“Very big family this you’ve got,” I remarked.  I knew what they were, but just wanted to draw him out.

“Oh, they’re not my family.”

“Only visitors?” I queried.

“Darned good visitors,” said he, “they’ve been here since the second week of August, 1914.”

“Refugees—­” I commented.

“Yes, refugees, not one with a home.  Not one who has not lost her husband, her son or her grandson.  Not one who has not lost every bit of small property, but her clothes as well.  You think that I am doing something to help?  Well, that is not much.  I’m lucky with the few I have.  There’s my old neighbor over yonder on the hill.  He owns five acres and has a two-roomed shack and he keeps eleven.”

“And how long do you expect them to stay?”

“Why, laddie,” said he.  “Stay—­how should I know?  I was talking to an officer the other day and he told me he believed the first ten years of this war would be the worst.  They are free and welcome to stay all that time, and longer if need be.  They are my people.  They are Belgians.  We have not much.  My savings are going rapidly, but we have set a few potatoes”—­he waved his hand over to where four of the old women were hoeing the ground.  “We get bread and a little soup; we have enough to wear for now.  We shall manage.”

That is only one instance in my own personal experience.  Every place was the same.  The people who could, sheltered those that had lost all.  It was a case of share and share alike.  If one man had a crust and his neighbor none, why then each had half a crust without questions.

It is for Belgium.  It is to-day, in the midst of war and pillage and outrage, that man is learning the brotherhood of man.  In peace times no man would have imagined the possibility of sharing his home and income, no matter how great it might have been, with fifteen other persons.  The fifteen unfortunates would have been left to the tender mercies of a precarious and grudging charity.  To-day, charity is dead in its old accepted sense of doling out a few pence to the needy; to-day, charity is imbued with the spirit of Him who, to the few said, “I was hungered and you gave me meat.”

To-day, it is not necessary to go to Ypres, to Namur, to Liege, to Verdun, or to any of the bombarded cities of Belgium and France to see the ruin that has been wrought by war among the people.  It is the populace who suffer, even in greater degree than do the fighting men.  They must give way in every instance before the irresistible barrier of martial law.  It is the old men, the women, the children, the babies and the physically imperfect who must bear the brunt of dreadfulness.

Go to any of the cities of France, a hundred or more miles from the firing line.  Go to Rouen, to Paris, to the smaller inland towns, to St. Omer, to Aubreville, and there is war.

The streets and boulevards, which a few years since were gay with a laughing crowd of joyous-hearted men and women, youths and maidens, to-day are gloomy, with the shadow of sorrow and death on them.  On a conservative estimate it will be found that in all the towns and cities of France, one in three women will be dressed in black.