there are fifty. Then she sends them to Switzerland,
where brothers and sisters are kept unseparated in family groups until
the war is over. The Queen busies herself with these children. For the
newest generation of Belgians Miss Fyfe has established a Maternity
Hospital. Nearly one hundred babies have come to live there.

It was my work to keep track of clothes and supplies. On a flying trip
to Paris, I told the American Relief Committee the story of this work,
and Geoffrey Dodge sent thirty complete layettes, bran-new, four big
cases, four gunny-sack bags, full of clothing for men, women, and
children, special brands of milk for young mothers in our maternity
hospital. Later, he sent four more sacks and four great wooden cases.

We used to tramp through many fields, over a single plank bridging the
ditches, to reach the lonely shelled farm, and persuade the stubborn,
unimaginative Flemish parents to give up their children for a safe home.
One mother had a yoke around her neck, and two heavy pails.

"When can I send my child?" she asked.

She had already sent two and had received happy letters from them. Other
mothers are suspicious of us, and flatly refuse, keeping their children
in the danger zone till death comes. During a shelling, the cure would
telephone for our ambulance. He would collect the little ones and sick
old people. Miss Fyfe could persuade them to come more easily when the
shells were falling. At the moment of parting, everybody cries. The
children are dressed. The one best thing they own is put on--a pair of
shoes from the attic, stiff new shoes, worked on the little feet unused
to shoes. Out of a family of ten children we would win perhaps three.
Back across the fields they trooped to our car, clean faces, matted
dirty hair, their wee bundle tied up in a colored handkerchief, no hats,
under the loose dark shirt a tiny Catholic charm. We lifted the little
people into the big yellow ambulance--big brother and sister, sitting at
the end to pin them in. We carried crackers and chocolate. They are soon
happy with the sweets, chattering, enjoying their first motor-car ride,
and eager for the new life.

LES TRAVAILLEURS DE LA GUERRE

The boy soldier is willing to make any day his last if it is a good
day. It is not so with the middle-aged man. He is puzzled by the
war. What he has to struggle with more than bodily weakness is the
malady of thought. Is the bloody business worth