Monsieur was particularly happy because 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 districts. 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 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 resources. 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 literally every day, and we realize how arduous is the task of the thousands of devoted teachers who are standing between the war and those who would otherwise 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 necessity!
At 8.30 the next morning I visited one of the “Jardins 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, 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.
Amélie B. wrote: