At Rosendaal, at Scheveningen, Eysden, and Flushing, at a dozen other places, these ghastly things are repeated in one form or another.  Holland has sheltered hundreds of thousands, but she could not in a moment organize even adequate shelter, much less comforts.

In Bergen-op-Zoom, where I write these words, there have come since the fall of Antwerp 300,000 hungry marchers, with no resources except what they carry with them.  This little town of 15,000 people did its best to meet the terrible pressure, and its citizens went without bread themselves to feed the refugees.  How can a small municipality suddenly deal with so vast a catastrophe?  Yet slowly some sort of order was organized out of chaos, and when the Government was able to establish refugee camps through the military the worst conditions were moderated, and now, in tents and in vans on a fortunately situated piece of land, over 3,000 people live, so far as comforts are concerned, like Kaffirs in Karoo or aborigines in a camp in the back blocks of Australia.  The tents are crammed with people, and life is reduced to its barest elements.  Straw, boards, and a few blankets and dishes for rations—­that constitutes the menage.

Children are born in the hugger mugger of such conditions, but the good Holland citizens see that the children are cared for and that the babies have milk.  Devoted priests teach the children, and the value of military organization illuminates the whole panoply of misery.  Yet the best of the refugee camps would seem to American citizens like the dark and dreadful life of an underworld, in which is neither work, purpose, nor opportunity.  It is a sight repugnant to civilization.

The saddest, most heartrending thing I have ever seen has been the patience of every Belgian, whatever his state, I have met.  Among the thousands of refugees I have seen in Holland, in the long stream that crossed the frontier at Maastricht and besieged the doors of the Belgian Consul while I was there, no man, no woman railed or declaimed against the horror of their situation.  The pathos of lonely, staring, apathetic endurance is tragic beyond words.  So grateful, so simply grateful, are they, every one, for whatever is done for them.

None of the Refugees Begs.

None begs, none asks for money, and yet on the faces of these frontier refugees I saw stark hunger, the weakness come of long weeks of famine.  One man, one fortunate man from Verviers, told me he could purchase as much as 2s. 8d. worth of food for himself, his wife, and child for a week.

Think of it, American citizens!  Sixty-six cents’ worth of food for a man, his wife, and child for a whole week, if he were permitted to purchase that much!  Sixty-six cents!  That is what an average American citizen pays for his dinner in his own home.  He cannot get breakfast, he can only get half a breakfast, for that at the Waldorf or the Plaza in New York.

This man was only allowed to purchase that much food if he could, because if he purchased more he would be taking from some one else, and they were living on rations for the week which would represent the food of an ordinary man for a day.  A rich man can have no more than a poor man.  It is a democracy of famine.