It is Madame herself who designs them. She is trying always to get something new, striking. In the C. R. B. office one day I noticed a representative off in a corner, busy with his pencil, and found him struggling to represent some sort of balancing bird—a suggestion for Madame.
TOYS CREATED BY WOMEN OF BELGIUM
She makes these lovely toys from the veriest scraps of cloth, old paper, straw, with pebbles picked up from the roads for weights.
In the beginning she knew nothing at all about such work, nor did any one of the young girls she was trying to help. But such a spirit experiments! She ground newspapers in a meat-grinder to try to evolve some kind of papier-mâché. She learned her processes by producing things with her own hands, and then taught each woman as she employed her. Thus she, too, is not only keeping her corps from the present soup-line, but preparing a body of trained workers for the future. The shops in Brussels sell these toys—a few have reached as far as Holland.
Everywhere in Belgium one is imprest with the facility in the handling of color, of clay or wood. There is the most unusual feeling for decorative effect; the tiniest children in the schools show a striking aptitude for design and modeling, and an astonishing sense of rhythm. One is constantly struck by this; it is a delight to hear a group of three-year olds carrying an intricate song without accompaniment, as they go through the figures of a dance.