One child had written on the cover of her book: “Father says I ought to send you my best picture book, but I think that this one will do.”
These gifts made the American aid to Belgium a thousand times more intimate and real, and never after that was American help thought of in other terms than those of burning gratitude. Among these gifts were hundreds of American flags, which soon became familiar to all Belgium.
The commission automobiles bore the flag, and the children would recognize the Stars and Stripes and wave and cheer as it went by. Thousands upon thousands of gifts to the Belgian people followed the Christmas ship. All, or a great part, of the cargoes of one hundred and two ships consisted of gift goods from America and indeed from all parts of the world, and the Belgians sent back a flood of acknowledgments and thousands of beautiful souvenirs. Some of the most touching remembrances came from the children. Every child in the town of Tamise, for example, wrote a letter to America.
One addressed to the President of the United States reads as follows:
Highly Honored Mr. President: Although I am still very young I feel already that feeling of thankfulness which we, as Belgians, owe to you, Highly Honored Mr. President, because you have come to our help in these dreary times. Without your help there would certainly have been thousands of war victims, and so, Noble Sir, I pray that God will bless you and all the noble American people. That is the wish of all the Belgian folk.
On New Year’s day Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, issued his famous pastoral:
Belgium gave her word of honor to defend her independence. She has kept her word. The other powers had agreed to protect and to respect Belgium’s neutrality. Germany has broken her word, England has been faithful to it. These are the facts. I consider it an obligation of my pastoral charge to define to you your conscientious duties toward the power which has invaded our soil, and which for the moment occupies the greater part of it. This power has no authority, and therefore, in the depth of your heart, you should render it neither esteem, nor attachment, nor respect. The only legitimate power in Belgium is that which belongs to our King, to his government, to the representatives of the nation; that alone is authority for us; that alone has a right to our heart’s affection and to our submission.
Cardinal Mercier was called the bravest man in Belgium. Six feet five in height, a thin, scholarly face, with grayish white hair, and a forehead so white that one feels one looks on the naked bone, he presented the appearance of some medieval ascetic. But there was a humorous look about his mouth, and an expression of sympathy and comprehension which gave the effect of a keenly intelligent, as well as gentle, leader of the nation.
At the beginning of the war the Roman Catholic party was divided. Some of its leaders were opposed to resistance to the invaders. Many priests fled before the German armies. But the pastoral letter of Cardinal Mercier restored to the Church its old leadership. In him conquered Belgium had found a voice.
On New Year’s Sunday, 1915, every priest at the Mass read out the Cardinal’s ringing challenge. There were German soldiers in the churches, but no word of the letter had been allowed to reach the ears of the authorities, and the Germans were taken completely by surprise. Immediately orders came from headquarters prohibiting further circulation of the letter, and ordering that every copy should be surrendered to the authorities. Soldiers at the bayonet’s point extorted the letter from the priests, and those who had read it were put under arrest. Yet, somehow, copies of the letter were circulated throughout Belgium, and every Belgian took new heart.