon to see a physician who has had 
 a full, hard day, rushing to a cantine to 
 examine hundreds of children. Outside 
 the zone of military preparation, 200,000 
 sub-normal children of from three to 
 seventeen years, and over 53,000 babies 
 under three months, are on their "relief" 
 lists, besides a large number of adults. 
 
64 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 Outside Brussels, the cantines are con- 
 ducted in much the same way as those of 
 the "Little Bees." Committees of women 
 everywhere are devoting themselves to 
 the children. 
 
yi 
 
 THE BATHTUB 
 
 WAY over in the northeast, in 
 Hasselt, a town of iy,ooo in- 
 habitants, there is an especially 
 interesting cantine — only one of thou- 
 sands in Belgium, mind you! A year 
 ago, when a California professor was 
 leaving San Francisco to become a C. R. 
 B, representative, he was offered a fare- 
 well dinner — and in the hall his hostess 
 placed a basket, with obvious intent ! The 
 money was not for the general fund, but 
 to be spent by him personally for some 
 child in need. 
 
 He was assigned to Hasselt, for the 
 Province of Limbourg, and there he very 
 soon decided that a splendid young Bel- 
 gian woman who had been giving her 
 
 £5 
 
66 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 whole time to nursing wounded soldiers 
 would be the person to know which of 
 their children was most in need of his 
 little fund. When he proposed turning it 
 over to her, she quite broke down at the 
 opportunity it offered. She and her 
 mother were living in a rather large 
 house, but on a limited income. She 
 would find the sick child and care for it 
 in her own home. A few days later the 
 professor called to see her "child" — and 
 he found twelve ! She had not been able 
 to stop — most of them were children 
 whose fathers were at the front. They 
 were suffering from rickets, arrested de- 
 velopment, paralysis, malnutrition. She 
 was bathing them, feeding them, and fol- 
 lowing the instructions of a physician, 
 whom she had already interested. Her 
 fund was two hundred and fifty dollars, 
 but in her hands it seemed inexhaustible. 
 She added children, one after another. 
 Then, finally, the Relief Committee 
 
THE BATHTUB 67 
 
 came to the support of her splendid and 
 necessary work with its usual monthly 
 subsidy, with which the women buy the 
 supplies most needed from the relief 
 shops. She is now installed in the middle 
 of the town — ^with a kitchen and dining- 
 room downstairs, and a little clinic and 
 bathroom upstairs. The forty-six 
 centimes (less than ten cents) a day 
 which she received per child, enabled her 
 to furnish an excellent me?il for each. 
 But she soon found that her children 
 could not be built up on one meal, and 
 she stretched her small subsidy to cover 
 a breakfast at eight and a dinner at 
 four to lOO children. She balances the 
 ration, makes the daily milk tests, looks 
 after every detail personally. Upstairs 
 in the prized tub devoted helpers 
 bathe the children who need washing, 
 care for their heads, and for all the 
 various ailments of a family of lOO sub- 
 normal children. Because of the glycerine 
 
68 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 it contains, soap has been put on the "non- 
 entry" list, which makes it so expensive 
 that the very poor are entirely without it. 
 The price has increased 300 per cent, 
 since the war. Incidentally, one of the 
 reasons for the high price of butter is 
 that it can be sold for making soap, at an 
 extraordinary figure. 
 
 This particular tub is a tribute to the 
 ingenuity of the present American repre- 
 sentative — also a professor, but from 
 farther East. Before the terrific problem 
 of giving children enough bread and 
 potatoes to keep them alive, bathrooms 
 sometimes appear an unnecessary luxury. 
 The relief committee could not furnish 
 Mademoiselle a bathroom! But to those 
 working with the sick and dirty children 
 it seemed all-essential. Hasselt is not a 
 rich town, everybody's resources had 
 been drained — -how should the money be 
 found? Finally the C. R. B. delegate 
 had an inspiration — there was a big 
 
THE BATHTUB 69 
 
 swimming-tank in Hasselt. To the peo- 
 ple, the American representative, tho 
 loved, is always a more or less surprizing 
 person. If it could be announced that by 
 paying a small sum they could see the 
 strange American swim, everybody who 
 had the small sum would come — ^he would 
 swim for the bathroom! It was an- 
 nounced, and they came, and that swim- 
 ming fete will go down in the annals of 
 the town! The cantine got its bath- 
 room, and there was enough left over to 
 buy a very necessary baby-scales. 
 
 Mademoiselle took us to the houses 
 where we saw the misery of mothers left 
 with seven, nine, eleven children, in one 
 or two little rooms. There was no wage- 
 earner — ^he was at the front; or there 
 was no work. One woman was crying as 
 we went in. She explained that her son, 
 "a bad one," had just been trying to take 
 his father's boots. She pulled out from 
 behind the basket where the twins were 
 
60 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 sleeping under the day's washing, a bat- 
 tered pair of coarse, high boots. There 
 were holes in the hob-nailed soles, there 
 was practically no heel left. The heavy 
 tops still testified to an original stout 
 leather, but never could one see a more 
 miserable, run-down-at-the-heel, leaky, 
 and useless pair of boots. Yet to that 
 woman they represented a fortune — 
 there is practically no leather left in the 
 country, and if there were, how could her 
 man, when he came back, have the money 
 to buy another pair, and how could he 
 work in the fields without his boots? 
 There were eight children — eight had 
 died. 
 
 And she wept bitterly because of the 
 son who had tried to take his father's 
 boots, as she hid them behind the twin's 
 basket. I had heard of the sword as the 
 symbol of the honor and power of the 
 house; in bitter reality it is the father's 
 one pair of boots! 
 
VII 
 
 THE BREAD IN THE HAND 
 
 I SOON came to have the curious 
 feeling about the silent stone fronts 
 of the houses that if I could but 
 look through them I should see women 
 sorting garments, women making pat- 
 terns for lace, women ladling soup, paint- 
 ing toys, washing babies. Up and down 
 the stairs of these inconvenient buildings 
 they are running all day long, back and 
 forth, day after day, seeking through a 
 heroic cheerfulness, a courageous smile, 
 to hold back tears. 
 
 And chiefly I was overwhelmed by the 
 enormous quantities of food they are 
 handling. The whole city seems turned 
 into a kitchen — and there follows the in- 
 
 61 
 
62 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 evitable question: "Where does it all 
 come from?" The women who are doing 
 the work connect directly with the local 
 Belgian organizations, by the great sys- 
 tem of decentralization, which is the key- 
 note of the C, R. B. Just these three 
 magic letters spell the answer to the in- 
 evitable question. 
 
 At the C. R. B. bureau I had seen 
 the charts lining the corridors. They 
 seemed alive, changing every day, mark- 
 ing the ships on the ocean, the number of 
 tons of rice, wheat, maize or sugar ex- 
 pected ; and how these tons count up ! In 
 the two years that have passed, 1,000,000 
 tons each year, meaning practically one 
 ship every weekday in the month; 90,000 
 tons at one time on the Atlantic! Other 
 charts show the transit of goods already 
 unloaded at Rotterdam. Over 200 
 lighters are in constant movement on 
 their way down the canals to the various 
 C. R. B. warehouses, which means about 
 
THE BREAD IN THE HAND 63 
 
 50,000 tons afloat all the time. I had 
 seen, too, the reports of the enormous 
 quantities of clothing brought in — 
 4,000,000 dollars worth, almost all of it 
 the free gift of the United States. 
 
 In the director's room were other maps 
 showing the territory in charge of each 
 American. Back of every cantine and its 
 power to work stands this American, the 
 living guaranty to England that the 
 Germans are not getting the food, the 
 guaranty to Germany of an equal neutral- 
 ity, and to the Belgians themselves the 
 guaranty that the gifts of the world to 
 her, and those of herself to her own peo- 
 ple, would be brought in as wheat through 
 the steel ring that had cut her off. One 
 had only to think of the C. R. B. door in 
 the steel ring as closed, to realize the posi- 
 tion of this neutral commission. The 
 total result of their daily and hourly co- 
 ordination of all this organization inside 
 Belgium, their solitude for each class of 
 
64 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 the population, their dull and dry calcula- 
 tions of protein, fat and carbohydrates, 
 bills of lading, cars, canal boats, mills and 
 what not, is the replenishing of the life- 
 stream of a nation's blood. 
 
 Thus, the food dispensed by the women 
 is part of the constantly entering mass, 
 and between its purchase, or its receipt as 
 gift by the C. R. B., and its appearance 
 as soup for adults, or pudding for chil- 
 dren, is the whole intricate structure of 
 the relief organization. The audible 
 music of this creation is the clatter of 
 hundreds of typewriters, the tooting of 
 tugs and shrieks of locomotives, but the 
 undertones are the harmonies of devo- 
 tion. 
 
 Everybody who can pay for his food 
 must do so — it is sold at a fair profit, and 
 it is this profit, gained from those who 
 still have money, that goes over to the 
 women in charge of the cantines for the 
 purchase of supplies for the destitute. 
 
THE BREAD IN THE HAND 66 
 
 They often supplement this subsidy 
 through a house-to-house appeal to the 
 people. For instance, in Brussels, the 
 "Little Bees" are untiring in their can- 
 vass. Basket on arm, continually they 
 solicit an egg, a bunch of carrots, a bit 
 of meat, or a money gift. They have 
 been able to count on about 5,000 eggs 
 and about 2,500 francs a week, besides 
 various other things. Naturally, the peo- 
 ple in the poorer sections can contribute 
 but small amounts, but it is here that one 
 finds the most touching examples of 
 generosity — the old story of those who 
 have suffered and understood. One 
 woman who earns just a franc a day and 
 on it has to support herself and her 
 family, carefully wraps her weekly two- 
 centime piece (two-fifths of a cent) and 
 has it ready when one of the "Little 
 Bees" calls for it. 
 
66 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 Our American Young Men 
 
 Monsieur . . . , a committee leader in the 
 Hainaut, once said to me, "Madame, one 
 of the big things Belgium will win in this 
 war is a true appreciation of the charac- 
 ter and capacity (quite aside from their 
 idealism) of American young men. 
 
 "I'll confess," he continued, "that when 
 that initial group of young Americans 
 came rushing in with those first heaven- 
 sent cargoes of wheat, we were not 
 strongly reassured. We knew that for 
 the moment we were saved, but it was 
 difficult to see how these youths, however 
 zealous and clear-eyed, were goin§ to 
 meet the disaster as we knew it. 
 
 "We organized, as you know, our local 
 committees, and headed them by our Bel- 
 gians of widest experience; our lawyers 
 of fifty or sixty, our bankers, our leaders 
 of industry. We could set all the machin- 
 ery, but nothing would work unless the 
 
THE BREAD IN THE HAND 67 
 
 Americans would stand with us. The in- 
 structions read : 'The American and your 
 Belgian chairmen will jointly manage the 
 relief.' 
 
 "And who came to stand with us? 
 Who came to stand with me, for instance ? 
 You see," and he pointed to splendid 
 broad-shouldered C. ahead of us, "that 
 lad — ^not a day over twenty-eight — just 
 about the age of my boys in the trenches, 
 and who, heaven knows, is now almost as 
 dear to us as they! 
 
 "But in the beginning I couldn't see it ; 
 I simply couldn't believe C. was going to 
 be able to handle his end of our terrific 
 problem. But day by day I watched this 
 lad quietly getting a sense of the situa- 
 tion, then plunging into it, getting under 
 it, developing an instinct for diplomacy 
 along with his natural genius for direct- 
 ness and practicality that bewildered me. 
 It has amazed us all. 
 
 "We soon learned that we need not 
 
68 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 fear to trust ourselves to that type of 
 character, to its adaptability and capacity, 
 no matter how young it seemed." 
 
 Of course there have been older Ameri- 
 cans who have brought to their Belgian 
 co-workers equal years as well as experi- 
 ence, but one of the pictures I like best to 
 remember is this of Monsieur . . . , a 
 Belgian of fifty-five or sixty, in counsel 
 with his eager American delegue of 
 twenty-eight. To the partnership, friend- 
 ship, confidence, the Belgian added some- 
 thing paternal, and the American re- 
 sponded with a devotion one feels is life- 
 long. 
 
 Between the visits to mills and docks, 
 and the grinding over accounts, orders 
 of canal boats and warehouses, there are 
 hours for other things. I remember one 
 restful one spent at this same Monsieur's 
 table — he is an excellent Latin scholar 
 and a wise philosopher — ^when he and 
 his young American friend for a time 
 
THE BREAD IN THE HAND 69 
 
 forgot the wheat and fat in their de- 
 light to get back to Virgil and Horace. 
 
 Young D., a Yale graduate, furnished 
 another example of these qualities Mon- 
 sieur stressed. If he had been a West- 
 erner, his particular achievement would 
 have been less surprizing, but he came 
 from the East. 
 
 He reached Belgium at the time of a 
 milk crisis. We were attempting, and, in 
 fact, had practically arranged, the plan 
 to establish C. R. B. herds adjacent to 
 towns, to insure a positive supply for tiny 
 babies. The local committees went at it, 
 but one after another came in with dis- 
 couraging reports. Even their own peo- 
 ple were often preventing success by fear- 
 ing and sometimes by flatly refusing to 
 turn their precious cows into a community 
 herd. Then one day D., who, so far as I 
 know, had never in his career been within 
 speaking distance of a cow, put on some- 
 thing that looked like a sombrero and 
 
70 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 swung out across his province. We had 
 hardly had time to speculate about what 
 he might accomplish, before he returned 
 to announce that he had rounded up a 
 magnificent herd, and that his district was 
 ready to guarantee so much pure milk 
 from that time on ! 
 
 "What had he done, where we had 
 failed?" asked Monsieur. "He had called 
 a meeting of farmers in each commune, 
 and said : 'We, the Americans, want from 
 this commune five or ten cows for the 
 babies of your cities. We give ourselves 
 to Belgium, you give your cows to us. 
 We will give them back when the war is 
 over — if they are alive!' And he got 
 them!" They would have given this 
 cheerful beggar anything — these stolid 
 old Flemish peasants. 
 
VIII 
 
 ONE WOMAN 
 
 THE world will be incredulous when 
 it is given the final picture of the 
 complexity and completeness of 
 the Belgian Relief Organization. In all 
 the communes, all the provinces, in the 
 capital, for over two years, groups of Bel- 
 gians have been shut in their bureaux 
 with figures and plans, matching needs 
 with relief. 
 
 There must be bread and clothing for 
 everybody, shelter for the homeless, soup 
 for the hungry, food boxes for prisoners 
 in Germany, milk for babies, special 
 nourishment for the tubercular, orphan- 
 ages and creches for the tiny war victims, 
 work for the idle, some means of secours 
 
 71 
 
72 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 for merchants, artists, teachers and 
 thousands of "ashamed poor" — 665,000 
 idle workmen with their 1,000,000 de- 
 pendents, 1,250,000 on the soupes, 53,000 
 babies and 200,000 children under normal 
 health in the cantines — ^how much of the 
 story can these figures tell ? 
 
