And now come the Belgian refugees to us, a most pitiable band. French Switzerland has the honor of beginning the movement which has made possible the bringing to Switzerland and placing in hundreds of households these innocent victims of this hideous war. In addition, subscriptions have been opened in various papers, and thousands of francs have been gathered and sent to this most unfortunate of nations. The movement to receive Belgian refugees is gaining ground, too, in German-speaking Switzerland, though here the sympathy for Germany stands somewhat in the way of a full and open hospitality. Some papers write:
"Let the Belgians stay in their country. The Germans will take care of them. Let those that have fled return to their hearths and take up their daily vocations. In this way the misery of the country—which is certainly not entirely the fault of Germany (a hit at England)—will be alleviated. Furthermore, Switzerland's harboring of Belgian refugees is a demonstration against Germany. Let Switzerland beware of doing anything to prejudice her neutrality. Finally, there are in our own country plenty of miserable poor people to exercise our charity upon, and every one knows that charity begins at home."
Articles have appeared in the German papers expressing surprise at Switzerland's hospitality, and to all of these carpers, at home and abroad, these people who have acted out of the purest motives of charity and love for their neighbor, answer somewhat as follows:
The Belgians that have come to take refuge in Switzerland wished nothing better than to stay in their own land. They were driven out in hordes, at the point of the sword, by the Germans. It would be hard to convince them that they ought to go back and that the Germans will take care of them. Some of these miserable beings did return, hoping to pick up their life again after the great shock. They found their village a heap of stones, their business ruined. How could they, therefore, "return to their hearths and take up their daily vocations"? If Switzerland's charitable impulse is to be construed as a demonstration against Germany, then must Switzerland reflect that any excuse will do, and that her neutrality has the same validity in Germany's eyes as had Belgium's. No country, thinking and acting objectively, could find in this movement anything to "prejudice Switzerland's neutrality."
As for charity beginning at home, one might add that it does not end there. It would be hard to find a country whose charitable organizations are so all-embracing as here. In times of peace there are committees who sew for and otherwise look after every kind of human misery. There are the tuberculous poor, the girl-mothers, the creches, the new-born babies, the soup kitchens, the visiting trained nurses, the clinics, the blind, the vicious, the vacation colonies, the swimming lessons, the gymnastics, the tramps and their woodyard, &c., and every organization has its Christmas tree, with distribution of presents when the season of rejoicing comes around. Now that the war is here, and every available man is standing at the frontier guarding his Fatherland from invasion, the soldiers have been added to the list of charities, and none of the old has been stricken off.
In addition to babies' socks, every one has time to knit a pair of soldiers' socks, and in every dainty work basket, lying next to neglected fancy work, there are sure to be some half-finished warm woolen gloves or wristlets or knee warmers for the boys at the frontier. If Switzerland can keep up her home charities and look out so splendidly for her soldiers at the same time, and still have the means and the will to welcome and care for the poor and unhappy of a sister folk whose fate might very well have been her own, it is surely not a subject for adverse criticism, but, on the contrary, for encouragement. And who was it who said: "For as much as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto Me"?
Once Fair Belgrade Is a Skeleton City
[Special Cable to The New York Times.]
LONDON, Jan. 11.—Z.D. Ferriman, special correspondent of The Daily Chronicle with the Servian Army and the first English journalist to enter Belgrade since the Austrian occupation, sends a long dispatch describing the Servians' re-entry into their capital, in the course of which he says: