How many of the roots of human nature are uncovered in a place like this! The branches and the foliage and the blossoms, too, are seen more clearly in this air where all things are necessarily open and in common.
The men are generally less industrious than the women. But they work willingly at the grading of roads and paths, the laying out and planting of flower-beds, the construction of ornamental designs, of doubtful taste but unquestionable sincerity.
You read the names which they have given to the different streets and barracks, and the passageways between the cubicles, and you understand the strong, instinctive love which binds them to their native Belgium. “Antwerp Avenue,” “Louvain Avenue,” “Malines Street,” “Liege Street,” and streets bearing the names of many ruined towns and villages of which you have never heard, but which are forever dear to the hearts of these exiles. The names of the hero-king, Albert, and of his brave consort, Queen Elizabeth, are honored by inscriptions, and their pictures, cut from, newspapers, decorate the schoolrooms and the little family cubicles.
The brutal power which reigns at Berlin may drive the Belgians out of Belgium by terror and oppression. But it cannot drive Belgium out of the hearts of the Belgians. While they live their country lives, and Albert is still their King.
But think of the unnatural conditions into which these thousands of human beings—yes, and hundreds of thousands like them, torn from their homes, uprooted, dispersed, impoverished—are forced by this bitter, cruel war. Think of the cold and ruined hearthstones, the scattered families, the shelterless children, the desolate and broken hearts. This is what Germany has inflicted upon mankind in order to realize her robber-dream!
Yet the City of Refuge, being human, has its bright spots and its bits of compensation. Here is one, out of many.
The chief nurse, a young Dutch lady of charming face and manners, serving as a volunteer under the sacred sign of the Red Cross, comes in, one morning, to make her report to the commandant.
“Well,” he says, disguising in his big voice of command the warm admiration which he feels for the lady, “what is the trouble to-day? Speak up.”
“Nothing, sir,” she answers calmly. “Everything is going on pretty well. No new cases of measles—those in hospital improving. The only thing that bothers me is the continual complaint about that Mrs. Van Orley—you remember her, a thin, dark little person. She is melancholy and morose, quarrels all the time, says some one has stolen her children. The people near her in the barracks complain that she disturbs them at night, moans and talks aloud in her sleep, jumps up and runs down the corridor laughing or crying: 'Here they are!' They don't believe she ever had any children. They think she is crazy and want her put out. But I don't agree with that. I think she has had children, and now she has dreams.”
“Send her away,” growls the commandant; “send her to a sanatorium! This camp is not a lunatic asylum.”