Part 6

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 children, and fortunately, too, I saw a swift hand slip extra portions in front of the little ones. There are ten such restaurants 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 Liége 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 surrounding spectators’ space made convenient cloak-rooms, the one-time casual buffet was a kitchen in deadly earnest, supplying 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 Liége. If he could, he paid 75 centimes (15 cents) for his dinner. If unable to, by presenting a special card from the Relief Committee, he might receive it for 60, or even 30 centimes—a little more than 5 cents.

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 portions, 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 seeming habitual.

The superintendent laughed: “Yes,” he said, “they are chiefly railroad engineers, conductors, various workmen of the Liége 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 because 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 average of 63 centimes.” To supply this to 250 assistants was quite beyond the subsidy allowed the Relief. And yet the 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 inexhaustible.

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 at 30 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 oeuvre is quite the most interesting of all the varied attempts to meet the staggering problem Belgium has daily to face.

XV

A ZEPPELIN

I went down the road toward Verviers. I stopt at a farmhouse to talk with the farmer about the pitiful ration of the Liége 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 simmering.

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 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, unearthly model for the little Japanese stuffed 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 gliding 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 religion. 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 be cut to bits; may they be burned to ashes—anything—anything! With an undying hate I swear it shall be destroyed! Madame, 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 lighters 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 furnishes another of the bewildering contrasts wrought by the war; what was two years ago a huge, thrilling Hippodrome is now filled with the silent ranks of bolts of cotton and flannel. And not far away, the once popular skating-rink is piled to the ceiling with finished garments; stage boxes, galleries, dressing-rooms, stairways—all are heaped with cases and stacked with racks. The ceiling 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 buildings and other sub-centers during the summer, and in the autumn the work of distribution against the approaching winter begins, October 1st 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 hundreds of thousands of garments assembled 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 and occupy several weeks in going from one to the other. That journey explains the marvelous development of the clothing 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, 1916, somehow it reached a weather-beaten school-house on a lonely stretch of coast 30 miles south of San Francisco. The teacher hurriedly got together some wool, and began showing her eight pupils (they happened all to be boys), how to knit caps for other 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 touching 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 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 contributions, and there consigned to a C. R. B. ship, starting for Rotterdam. In Rotterdam 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 reloaded on to one of the C. R. B. barges that ply the canals constantly, and finally deposited for the Comité National in the Hippodrome at Brussels. There the women’s work began—in fact, to one woman especially is due the credit 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 between 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 and bread! But every hour’s work encourages somebody, and the opportunities 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 necessary furnishings for millions of garments—can we conceive the tediousness of this task? Instructions must be carefully marked on a card that is tied across the top of the completed bundle, everything being made as simple for the sewer as possible. They travel from one counter to another, from one room to the next, even up and down stairs, before compact, neat and complete, they are finally registered and ready to go to the waiting women, who will 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 degree. Here dozens of people are bending 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 advantageous cutting. Along with every type of pattern goes one finished model for exhibition in the workroom. In the models the women may see just how the little 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 decided 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 committee 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 criticism until one has seen with his own eyes several millions depending entirely on a relief organization for covering (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 thousands of unemployed, the necessity of a high standard of work, and of justice in division among the nine provinces.

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 materials 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 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 different 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 together are to go to others even more unhappy—these are the places where service has its swift and rich rewards! I have visited just such blessed workrooms 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 should see all the country dotted with 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 diverting program. Every night thousands drifted in to laugh and smoke—drawn by the human desire for happiness. Here they were care-free, irresponsible; 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 wonderful solemn music—1,200 girls were singing a Flemish folk-song that might have been a prayer. We looked on a sea of golden and brown heads bending over sewing tables. Noble women had rescued them from the wreckage of war—within the shelter of this music-hall they were working for their lives, singing 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 cutting 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, registering the income and output of materials and finished garments. On the stage, too, was an extraordinary exhibit. Three forms presented three of the quaintest silk dresses imaginable, elaborately trimmed with ribbons and velvets and laces, and all designed for women of dainty figure. I laughed and then rather 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 something of apology, and referred to the advance the Commission had made in 1915, when it had sent out the appeal for new materials only.

But Madame protested: “Oh,” she 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 sadness 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 together 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 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 employment it offers. Without this employment, without the daily devotion of the wonderful women who have built up this astonishing organization, thousands 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 depend on for bread. Of course, there is always dire need for the finished garments. They are turned over as fast as they can be to the various other committees that care for the destitute. Between February, 1915, and May, 1916, 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 degradation following long periods of non-employment. 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. Another was making children’s shoes out of bits of carpet and wool.

In one whole section the girls do nothing but embroider our American flour sacks. Artists draw designs to represent the gratitude of Belgium to the 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 clothing to be patched or darned. A shoe section, too, does what it can for old shoes. Such shoes and such remnants of socks and of shirts as we saw! But the more difficult the job, the happier the committee!

During the week, courses are given in the principles of dressmaking and design. In the evening there are classes for history, geography, literature, writing, 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, courage, progress all along the line. The committee has always been able to secure 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 ouvroir, and appeal once more for her precious necessity—“old clothes!” This the C. R. B. may be able to do—but will England feel equally free to make an exception to her ruling that since the Germans 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, galleries and entry packed, lengths of cotton 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 packing-cases behind his accustomed footlights to sing to this audience driven in by disaster, and to teach them the beautiful 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 beautiful—and you know, incidentally, it prevents much idle chatter!”

XVIII

LACE

A full account of the struggle of the lace-workers would take us straight to the heart of the tragedy of Belgium. At present it can only be intimated. The women who are back of this struggle represent a fine intelligence, a most fervent patriotism and most unswerving devotion to their people 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 patronage and tried in every way to better the condition of the workers, and to raise the standard of the output. We need to remember that when war broke out, 50,000 women were supporting themselves, and often their families, through this work; we need to remember the suddenness with which the steel ring was thrown about Belgium—all import 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 desperate 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 workers (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 for them, till finally that hope was realized—the C. R. B. had gained the permission of England to bring in a certain amount of thread, and to take out a corresponding amount of lace for sale in France and England, or elsewhere.