National Archives and Records Administration

Introduction Activity 1 Activity 2 Activity 3

    It is surprising to learn that in ravaged and desolated Belgium there are still sixty-nine schools doing “business as usual.” Perhaps the strategy of the Commission for Relief in Belgium is responsible, but the fact remains, and one cannot but wonder at it. Hundreds of the little ones could not tell you where their parents are at the present time, many of them will never be reunited in this world, but still day by day they turn up at school to go through the daily round of lessons. It was a very difficult piece of work to undertake the safety and protection of Belgian children, but the Commission have done it, and done it well. They decided that the best thing to do was to lay down a rule that any child who preferred wandering to attending school should not get any food. It was absolutely necessary that the children to be safe must be altogether under the direct care of responsible persons, and who could do this work better than the nuns, who have the care and training of the souls of these babies in times of peace, and it is no task to these women to go on bravely day by day trying to do the work of those who have fallen in this bitter struggle. Of course if a child is ill and unable to attend school classes then the nuns take particular care of him or her, outside school hours. The new rule has appealed to the youngsters, the usual breadwinners are not forthcoming, their young animal hunger has to be appeased, and so they turn up day by day regardless of the desolation by which they are surrounded, to be prepared physically and mentally to take the places of those who are falling in the great struggle.