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Title: The work of the War Refugees Committee
An address given by Lady Lugard to the Royal Society of Arts, March 24th, 1915
Author: Flora L. Shaw
Release date: November 24, 2025 [eBook #77327]
Language: English
Original publication: London: G. Bell and sons, ltd, 1915
Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORK OF THE WAR REFUGEES COMMITTEE ***
THE WORK OF
THE WAR REFUGEES COMMITTEE
AN ADDRESS
GIVEN BY
LADY LUGARD
TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS
MARCH 24th, 1915
[Illustration: [Logo]]
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1915
THE WORK OF THE
WAR REFUGEES COMMITTEE
[Illustration: [Logo]]
I have been asked to speak to-day about the work of the War Refugees
Committee.
The work of the War Refugees Committee is intimately associated with
what will, I believe, hereafter be regarded as one of the most acutely
pathetic chapters of our island history. Because we are an island,
because a stretch of sea lies between us and Europe, because, above all,
we have a Navy which for a thousand years has known how to defend that
strip of sea, we have been able, not for the first time in our history,
to offer refuge to a people stricken and driven out from their proper
home.
There is no need for me to speak now of what Belgium has done—we all
have the knowledge in our hearts. In the Titanic struggle in which we
are engaged Belgium bore for a time the burden of the world, and the
world can never forget, and never repay.
We all remember the shock of horror with which we read the first
accounts of the atrocities perpetrated at Visé and Liège. But we have
almost forgotten that only a few days before the outbreak of this war
our eyes were turned towards another theatre of disturbance, and the
outbreak of civil war in Ireland was the catastrophe we feared. For a
moment I must recall it in connection with the refugees, for, strange as
it may seem, the War Refugees Committee is, in a sense, the lineal
descendant of the Ulster Council.
The preparations of Ulster in the early summer of last year were
sufficiently public to be known to anyone who chose to be acquainted
with them. Like most Irish Protestants, I was aware that in view of
coming contingencies arrangements had been made for the removal of many
thousands of women and children from the area which was likely to become
a theatre of war. These arrangements had been made with great
thoroughness. Registration and all other necessary forms had been
prepared, transport had been organized and safe homes had been secured
in England. The outbreak of European war mercifully averted the
misfortune of war in Ireland, and when the news of the first atrocities
came through from Belgium they suggested the idea, “Why not use the
Ulster organization to get the Belgian women and children out if
possible from under the German guns?” At that time we had of course no
conception of the development which the Refugee movement was ultimately
to take. The thought in my mind was mainly of women and children. I
telegraphed to Captain Craig to ask whether, if such a scheme proved
feasible, he would let me have the use of the Ulster organization. He
telegraphed back immediately that everything they had was at my disposal
for such a purpose. He sent me all their registration forms—forms which
we are to-day using at the War Refugees Committee—and put me immediately
in touch with people who had the necessary information. In twenty-four
hours I had the embryo of an organization in my hands.
But it was evidently necessary to change what I may call the “sentiment
base.” The next step was to approach the Catholic Church and to ask of
Cardinal Bourne that the Catholic institutions of Great Britain and
Ireland might be circularized in order to ascertain how many homes of
undoubted security could be placed at the disposal of Belgian refugees.
I was received with a cordiality which, I would like to say here once
for all, the Catholic Church has constantly maintained towards the
movement. I was assured by Monsignor Bidwell, whom Cardinal Bourne
deputed to discuss the matter with me, that assuming the movement to be
properly organized and to be viewed with favour by the Government, the
Catholic authorities would be very ready to help.
With this amount of preparation I approached the Foreign Office, and was
assured of the sympathy of Sir Edward Grey. The Local Government Board
signified their approval, and the Foreign Office was good enough
ultimately to arrange an interview for me with the Belgian Minister,
directing me that in placing the scheme before him I was to inquire what
steps his Government, in the event of their viewing the proposal with
favour, would take to make the scheme known in Belgium. In accordance
with these instructions I laid the scheme before the Comte de Lalaing,
and in due course an answer was received from the Belgian Government
accepting the proposal with gratitude, and saying that they would make
the scheme known in Belgium, and would direct intending refugees to come
to Ostend, whence they understood that we would take steps to bring them
away.
