mr. hoover’s visits to brussels are crowded with conferences, endless complications to be straightened out, figures and reports to be accepted or rejected—with all the unimaginable difficulties incident to the relief of an occupied territory.
responsible on the one hand to england, on the other to germany, dependent always on the continued active support of his own countrymen and on the efficiency and integrity of the local relief organization, he fights his way literally inch by inch and hour by hour to bring in bread for the belgian mother and her child.
1,662 children, made sub-normal by the war, waiting for their dinner
[205]
it is easy to conceive of such service if the giver is in close touch with the mother and her need, but when he must be cut off from her—locked up with the grind, the disillusionment, the staggering obstacles, this unbroken devotion through the days and nights of more than two years, becomes one of the finest expressions of altruism the world has seen.
the two years have left their mark—to strangers he must seem silent, grim, but every c. r. b. man knows what this covers.
on one visit i persuaded him to take an hour from the bureau to go with me to one of the cantines for sub-normal children. he stood silently as the 1,600 little boys and girls came crowding in, slipping in their places at the long, narrow tables that cut across the great dining-rooms, and, when i looked up at him, his eyes had filled with tears. he watched madame and her husband, a physician, [206]going from one child to another, examining their throats, or their eyes, taking them out to the little clinic for weighing, carrying the youngest in their arms, while the dozen white-uniformed young women hurrying up and down the long rows were ladling the potato-stew and the rice dessert.
then suddenly a black-shawled woman, evidently in deep distress, rushed up the stairs, and by us to madame, to pour out her trouble. she was crying—she had run to the cantine, as a child to its mother, for comfort. her little eight-year-old marie, who had, only a week ago, been chosen as the loveliest child of the 1,600 to present the bouquet to the minister’s wife, and who, this very morning, had seemed well and happy, was lying at home dead of convulsions. the cantine had been the second home of her precious one for over two years—where, but there, should she flee in her sorrow?
i turned toward mr. hoover, and he spoke these true words: “the women of belgium have become the mother of belgium. in this room is the relief of belgium!”
