Women of Belgium; turning tragedy to triumph

Contents

OHAPTEB

Introduction ....

I. The Leaders . „ . .

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, courage, 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 19 14 the people were again drawn into the European maelstrom, 600,000 of them became fugitives abroad, and the remainder were re-

Tii viii INTRODUCTION

duced to the state of a city which, captured 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 commerce; and the cessation of this inflow, together with the destruction and requisition of their meager stocks, threatened the Belgians with an even greater catastrophe — the loss of their very life.

With the stoppage of the industrial clock, their workpeople were idle, and destitution 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 endeavor has been to help themselves. Not

INTRODUCTION ix

only were all those who had resources insistent that they should either pay now or in the future for their food, but far beyond this, they have insisted upon caring for their own destitute to the fullest extent of those remaining resources — the charity of the poor toward the poor. They have themselves set up no cry for benevolence, but the American Relief Commission 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 guardianship 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 destitute.

To visualize truly the mental and moral currents in the Belgian people during 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 depression, 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 onefourth. 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 subjection. Belgium is a little country and the sound of the guns 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 Organization and the demand that it has made upon their exertion and their devotion, 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 themselves 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 perfection 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 foodstuffs per month of a character appropriate 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 distribution to 140 terminals throughout Belgium and Northern France ; to control the milling 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 soupkitchens; to supply great clothing establishments; to give the necessary assurances 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 intelligence.

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 children; to provide the machinery for supplemental 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 meetings after afternoon tea, but by actual executive labor from early morning till late at night — to go far beyond mere direction by giving themselves to the actual manual labor of serving the lowly and helpless ; to do it with cheerfulness, sympathy 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 devotion, 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 Belgium received a grievous wound, but the women of Belxvi INTRODUCTION

gium are staunching the flow — sustaining 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 inspiration 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 husband during his administration of our Brussels office. She has done more than record in simple terms passing impressions 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 nowgone 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 children, 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 warehouses should fail, for has the cantine 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.

TURNING TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH

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 see, l thrown into high relief, special aspects of an inexpressible experience.

One 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 comrade 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 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 exceedingly 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 throughout history for her good works — for her clear, clean vision of right, her swift courage, and her utter devotion to each and all of her people. Albert and Elizabeth, 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 example 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 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 could 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 undertaking 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 enduringly, 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 trouble, she could not neglect her personal appearance, and after the fatiguing journey across the Continent, she looked fresh and charming as we met her in San Francisco. The first day at luncheon we were plying her with questions, 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 precious plan from her bag, and smoothed it across her end of the table. Then with her pencil she marked of! with a heavy line the little part that is still free Belgium: 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 marveled at the directness with which she brought her country and her people before 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 return 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, 1915, flashed the incredible, the terrible news — the greatest passenger liner afloat had been torpedoed! The Lusitania had sunk in twenty-two minutes, 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.

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 I was permitted to enter Belgium in July, 191 6.

I already knew that this country held 3,000,000 destitute ; that over one and one-quarter million depended for existence entirely on the daily "soupes" ; that between the soup-lines and the rich (who in every country, in every catastrophe, can most easily save themselves) 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 and professional classes, from the nobility itself, 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 Herbert Hoover had seized the apparently unsolvable problem of the Relief of Belgium, and with an incredible swiftness 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 secure, 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 throughout Belgium. It meant the finding of millions of money — $250,000,000 to date — begging of individuals, praying to governments, the pressing of all the world to service.

I realized, too, that the Belgian men, 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 responsible for the meeting of the situation locally and as a whole.

But I knew from the lips of the Chairman 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"

1 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 children 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 11 communal store where "identity cards" permit the purchase every week of limited 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 "supplement" to their daily ration of carbohydrates and fat which will give them protein — says the C. R. B., and thus we have "Soupes"; — but these dry statements of engineers now become dieticians convey to no one the human story of these dumb, waiting lines.

We can have little conception of what it means for just one city, the Agglomeration 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" IS

include the soup made by the "Little Bees/' an organization which cares especially 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 — and do not think of soup as an American 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 slaughter-house has been converted 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 appetizing 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 remember 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 committee 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 be, cut, and unfortunately, in November, 19 1 6, 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 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 processes, 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 purchasing 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, is that which cares for the meat and unsmoked bacon or "lard" the 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 to find a few pieces in the pint of soup! Then there is the great kitchen proper, with the one hundred 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 washing of food and receptacles and premises.

The first shift of cooks arrives at twothirty in the morning to start the gas under 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 second works from 8 till 5, on an average wage of four francs a day and soupe!

There are ten of the large trucks and 500 of the fifty-quart 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 steaming 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 I discovered "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 managers who were preparing the big hall for the women who would arrive in a few minutes to fill the pitchers with soup, and the string bags with bread. These communal 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 heartbreaking 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 stationed toward the rear, and the great bread-racks of either side. The committee 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 represented 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 reveal 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 saddest were the very old — for them the men had always a kindly "How is it, mother? How goes it, father?"

The "Merci, Monsieur, merci beaucoup/' of one sweet-faced old woman was so evidently the expression of genuine 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 work. A little Spanish woman had lost her husband 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 too feeble to bow low as he said "Merci," was an unforgettable figure.

Some of the very old and very weak are given supplementary tickets which entitle them to small portions of white bread, more adapted to their needs than 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 following her mother and grandmother, and slipt out of the line to offer a tiny hand. Then

THE "SOUPES" «l

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 congratulated the pretty girl of fifteen, who had won all the term's prizes in the communal 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 endless procession, a large proportion in carpet slippers, or other substitutes for leather shoes. Many were weak and illlooking; all wore the stamp of war. Every day they must come for the pint of soup and the bread that meant life — 200,000 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 meat never passes their lips but in soup.

The questions were always swift, admitting no delay in the reply, and knowing the hearts of the questioners, I wondered a little at this. Till in a flash I saw: if the directors wished to know more they would go to the homes represented — 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 representing 2,500 pints of soup and portions 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.