The way in which this food was put up was original and quite American. Boxes were filled with nourishing food suited to the needs of three classes of refugees—infants, convalescents, and adults.
“A package for infants and young children should include thirty pounds of evaporated, unsweetened milk; about two pounds of milk sugar, five pounds of barley flour, five pounds of cornmeal, five pounds of oatmeal, and two ounces of salt. This will sustain from two hundred to two hundred and fifty infants or young children for one day.
“For packages for convalescents the following is recommended: Fifteen pounds of evaporated milk, fifteen pounds of malted milk; one pound can of olive or cottonseed oil; two pounds of canned chicken, five pounds of brown rice, seven pounds of whole wheat or white flour, three pounds of sugar, two pounds of tea, and six ounces of salt. It is estimated that this will sustain from one hundred to one hundred and fifty convalescents for one day.
“A package for well adults should contain: Five pounds of canned baked beans, eight pounds of dried lentils, peas or beans, five pounds of canned salmon, five pounds of oatmeal, five pounds of cornmeal, fifteen pounds of whole wheat or white flour, two pounds of sugar and six ounces of salt. This will furnish a sustaining ration for fifty adults for one day.”
“Not one mouthful has gone down a German throat yet, nor do I believe it ever will,“ wrote Mr. Hoover; ”we have had nothing but help from the Germans in the distribution of American foodstuffs in Belgium. Belgium raises less than forty per cent. of its own food. The war struck it in the midst of the harvest, and Belgium had made no provision to feed itself in time of trouble. The minimum monthly requirements of the Belgian population are sixty thousand tons of grain, fifteen thousand tons of maize, three thousand tons of rice and peas, at a cost of four or five million dollars.”
There was no milk for thirty thousand babies at the end of November. The cows had all been killed or taken by the Germans for the army. The starving mothers could give little nourishment to their infants, and the supply of condensed milk was quickly used up. This picture was brought by an American from Belgium:
“I stood one morning by the back door of a German cook camp, watching a group of Belgian women grubbing through the trash heap piled up behind the camp. All these women carried babies. ’What are they doing?’ I asked a German sergeant with whom I had struck up an acquaintance. ’Scraping our condensed milk cans,’ he said. ’It is the only way to get milk for their babies. I have seen them run their fingers round a can which looked as bright as a new coin, and hold them into the babies’ mouths to suck.”
Six thousand meals a day were served in Brussels alone in the autumn. In some places one large baker’s bun a day was all that was issued by the authorities; in other places, one bowl of cabbage soup. By April there were forty-seven soup kitchens in Brussels.
A shipload of food meant one day’s rations for the Belgians. When the first ship arrived at the Hook of Holland, the city of Rotterdam rejoiced. While the unpacking went on, speeches were made and banquets held, and American national airs were played. The cargo of the ship was put into canal barges, which by German permission were allowed to make their way to the different towns.
To show how quickly the food is distributed—in three hours sixty thousand people received bread. Three hundred and sixty sacks of American flour arriving at Verviers was distributed in the form of bread the following morning. According to the system of the Commission, each person receives three cards. “One is kept at the office, the other two are given to the applicant. One of these he keeps and presents each day for his quota of rations, i. e., bread. The other he gives to his baker. With this card the baker makes application to the storehouse for the necessary flour to cover the demand of the bread card. The bread card calls for 325 grams of bread; the baker’s card for 250 grams of flour. When there are not full rations to be had, the applicant gets the percentage available. This applies to every one, rich and poor alike.”