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Show seeing their fame in battle hath raised them up for ever from Forgetting and the Grave." . ' What can we do, we Englishwomen at home in our sheltered island, for this heroic little nation that has held the pass ? Day and night the fleeing army of women and Children, of old men and boys passes northward to Holland, and westward over the sea to England. The other night, in a London social settlement, which has been largely given over to the refugees, a woman I know watched the incoming stream-peasants in their sabots, small bourgeois, carrying with them a few last possessions, children weary to death and wailing for food. But English hands were proud to wait on them, and English brains to plan for them. Here were a father and mother and seven children from Louvain who had been tramping and hiding in the Flemish fields for days and nights. The mother was on the point of maternity. There was no accommodation for her in the settlement, where the large hall and the gymnasium have been turned into wards for men and women respectively, of the peasant class, and the separate rooms looking out on the garden have been mostly assigned to the elderly men and women of the educated professional type. Much perplexity, accordingly, as to the poor expectant mother, in the mind of the kind Scotch lady who is the house~ keeper of the settlement! But, suddenly, she remembers an address in Kensington ; she flies to the telephone; she calls up a house in Queen's Gate, and its mistress. " Did you say the other day you would take in Belgian women for their confinement ? " "Certainly! Have you got such a case P" The note ofjoyful eagerness in the voice was unmistakable through the tube. Details are given. " All right. I will bring my motor round directly." And in an hour or so from her arrival, the dazed and wearied woman, with another Belgian woman and her little boy of three to keep her company, are speeding in a luxurious motor to the house in Queen's Gate. A warm room, a comfortable bed, nurse, clothing, foodfieverything is ready ! In a few days the poor soul‘s trouble is over, and the pretty babe lies peacefully beside its resting mother. For three days i Then the soul of the peasant woman who waits on others, and it; never waited on, rebelled. " I am always up, madame, in three days." " This time, take five ! You were so worn Most unwillingly, the tired body rests a few more days ; and then the whole family goes to a cottage ready for them, in an English village. the children go to school, the whole Village become their protectors and friends, the Flemings learn a few words of English, the English a few Words of li‘lemish, kindness and gesture do the rest, till, occasionally, an interpreter comes round and promotes a more satisfactory intercourse. But among,' the incoming throng on this October night there are figures of another type. A mother and three daughters~the widow and children of a Belgian otiieer soft-spoken, refined women, flyingy in terror from Antwerp, with a few scanty parcels of luggage, plus a grey parrot I-who is no sooner set down in the rooms allotted to them, than he vents his opinion on the diseomforts of the journey in some vigorous cursing of "Guillaume"! 76 By SIR THortus liaocx, RA. out ! " |