 Yet the efforts of the organization have 
 been so continuous and comprehensive, 
 the C. R. B. has been so steadily bringing 
 to them the vital foodstuffs, and holding 
 for them the guaranty of their freedom 
 to act, that from the committee-rooms it 
 has sometimes seemed as if there were 
 really nothing more to be done for Bel- 
 gium! 
 
 But one has only to spend a few days 
 at the other end, to get quickly disabused 
 of this idea! No amount of organization 
 can truly meet the needs of the seven and 
 a half million people of a small industrial 
 country, suddenly and entirely cut off 
 from all normal contact with the rest of 
 
ONE WOMAN 73 
 
 the world. Despite all the food that has 
 been distributed, the resistance of the peo- 
 ple has been lowered. Tuberculosis has 
 seized its opportunity, and is making 
 rapid strides. I have visited home after 
 home where a heartbreaking courage was 
 trying to cover up a losing struggle. Over 
 and above all the organized "Relief," 
 there remains an enormous task for just 
 such splendid women as Madame . . . 
 
 Madame is the wife of a lawyer, with 
 two sons at the front. As soon as the 
 war broke out she organized a Red Cross 
 center. Then the refugees came pouring 
 into Brussels, and she felt that among 
 them there must be many to whom it 
 would be torture to be crowded into the 
 big relief shelters. She said little, but 
 by the end of August she had managed to 
 squeeze five families in with her own. 
 From the day the Germans abolished the 
 Belgian Red Cross she gave her entire 
 time to helping the homeless who had 
 
n WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 been in comfortable circumstances before 
 the war to some quiet corner where they 
 might wait its end. There was never any 
 announcement of her work, but the word 
 spread like wildfire — ^many had to be 
 turned away daily. Then she found a 
 big home on the Boulevard, rather shabby 
 inside, but conveniently arranged for 
 suites of two or even three rooms. Here 
 a considerable number of families might 
 have space for a complete menage ; plenty 
 of light and air, and room to cook and 
 sleep. Before long she was housing 
 ninety-eight, but a few of these were able 
 to re-establish themselves, so when I 
 visited her in September, 1916, there were 
 sixty-five. As her own funds were 
 limited, and fast disappearing, she had 
 in the end to appeal to the "Relief" to 
 subsidize this "Home." 
 
 On the first floor she had a little pantry- 
 shop, where each family received the per- 
 mitted ration of bread, sugar, bacon and 
 
ONE WOMAN 76 
 
 other foodstuffs. One day a woman came 
 to her, hungry. She was a widow with 
 two little girls, who, before the war, had 
 earned a good salary in the post-office. 
 Somehow she had managed to exist for 
 two years, but now there was nothing left. 
 She was given charge of the pantry at 
 ten cents a day. I have seen many pro- 
 cessions of people descending long stair- 
 ways. I shall forget them. But I shall 
 never forget this one of the refugees 
 from the upper floors winding down the 
 stairways at the shop hour, with their 
 pathetic plates and bowls ready for the 
 bacon and bread that made living possible. 
 They could, perhaps, add vegetables and 
 fruit, or an tgg or two, to the ration to 
 piece out the meal. On the lowest shelf 
 of this miniature shop were a few dozen 
 cans of American corn, which even yet 
 the people have not learned to like. Hav- 
 ing been brought up to regard corn in 
 all forms as fit only for cattle and 
 
76 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 chickens, even disaster can not convince 
 them that it is a proper food for man ! 
 
 Later we went upstairs to visit some 
 of the apartments. They were bright and 
 clean, with cheery flower-pots on all the 
 window-sills. Every one showed a fine 
 appreciation of what was done for him 
 by making the most of all he had; an at- 
 titude quite different from that of many 
 less used to comfort, less intelligent, who 
 neither hesitate to demand charity, nor to 
 complain of what they receive. Each 
 family had a small, practical stove, which 
 served for both cooking and heating. 
 
 One family of eight was content in its 
 two rooms. They had had a copper shop 
 and a pension at Dinant; were very com- 
 fortably off, when, suddenly, Dinant was 
 struck. All their property was in flames, 
 men were being shot, their own grand- 
 mother, eighty-one years old, had her leg 
 broken, and, terror-stricken, they fled with 
 her up and down hill, over rocks and 
 
ONE WOMAN 77 
 
 through brush till they reached Namur, 
 and finally arrived at Brussels where they 
 heard of Madame's "Home." The grand- 
 mother, whose leg is mended but still 
 crooked, was sitting in front of the red 
 geraniums at a window, knitting socks. 
 She knits one pair a week and receives five 
 cents for each pair from the clothing com- 
 mittee. The young girls help Madame in 
 various ways ; the father tries to work in , 
 copper, but if he earns fifty cents a week, 
 considers himself lucky. The particular 
 struggle for this family is to get eggs 
 for the grandmother, who can not get 
 along on the bacon and bread. Eggs cost 
 ten cents each. Happily, this is a kind of 
 situation that "special funds" from the 
 United States have often relieved. Every- 
 body was courageous, trying simply to 
 hold on till the terrible war should be 
 ended and he could go back to rebuild 
 something on the ruins of his home. 
 There was another Dinant menage next 
 
18 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 door, but a menage for one. I quickly 
 read this poor woman's story on the walls. 
 On one was tacked a large picture of 
 Dinant, beautiful, smiling, winding along 
 the river, as in July, 19 14. Above it was 
 the photograph of her husband, shot in 
 August; on the other wall a handsome 
 son in uniform. He was at the front. 
 She stopt pefeling her potatoes to go over 
 again those horrible days. They had 
 been so well off, so happy, father, mother 
 and son. When they saw their city in 
 flames, they were too bewildered, too 
 terror-stricken to realize what it meant. 
 Her husband left to help restore a bridge 
 — he did not return. The son hurried to 
 follow his King; she somehow reached 
 Brussels. 
 
 There was a fine young chap of about 
 fifteen, whose father had been killed at 
 Manceau sur Sambre. He and his mother 
 had found this haven, but now she was in 
 the hospital undergoing a capital opera- 
 
ONE WOMAN 79 
 
 tion. Madame was trying to arrange a 
 special diet for her on her return. They 
 had been in very comfortable circum- 
 stances; now everything was gone. 
 
 And so it was — the same story, and 
 from all parts of Belgium. They had 
 come from Verviers, Aerschot, Dinant, 
 from Termonde and Ypres — the striking 
 thing was the courage, the gentleness, the 
 fine spirit of all. 
 
 This "Home," as I said, has now been 
 subsidized, but along with it Madame still 
 carries on another admirable work en- 
 tirely on her own responsibility. Some 
 friends help her, but she really lives from 
 day to day ! On the ground floor of this 
 same building she has a restaurant, also 
 known only as the word passes from 
 mouth to mouth, where any one may 
 come for a good dinner at noon. There 
 is no limit to what one may pay, but the 
 charge is a franc, or twenty cents. The 
 majority pay less. 
 
80 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 It has quite the atmosphere of one of 
 the little Paris restaurants of the Latin 
 quarter — ^two adjoining rooms bright with 
 flowers and colored cloths and gay china, 
 separated from the kitchen only by 
 screens. It is frequented chiefly by 
 artists and teachers, some young girls 
 from the shops, and a few business men. 
 Madame does not go from table to table 
 as the Paris host does, greeting his guests, 
 but they come to her table to shake hands 
 and chat for a minute. They linger over 
 their coffee — there is the general atmos- 
 phere of cheer and bien etre. And what 
 this means in this time of gloom to the 
 sixty or more who gather there daily ! 
 
 Young girls of the families of the refu- 
 gees serve the meals. The cook, herself 
 a refugee, works for twenty francs a 
 month. 
 
 I said any one might come, but that is, 
 of course, not exact. Any one may ask 
 to come, but he must prove to Madame 
 
ONE WOMAN 81 
 
 that he needs to come. After he explains 
 his situation, she has ways of checking up 
 this information and deciding herself 
 whether the need is a real one. The din- 
 ner consists of soup, a meat and vegeta- 
 ble dish, and dessert, with beer or coffee. 
 I was looking over the meal tickets and 
 noticed that while most of them were 
 unstamped (the one franc ones) a good 
 number had distinguishing marks. Then 
 I learned that if a person was unable to 
 pay a franc for this meal, he might have 
 it for fifteen or even ten cents, and his 
 ticket was stamped accordingly. I found 
 one ticket with no stamp, but with the 
 "o" of "No" blotted out. This might 
 be chance, but after finding a half-dozen 
 or more with this same ink blot, I sus- 
 pected a meaning. And the explanation 
 revealed the spirit of Madame's work. 
 "Yes," she said, "there is a meaning. 
 There are some so badly ofif that they can 
 pay nothing; to save them the pain of 
 
82 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 having to look at, and to have others look 
 at, a stamp registering this misery, I do 
 not stamp their tickets, but, since I must 
 keep count, I blot that little 'o,' which 
 at once suggests 'zero' to me!" 
 
 Choosing at random, I found regis- 
 tered for one day in July, 19 16: 
 I dinner at i franc, 10 centimes. 
 
 58 dinners at i franc. 
 
 43 dinners at 75 centimes (15 cents). 
 
 10 dinners at 50 centimes. 
 4 dinners at a 
 
IX 
 
 THE CITY OF THE CARDINAL 
 
 UNQUESTIONABLY the Belgian 
 above all others the Germans would 
 rid themselves of if they could, is 
 Cardinal Mercier. He is the exalted 
 Prince of the Church, but in the hour of 
 decision, he stept swiftly down and, with 
 a ringing call to courage, took his place 
 with the people. Ever since that day he 
 has helped them to stand united, defiant, 
 waiting the day of liberation. Others 
 have been silenced by imprisonment or 
 death, but the greatest power has not 
 dared to lay hands on the Cardinal. He 
 is the voice, not only of the Church, but 
 of Belgium heartening her children. 
 Malines has her cantines and soupes 
 
84 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 and ouvroirs, all the branches of secours 
 necessary to a city that was one of the 
 centers of attack; but these are not the 
 most interesting things about Malines. 
 It is above all as the city of the Cardinal 
 that she stands forth in this war. Her 
 "ceuvre" has been to give moral and 
 spiritual secours, not only to her own 
 people, but to those of every part of Bel- 
 gium. 
 
 Since under the "occupation" the press 
 has naturally been "controlled," this 
 secours has been distributed chiefly 
 through the famous letters of the Car- 
 dinal sent to priests to be re-read to their 
 people. We remember the thrill with 
 which the first one was read in America. 
 After the war there will be pilgrimages 
 to the little room where it was printed. 
 I had the privilege of having it shown me 
 by that friend of the Cardinal who was 
 the printer of the first letter, and whose 
 brother was at this time a prisoner in 
 
THE CITY OF THE CARDINAL 85 
 
 Germany for having printed the second. 
 The room was much as it had been left 
 after the search; books were still disar- 
 ranged on their shelves, papers and 
 pamphlets heaped in confusion on the 
 tables. The red seals with which the 
 Germans had closed the keyholes had 
 been broken, but their edges still re- 
 mained. Standing in the midst of the 
 disarray, remembering that the owner 
 had already been six months in a German 
 prison, and looking out on the shattered 
 f agade at the end of the garden, I realized, 
 at least partly, another moment of the 
 war. 
 
 This quickening secours, then, is dis- 
 tributed chiefly by letter, but continually 
 by presence and speech in Malines itself, 
 and occasionally in other parts of the 
 country. On the 2ist of July, 19 16, the 
 anniversary of the independence of Bel- 
 gium, all Brussels knew that the Cardinal 
 was coming to celebrate high mass in 
 
86 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 Sainte Gudule. The mass was to begin 
 at 1 1 o'clock, but at 9.30 practically every 
 foot of standing-room in the vast cathe- 
 dral was taken. In the dimness a great 
 sea of people waited patiently, silently, 
 the arrival of their leader. Occasionally 
 a whispered question or rumor flashed 
 along the nave. "He has come!" "He 
 has been prevented!" There was a tacit 
 understanding that there should be no 
 demonstration — the Cardinal himself had 
 ordered it. Every one was trying to con- 
 trol himself, and yet, as the air grew 
 thicker, and others fought their way into 
 the already packed transepts, one felt that 
 anything might happen! Almost every 
 person had a bit of green ribbon (color 
 of hope) or an ivy leaf (symbol of en- 
 durance) pinned to his coat. The wear- 
 ing of the national colors was strictly for- 
 bidden, but the national spirit found 
 another way: green swiftly replaced the 
 orange, black and red. 
 
THE CITY OF THE CARDINAL 87 
 
 We all knew that this meant trouble 
 for Brussels, and the fact that the shops 
 (which had all been ordered to keep open 
 this holiday) were carrying on a con- 
 tinuous comedy at the expense of the 
 Germans, did not help matters. Their 
 doors were open, to be sure, but in many, 
 the passage was blocked by the five or 
 six employees who sat in stiff rows with 
 bows of green ribbon in their buttonholes, 
 and indescribable expressions on their 
 faces. In the biggest chocolate shop, the 
 window display was an old pail of dirty 
 water with a slimsy rag thrown near it. 
 There was no person inside but the owner, 
 who stood beside the cash register in 
 dramatic and defiant attitude, smoking a 
 pipe. There were crowds in front of the 
 window which displayed large photo- 
 graphs of the King and Queen, draped 
 with the American flag. Another shop 
 had only an enormous green bow in the 
 window. Almost every one took some 
 
88 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 part in the play. Not a Belgian entered 
 a shop, and if a German was brave enough 
 to, he was usually made the victim of his 
 courage. One was delighted to serve 
 him, but, unfortunately, peaches had ad- 
 vanced to ten francs each, or something 
 of the sort! 
 
 Finally, after an hour and a half, a 
 priest made an announcement, which 
 from our distance we misunderstood. We 
 thought he said that the mass would be 
 celebrated, but unfortunately not by 
 Monseigneur, who had been detained. A 
 few of us worked our way, inch by inch, 
 to the transept door, and out into the 
 street. There I found an excited group 
 running around the rear of the cathedral 
 to the sacristy-door, and, when I reached 
 it, I learned the Cardinal had just passed 
 through. 
 
 For no particular reason I waited there, 
 and before long the door was partly 
 opened by an acolyte, who was apparently 
 
THE CITY OF THE CARDINAL 89 
 
 expecting some one. He saw me and 
 agreed that I might enter if I wished, for 
 was I not an American to whom all 
 Belgium is open? So I slipt in and 
 found room to stand just behind the altar 
 screen where all through the celebration 
 I could watch the face of the Cardinal — 
 a face at once keen and tender, strong, 
 fearless, devout: one could read it all 
 there. He was tall, thin, dominating, a 
 heroic figure, in his gorgeous scarlet vest- 
 ments, officiating at the altar of this 
 beautiful Gothic cathedral. 
 
 The congregation remained silent, three 
 or four fainting women were carried out, 
 that was all. Then the Cardinal mounted 
 the pulpit at the further end of the nave to 
 deliver his message, the same message he 
 had been preaching for two years — they 
 must hold themselves courageous, uncon- 
 quered, with stedfast faith in God and in 
 their final liberation. Tears were in the 
 eyes of many, but there was no crying out. 
 