While these negotiations were in progress the position in Belgium was
becoming every day more acute, and efforts which had already been
started in other quarters to alleviate this distress were suddenly
brought into line with my endeavour. Lord Lytton had begun collecting
contributions towards the Belgian Relief Fund from exhibitors at the
recent Brussels and Ghent Exhibitions. This had led Mr. Wintour, of the
Exhibitions Branch of the Board of Trade, to pay a visit to Ostend,
where the homeless refugees were already congregated in large numbers.
On August 22nd I was informed by Mr. Reyntiens and Mr. Wintour that they
had the promise of a transport, from the Admiralty, with which they were
immediately going to fetch over refugees, and that they hoped to return
on the following Monday with a ship-load. I asked Mr. Reyntiens how many
they proposed to bring back. He said “As many as we can get—anything
from 100 to 1,000.” To the inquiry “What do you propose to do with your
refugees when you bring them back?” his reply was, in effect, “We leave
that to you!” There was no time to discuss the matter; it was necessary
for him to go at once and get his papers ready, and I was left on
Saturday morning in full sympathy with the adventure, but with the
knowledge that on Monday I might be expected to receive in England 1,000
refugees.
No Committee had as yet been formed. It was evident that between
Saturday and Monday a Committee had to be created. I will not delay you
with a relation of the details of that Saturday and Sunday afternoon,
interesting as they were at the moment to those engaged in the work. The
only condition which I made was that the Committee should have no
politics and no religious distinctions, and it is enough now to say that
thanks mainly to the exertions of Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton and Mr. H. E.
Morgan a Committee was formed under the required conditions and in the
required time, Lord Hugh Cecil consenting to be our Chairman and Lord
Gladstone our Treasurer.
By the kindness of Mr. F. Norie-Miller, General Manager of the General
Accident Fire and Life Assurance Corporation, Ltd., offices were placed
at our disposal entirely free of charge. The nucleus of a clerical and
typewriting staff was secured. A name was chosen. An appeal was sent to
the papers on Sunday night, and as a net result of our exertions we were
enabled on the following Monday morning to take possession as a
Committee of the empty offices which have since developed into the
well-known headquarters of the War Refugees Committee at Aldwych. That
first morning we had hardly pens and ink, we had not chairs to sit upon,
the offices were almost entirely without furniture, and while we were
trying to organize our immediate plan of operations the response to our
Appeal, which had appeared only in that morning’s papers, took the
embarrassing if at the same time encouraging form of no less than 1,000
letters, all containing offers of hospitality and help.
The response of the country to the movement was absolutely phenomenal.
The 1,000 letters of that day became 2,000 on the following day, then
3,000, then 4,000, then 5,000, and on the day on which we received 5,000
letters there were also 1,200 callers at the Office. Every letter and
every visitor brought proposals of help in one form or another. Within a
fortnight we had at our disposal hospitality for 100,000 persons.
Cheques, clothing, food, offers of personal service flowed in upon us. I
could spend hours rather than minutes in telling you the details of that
first outpouring of public generosity. The sense of the country was made
absolutely clear that if it could not share the acute suffering caused
to the people of Belgium by the war it desired to diminish that
suffering by every means that it possessed. These offers came not from
one class nor from one place, but from all classes and from all places.
Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Nonconformist, high and low, rich and
poor united, all unaware, in a spontaneous tribute of sympathy and
respect. Nations, like individuals, have their moments of unconscious
self-revelation. It was a moment which unmistakably revealed the heart
of England.
The enthusiasm and volume of the movement were cheering, and no offers
touched us more deeply than the hundreds we received, often on
postcards, from the very poor. But the suddenness of the movement
brought with it accompaniments which it must be admitted were difficult
to cope with. We were soon accused, and justly accused, of not answering
our letters, of not acknowledging our cheques, of not receiving our
visitors with due consideration. It was all true! though it remained so
only for a few days. To have done otherwise was a physical
impossibility, for what were we among so many? We were only a willing
company of amateurs suddenly called upon to deal with the conditions of
a large business created in twenty-four hours. And while this volume of
external business was pouring in the true object of our existence
remained in our opinion the providing of homes for our coming guests. We
contented ourselves with safeguarding our cheques, and gave our thoughts
to the refugees.
