Soup for the Refugees.
Out of the black horrors of Antwerp, out of the hell of bombs and shells, these million people came fleeing for their lives into Dutch territory. Penniless, footsore, bleeding, broken with terror and grief, dying in hundreds by the way, the inhabitants of Antwerp and its villages crushed blindly onwards till they reached the Dutch frontiers, where they flung themselves, a million people, on the pity and mercy of Holland, not knowing the least how they would be treated. And what did Holland do? With a magnificent simplicity, she opened her arms as no nation in the history of the world has ever opened its arms yet to strangers, and she took the whole of those million stricken creatures to her heart.
The Dutch at Bergen-op-Zoom, where the majority of the refugees were gathered, gave up every available building to these people. They filled all their churches with straw to make beds for them; they opened all their theatres, their schools, their hospitals, their factories and their private homes, and, without a murmur, indeed, with a tenderness and gentleness beyond all description, they took upon their shoulders the burden of these million victims of Germany's brutality.
"It is our duty," they say quietly; and sick and poor alike pour out their offerings graciously, without ceasing.
In the Grand Place of Bergen-op-Zoom stand long lines of soup-boilers over charcoal fires.
Behind the line of soup-boilers are stacks of bones, hundreds of bags of rice and salt, mountains of celery and onions, all piled on the flags of the market-place, while to add to the liveliness and picturesqueness of the scene, Dutch soldiers in dark blue and yellow uniforms ride slowly round the square on glossy brown horses, keeping the thousands of refugees out of the way of the endless stream of motor cars lining the Grand Place on its four sides, all packed to the brim with bread, meat, milk, and cheese.
Inside the Town hall the portrait of Queen Wilhelmina in her scarlet and ermine robes looks down on the strangest scene Holland has seen for many a day.
The floors of the Hotel de la Ville are covered with thousands of big red Dutch cheeses. Twenty-six thousand kilos of long loaves of brown bread are packed up almost to the ceiling, looking exactly like enormous wood stacks. Sacks of flour, sides of pork and bacon, cases of preserved meat and conserved milk, hundreds of cans of milk, piles of blankets, piles of clothing are here also, all to be given away.
The town of Bergen-op-Zoom is full of heart-breaking pictures to-day, but to me the most pathetic of all is the writing on the walls.