Walking through the wonderful wood which probably has no equal in Europe, calm and imposing as it is with its green ponds and its gigantic lime-trees, we came to the large avenue on which is the Palace of Peace, the greatest irony in brick and stone human mind has ever conceived.
"You should be ashamed to talk like that, you official guardian of the temple of European peace," I said.
"We are jolly glad to have this big palace here," he answered, smiling. "We are short of large barracks at the Hague!"
* * *
The names of Nispen, Rosendaal, Bergen-op-Zoom, and of many other little towns and villages of North Brabant, will always in future call to my mind the most touching scenes I have ever witnessed. The multitude of refugees who have found asylum in the frontier towns of Holland called to my memory the crowds of starving folk in the best of Goya's sanguines, or the intricate groups of absent-minded humanity in some of Previati's wonderful drawings. Every face, every movement, not only of men and women who have seen and understood, but even of children, is full of pathos and tragedy.
Even now, months and months after their flight from that hell of sacked, burned, and destroyed towns which was Belgium before Antwerp's capitulation, they look frightened, worried, and restless as on the day of their arrival.
Dutch hospitality, which has been celebrated for centuries and centuries, has in this case surpassed itself. The crowd of starving, penniless, terrorised people found a kindly reception, and within a few days' time all churches, public buildings, theatres, and chapels were transformed into lodgings for the new guests.
But soon this was not enough, and temporary constructions had to be erected at public expense, most of the able-bodied refugees helping in the task.
About 350,000 refugees are now in Holland, some in the frontier towns, some in the large towns of South and North Holland. Rotterdam and Amsterdam, the Hague, and Leiden and Haarlem received with outstretched arms, dressed, sheltered, and fed their share of Belgians without making any fuss about it, just as if it was the most natural thing to help this wave of humanity which had come into their country.
It may be said here that not a single charity show, fund, or special committee has been arranged. The different corporations give what they can or take as many refugees as they can afford to keep. The same with private families. I have seen a humble workman offer a corner of his bedroom and his dining-table to a Belgian boy who had lost his parents, and consider him as one of the family.