90 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 From the pulpit he came back to the 
 catafalque erected in the middle of the 
 nave for the Belgian soldiers dead in 
 battle. It represented a great raised 
 coffin, simply and beautifully draped with 
 Belgian flags, veiled in crepe. Tall, flam- 
 ing candles surrounded it. As the Car- 
 dinal approached, the dignitaries of the 
 city, who had been occupying seats of 
 honor below the altar, marched solemnly 
 down and formed a circle about the 
 catafalque. Then the Cardinal read the 
 service for the dead. The dim light of 
 the cathedral, the sea of silent people, the 
 memorial coffin under the flag and lighted 
 by tall candles, the circle of those chosen 
 to represent the city, the sad-faced Cardi- 
 nal saying the prayers for those who had 
 died in defense of the flag that now 
 covered them — ^was it strange that as his 
 voice ceased and he moved slowly toward 
 the sacristy-door by which he was to de- 
 part, the overwhelming tide of emo- 
 
THE CITY OF THE CARDINAL 91 
 
 tion swept barriers, and "Vive le Roil" 
 "Vive Monseigneur !" echoed once more 
 from these ancient walls! We held our 
 breath. Men were pressing by me 
 whispering, "What shall we do? We 
 have necessity to cry out — after two 
 years, we must cry out!" The Cardinal 
 went straight forward, looking neither to 
 the right nor the left, the tears streaming 
 down his cheeks. 
 
 Outside, to pass from the rear of the 
 cathedral to the Archbishop's palace, he 
 was obliged to cross the road. As I 
 turned up this road to go back to the 
 main portal, the crowd came surging 
 down, arms outthrust, running, waving 
 handkerchiefs and canes, pushing aside 
 the few helpless Belgian police, quite be- 
 yond control, and shouting wildly now, 
 "Vive le Roi!" and "Vive Monseigneur!" 
 I was able to struggle free only after the 
 gate had closed on the Cardinal. 
 
 This was the day when in times of 
 
92 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 peace all the populace brought wreaths 
 to the foot of the statue erected in honor 
 of the soldiers who died for the inde- 
 pendence of Belgium. The Germans had 
 placed guards in the square and for- 
 bidden any one to go near it. So all day 
 long throngs of people, a constant, steady 
 procession marched along the street 
 beyond, each man lifting his hat, women 
 often their green parasols, as soon as 
 they came in view of their statue. All 
 these things, I repeat, did not help Brus- 
 sels in the matter of the demonstration at 
 the cathedral. And a few days later a 
 posted notice informed her that she had 
 been fined 1,000,000 marks! 
 
 But the people had seen their Cardinal 
 — they had received their spiritual 
 secours — ^he had brought heavenly com- 
 fort to their hearts, put new iron in their 
 blood. They had dared to cry just once 
 their loyalty to him and to their King, 
 and they laughed at the 1,000,000 marks! 
 
X 
 
 THE TEACHERS 
 
 ONE afternoon I happened by a 
 communal school in another 
 crowded quarter of Brussels, and, 
 tho it was vacation, and I knew the prin- 
 cipal had been sadly overworked for two 
 years and ought to be in the country, I 
 decided to knock at the bureau to see if 
 he were in. 
 
 I had my answer in the corridor, where 
 rows of unhappy mothers and miserable 
 fathers were waiting to see him. Inside 
 there were more. He was examining a 
 little girl with a very bad eye; and I 
 realized why there could be no vacation 
 for the principal! 
 
 As I sat there, I heard the noise of 
 
 93 
 
94 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 marching in the court below, and when I 
 asked what it was, he opened the window 
 for me to see. There were 720 children 
 between six and fourteen years, gaily 
 tramping round and round under the 
 trees, making their "promenade" before 
 the 4 o'clock "repas scolaire" (school 
 children's repast) which the Relief Or- 
 ganization is now trying to furnish to 
 each of the i,200,ocx) children in the free 
 schools of Belgium who may need it — 
 incidentally at an outlay of $2,500,000 a 
 month. 
 
 Over 8,500 children in the sixty com- 
 munal schools of Brussels proper receive 
 this dinner. It is quite distinct from the 
 eleven o'clock meal furnished at the can- 
 tines for children below normal health — 
 they may have both — and it is served in 
 the school building. Naturally the school- 
 teachers are carrying a large share in 
 this stupendous undertaking. 
 
 For the children, the "repas" is the 
 
THE TEACHERS 96 
 
 great event of the day, and, since the 
 vacation, they gather long before the 
 hour. One sees, too, hundreds of little 
 ones on the sidewalks before the Enfants 
 Debiles dining-rooms, as early as 8 a.m., 
 clutching their precious cards and waiting 
 already for their eleven o'clock potatoes 
 and phosphatine. 
 
 This school is also a communal soup 
 center, tho the teachers have nothing to 
 do with the distribution. Every day 
 from 2,500 to 3,000 men and women line 
 up — worn, white enamel pitchers in one 
 hand, cards in the other, to receive the 
 family ration of soup and bread. 
 
 As I passed one morning, I saw a little 
 bare-legged girl sitting on a doorstep op- 
 posite. Her mother had evidently left 
 her to guard their portion, and she sat 
 huddled up against the tall, battered 
 pitcher full of steaming soup, her little 
 arms tight about four round loaves — 
 which meant many brothers and sisters. 
 
96 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 The father was in the trenches. She sat 
 there, a slim, wistful little thing, guard- 
 ing the soup and bread, the picture of 
 what war means to women and children. 
 
 Monsieur was particularly happy be- 
 cause he had just succeeded in sending 
 fifteen children, who very much needed to 
 be built up, to the seacoast for fifteen 
 days. It is his hope to establish homes, 
 in the country so far as possible, which 
 shall be limited to from thirty to forty 
 children. 
 
 He has continually to arrange, too, for 
 the care of those who may not be in truth 
 orphans, but who belong to the thousands 
 of wretched little ones set adrift by the 
 war. I saw one little boy who had been 
 found all alone in a most pitiful plight 
 beside a gun, in one of the devastated dis- 
 tricts. If his parents are still living, no 
 one has yet succeeded in tracing them. 
 
 That morning an old uncle had begged 
 Monsieur to take charge of his nephew 
 
THE TEACHERS 97 
 
 and niece; he had not a penny left, they 
 must starve unless something were done 
 for them. Some months before, the father 
 had been wounded at the front, and the 
 mother had foolishly hurried away to try 
 to reach him, leaving the children with 
 her brother. Months had gone by — ^he 
 had had no word from any one — and 
 now he was quite at the end of his re- 
 sources. And so it was with case after 
 case. Something must be done! 
 
 Besides being the section kitchen and 
 dining-room, this school has become a 
 social center. Every Sunday afternoon 
 the children are invited to gather there 
 to have a good time. They are taught to 
 play games, each is given a bonbon, a 
 simple sweet of some sort — "nothing of 
 the kind to encourage luxury!" They 
 are occupied, happy, and kept off the 
 streets and out of homes made miserable 
 through lack of employment. 
 
 We see, then, that "every day" means 
 
98 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 literally every day, and we realize how 
 arduous is the task of the thousands of 
 devoted teachers who are standing be- 
 tween the war and those who would other- 
 wise be its victims. 
 
 And as they tell us over and over again 
 that the one thing that makes them able 
 to stand is their confidence in the love 
 and sympathy of the United States, we 
 begin to realize our responsibility. It 
 is not only that the wheat and cloth 
 are essential, the encouragement of 
 the presence of even the few (forty 
 to fifty) Americans is the great ne- 
 cessity ! 
 
 At 8.30 the next morning I visited one 
 of the "]dir6.ms d'Enfants" — schools for 
 children between two and a half and six 
 years of age. There were the teachers 
 already busy in that new department of 
 their work — the war-food department; 
 460 tiny tots were being given their first 
 meal of the day — a cup of hot cocoa, and. 
 
THE TEACHERS 99 
 
 during that month, a little white bread 
 bun. No American can understand what 
 this single piece of white bread means to 
 a French or Belgian child. I am sure 
 that if a tempting course dinner were set 
 at one side, and a slice of white bread at 
 the other, he would not hesitate to choose 
 the bread. It is white bread that they all 
 beg for, tho the brown war bread made 
 from flour milled at 82 per cent, is really 
 very palatable, and superior to the war 
 bread of other countries. 
 
 A sheaf of letters sent from a school in 
 Lille to thank the C. R. B. director for 
 the improved brown (not nearly white) 
 bread gave me my first impression of the 
 all-importance of the color and quality of 
 the bread. 
 
 Amelie B. wrote: 
 
 "Before May 5, 191 5, we had to eat 
 black bread, which we preferred to make 
 into flowers of all sorts as souvenirs of 
 the war! But after that date we have 
 
100 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 had the good, light bread — so eatable. 
 It is for this we thank you." 
 
 Another says: 
 
 "Since we have had the good bread the 
 happiest people are the mothers, who be- 
 fore had to let their "chers petits" suffer 
 from hunger, because their delicate 
 stomachs would not digest the bad, black 
 bread." 
 
 Further : 
 
 "The mothers of little cbiidren wept 
 with joy and blest you, as they went to 
 get their good, light bread." 
 
 One little girl wrote: 
 
 "When on the 5th of May, 1915, 
 maman returned with the new bread, 
 and we all ran to taste it, we found it 
 good. The bread we had been eating 
 long months had been dark and moist. 
 Further, rice had been our daily food. It 
 is without doubt to show your gratitude 
 to the French, who went to drive the 
 English away from you in 1783, that you 
 
THE TEACHERS lOlj 
 
 have thought to soften our suffering. 
 Merci! Merci! Many died because of 
 that bad bread, and many more should 
 have died, had you not come to our aid 
 with the good bread." 
 
 Another little girl writes: 
 
 "If ever in the future America is in 
 need, France will not forget the good she 
 has done and will reach a hospitable hand 
 to her second country, who has saved her 
 unhappy children. It is you who have 
 made it possible for all mothers to give 
 bread to their children. Without the rice 
 and beans, what would have become of 
 us ! You have helped us to have coal and 
 warm clothing against the cold. In the 
 name of all the mothers we thank you, 
 and all the little children send you a great 
 kiss of thanks." 
 
 The babies had all finished their cocoa 
 and buns, so I went to the Girls' Tech- 
 nical Training School in the neighbor- 
 hood. It was having a particularly hard 
 
102 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 time because of the lack of materials and 
 of opportunity to sell the articles made 
 by the children. But two wonderful 
 women — one the director, the other the 
 art teacher — were courageously fighting 
 to keep things going. 
 
 The pupils are largely from poor fami- 
 lies. When they were going through the 
 beautiful figures of their gymnasium ex- 
 ercise for me, I saw that the bloomers 
 were mostly made of odds and ends of 
 cloth. The shoes, too, quickly told the 
 tale — all sorts of substitutes for leather, 
 patched woolen shoes or slippers, wooden 
 soles with cloth tops, clogs. 
 
 In the room for design I was greeted 
 with most cordial smiles as Madame in- 
 troduced me as her friend from America, 
 the country which meant hope to them. 
 Then happened swiftly one of the things 
 it is difficult to prevent — the shouting in 
 one breath of "Vive le Roil" and "Vive 
 I'Amerique!" Who would doubt that a 
 
THE TEACHERS 103 
 
 good part of the joy of shouting "Vive 
 TAmerique" comes from the opportunity 
 it gives them to couple with it the cry of 
 their hearts, "Vive la Belgique!" 
 
 By the time we returned to her bureau, 
 Madame trusted me entirely, and ex- 
 plained that this was the center of a kind 
 of "Assistance Discrete" she had estab- 
 lished for her girls and their families. She 
 opened several cabinets, and showed me 
 what they had mkde to help one another. 
 Certain women have been contributing 
 materials — old garments, bits of cloth, 
 trimming for hats, all of which have been 
 employed to extraordinary advantage. 
 What struck me most were the attractive 
 little babies' shirts, made from the upper 
 parts of worn stockings. 
 
 Madame opened a paper sack and 
 showed me nine hard-boiled eggs that 
 were to be given to the weaker girls, who 
 most needed extra nourishment that day. 
 
 Her most precious possession was a 
 
104. WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 record of the gifts of the pupils and their 
 friends for this "Assistance Discrete." It 
 is a Ust of contributions of a few centimes, 
 or a franc or two, given as thank offer- 
 ings for some blessing; oftenest for re- 
 covery from illness, or for good news re- 
 ceived. It showed, too, that the children 
 had been bringing all the potato peelings 
 from home, to be sold as food for cattle. 
 Sometimes a girl brought as much as 
 twenty-eight centimes (over five cents) 
 worth of peelings. But in May, 1916, 
 the potato peelings stopt — ^they were not 
 having potatoes at home. 
 
XI 
 
 GABRIELLE'S BABY 
 
 BEFORE the war Madame was very 
 close to the Queen. She lived in 
 our quarter of Brussels ; we became 
 friends. And how generous the friend- 
 ship between a Belgian and an American 
 can be, only the members of the Commis- 
 sion for Relief truly know! It is swift 
 and complete. 
 
 I had been in Brussels five months 
 when she said to me one day: 
 
 "My dear, I understand only too well 
 the difficulties of your position — the 
 guaranty you gave on entering. As 
 you know, I have never once suggested 
 that you carry a note for me, or bring a 
 message — ^tho I have seen you starting in 
 your car behind your blessed little white 
 
 lOS 
 
106 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 flag for the city of my daughter and my 
 grandchildren ! Nor have I," she laughed, 
 with the swift play so typical of the Bel- 
 gian mind, "once hinted at a pound of 
 butter or a potato! But lately I have 
 been suffering so many, many fears, that 
 I am tempted just to ask if you think this 
 would be wrong for you — if it would, 
 forget that I asked it: I have a relation 
 who has always been closer to me than a 
 brother — we were brought up together. 
 He is eighty-two now, and, at the begin- 
 ning of the war, was living near X in 
 Occupied France. He was important in 
 his district, his name is known. Now, if 
 I should merely give you that name, and, 
 when you next see your American dele- 
 gate from that district, you should speak 
 it, might it not be possible that he would 
 recognize it, and could tell you if my dear, 
 dear M. is suffering, or if he is yet able 
 to care for himself ? Would that be break- 
 ing your agreement?" 
 
GABRIELLE'S BABY 107 
 
 As she stood there — inteUigence, dis- 
 tinction speaking from all her person — 
 fearfully putting this pitiful question, I 
 experienced another of those maddening 
 moments we live through in Belgium. 
 One swiftly doubts one's reason — the 
 situation — ever)^hing ! The world simply 
 can not be so completely lost as it seems ! 
 
 Mercifully this would not be breaking 
 any promise ; and I begged for the name. 
 
 But even then I was rather hopeless 
 that our American would know. In the 
 North of France he must live with his 
 German officer; he is not free to mingle 
 with the French people. 
 
 Thursday, conference day, came, 
 when all the little white flags rush in 
 from their provinces, bringing our 
 splendid American men — their faces 
 stern, strained, but with that beautiful 
 light in them that testifies they are giv- 
 ing without measure the best they have 
 to others. 
 
