VALENCIENNES, SQUARE MESH
As I examined them, Monsieur got out his records and discust the future of his lace-workers. “I am convinced they will be happy to continue in this district, if only they can be sure of a living wage. And apart from other determining factors, to make that, they must learn to execute laces of better quality. We need, above all, a school which will offer along with its courses in practical lace-making, training in design. During the war we had many beautiful designs from the Committee, but each time we were cut off from them we realized our helplessness. In one of the villages the patterns are drawn by a furniture-maker. One reason for the wretched condition of the workers before the war was their entire dependence on the particular lace dealer who furnished them their patterns and their thread, and who, of course, protected his models by copyright. The old, unprotected designs, which may be copied by any one, are little in demand, and during the process of generations of recopying, many of them have so greatly deteriorated as to become scarcely recognizable. If our women were trained they could restore these, and, what is more important, some of them, at least, could invent new ones.”
I asked what it would cost to found a school and support it during its first year. “Perhaps 20,000 or 25,000 francs; we might hope that the State would undertake such a work, but with its present overwhelming burden, it is a question if the Government can occupy itself with lace needs. If it could be started by private initiative, and prove successful, I believe there is no doubt that the Government would be willing later to subsidize it.”
Madame brought a picture post-card from the mantel, of three brothers who had been deported, two of whom had not returned. Other men were drifting back from Metz, where most of the déportés from Herzele had been for over two and a half years, but these two would not return, for they had been frozen to death. I understood at once, for I remembered the sixty-five men with black arms and legs who had been “returned” to the Brussels Hospital in 1917. “No”; Madame looked at the portrait of her boy, with the Belgian colors above it and a vase of flowers in front, and then again at the little post-card; “No,” she said simply, “I have no desire yet to go to Brussels. I prefer to remain here with my people, where we may still, from time to time, weep together.”
[XI]
GHENT
A Lace Queen of Long Ago
Of the cities I visited during three months’ continuous travel in Belgium following the armistice, Ghent appeared to me to be attacking her problems with greatest speed and vigor. Brave old Burgher city of canals and mellow buildings and bell-towers, this Flemish capital is at the same time an active, modern, commercial center; which explains why Bruges has been able to win from her the title she once proudly held of “Queen of Lace Cities.”