That autumn became a season of secret interments, for not only copper but certain preserved edibles were buried to escape the vampire’s greed, and in anticipation of the famine obviously approaching. What the Alimentation Commission provided was so little for each individual that hunger reigned generally, not only among those who depended wholly on charity. The latter, indeed, were better off than many British women and others formerly well-to-do; and everyone who could sought to lay by something for a still more trying hour.
These silent midnight burial-parties were not devoid of a comic side, despite their pathetic object. Whole families gathered in the dark of their gardens, busy about a yawning grave, wherein a red-glazed lantern afforded dim light invisible from the surface. No word was spoken by the shadowy forms consigning food and treasure to the earth’s faithful keeping. All was done in silent haste, in order that every suspicious trace might be obliterated before dawn. Bushes and even small trees were planted above the graves, and stood innocently smiling in autumn leaf when the sun arose!
Food grew daily scarcer and dearer. With the entrance of the United States into the war it seemed as though Belgium was doomed to famine. The laying up of provisions that could not be buried, even by those who could afford it, was dangerous, since they were forbidden, and could not be concealed from the prying eyes of soldiers likely at any moment to enter our houses. Consequently the winter of ’17-’18, with a great scarcity of coal and the probability of being deprived of gas, was looked forward to with dread.
During the summer every patch of ground, even road-edgings, was cultivated. Vacant fields were divided into small patches and given to the poor to till and plant; potatoes especially were grown, for during the preceding winter there had been a great dearth of this mainstay of the poorer classes. Now, however, it was not only the indigent who feared starvation. The well-to-do and even the rich anticipated being deprived not only of the better edibles to which they were accustomed, but even of necessities. Consequently flower-beds and lawns of private estates were tilled to raise potatoes, beans, sprouts, etc. Our own croquet-ground was converted into a potato-patch; the rose-garden produced cabbages, onions, and beets, while the tennis-court netting served to support climbing beans! But ill-fortune made that summer, in regard to weather, the worst Belgium could remember for many years, as the winter before had been one of the most severe. Continual rain destroyed a large proportion of the potatoes and greatly injured other crops.
It was pitiable to see farmers who, deprived of their horses,—for the Germans had taken all,—had tilled their fields, foot by foot, with spades (the more fortunate with slow and stubborn oxen), and had laboured from dawn till dark to make them flourish, gazing in wide-eyed despair upon acres of rain-blackened rye or blight-ruined potatoes. As the Germans claimed a large percentage of all produce, this misfortune raised the price of ordinary vegetables, poor as they were, so high that only the rich could afford them. The poor were obliged to subsist on the two potatoes a day per head which—until their stock was exhausted—the “National Alimentation Committee” [1] provided.
[1] “Le Comité National,” Belgian organization for distributing food-stuffs provided by the American Commission for relief.
Not far from us, on a narrow strip of grass-land bordering a wood, two poor women “whose husbands were fighting” had planted vegetables for their own use during the winter. They were mothers of several small children, but despite this care and their household duties, they were at work there at the first glimmer of day. They went home only at midday to procure the charity soup and warm it for their children, then returned to labour until dark. It seemed impossible that anything could thrive in such a shadowed place, but a weak crop of potatoes, cabbages, and beans presently appeared, only to be partly destroyed by rain, while much of what survived was stolen later by those who had no land to cultivate.
However, after the roots had begun to form and until the potatoes were ripe, these women never left the spot unguarded. One or the other remained there the entire day and night, rain or shine, as did all who had unprotected ground. They erected a primitive sort of shelter, composed of every conceivable thing they could find: bits of rusty tin and old carpets, for the most part, as wood was too dear and too much needed for fuel. Ah, they suffered, these people!—suffered as no one can understand who did not see their daily struggle to live. Young and old women went tramping for hours and days through the woods to gather dry twigs and bear them home in great bundles on their backs;—not only the usual poor wretch, whose patient drudgery so well serves the landscape-painter, but many women who were formerly in comfortable circumstances, now blue with cold and pinched with hunger, trudged through the rain-oozing dead leaves of the woods.
Later, they went entirely without shoes, for all leather was taken by the Germans; and until wooden sabots could be produced in sufficient numbers to meet the demand, women and children were to be seen with their feet shod only by bits of carpet and often without stockings. Their patience under these miserable conditions was extraordinary. When told they could have no coal, they made no murmur, but set out to gather twigs as though realizing the uselessness of rebellion, and only impelled by an instinctive impulse of self-preservation.
Many hundreds of trees were felled each winter for exportation and other German uses, and the poor swarmed where this was done, waiting eagerly until each superb tree crashed to earth, when they swooped down upon it, like hungry vultures, each securing what he could of the lesser branches, to ensure him some warmth during the cold months.