108 WOMEN OP BELGIUM 
 
 Never will any one, who has experi- 
 enced it, forget the thrill he felt when 
 he saw those fifteen cars with their 
 forty-two men rushing up, one after the 
 other to 66, rue des Colonies, nor the 
 line of them all day on the curb with 
 their fluttering white flags carrying the 
 red C. R. B. ! There were no other cars 
 to be seen. Each person, as he passed, 
 knew that these fifteen white flags 
 meant wheat and life to 10,000,000 
 people. 
 
 As I stood there I heard a band. I 
 looked up the street and saw the Ger- 
 man soldiers goose-stepping before their 
 guard mount. This happens every 
 morning, just a square above our offices. 
 The white flags and the goose-step — 
 they pretty much sum up the situation ! 
 
 I hurried inside, hoping fervently to 
 hear the longed-for answer, as I put the 
 name and my question. 
 
 But the name was strange to S., he 
 
GABRIELLE'S BABY 109 
 
 could tell me nothing, tho he felt sure 
 that by keeping his ears open that week, 
 he might learn something. 
 
 How often through those days I 
 thought of these two, caught in this war- 
 night of separation. For two and a 
 half years neither had been able to call 
 across it even the name of the other. 
 And then of the word thrown into the 
 night with hope and prayer! 
 
 On the next meeting day, as he hur- 
 ried toward me, I could see from S.'s 
 face that he had news. "Yes," he said 
 eagerly, "he is still there, he draws his 
 ration — ^he is not suffering from want, 
 he has enough left to pay for his food. 
 But when he heard that somebody 
 would possibly carry this news to his 
 dearest living relation, he cried: 'Oh! 
 Would it not be possible to do just 
 one thing more! I am eighty-two; 
 I may die before this terrible war is 
 ended. In pity will not somebody tell me 
 
110 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 before I die if any of my nieces has had 
 a little baby, or if any one of them is 
 going to have a little baby?' 
 
 "And now," S. said, "you and I 
 know that if the Relief stops, we've got to 
 find out for that poor old man that there 
 is a baby!" 
 
 And I went about it. On Thursday, 
 when he rushed over to me I could call: 
 "Yes, there is one! It's Gabrielle's! A 
 little girl, five months old and doing 
 beautifully!" 
 
 "Hurrah!" he shouted, and hurried 
 back to his tons and calqries. 
 
 It is four months since then, and I do 
 not know if there are any more babies, 
 or if that old gentleman of a distin- 
 guished house has had any other than 
 this single connection with the loved ones 
 of this family in over two and a half 
 years.' 
 
XII 
 
 THE "DROP OF MILK" 
 
 BELGIUM is succoring her weak 
 children, but she is going deeper 
 than this: she is trying to prevent 
 weak children. All through the country 
 there are cantines where an expectant or 
 young mother without means may receive 
 free a daily dinner, consisting usually of a 
 thick soup, a meat or egg dish with vege- 
 tables, a dessert with lactogenized cream, 
 and a measure of milk. Light service, 
 like the peeling of vegetables, is often re- 
 quired in return. The mother may come 
 as early as three months before the birth 
 of her child, and if she is still nursing it, 
 may continue nine months after its birth. 
 About 7,000 mothers are receiving this 
 dinner, and 6,000 more come to the 
 111 
 
112 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 affiliated consultation cantines for advice. 
 
 Of course, there are always those who 
 can not nurse their children, or who can 
 carry them through but a short period, 
 when the question of pasteurized milk be- 
 comes all-important. The "Goutte de 
 Lait" (drop of milk) sections meet this 
 problem by offering the necessary feed- 
 ings of pure milk. The mother may pay 
 for the bottles, and have them delivered, 
 or she may, if necessitous, receive them 
 free by calling or sending for them. 
 
 In Antwerp, where this work has 
 assumed unusual proportions, a big- 
 hearted president of the Belgian Provin- 
 cial Committee got permission to pur- 
 chase lOO cows in Holland and to hold 
 them without danger of requisition. He 
 installed a model dairy on his place, and 
 now gives all the baby cantines pure 
 milk. He is always most anxious to fin- 
 ish his arduous day's work at the bureau, 
 so that he may return to his dairy, ex- 
 
w 
 
 o 
 
 s 
 
 o 
 
THE "DROP OF MILK" 113 
 
 amine the milk tests, and review his fine 
 herd. One of his daughters, in addition 
 to hours spent in the cantines, takes the 
 entire responsibility of the management 
 of this dairy. Other towns are less for- 
 tunate, and must struggle continually to 
 get the milk they require. There is a 
 beautiful development of the work of a 
 "Goutte de Lait" in Hasselt, in a cantine 
 occupying part of a maternity hospital. 
 There they have an admirable equip- 
 ment for sterilization and pasteurization. 
 At 7 o'clock in the morning I found the 
 women directors already busy with the 
 preparation of the milk. Each feed- 
 ing has its separate bottle, and may be 
 kept sealed till the baby receives it. After 
 seven months, white phosphatine, a 
 mixture of the flour of wheat, rice and 
 corn, with salt, sugar and phosphate of 
 lime, is furnished; at fourteen months, 
 cocoa is added, and after two years, soup 
 and bread. 
 
114 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 I happened to arrive on the weekly 
 weighing day. One hundred mothers 
 were gathered in a large, cheery room, 
 their babies in their arms, many of them 
 gay in the pretty bonnets the doctor's 
 wife had made for those who had the 
 best records. They passed, a few at a 
 time, into the smaller room where the 
 doctor and his wife examined, weighed, 
 coimseled, while two assistants regis- 
 tered important details; the three young 
 nurses generally aided the mothers and 
 their chiefs. 
 
 Then I was shown an adjoining room, 
 where, in the corners, there were heaps 
 of little white balls rolled in wax paper. 
 From a distance they looked more than 
 an)rthing else like tiny popcorn balls. 
 What could they mean? I took one in 
 my hand and saw that they meant that 
 the most precious prize that can be 
 offered a Belgian mother to-day is a tiny 
 ball of white lard! With the more 
 
THE "DROP OF MILK" 115 
 
 ignorant, this prize-system is the swiftest 
 means of opening the way. The doctor 
 laughed as he recounted his struggle with 
 one obstinate woman, who argued stoutly 
 that because the cow is a great, strong 
 creature, while she herself is but small 
 and frail, undoubtedly its milk would be 
 infinitely more strengthening to her child 
 than her own! Where argument failed, 
 the prize convinced. If a mother can 
 nurse her baby but neglects to, she is 
 forced to feed it regularly before some 
 member of the committee. Nurses visit 
 all the homes registered. 
 
 The attempt is being made everywhere 
 to induce mothers who are not actually in 
 want, to enroll in these cantines, while 
 paying for their food, that they may have 
 the benefit of the pure milk and the phy- 
 sician's care. The "Relief" is not count- 
 ing the cost of this fundamental work — 
 the baby cantines are the promise of the 
 future. They are already closely watch- 
 
116 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 ing the development of 53,000 babies. 
 The educational value alone can not be 
 measured; women who had not the faint- 
 est conception of the simplest laws of 
 hygiene are being trained, forced to learn, 
 because their own and their children's 
 food can come to them only from the 
 hand of their teacher. While the war has 
 brought unutterable misery, it has also 
 brought extraordinary opportunity, and 
 Belgium is seizing this opportunity wher- 
 ever she can. 
 
XIII 
 
 LAYETTES 
 
 AND babies must be clothed, as well 
 as fed! I visited one of the Brus- 
 sels layette centers with the C. R. 
 B. American advisory physician, whose 
 interest in children had brought him at 
 once face to face with what women are 
 doing to save them. We went to a little 
 cantine consisting of a room and ante- 
 room on the ground floor, and, I might 
 add, the sidewalk — for before we reached 
 it we saw the line of hatless mothers with 
 their tiny babies wrapt in shawls in their 
 arms, waiting their turn. This was a 
 depot where they might receive the 
 articles for the lying-in period and cloth- 
 ing for babies under six months of age. 
 We passed through the anteroom, where 
 nr 
 
118 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 a number sat nursing their babies (young 
 mothers mostly, and many of them 
 pretty, into the distributing-room. 
 
 Here we found three directors very 
 busy at their tables with the record-cards, 
 books and other materials of their organi- 
 zation, and three younger women rapidly 
 sorting out the tiny bibs, slips and sheets 
 heaped high on the counters along the 
 walls. From the miscellaneous piles 
 they produced the neat little layettes — 
 each a complete wardrobe for an ex- 
 pectant or young mother, and compris- 
 ing 4 squares, 2 swaddling cloths, 3 
 fichus, 4 brassieres, 2 shirts, 2 bands, 2 
 pair socks, 2 bonnets, 3 bibs, i hooded 
 cloak. The packages for children from 
 three to six months held 3 squares, 2 
 pantaloons, 2 bibs, 2 fichus, 2 shirts, 2 
 brassieres, 2 dresses. 
 
 As the mothers came in, the babies 
 were carefully weighed and examined, 
 the records added to, through direct, 
 
LAYETTES 119 
 
 effective questioning — always gentle and 
 encouraging. The young women turned 
 over the needed garments, with advice 
 about their use, chiefly regarding cleanli- 
 ness. To support this advice, they at- 
 tempted to have the materials white as 
 far as possible. 
 
 iWhen I asked what they most needed, 
 they said, "Cradles, Madame, cradles. 
 We could place fifty a week in this can- 
 tine alone, and white materials for sheets 
 and blankets — and oh, hundreds of yards 
 of rubber sheeting or its equivalent!" 
 For very evident reasons, the C. R. B. is 
 not allowed to bring in rubber materials 
 of any kind. Many mothers, as the babies 
 arrive, appeal for beds for the older chil- 
 dren and for mattresses for themselves. 
 "We can still get ticking in Brussels if 
 we have the money, but nothing to stuff it 
 with." 
 
 Every morning since the beginning of 
 the war these women have been there, on 
 
120 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 their feet most of the time — sorting, ar- 
 ranging packages of garments, and keep- 
 ing in their minds and hearts the hun- 
 dreds of mothers and babies who depend 
 on them. They often visit the homes 
 after cantine hours. Madame smiled as 
 she explained the necessity of a personal 
 investigation of each case. "For in- 
 stance," she said, "if at the children's 
 cantine I gave a youngster a pair of shoes 
 simply because he seemed to have none, 
 and without personally proving that he 
 had none, I should undoubtedly have an 
 entire -barefoot family the next day!" 
 
 It was with this particular kind of work 
 that the Petites Abeilles or "Little Bees" 
 started five years before the war. A group 
 of young women banded together to help 
 children, and organized centers in Brus- 
 sels for the distribution of needed cloth- 
 ing. Their eflforts at once won the en- 
 thusiasm of the people. Poets wrote 
 songs to "The Little Bees," the Queen 
 
LAYETTES 121 
 
 and the adored Princess Marie- Jose were 
 their patronesses — ^they were probably the 
 most popular organization of their kind in 
 Belgium. 
 
 Then the war came, and the mothers 
 quickly took charge. They established a 
 vast home for refugees, where they 
 housed over 5,000. Later they appealed 
 to the Relief Committee to be allowed to 
 develop their work to meet the terrible 
 emergency. Their offer was only too 
 gladly accepted, and one after another 
 cantine for feeding, as well as clothing, 
 was opened in the various sections of the 
 city ; where to-day practically all the work 
 for the children is carried on by these 
 wonderful "Little Bees" and their 
 mothers. By July, 1916, their 124 Brussels 
 sections were caring for about 25,000 
 children, and between 2,500 and 3,000 
 women were giving a great part of their 
 time to the work. Social barriers disap- 
 peared. All classes rallied to the need. 
 
122 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 Four hundred telephone girls out of work 
 were doing their best, side by side with 
 countesses. 
 
 As we were leaving, Madame explained 
 that the woman who founded this par- 
 ticular cantine was a prisoner in Ger- 
 many. The three beautiful young girls 
 sorting the layettes were the daughters, 
 carrying forward their mother's work. 
 I was to learn that almost invariably at 
 some moment of my visit, the veil would 
 be withdrawn and the tragedy revealed. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE SKATING-RINK !A:T LIEGE 
 
 TO the world Liege is the symbol of 
 Belgium's courage. During eleven 
 days her forts withheld an over- 
 whelming force, reckless of its size or her 
 own unpreparedness, determined to save 
 the national integrity of Belgium. And 
 well Belgium knew to what point she 
 could count on the brave Liegeois; 
 through all her troubled history, they had 
 been the ardent champions of her free- 
 dom. 
 
 This beautiful city on the Meuse es- 
 caped the ruin visited on other parts of 
 her province. In fact, all the four largest 
 cities of Belgium escaped, in each case a 
 smaller neighboring town, especially pic- 
 turesque, stands as an example of de- 
 
 133 
 
124. WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 struction and warning. Belgians ask if 
 it was not with the obvious intent of cow- 
 ing the nearby capital, that Dinant was 
 made an example to Namur, Nimy to 
 Mons, Louvain to Brussels? They point 
 out that tho only the ghost of lovely 
 Visee remains, Liege itself has lost but 
 about lOO buildings. After the final in- 
 evitable surrender of her forts, the at- 
 tacking army passed on, leaving her un- 
 der powerful control. But tho the 
 material damage was small, as the popu- 
 lous center of a great industrial region, 
 this city was one of the first to realize the 
 distress that followed the occupation and 
 isolation of Belgium. One by one her 
 famous firearm factories and glass mills 
 closed their doors, and poured their thou- 
 sands of workmen into the streets. In 
 many cases the factories were dismantled, 
 the machinery taken to Germany to make 
 munitions. And this was happening all 
 through the province, so that by 191 5 it 
 
THE SKATING-RINK AT LIEGE 126 
 
 counted 90,000 idle workmen (chomeurs), 
 and in the capital alone, fully 18,000. 
 Ordinarily (among her 180,000 inhabit- 
 ants) Liege lists 43,000 skilled workmen; 
 so for her the proportion of idle was al- 
 most one-half; with their families they 
 represented but little less than one-quarter 
 of the entire population. The 4,000 em- 
 ployed in the coal mines, which, for- 
 tunately, were able to keep open, were 
 the one saving factor in the situation. 
 
 The question of chomage, or unem- 
 ployment, is the most serious the relief 
 organization has had to face. It has 
 been most acute in the two Flanders; but 
 in Antwerp, with its 25,000 idle dock 
 hands, in the highly industrial Hainault, 
 in Namur and Brabant, as well as in 
 Liege, there have been special circum- 
 stances developing particular difficulties. 
 Over 665,000 workmen without work, 
 representing millions of dependents, would 
 present a sufficiently critical problem to 
 
126 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 a country not at war. One can imagine 
 what it means to a country every square 
 foot of which is controlled by an enemy 
 so hated that the conquered would risk 
 all the evils of continued non-employment 
 rather than have any of its people serve 
 in any way the ends of the invader. Bet- 
 ter roads, better railways, mean greater 
 facility for the Germans. 
 
