BELGIUM'S PLIGHT 



435 



things in the shop windows? Why do 

 they look so careless and disinterested 

 instead of so serious and earnest and 

 sober? Where do they get the automo- 

 biles, the tires, the boots, the shoes ? 



No ; I have left the real world beyond. 

 The artificialities of life are gone ; the 

 conventionalities have been washed away, 

 and here I have come back to where they 

 still look the truth between the eyes. 



Every man and every woman was a 

 worker there. I remember one day going 

 through the streets of Brussels. We had 

 recently opened a soup kitchen. We had 

 the pots ; we had the pans ; we had the 

 kitchen ; we had the food ; we had every- 

 thing except the workers. 



I walked down the street and saw a 

 couple of servants waiting in front of a 

 building, and I asked, "What is going on 

 inside?" They told me there was a meet- 

 ing of the noble women of Brussels. 



I went inside, and as soon as I entered 

 they recognized me. I said, "I need 

 twenty or more women right away — five 

 to wash the floors, five to ladle soup, 

 five to take away the dishes, five to carry 

 out the garbage, and the remainder to do 

 whatever work there is left." 



I had scarcely finished my demand be- 

 fore the response came, almost as quickly 

 as the appeal. There those women have 

 been working for the last eight months, 

 not once a week, but seven days a week. 

 Those are the noble women of Belgium, 

 noble of heart as well as of birth. 



You have got to bring home here to 

 our. people conditions as they are. You 

 have got to give them the vision. How 

 awful the conditions are no one realizes. 

 I will give you a single picture. 



THE WOES OF SLAVERY 



I will take the 18th of November of 

 last year. A week or so before that a 

 placard was placed on the walls telling 

 my capital city of Mons that in seven 

 days all the men of that city who were 

 not clergymen, who were not priests, 

 who did not belong to the city council, 

 would be deported. 



At half past five, in the gray of the 

 morning on the 18th of November, they 

 walked out, six thousand two hundred 

 men at Mons, myself and another leading 



them down the cobblestones of the street 

 and out where the rioting would be less 

 than in the great city, with the soldiers 

 on each side, with bayonets fixed, with 

 the women held back. 



The degradation of it ! The degrada- 

 tion of it as they walked into this great 

 market square, where the pens were 

 erected, exactly as if they were cattle — 

 all the great men of that province — the 

 lawyers, the statesmen, the heads of the 

 trades, the men that had made the capital 

 of Hainaut glorious during the last 

 twenty years. 



There they were collected ; no question 

 of who they were, whether they were 

 busy or what they were doing or what 

 their position in life. "Go to the right ! 

 Go to the left! Go to the right!" So 

 they were turned to the one side or the 

 other. 



Trains were standing there ready, 

 steaming, to take them to Germany. 

 You saw on the one side the one brother 

 taken, the other brother left. A hasty 

 embrace and they were separated and 

 gone. You had here a man on his knees 

 before a German officer, pleading and 

 begging to take his old father's place ; 

 that was all. The father went and the 

 son stayed. They were packed in those 

 trains that were waiting there. 



You saw the women in hundreds, with 

 bundles in their hands, beseeching to be 

 permitted to approach the trains, to give 

 their men the last that they had in life 

 between themselves and starvation — a 

 small bundle of clothing to keep them 

 warm on their way to Germany. You 

 saw women approach with a bundle that 

 had been purchased by the sale of the 

 last of their household effects. Not one 

 was allowed to approach to give her man 

 the warm pair of stockings or the warm 

 jacket so there might be some chance of 

 his reaching there. Off they went ! 



AT THE BIER OE A CITY 



I returned to Mons that evening. You 

 have sat at the funeral of your dear sons 

 and you have heard the family weep, but 

 you have never sat at the funeral of a 

 city. I went in and I lost courage. I 

 walked the streets of Mons all that even- 

 ing. 



