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 forgot the wheat and fat in their delight to get back to Virgil and Horace.
Young D., a Yale graduate, furnished another example of these qualities Monsieur stressed. If he had been a Westerner, 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 discouraging reports. Even their own people were often preventing success by fearing 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 something that looked like a sombrero and 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 Belgians 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, orphanages and crèches for the tiny war victims, work for the idle, some means of secours for merchants, artists, teachers and thousands of “ashamed poor”—665,000 idle workmen with their 1,000,000 dependents, 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?