 None of the leaders I have talked with 
 have been satisfied with the system 
 evolved, but no one has yet been able to 
 substitute a better. 
 
 A scheduled money allowance for the 
 chomeur was quickly adopted, but as a 
 friend from Tournai said, this enabled a 
 man simply to escape complete starva- 
 tion, but not to live. Three francs a week 
 for the workman, one franc and a half for 
 his wife, fifty centimes for each of his 
 children, or one dollar and ten cents a 
 week for a family of four, just about the 
 war price of one pound of butter or meat I 
 
THE SKATING-RINK AT LEEGE 12T 
 
 Obviously the chomeur and his family 
 must draw on the soupes and cantines, 
 and this they do. They form a consider- 
 able part of the one and one-quarter mil- 
 lions of the soup-lines. Every province 
 has tried to reduce its number of unem- 
 ployed by providing a certain amount of 
 work on roads and public utilities. 
 Luxembourg has been conspicuous in this 
 attempt, reclaiming swamps, rebuilding 
 sewer systems and roadways, employing 
 about lOjOCX) men. In fact, Luxembourg 
 has so far almost avoided a chomeur 
 class. 
 
 Throughout the country, too, the cloth- 
 ing and lace committees are furnishing 
 at least partial employment to women. 
 In a lesser way various local relief com- 
 mittees are most ingenious in inventing 
 opportunities to give work. In the face 
 of the whole big problem they often seem 
 insignificant, but every community is 
 heartened by even the smallest attempt to 
 
1*8 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 restore industry. I have seen fifty men 
 given the chance to buy their own food 
 by means of a "soles work." AH the 
 needy of the village were invited to bring 
 their worn shoes to have a new kind of 
 wooden sole put on for the winter, and 
 the men were paid by the committee for 
 putting them on. In one city the owner 
 of a closed firearm factory has opened a 
 toy works where lOO men and 30 women 
 are kept busy carving little steel boxes 
 and other toys. If these articles could be 
 exported, such establishments would 
 quickly multiply, but every enterprize 
 must halt at the grim barrier. 
 
 In Liege I came upon a most pic- 
 turesque attempt at an individual solu- 
 tion. I had been much interested in Ant- 
 werp and Qiarleroi and other cities, in 
 the "Diner Economique" or "Diner Bour- 
 geois," conducted by philanthropic 
 women. These are big, popular restau- 
 rants, where because of a subsidy from 
 
THE SKATING-RINK AT LIEGE 129 
 
 the relief committee, and because almost 
 all of the service is contributed, a meal 
 can be served for less than it costs. For 
 a few centimes, about ten cents, usually, 
 one may have a good soup, a plate with 
 meat and vegetables, and sometimes a 
 dessert. 
 
 Wonderful Belgian women come day 
 after day, month after month, to serve 
 the thousands that flock to these centers 
 that save them from the soup-lines. If 
 they can add this dinner to their relief 
 ration, they can live. And they are not 
 "accepting charity!" The dining-rooms 
 are always attractive, often bright with 
 flags and flowers, the women are cheery 
 in their service. Priests, children, artists, 
 men and women of every class sit at the 
 tables. Once I saw a poor mother buy 
 one dinner for herself and her two chil- 
 dren, and fortunately, too, I saw a swift 
 hand slip extra portions in front of the 
 little ones. There are ten such restau- 
 
180 WOMEN OF BELGroM 
 
 rants in Antwerp (five conducted by the 
 Catholics, and five by the Liberals) that 
 serve on an average over 10,000' dinners 
 a day. The one in Charleroi serves from 
 400 to 900 daily. 
 
 In Liege the work is consolidated. I 
 found the once popular skating-rink 
 turned into a mighty restaurant, gay with 
 American bunting. The skating floor 
 was crowded with tables, the surround- 
 ing spectators' space made convenient 
 cloak-rooms, the one-time casual buffet 
 was a kitchen in deadly earnest, supply- 
 ing dinners to about 4,000 daily. 
 
 When I arrived, there was already a 
 line outside; each person had to present 
 a card on entering to prove him a citizen 
 of Liege. If he could, he paid 75 centimes 
 (15 cents) for his dinner. If unable to, 
 by presenting a special card from the Re- 
 lief Committee, he might receive it for 
 60, or even 30 centimes — a. little more 
 than 5 cents. 
 
THE SKATING-RINK AT LIEGE 131 
 
 Inside the tables were crowded, sixty- 
 five women were hurrying between them 
 and back and forth to the directors who 
 stood at a long counter in front of the 
 kitchen, serving the thousands of por- 
 tions, of soup, sausage, and a kind of 
 stew of rice and vegetables. 
 
 In the kitchen and meat and vegetable 
 rooms there was the constant clamor of 
 sifting, cutting, stirring, of the opening 
 and shutting of ovens. While the 
 sausages of the day were being hurried 
 from the pans, the soup of the morrow 
 was being mixed in the great caldrons; 
 250 men were hard at work. Somehow 
 they did not look as tho they had been 
 peeling carrots and stirring soup all their 
 lives — there was an inspiring dash in 
 their movements that prevented it seem- 
 ing habitual. 
 
 The superintendent laughed: "Yes," 
 he said, "they are chiefly railroad engi- 
 neers, conductors, various workmen of 
 
1318 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 the Liege Railroad Company! I myself 
 was an attorney for the road, and I am 
 really more interested in this oeuvre from 
 the point of view of these men, than be- 
 cause of the general public it helps. Here 
 are 250 men who are giving their best 
 service to their country. In working for 
 others they have escaped the curse of 
 being forced to work for the Germans! 
 The sixty-five women serving the 
 4,000 were once in the telephone service. 
 They also offered to devote themselves to 
 their fellow-sufferers, and they are so 
 proud, so happy to be able to stand 
 shoulder to shoulder with other women in 
 this black hour." 
 
 I asked if each worker were given his 
 dinner. "Ah! there was a problem!" he 
 said. "The meals which we furnish for 
 from 30 to 75 centimes, cost us an aver- 
 age of 63 centimes." To supply this to 
 250 assistants was quite beyond the sub- 
 sidy allowed the Relief. And yet the 
 
THE SKATING-RINK AT LIEGE 133 
 
 workers certainly must be fed. Finally he 
 admitted that he and a group of friends 
 were contributing the money necessary to 
 supply these meals. He added that in the 
 beginning the men were hardly able to 
 give more than two hours' hard work a 
 day, but that after a few months of 
 proper nourishment their energy was in- 
 exhaustible. 
 
 On another day I found there were no 
 potatoes, and that the number of meals 
 served had in consequence dropt fully 
 1,000; 743 at 75 centimes, 820 at 60 
 centimes, 1,473 ^^ 3° centimes. If there 
 are no potatoes to be had in the city, and 
 they are known to be on the carte of the 
 restaurant, there is not standing-room. 
 Hundreds have to be turned away. 
 
 This kind of double ceuvre is quite 
 the most interesting of all the varied at- 
 tempts to meet the staggering problem 
 Belgium has daily to face. 
 
XV 
 
 'A ZEPPELIN 
 
 I WENT down the road toward Ver- 
 viers. I stopt at a farmhouse to talk 
 with the farmer about the pitiful ration 
 of the Liege coal miners. They travel 
 many miles underground, and there is no 
 way of getting hot soup to them. His wife 
 gave me a glass of sweet milk. Then 
 we went into the courtyard where he had 
 a great caldron of prune syrup simmer- 
 ing. 
 
 The summer had been wet and gray, 
 but September was doing her best to 
 make up for it. Suddenly I heard the 
 soft whirr-whirr of a Zeppelin. I ran 
 out into the road. The farmer left his 
 prunes to join me. We watched the 
 
 134 
 
A ZEPPELIN 135 
 
 great strange thing gliding through the 
 sunshine. It was flying so low that we 
 could easily distinguish the fins, the 
 gondolas, the propellers. It looked more 
 than anything else like a gigantic, un- 
 earthly model for the little Japanese 
 stuflfed fishes I had often seen in the 
 toy shops. Its blunt nose seemed shining 
 white, the rest a soft gray. The effect of 
 the soothing whirring and its slow glid- 
 ing through the air was indescribable; 
 that it could be anything but a gentle 
 messenger of peace was unbelievable. 
 "Ah, Madame," said my companion, 
 "four years ago I saw my first Zeppelin! 
 It seemed a beautiful vision from another 
 world, like something new in my re- 
 ligion. We all stood breathless, praying 
 for the safety of this wonderful new 
 being; praying that the brave men who 
 conducted it might be spared to the 
 world. And to-day, Madame, may it be 
 blown to atoms ; if necessary may its men 
 
136 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 be cut to bits; may they be burned to 
 ashes — anything — anything ! With an un- 
 dying hate I swear it shall be destroyed! 
 Mada^ie, that is what war does to a man ! 
 War, Madame, is a horrible thing!" 
 
XVI 
 
 NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 
 
 THE cereal and fat reserves are 
 divided between Rotterdam, the 
 mills, warehouses and moving 
 lightei^s in Belgium and Northern 
 France, so that one can never see the 
 dramatic heaping up in one place of the 
 grain that is to feed 10,000,000 for six 
 days, or months. But the greater part 
 of the clothing reserves are held in the 
 one city of Brussels. Their housing fur- 
 nishes another of the bewildering con- 
 trasts wrought by the war; what was 
 two years ago a huge, thrilling Hippo- 
 drome is now filled with the silent ranks 
 of bolts of cotton and flannel. And not 
 
 137 
 
138 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 far away, the once popular skating-rink 
 is piled to the ceiling with finished gar- 
 ments; stage boxes, galleries, dressing- 
 rooms, stairways — all are heaped with 
 cases and stacked with racks. The ceil- 
 ing is the only part of the edifice still 
 visible ; along the rear wall, for instance, 
 runs a big sign, "Garments for Babies," 
 and they mount to the skylights. Stocks 
 are accumulating in both these build- 
 ings and other sub-centers during the 
 summer, and in the autumn the work 
 of distribution against the approaching 
 winter begins, October ist registering 
 the high-water mark of assets. At that 
 time there were three and a half million 
 pieces, yards and pairs, on the shelves 
 of the Hippodrome, and already hun- 
 dreds of thousands of garments assem- 
 bled in the skating-rink. 
 
 The Rink is not more than a few yards 
 and minutes from the Hippodrome, but 
 a bolt of flannel may travel many miles 
 
NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 189 
 
 and occupy several weeks in going from 
 one to the other. That journey explains 
 the marvelous development of the cloth- 
 ing organization. One may go even 
 further, and trace the cloth from the 
 donor in America, to the recipient in 
 Mons or Tournai! In fact, I once 
 thought I recognized a finished blouse, 
 as plaid flannel contributed in San 
 Francisco. I may have been mistaken, 
 but I let my mind follow that flannel 
 from the hand of the little school- 
 teacher on the Pacific, to the unhappy 
 mother in Tournai ! 
 
 For when the C. R. B. sent out a call 
 for new clothing materials in January, 
 191 6, somehow it reached a weather- 
 beaten school-house on a lonely stretch 
 of coast 30 miles south of San Fran- 
 cisco. The teacher hurriedly got to- 
 gether some wool, and began showing 
 her eight pupils (they happened all to 
 be boys), how to knit caps for other 
 
140 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 boys of their own size. Their few families 
 gathered what they could, and on her 
 first free Saturday, the teacher started 
 in an open buggy in the rain for the 
 C. R. B. Bureau in San Francisco. This 
 meant 30 miles over wretched roads, up 
 hill and down, with her precious box. 
 When we opened it we found eight 
 knitted caps, one small sack of rice, one 
 pair of fur-lined gloves, a bag of beans, 
 a lady's belt, plaid flannel for a blouse, 
 and 40 cents for eight five-cent stamps 
 for the letters the boys hoped to receive 
 in answer to those they had carefully 
 tucked inside the caps. They did not 
 know that our orders were to remove 
 all writing from all gifts, tho once in a 
 while a line did slip in. I saw a touch- 
 ing example of what these slips meant 
 when I was leaving Brussels. A group 
 of women came to me to say, "Madame, 
 we hear you are going to California — 
 is it true? And, if you are, may we not 
 
NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 141 
 
 send a message of just a single word by 
 you? Will you not tell Margery Marshall, 
 of Saratoga, that the pretty dress she 
 sent over a year ago, made a little girl, 
 oh, so happy! She has waited all these 
 long months hoping to find a way to 
 thank Margery — and we want to thank 
 Margery. Will you tell her?" 
 
 These offerings then were freighted 
 to New York with the month's contribu- 
 tions, and there consigned to a C. R. B. 
 ship, starting for Rotterdam. In Rot- 
 terdam they were unloaded into the 
 enormous C. R. B. clothing warehouse, 
 a corrugated zinc structure as big as a 
 city block. After the examinations, 
 valuings and listings, they were re- 
 loaded on to one of the C. R. B. barges 
 that ply the canals constantly, and 
 finally deposited for the Comite Na- 
 tional in the Hippodrome at Brussels. 
 There the women's work began — in fact, 
 to one woman especially is due the credit 
 
142 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 for the completeness of the organization 
 of this clothing department. 
 
 On a certain day the flannel for the 
 blouse was piled into a big gray truck 
 and hauled across the city to one of the 
 most interesting places in Brussels. 
 This is at once the central workroom 
 for the capital, and the pattern and 
 model department for all Belgium. 
 Madame . . . has 500 women and men 
 working continually, to prepare the 
 bundles of cut garments that go out to 
 the sub-sections and homes in Brussels. 
 If the seamstresses have children they 
 may receive one bundle of sewing a 
 week ; if not, but one in a fortnight. In 
 the ouvroir itself the work is divided be- 
 tween shifts who are allowed to come 
 for a fortnight each. This is, of course, 
 the great sorrow of the committees. If 
 only there were enough work to give all 
 the time to those whose sole appeal is 
 that they be allowed to earn their soup 
 
NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 143 
 
 and bread! But every hour's work en- 
 courages somebody, and the opportuni- 
 ties are distributed just as widely as 
 possible. In this way about 25,000 are 
 reached in Greater Brussels alone. 
 
 The business of preparing these little 
 packages of cut-out blouses and trousers 
 and bibs is amazing. The placing of 
 patterns to save cloth in the cutting is 
 the first consideration ; the counting off 
 of the buttons, tapes, hooks and neces- 
 sary furnishings for millions of gar- 
 ments — can we conceive the tediousness 
 of this task? Instructions must be care- 
 fully marked on a card that is tied across 
 the top of the completed bundle, every- 
 thing being made as simple for the sewer 
 as possible. They travel from one coun- 
 ter to another, from one room to the 
 next, even up and down stairs, be- 
 fore compact, neat and complete, they 
 are finally registered and ready to 
 go to the waiting women, who will 
 
144 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 make them into the skirts or baby slips 
 or men's shirts or suits that the relief 
 committees will distribute. 
 
 That is the Brussels side of the work; 
 the national side appears in the pattern 
 and model department. Madame has 
 developed this to an extraordinary de- 
 gree. Here dozens of people are bend- 
 ing over counters, folding, measuring, 
 cutting heavy brown paper into shapes 
 for every particular article that is to be 
 given to every particular man, baby and 
 woman in Belgium. There are patterns 
 for children of every age, and for grown- 
 ups, of every width and length — ^hundreds 
 of patterns for all the workrooms in all 
 the provinces. Then there are sample 
 picture-charts showing how the patterns 
 must be placed for the most advantage- 
 ous cutting. Along with every type of 
 pattern goes one finished model for exhi- 
 bition in the workroom. In the models 
 the women may see just how the little 
 
55 
 
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 < 
 
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 < 
 
 a 
 u 
 
 o 
 
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 |3 
 O 
 
NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 146 
 
 bundles that started originally from the 
 Hippodrome should look, when they are 
 shipped back as garments to the Rink. 
 
 And it was for one of these models for 
 a blouse that the school-teacher's plaid 
 was used! As sample blouse it traveled 
 from the Brussels pattern center to 
 an ouvroir in the Southern Hainaut: 
 it hung in a workroom in Mons! 
 After hundreds of blouses had been 
 copied from it and distributed in the 
 province, the pattern department de- 
 cided to change the blouse model, and 
 the old one was sent back to Brussels to 
 the skating-rink, to be apportioned 
 again, as it happened, to the relief com- 
 mittee in Tournai, which knew the need 
 of the mother who wore it the day I 
 saw her! Too much system, you will 
 say. But there should be no such criti- 
 cism until one has seen with his own 
 eyes several millions depending entirely 
 on a relief organization for covering 
 
146 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 (blankets and shoes, too, are a necessary 
 part of the aid given), and realize the 
 terrible obligations to divide the work 
 among as many as possible of the thou- 
 sands of unemployed, the necessity of 
 a high standard of work, and of jus- 
 tice in division among the nine prov- 
 inces. 
 
 The scraps from the floors of the 
 ouvroirs are carefully hoarded in sacks, 
 in the hope that the Germans may grant 
 the committee the right to use a factory 
 to re-weave them into some rough ma- 
 terials in the absence of cotton and wool. 
 Some of these cuttings are at present 
 being used as filling for quilts. 
 
 The constant contributions of time 
 and service at the strictly business ends 
 — in the warehouses, or depots like the 
 Hippodrome, or the skating-rink — seem 
 more generous than all others. In these 
 places the committees are shut away 
 from that daily contact with misery that 
 
NEW USES OF A HIPPODROME 147 
 
 evokes a quick response. The business 
 there has settled down to a matter of 
 lists and accounts: one must work with 
 a far vision for inspiration. It is quite 
 a diflferent matter in the actual ouvroir, 
 where grateful women come all day and 
 sew, and are sometimes allowed to keep 
 their little children beside them. There 
 you have their stories and know their 
 suffering; you are able, also, to teach 
 them, while they sew, how to care for 
 their bodies and their homes, even to 
 sing, and all the while you realize that 
 the very garments they are putting to- 
 gether are to go to others even more un- 
 happy — these are the places where serv- 
 ice has its swift and rich rewards! 
 I have visited just such blessed work- 
 rooms in Namur and Charleroi and 
 Mons, in Antwerp and Dinant, in fact 
 in dozens of cities up and down the 
 length of Belgium. If they could be 
 gaily flagged as they should be, we 
 
148 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 should see all the country dotted witfi 
 these centers of hope. And we should 
 know that they meant that thousands of 
 women in Belgium are being given at 
 least a few days' work every month. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE ANTWERP MUSIC-HALL 
 
 BEFORE the war the big music-hall 
 in Antwerp offered a gay and di- 
 verting program. Every night 
 thousands drifted in to laugh and smoke 
 — drawn by the human desire for happi- 
 ness. Here they were care-free, irre- 
 sponsible ; tragedy was forgotten. 
 
 To-day it is still a music-hall. As 
 Madame opened the door — from the 
 floor, from the galleries, from every 
 part of the vast place floated a wonder- 
 ful solemn music — 1,200 girls were sing- 
 ing a Flemish folk-song that might have 
 been a prayer. We looked on a sea of 
 golden and brown heads bending over 
 
 149 
 
160 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 sewing tables. Noble women had res- 
 cued them from the wreckage of war — 
 within the shelter of this music-hall 
 they were working for their lives, sing- 
 ing for their souls ! 
 
 And all the time they were preparing 
 the sewing and embroidery materials for 
 3,300 others working at home. In other 
 words, this was one of the blessed 
 ouvroirs or workrooms of Belgium. 
 
 Off at the left a few tailors were cut- 
 ting men's garments. High on the 
 stage, crowded with packing-cases, sat 
 the committee of men who give all their 
 time to measuring the goods, register- 
 ing the income and output of materials 
 and finished garments. On the stage, 
 too, was an extraordinary exhibit. Three 
 forms presented three of the quaint- 
 est silk dresses imaginable, elaborately 
 trimmed with ribbons and velvets and 
 laces, and all designed for women of 
 dainty figure. I laughed and then rather 
 
THE ANTWERP MUSIC-HALL 151 
 
 flushed, as I remembered the stories of the 
 white satin slippers and chiffon ball gowns 
 that had been included in our clothing 
 offering of 1914. I murmured some- 
 thing of apology, and referred to the 
 advance the Commission had made in 
 191 5> when it had sent out the appeal for 
 new materials only. 
 
 But Madame protested: "Oh," sKe 
 said, "these are here in honor! And we 
 know that somebody once loved these 
 dainty dresses, and for that reason gave 
 them to us. We love your old clothes ! 
 Our only sadndss is that we can not have 
 them any more. One old dress to be 
 made over gives work for days and days, 
 while the new materials can be put to- 
 gether in one or two. What will become 
 of all my girls now that I shall have no 
 more of your old clothes to furnish 
 them? How shall they earn their 3 
 'francs (60 cents) a week? At best we 
 can allow each but eight days' work out 
 
152 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 of fifteen, and only one person from 
 each family may have this chance. 
 
 "But these three dresses we shall not 
 touch!" And she smiled as she looked 
 again at her exhibit. 
 
 Here the whole attitude toward the 
 clothing is from the point of view, not 
 of the protection it gives, but of the em- 
 ployment it offers. Without this employ- 
 ment, without the daily devotion of the 
 wonderful women who have built up 
 this astonishing organization, thou- 
 sands of other women must have been 
 on the streets — ^with no opportunity 
 (except the dread, ever present one) 
 through these two years to earn a franc, 
 with nothing but the soup-lines to de- 
 pend on for bread. Of course, there is 
 always dire need for the finished gar- 
 ments. They are turned over as fast as 
 they can be to the various other commit- 
 tees that care for the destitute. Be- 
 tween February, 1915, and May, 1916, 
 
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 w 
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THE ANTWERP MUSIC-HALL 153 
 
 articles valued at over 2,000,000 francs 
 were given out in this way through this 
 ouvroir alone. 
 
 But one could endure cold — ^anything 
 is better than the moral degrada- 
 tion following long periods of non-em- 
 ployment. So it is not of the garments, 
 but of the 9,500,000 francs dispensed as 
 wages, that these women think. The 
 work must go on. "See," Madame said, 
 "what we do with the veriest scraps!" 
 A young woman was putting together 
 an attractive baby quilt. She had four 
 pieces of an old coat, large enough to 
 make the top and lining, and inside she 
 was stitching literally dozens of little 
 scraps of light woolen materials. An- 
 other was making children's shoes out 
 of bits of carpet and wool. 
 
 In one whole section the girls do noth- 
 ing but embroider our American flour 
 sacks. Artists draw designs to repre- 
 sent the gratitude of Belgium to the 
 
164 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 United States. The one on the easel as 
 we passed through, represented the lion 
 and the cock of Belgium guarding the 
 crown of the king, while the sun — the 
 great American eagle — rises in the East, 
 The sacks that are not sent to America 
 as gifts are sold in Belgium as souvenirs. 
 Each sack has its value before being 
 worked. Many of them — especially in 
 the north of France — have been made 
 into men's shirts, and tiny babies' shirts 
 and slips. 
 
 Before July, 1916, in the Charleroi 
 ouvroir, over 30,000 sacks had been 
 made into 15,000 shirts at a cost of 25 
 centimes per sack, and a sewing price of 
 30 centimes each. 
 
 Each Monday the women may work 
 on their own garments, and on Tuesday 
 all the poor of the city bring their cloth- 
 ing to be patched or darned. A shoe sec- 
 tion, too, does what it can for old shoes. 
 Such shoes and such remnants of socks 
 
THE ANTWERP MUSIC-HALL 155 
 
 and of shirts as we saw ! But the more 
 difficult the job, the happier the com- 
 mittee ! 
 
 During the week, courses are given in 
 the principles of dressmaking and de- 
 sign. In the evening there are classes 
 for history, geography, literature, writ- 
 ing, and very special attention is given 
 to hygiene, which is taught by means of 
 the best modern slides. These things 
 are splendid, and with the three francs 
 a week wages, spell self-respect, cour- 
 age, progress all along the line. The 
 committee has always been able to se- 
 cure the money for the wages, but they 
 can not possibly furnish the materials — 
 sufficient new ones they could never 
 have. 
 
 They are living from day to day on 
 the hope that the C. R. B. may be able 
 to make an exception for the Antwerp 
 GUvroir, and appeal once more for her 
 precious necessity — "old clothes!" This 
 
156 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 the C. R. B. may be able to do — ^but will 
 England feel equally free to make an ex- 
 ception to her ruling that since the Ger- 
 mans have taken the wool from the 
 Belgian sheep, no clothing of any kind 
 can be sent in ? 
 
 As I was leaving, a thrilling thing 
 happened. Picture this sea of golden 
 and brown heads low over the heaped 
 tables — every square foot of pit, gal- 
 leries and entry packed, lengths of cot- 
 ton and flannel flung in confusion over 
 all the balconies and from the royal box 
 like war banners — and then suddenly 
 see a man making his way through the 
 crowded packing-cases on the stage to 
 the footlights! He was the favorite 
 baritone of this one-time concert hall, 
 and he has come (as he does twice a 
 week) to stand in the midst of the pack- 
 ing-cases behind his accustomed foot- 
 lights to sing to this audience driven in 
 by disaster, and to teach them the beau- 
 
THE ANTWERP MUSIC-HALL 167 
 
 tiful Flemish folk-songs. They sing as 
 they work. For several minutes neither 
 Madame nor I spoke. Then she smiled 
 swiftly and said : "Yes, it is sadly beauti- 
 ful — and you know, incidentally, it pre- 
 vents much idle chatter!" 
 
XVIII 
 
 LACE 
 
 A FULL account of the struggle of 
 the Ikce-workers would take us 
 straight to the heart of the trag- 
 edy of Belgium. At present it can only 
 be intimated. The women who are back 
 of this struggle represent a fine intelli- 
 gence, a most fervent patriotism and 
 most unswerving devotion to their peo- 
 ple and their country. 
 
 Before the war, her laces were the 
 particular pride of Belgium, Flanders 
 produced, beside the finest linen, the most 
 exquisite lace known. The Queen took 
 this industry under her especial patron- 
 age and tried in every way to better 
 the condition of the workers, and to 
 
 158 
 
LACE 169 
 
 raise the standard of the output. We 
 need to remember that when war broke 
 out, 50,000 women were supporting 
 themselves, and often their famiUes, 
 through this work; we need to remem- 
 ber the suddenness with which the steel 
 ring was thrown about Belgium — all im- 
 port of thread, all export of lace, at once 
 and entirely cut off. In a few weeks, 
 in a few days, thousands of women were 
 without hope of earning their bread — 
 at least in the only way hitherto open to 
 them. The number grew with desper- 
 ate swiftness. And we need most of all 
 to remember that the chief lace centers 
 were in the zone under direct military 
 rule. 
 
 Women like Madame . . . grappled with 
 this situation, trying to save their work- 
 ers (most of them young girls) from the 
 dread alternative, trying by one means and 
 another to give them heart, and hoping 
 always that America could make a way 
 
160 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 for them, till finally that hope was 
 realized — the C. R. B. had gained the 
 permission of England to bring in a cer- 
 tain amount of thread, and to take out a 
 corresponding amount of lace for sale in 
 France and England, or elsewhere. 
 
 A fever of effort followed. Every- 
 where those who had been trying to 
 keep the groups of lace-workers alive 
 were given thread. They organized cen- 
 ters for the control of the output. The 
 thread must be weighed as it was given 
 out, and paid for by the worker as a 
 guaranty that it would not be sold to 
 some one else; the weight of the lace 
 turned in must tally. Much thought 
 must be put in the selection of designs, 
 into the choice of articles to be made — 
 things that would interest the people of 
 England and France and America. 
 
 Certain parts and kinds of these laces 
 are made in certain districts only. I am 
 told that the very fine Malines lace, 
 
LACE 161 
 
 made now only in a restricted area, will 
 not be found much longer. All these 
 separate parts must be brought to the 
 central depot to be made into tea-cloths 
 and doilies and other articles for export. 
 The finest and most necessary laces and 
 the linen for the cloths are made in or 
 about Bruges and Courtrai and in other 
 towns in Flanders, in what is known as 
 the "fitape," or zone of military prepa- 
 ration, with which it is almost impossi- 
 ble to communicate. 
 
 The C. R. B. is made absolutely re- 
 sponsible to England that no lace will 
 be sold in the open market in the occu- 
 pied territory (altho it was allowed to 
 be sold in October and November, 191 5, 
 at exhibitions in several of the large 
 cities of Belgium), and that all of it be 
 exported. If it is not sold, it must be 
 held at Rotterdam. 
 
 One can imagine the meaning of the 
 first export of lace to those whose hearts 
 
162 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 were in this work. It was not only that 
 they saw the lace-workers kept alive, but 
 they saw their country reunited with 
 the outside world. Her beautiful laces 
 were going to those who would buy 
 them eagerly, her market would be kept 
 open. 
 
 Of necessity, the work became 
 strongly centralized. The Brussels bu- 
 reau, where three noble women espe- 
 cially were giving literally every day of 
 their time and every particle of their 
 energy and talent, became the official 
 headquarters, and 45,000 lace-workers 
 were employed under orders sent out by 
 this central committee. Every day they 
 came to plan, to design, to direct. They 
 were handling thousands of articles, 
 and hundreds of thousands of francs. 
 They carefully examined every yard 
 sent in, rejecting any piece below the 
 standard, encouraging excellence in 
 every possible way. Never in recent 
 
LACE 163 
 
 times have there been such beautiful 
 laces made, and they are being sold at 
 about half what was asked before the 
 war. Many of the designs are copies of 
 the best ancient models, other lovely 
 ones turn on the present situation, hav- 
 ing for motive the roses of the Queen, 
 the arms of the provinces, the animals 
 of the Allies. 
 
 Madame . . . made an unforgettable 
 picture — tall, golden-haired, exquisite, ar- 
 ranging and re-arranging the insets for 
 her cloths and cushions-^and recounting, 
 as she set her patterns, the steps in the 
 struggle for the lace-workers. There 
 had been dangers, some were in prison. 
 As I listened I felt the fire within must 
 consume her. I understood why there 
 were women in prison, why martyrdom 
 was always a near and real possibility. 
 
 There were always discouragements 
 of one kind or another. At the bureau, 
 one day, Madame's eyes were red when 
 
164. WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 she came downstairs. She had just had 
 to turn off a group of workers; there 
 was no thread to give them. At best, 
 in order that all may be helped a little, 
 no one person may work more than 30 
 hours a week, nor receive more than 3 
 francs (or 60 cents) a week as wages! 
 But- on the whole the lace committees 
 are overwhelmingly grateful for the op- 
 portunities they have had. Up to 
 November, 191 6, they have dispensed 
 6,000,000 francs in wages. They have 
 given two weeks' work a month to 
 45,000 women, 25,000 of whom are 
 skilled, 10,000 of average ability, and 
 10,000 beginners. There will be a de- 
 ficit when the war is over. "But what 
 of that ?" they say, "if only we can keep 
 on! On the Great Day we shall give 
 back to the Queen her chosen industry, 
 fully three years ahead of where she left 
 it. She will find all the standards raised, 
 her women better trained and equipped 
 
LACE 165 
 
 to care for themselves, and to re-estab- 
 lish Belgium as the lace-maker of the 
 world." 
 
 It has been extremely difficult for the 
 C. R. B. to handle the lace in the United 
 States. Its great value necessitates 
 much more machinery and time than 
 could be spared from the all-important 
 , ravitaillement duty. The orders from 
 England and France are much easier to 
 take care of. On one happy day Paquin 
 wrote for all the Point de Paris 
 and Valenciennes they could supply. 
 Certain friends in London and New 
 York are every now and then sending 
 in individual rec^uests. On a red-letter 
 day the Queen of Roumania ordered, 
 through her Legation, three very beau- 
 tiful table-cloths, and quantities of other 
 fine laces. And it is the hope of the 
 committee that the number of these 
 friends will grow. Needless to say, 
 hardly a C. R. B. representative leaves 
 
166 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 Belgium without taking with him 
 some example of this exquisite work, a 
 testimony to others of the splendid de- 
 votion of the women of these lace com- 
 mittees. 
 
XIX 
 
 A TOY FACTORY 
 
 I WAS reminded again to-day of how 
 constant work must be the only thing 
 that makes living possible to many of 
 these women. We were at lunch, when 
 suddenly the roar of the German 
 guns cut across our talk. We rushed 
 into the street, where a gesticulating 
 crowd had already located the five 
 Allied aeroplanes high above us. Little 
 white clouds dotted the sky all about 
 them — puffs of white smoke that 
 marked the bursting shrapnel. Tho the 
 guns seemed to be firing just behind our 
 house, we believed we were quite out of 
 danger. However, Marie ran to us quite 
 white and with her hands over her ears. 
 "Oh, Madame!" she cried, "the shrap- 
 
 167 
 
168 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 nel is bursting all about the kitchen!" 
 She had experienced it. She had told 
 me once that her sister had died of fright 
 three days after the war began, and I 
 realized now that she probably had. 
 Dur picturesque Leon slipt over to 
 assure me that this was not a real attack, 
 but just a visit to give us hope on the 
 second anniversary of the beginning of 
 the war, to tell us the Allies were think- 
 ing of us, and that we should soon be 
 delivered. Without doubt they would 
 drop a message of some sort. 
 
 I thought of our United States Min- 
 ister and his proximity to the Luxem- 
 bourg railroad station. He had several 
 times smilingly exprest concern over 
 that proximity. 
 
 I remembered, too, the swift answer 
 of Monsieur . . . who lives opposite the 
 railroad station at Mons. Bombs had 
 just been dropt on this station — one had 
 fallen in front of his house, and when 
 
A TOY FACTORY 169 
 
 I asked if he and his wife would not con- 
 sider moving he replied, "Madame, our 
 two sons are in the trenches — should we 
 not be ashamed to think of this as 
 danger?" 
 
 All the while the aeroplanes were 
 circling and the guns were booming. 
 Then suddenly one of the aviators made 
 a sensational drop to within a few hun- 
 dred meters of the Molenbeek Station, 
 threw his bombs, and before the guns 
 could right themselves, regained his 
 altitude — and all five were ofif, marvel- 
 ously escaping the puffs of white before 
 and behind them. 
 
 This was thrilling, till suddenly 
 flashed the sickening realization of what 
 it really meant. The man behind the 
 gun was doing his utmost to kill the 
 man in the machine. It was horrible — 
 horrible to us. 
 
 But to Belgian wives and mothers 
 what must it have been? As they 
 
170 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 looked up they cried: "Is that my boy; 
 — my husband, who has come back to 
 his home this way? After two years, 
 is he there? My God, can they reach 
 him?" The only answer was the roar 
 of the guns, the bursting shrapnel — and 
 they covered their eyes. 
 
 I visited Madame . . . , whose only son 
 is in the flying corps, at her toy factory 
 the following day, and realized what 
 the experience had cost her. Her com- 
 ment, however, was, "Well, now I be- 
 lieve I am steeled for the next." 
 
 Madame is accomplishing one of the 
 finest pieces of work being done in Bel- 
 gium to-day. Before the war she had 
 a considerable reputation as a painter 
 in water colors. As suddenly as it came, 
 she found her home emptied of sons, 
 brothers, nephews, and she went 
 through the common experience of try- 
 ing to construct something from the 
 chaos of those tragic days. Her first 
 
A TOY FACTORY 171 
 
 thought was of what must be done for 
 the little nephews and nieces who were 
 left. They must be kept happy as well as 
 alive. And she wondered if she could not 
 turn her painting to use in making toys 
 for them. Often before the war when 
 sketching in Flanders she had looked at 
 the quaint old villages, full of beauty in 
 color and line, and felt that each was a 
 jewel in itself and ought, somehow, to be 
 preserved as a whole. And suddenly she 
 decided to try and reproduce them in 
 toy form for children. She drew beau- 
 tiful designs of the villages of Fumes 
 and Dixmude, loving ones of churches 
 that had already been destroyed. She 
 secured wood, began carving her houses, 
 trees, furniture — then arranged her vil- 
 lages, drawing the patterns for the chil- 
 dren to build from. Needless to say the 
 nieces and nephews were enchanted; 
 and she worked ahead on other villages 
 for other children. 
 
172 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 Not very long after this she visited 
 the Queen's ambulance in the palace at 
 Brussels, and as she talked with the 
 wounded Belgian soldiers, the thought 
 of the hopeless future of the mutilated 
 ones tormented her. It suddenly flashed 
 over her that they might be given hope, 
 if they could be taught to make her be- 
 loved toys. She was allowed to bring 
 in models — the soldiers were interested 
 at once — the authorities gave her per- 
 mission to teach them. 
 
 Later she secured a building in Brus- 
 sels — her sister-in-law and others of her 
 family came to help. They wisely laid 
 in a good supply of beechwood in ad- 
 vance, got their paints and other ma- 
 terials ready, and began to work with a 
 handful of soldiers. She soon needed 
 machines for cutting the wood, and then 
 found that no matter how thoroughly 
 healed, a man who has been terribly 
 wounded, the equilibrium of whose body 
 
A TOY FACTORY 173 
 
 had been destroyed by the loss of an 
 arm or leg, or both, could not soon be 
 trusted with a dangerous machine — and 
 she had to engage a few expert work- 
 men for this department. Girls begged 
 to be taken in, and she added nine to her 
 fifty soldiers — one of them a pretty, 
 black-haired refugee from the north of 
 France. The thick book with all the ad- 
 dresses of applicants for work who have 
 had to be refused, is a mute evidence of 
 the saddest part of this whole situation 
 — the lack of work for those who beg to 
 be kept off the soup-lines. 
 
 The fortunate ones are paid by piece- 
 work, but always the directors try to 
 arrange that each man shall be able to 
 earn about 2^ francs a day. 
 
 Madame is not merely accomplishing 
 a present palliative, but aiming at mak- 
 ing men self-respecting, useful members 
 of the State for their own and their 
 country's good. 
 
XX 
 
 ANOTHER TOY FACTORY 
 
 THE following day, I visited an- 
 other kind of toy factory. 
 Madame • . ., who had lost her 
 only son early in the war, works proba- 
 bly in the most inconvenient building in 
 Brussels, which she has free of charge. 
 She works there all day long, every day, 
 furnishing employment for between 30 
 and 40 girls, who would otherwise have 
 to be on the soupes. I went from one 
 room to another, where they were busily 
 constructing dolls, and animals, and all 
 sorts of fascinating toys out of bits of 
 cotton and woolen materials — cheap, 
 salable toys. 
 This is one of the things that we must 
 
 174 
 
ANOTHER TOY FACTORY 176 
 
 remember if we wish properly to appre- 
 ciate the work the women are doing — 
 most of it is being carried on in build- 
 ings that we should consider almost im- 
 possible — no elevators; everywhere the 
 necessity of climbing long flights of 
 stairs; no convenient sanitary arrange- 
 ments — but nothing discourages them. 
 
 Madame began by making bouncing 
 balls in the Belgian colors, stuffed with 
 a kind of moss. They cost only a few 
 centimes, and sold as fast as she could 
 make them. When the order came that 
 they were no longer to be made in these 
 colors, she ripped up those she had on 
 hand, and began new ones, omitting the 
 black. The balls must go on. Another 
 day all the stuffing for her balls was 
 requisitioned. She rushed out, up and 
 down, street after street, seeking a sub- 
 stitute, and by night the little store- 
 room was filled with a kind of dry grass 
 — and the balls could go on. 
 
176 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 The day of my first visit there were 
 6 of the 32 girls absent because of 
 illness. Madame said she usually had 
 that large a percentage out because of 
 intestinal troubles of one sort or an- 
 other. They get desperately tired of 
 their monotonous food, and whenever 
 they can scrape together a few extra 
 pennies, they go to one of the few choco- 
 late shops still open and make them- 
 selves ill. 
 
 Here, too, they are looking to Amer- 
 ica. If only they could get their toys 
 to our markets, they could take in many 
 who are suffering for want of work^ 
 and one feels that America would be 
 delighted with every toy. 
 
 It is Madame herself wHo designs 
 them. She is trying always to get some- 
 thing new, striking. In the C. R. B. 
 office one day I noticed a representative 
 off in a corner, busy with his pencil, and 
 found him struggling to represent some 
 
ANOTHER TOY FACTORY 177 
 
 sort of balancing bird — a suggestion for 
 Madame. 
 
 She makes these lovely toys from the 
 veriest scraps of cloth, old paper, straw, 
 with pebbles picked up from the roads 
 for weights. 
 
 In the beginning she knew nothing at 
 all about such work, nor did any one of 
 the young girls she was trying to help. 
 But such a spirit experiments ! She ground 
 newspapers in a meat-grinder to try to 
 evolve some kind of papier-mache. She 
 learned her processes by producing 
 things with her own hands, and then 
 taught each woman as she employed 
 her. Thus she, too, is not only keeping 
 her corps from the present soup-line, but 
 preparing a body of trained workers 
 for the future. The shops in Brussels 
 sell these toys — a few have reached as 
 far as Holland. 
 
 Everywhere in Belgium one is imprest 
 with the facility in the handling of 
 
178 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 color, of clay or wood. There is the 
 most unusual feeling for decorative 
 effect; the tiniest children in the schools 
 show a striking aptitude for design and 
 modeling, and an astonishing sense of 
 rhythm. One is constantly struck by 
 this; it is a delight to hear a group of 
 three-year olds carrying an intricate 
 song without accompaniment, as they 
 go through the figures of a dance. 
 
XXI 
 
 THE MUTILES 
 
 AT last I met the little Madame — all 
 nerve, energy — a flame flashing 
 from one plant under her charge 
 to the next. I had seen her whirling by 
 in a car, one of the two Belgian women 
 allowed a limited pass. I had heard how 
 she presided over councils o/ men, as 
 well as of women; that she had won the 
 admiration of all. With her it is not a 
 question of how many hours she spends; 
 she gives literally every hour of her 
 time. It was especially of her work for 
 the mutilated victims of the war that we 
 talked this morning. She took me to 
 the park at Woulwe, where she has i8o 
 men being trained in various trades. 
 
 179 
 
180 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 Ten months ago she decided that one 
 of the most important things Belgium 
 had to accomplish was to save its muti- 
 lated for themselves and the State. The 
 whole problem of the unemployment 
 brought on by the war was terrific. In 
 April, 1916, over 672,000 workmen were 
 idle. But the mutilated soldiers formed 
 the most heartbreaking part of this 
 problem. They must at once be taught 
 trades that would fill their days and 
 make them self-supporting in the future. 
 
 First of all, their surroundings must 
 be cheerful and healthy; no cramped 
 buildings in the city, and yet something 
 easily accessible from Brussels. She 
 told me how she searched the environs 
 until she came upon an old, apparently 
 deserted villa at Woulwe with beautiful 
 spacious grounds, orchard and vegetable 
 garden. She quickly sought out the 
 owner and appealed to him to turn his 
 property over to the "Mutiles." In 
 
THE MUTILES 181 
 
 three days a letter told her the request 
 was granted, and within a few hours an 
 architect was at work on the plans. He 
 developed a cottage system with every- 
 thing on one floor, sleeping-rooms, 
 workrooms, unlimited fresh air and 
 light; the most modern sanitary equip- 
 ment; and for the workrooms, every 
 practical arrangement possible. There 
 is a gymnasium with a resident physi- 
 cian directing the work. His duty is 
 one of the most difficult; it is not easy 
 to convince the men of the value of all 
 the bothersome exercises he prescribes. 
 The restoration of the equilibrium of 
 their broken bodies is to them often a 
 vague end. At first some even try to 
 escape using the artificial arms and legs 
 provided them. 
 
 The cottages are grouped about the 
 garden, under the trees, connected by 
 easy little paths for the lame and the 
 blind. The old villa holds the office, 
 
182 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 the dining-room, and a big, airy pavilion, 
 where the men may gather for a 
 weekly entertainment, cards or music. 
 A bowling alley has been converted 
 into the quaintest little chapel imagin- 
 able, with the Virgin Mary and the 
 statues of the King and Queen in very 
 close company, and back of them a 
 splendid Belgian flag. Besides the regu- 
 lar gatherings, the men hold special 
 services here for their comrades dead on 
 the Field of Honor. 
 
 One by one new cottages are being 
 built; more trades are being taught. 
 Electricity and book-binding have been 
 added recently, and the course for chauf- 
 feurs. The greater number of the men 
 work in the shoe shops, where there is 
 one workroom for the Walloons and 
 another for the Flemings; but the scar- 
 city of leather greatly hinders this im- 
 portant department. In certain sections 
 they are already using machinery manu- 
 
THE MUTILES 183 
 
 factured by the men themselves. And 
 it must be kept in mind all the time that 
 these men before the war were almost 
 without exception in the fields. 
 
 Madame told us that the most cheer- 
 ful workmen are the blind, who seemed, 
 however, most to be pitied, as they sat 
 there weaving their baskets and chair 
 seats. She said that often during their 
 weekly entertainments the entire com- 
 pany would be thrown into spasms of 
 laughter by the sudden meowing of cats 
 or cackling of hens in their midst. These 
 were the tricks of the blind men, who 
 were as gay as children. 
 
 The atelier is truly a joyous place, set 
 in a garden tended by the soldiers, and 
 inside flooded with light. The walls are 
 covered with models and designs. Some 
 of the men were busy with patterns for 
 lace and embroidery. Others were 
 modeling. A legless soldier, in the 
 trenches only a month ago, was already 
 
184 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 handling his clay with pleasure and skill. 
 But the most remarkable work was that 
 of a man who had lost his right arm. 
 Before the war, like the others, he had 
 been a "cultivateur," never conscious of 
 a talent that under the encouragement 
 of a good teacher was developing aston- 
 ishingly. With the pencil in his left hand, 
 he produced designs of leaves, flowers 
 and animals of great beauty. 
 
 One of the strangest, saddest sights 
 in the world is the workroom for artifi- 
 cial limbs. Here men who have lost 
 their own arms and legs sit construct- 
 ing arms and legs for their comrades 
 who are to lose theirs on the battlefield. 
 A soldier who had his right arm and all 
 but two fingers of his left hand shot 
 away, was filing, hammering, and shap- 
 ing an artificial arm. A man with half 
 of each forearm gone was able, by means 
 of a simple leather appliance, to make 
 thirty-five brushes a day. Here they 
 
THE MUTILES 185 
 
 were making, too, the gymnasium ap- 
 paratus for the muscular exercises which 
 help to restore the equilibrium of their 
 own bodies. 
 
 After visiting all the workshops, we 
 went to one of the cheery cottage dor- 
 mitories. It was noon-time now, and 
 the men, deciding that we were apt to 
 pass that way, had quickly decorated 
 the front porch with the flags of the 
 Allies, daringly binding our American 
 flag with them! Then with a yellow 
 sand they had written on the darker 
 earth in front of the cottage: "To the 
 Welcome Ones — the Brave Allies" — 
 (again they had included us !) "we offer 
 the gratitude of their soldiers!" 
 
XXII 
 
 THE LITTLE PACKAGE 
 
 ONE morning in Antwerp I saw 
 women with string bags filled 
 with all sorts of small packages, 
 some with larger boxes in their arms, 
 hurrying toward a door over which was 
 the sign "Le Petit Paquet"— the Little 
 Package. In the hallway many others 
 were trying to decipher various posted 
 notices. One black-haired woman, 
 empty bag in hand, was going through 
 the list marked "Kinds and quantities 
 of food allowed in 'Le Petit Paquet' 
 for our soldiers, prisoners in Germany." 
 This, then told the story — husbands 
 and sons were in prison — ^wives and 
 mothers were here ! The posted notices, 
 the organizations within achieved by 24 
 16S 
 
THE LITTLE PACKAGE 187 
 
 devoted women — the mountains of little 
 brown packages each carefully addrest, 
 approved for contents and weight, and 
 ready for shipment — these connected 
 the two sad extremes. 
 
 This morning the receiving-room was 
 crowded, as it is every morning, I am 
 told. The directors had been standing 
 back of the long counters since 7:30; 
 women of every class pressing along 
 the front, depositing their precious 
 offerings. 
 
 Each prisoner is allowed a monthly 
 500-gram parcel-post package, and a 10- 
 pound box, which may contain, beside 
 food, tobacco and clothing. The per- 
 mitted articles include cocoa, chocolate 
 and coffee; tinned fish and vegetables 
 and soups; powdered milk and jam. 
 Soap may be sent with the clothing. 
 One mother had arranged her parcels in 
 a pair of wooden sabots which she hoped 
 to have passed. 
 
188 WOMEN OF BELGroM 
 
 Such a rush of unwrapping, weighing, 
 re-wrapping. There seemed hardly a 
 moment for breathing, and yet somehow 
 there was time to listen to stories, to 
 answer questions, give courage to hun- 
 dreds who found in these rooms their 
 closest connection with their loved ones. 
 One could see that they were loath to 
 go — they would have liked to stay and 
 watch the final wrapping and register- 
 ing — to actually see their tokens to the 
 train ! 
 
 On this day there was a special gift 
 box from Cardinal Mercier for every 
 prisoner from the province. Antwerp 
 has 6,000 prisoners in Germany, and 
 through the offerings of relatives or 
 friends, or of the city itself when these 
 fail, each one receives a permitted gift. 
 
 One sees at a glance what an enor- 
 mous task the bookkeeping alone en- 
 tails — ^record of contents, addresses of 
 senders, distribution, registering of re- 
 
THE LITTLE PACKAGE 189 
 
 ceived packages, and numberless other 
 entries. And each month the instruc- 
 tions are changing, which renders the 
 ,work still more arduous. 
 
 And one is astonished over and over 
 again at the amount of sheer physical 
 energy women are putting into their 
 service. Belgium has some 40,000 pris- 
 oners in Germany. In Brussels ahd 
 other cities other women are repeating 
 what the directors in Antwerp were do- 
 ing that morning. 
 
XXIII 
 
 THE GREEN BOX 
 
 THERE are seven rooms in Brus- 
 sels, each with a long table in the 
 middle, and with rows upon rows 
 of green wooden boxes (about the size 
 of a macaroni box) on shelf-racks 
 against walls. The racks, too, are 
 painted the color of hope — the green 
 which after the war might well deserve 
 a place with the red, orange and black, 
 for having so greatly comforted the peo- 
 ple when all display of their national 
 colors was supprest. Each box has a 
 hook in front from which hangs a paste- 
 board card, marked with a number; it 
 hangs there if the box is full, when 
 empty it is filed. 
 
 190 
 
THE GREEN BOX 191 
 
 The first morning I happened in on 
 one of these sections, I found a director 
 and three pretty young girls feverishly 
 busy with hundreds and hundreds of 
 little paper bags. There were as many 
 green boxes as the table would hold, 
 arranged before them, with scales at 
 either end. They were running back 
 and forth from the pantry with a bowl 
 or an apronful of something, and then 
 weighing and pouring into the bags 
 tiny portions of beans and chicory, salt 
 and sugar, bacon and other things. 
 They weighed and poured as fast as they 
 could and with almost joyous satisfac- 
 tion tucked the little bags one after an- 
 other into the boxes. Then they dove 
 into the big vegetable baskets at one end 
 of the room, and each box was made gay 
 with a lettuce or cauliflower. For some 
 there were bottles of milk, or a few pre- 
 cious potatoes or eggs. If the egg chest 
 had been gold, it could hardly have been 
 
192 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 more treasured. For a moment it 
 seemed the war must be a horrible 
 dream. This was really the day before 
 Christmas ! There were even a few red 
 apples — ^as a special surprize, some one 
 had contributed two kilos that day. 
 Since they were obviously far short of 
 enough to furnish one for each, box, the 
 directors decided to tuck one into the 
 box for each mother whom they knew 
 to have a little boy or girl. Box after 
 box took its place on the shelves until 
 finally, by two o'clock, all gaps were 
 filled, and a curious wall-garden grew 
 half-way up to the ceiling. It might well 
 have been Christmas, but actually this 
 scene had been repeated two days a 
 week, week in and week out, for over 
 two and a half years, and nobody stops 
 to question how many long months it 
 must continue. 
 
 Some time before the last box was on 
 its shelf, the first woman with a string 
 
THE GREEN BOX 193 
 
 bag on her arm arrived. She was care- 
 fully drest, intelligent-looking, a woman 
 of about fifty. Later I found that be- 
 fore the war she had a comfortable 
 home, with servants and a motor-car. 
 She slipt quietly along the racks till she 
 found the card with her number, took 
 her box from the shelf and transferred 
 the tiny sacks and the two eggs to her 
 string bag. Then she placed the little 
 packet of empty bags and string she 
 was returning on the table, and, after 
 answering a few questions about her 
 two children, went slowly downstairs. 
 None but the Committee, or equally un- 
 fortunate ones who came as she did, 
 need know she had been there. This 
 was Wednesday; she could come again 
 on Friday. Other women came, and, as 
 the first, each could go to her box with- 
 out asking, and find the precious pack- 
 ages — ^mere mouthfuls as they seemed 
 to me! 
 
194 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 I thought I smelled soup, and fol- 
 lowed Madame ... to a little side room 
 where I saw chairs and a white-covered 
 table. Her cook was just depositing a 
 big can of thick soup which she had been 
 preparing at home, and which Madame 
 had ordered brought to the center each 
 distribution day. Any one who wishes 
 may slip into this room on her way out, 
 sit at a dainty table, and drink a bowl 
 of hot soup. 
 
 By half-past two the place was filled. 
 Dozens of women were busy with their 
 bags and boxes, while half a dozen di- 
 rectors were tidying up, storing strings 
 and sacks, filing cards, washing utensils; 
 there was a most heartening atmosphere 
 of busyness and cheerfulness. And all 
 the while one group was telling its story 
 to the other and receiving the comfort 
 warm hearts could give. I Overheard the 
 promise of a bed to one, or coal to 
 another, and over and over again the 
 
THE GREEN BOX 196 
 
 "Yes, I understand; I, too, am without 
 news." From all the husbands and sons 
 at the front no word ! These women met 
 on the ground of their common suffer- 
 ing. One of the saddest of all sad things 
 happened that afternoon, when a mother, 
 on seeing the lovely "unnecessary" apple, 
 burst into tears. For so long, so long, 
 her little Marie had had nothing but the 
 ration prescribed to keep her from starv- 
 ing. This mother broke down as she 
 dropt the red apple into her bag. 
 
 These were all people who had been 
 well-off, even comfortable, but whose 
 funds either suddenly, at the beginning, 
 or gradually through the two terrible 
 years, had been exhausted. Mostly their 
 men were in the trenches; there were 
 children or old people to care for; they 
 had done their utmost, but at last were 
 forced to accept help. I wondered how 
 these few pitiful little bags could make 
 any difference. The slice of unsmoked 
 
196 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 bacon was neither so broad nor so thick 
 as the pahn of my hand, and yet that 
 was to be their meat and butter for three 
 days! In this distribution center it 
 seemed absolutely nothing, but when I 
 visited the homes later I saw it was a 
 great deal. 
 
 In Brussels there were in October, 
 1916, no less than 5,000 "Pauvres Hon- 
 teux" or "Ashamed Poor" (there must be 
 many more now) being helped through 
 the seven sections of this "Assistance 
 Discrete," each of which carries the same 
 beautiful motto, "Donne, et tais-toi," 
 "Give, and be silent." At the very be- 
 ginning of the war a great-hearted 
 woman saw where the chief danger of 
 misery lay. The relief organizations 
 would natUi-ally first look after the 
 wounded, the homeless, the very poor. 
 Those who were accustomed to accept 
 charity would make the earliest demands. 
 But what about those whose business was 
 
THE GREEN BOX 197 
 
 slowly being ruined, whose reserves were 
 small? What about school-teachers, 
 artists, and other members of profes- 
 sional classes? And widows living on 
 securities invested abroad, or children of 
 gentle upbringing, whose fathers had 
 gone to the front expecting to return in 
 three or four months? She saw many 
 of them starving rather than go on the 
 soup-lines. 
 
 She had a vision of true mutual aid. 
 Each person who had should become the 
 sister of her who had not. There should 
 be a sharing of individual with individual. 
 She did not think of green boxes or sec- 
 tions, but of person linked with person 
 in the spirit of Fraternity. But the num- 
 ber of the desperate grew too rapidly, 
 her first idea of direct individual help 
 had to be abandoned, and one after 
 another distribution centers were organ- 
 ized. An investigator was put in charge 
 of each center who reported personally 
 
198 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 on all the cases that were brought in, 
 either directly or indirectly to the com- 
 mittee. The Relief Committee granted a 
 subsidy of io,cx)0 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 un- 
 tiring devotion raise the monthly io,cxx) 
 to about 28,000 francs. But, unfor- 
 tunately, 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 re- 
 ceive, 
 
 I went with Mademoiselle . . . , an in- 
 vestigator, 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 
 
THE GREEN BOX 199 
 
 to us he still looked far from well. The 
 drawing-room was comfortable, spot- 
 lessly clean; there was no fire. Wt 
 talked of his children, both of whom were 
 married; one son was in Italy, another in 
 Russia — ^the war had cut ofif 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 your golden eggs!" 
 Outside, I still could hardly pull myself 
 together — one egg as a precious gift to a 
 dignified old gentleman-engineer! Could 
 
200 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 it be possible? "But," explained Made- 
 moiselle, "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 Bel- 
 gium, 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 
 
THE GREEN BOX 201 
 
 takes her to the hospital, a matter of hours, 
 three times a week for treatment, and, be- 
 sides 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 chil- 
 dren with no father; in others, grand- 
 fathers with neither children nor grand- 
 children; and between them, people well 
 enough, young enough, but simply ruined 
 by the war. Mademoiselle was going back 
 
202 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 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 testa- 
 ment, 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 imf ortunates ; there must be every- 
 where some form of "Assistance Dis- 
 crete," 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 increas- 
 ing pitifully as month follows month. 
 
 Every one permitted to be in Belgium 
 for any length of time marvels at the in- 
 credible, unbreakable spirit of its people. 
 They meet every new order of the mili- 
 tary authorities with a laugh; when they 
 have to give up their motor-cars, they 
 
THE GREEN BOX 203 
 
 ride on bicycles ; when all bicycle tires are 
 requisitioned, they walk cheerfully; if the 
 city is fined i,cx)0,ooo marks, the laconic 
 comment is : "It was worth it I" 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 "As- 
 sistance Discrete," 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 un- 
 imaginable difficulties incident to the re- 
 lief of an occupied territory. 
 
 Responsible on the one hand to Eng- 
 land, on the other to Germany, de- 
 pendent 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. 
 
 304 
 

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 m 
 
 W 
 
 M 
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 iz; 
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 n 
 
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 a 
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"THE MOTHER OF BELGIUM" 205 
 
 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 obsta- 
 cles, 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 i,6oo 
 little boys and girls came crowding in, 
 slipping in their places at the long, nar- 
 row tables that cut across the great din- 
 ing-rooms, and, when I looked up at him, 
 his eyes had filled with tears. He watched 
 Madame and her husband, a physician, 
 
206 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 going from one child to another, examin- 
 ing their throats, or their eyes, taking 
 them out to the Httle 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 i,6cx) to present the bouquet to the 
 Minister's wife, and who, this viery morn- 
 ing, 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? 
 
"THE MOTHER OF BELGIUM" 207 
 
 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 I" 
 
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? 
 
 308 
 
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 un- 
 derstood that, higher than charity which 
 gives, you brought us charity which un- 
 derstands and consoles! Your souls have 
 bowed down over ours, our eyes with 
 
210 WOMEN OF BELGIUM 
 
 anxiety are looking in your f.i^iendly 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!" 
 
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