They began to come on the first day. They increased in numbers, not
being immediately brought in ship-loads, but trickling through on their
own account from various sources to the number of perhaps 100 or 150 a
day. Our first difficulty with regard to finding homes for them was met
by the kindness of Sir James Dunlop-Smith, who obtained from the India
Office permission to place at our disposal a small house at 49, St.
George’s Road, usually occupied by the King’s orderlies, but standing at
the moment empty and furnished. This was the first place of refuge
offered in this country to Belgians. It seemed to us a suitable
coincidence that it should come, even indirectly, from the King. The
Borough Council of Camberwell was, if my memory serves me rightly, the
next to offer us beds for Belgian refugees. They had organized Dulwich
Baths as a hospital, and they placed at our disposal between 80 and 100
beds. Battersea followed their example. Private offers were added to
these, and in two or three days we had a couple of hundred beds upon
which we could count.
We reached the third day of our existence before any news came of the
ship-load of refugees for whose reception the Committee had been so
hastily organized. It was on Wednesday evening at about half-past seven
o’clock, as we were separating after a heavy day’s work, that a telegram
was brought in saying, “One thousand refugees arriving Folkestone
to-night. Can you take 500 in London tomorrow?” The moment had come. We
afterwards discovered that this was not “the” ship, and as a matter of
fact Mr. Wintour’s refugees never did come over in a special transport
chartered for them. I give you our impressions, however, only as we
received them then. We had provided with the greatest difficulty for
250. To provide suddenly for 500 more seemed at first sight impossible.
But to let you have one instance of the early work I will describe how
it was done.
Among the offers which had been made to us was one from the Army and
Navy Stores proposing to lend us an empty shirt factory conveniently
situated just opposite Victoria Station. It was in a perfectly sanitary
condition, clean, with gas, light, and water laid on, but stark empty.
At eight o’clock on Wednesday evening we accepted the offer. Mrs. Walter
Cave took direction in this particular act of energy, and I believe she
was up all that night. The Army and Navy Stores let us have beds at cost
price. The Chairman of the Rowton Houses lent us crockery and linen.
Willing help came from every side, and the result was achieved that
before three on the following afternoon the shirt factory had been
converted into a hostel, where 250 beds were made up with clean sheets
and pillow-cases; a kitchen was arranged downstairs with eight
cooking-stoves; dining-tables were ready laid; and a hot dinner for
several hundred people awaited the arrival of the refugees. Our first
batch of 250 arrived there that afternoon. We disposed of the others in
different places, and from that day, though we continued to receive
refugees in London at the rate of several hundreds per day, and were
often at our wits’ end what to do, not one who reached our hands was
ever left without food and lodging.
The experience of this first week gave us the formation of the principal
Departments of the War Refugees Committee. I do not propose now to
detain you with any full description of our organization. For anyone who
is interested the details are recorded in the Blue-Book issued by the
Departmental Committee of the Local Government Board appointed to
consider and report on questions arising in connection with the
Reception and Employment of the Belgian Refugees in this country. I will
indicate merely the framework of the machine which circumstances
immediately brought into operation.
LADY LUGARD’S HOSTELS
FOR BELGIAN REFUGEES.
_Committee_—_Lady Lugard._
_The Hon. Mrs. Roland Leigh._
_Stuart Hogg, Esq._
These Hostels have been instituted by Lady Lugard for the reception of
Belgians who have hitherto lived on their private means but have come to
the end of their resources. Also for some of a poorer class who have
received hospitality offered for a definite period which has now come to
an end.
There are at present eleven houses, accommodating a total of about 400
people. Two of these are more in the nature of hospitals, the rest are
carried on like private hotels or boarding-houses. Care is taken to make
the life as pleasant as possible. Guests are placed in the different
houses according to their social rank; there is a capable manageress in
every house, a Belgian cook, and to a large extent the other servants
are Belgian.
In many cases, where the refugees have some small means of their own, it
has been found desirable to assist in payment of the rent of flats, or
by direct contributions. At present 125 are helped in these ways.
Lady Lugard’s aim has been to make each house a “little corner of
Belgium,” as one of the guests happily expressed it. There is a
committee of ladies, who visit these houses regularly and see that the
inmates are as happy and comfortable as possible.
All expenditure is accounted for to the Central Committee, and care is
taken that there is no waste.
The scheme has a certain amount of financial help from the War Refugees
Committee, but all expenses of furnishing, rent, lighting, and general
upkeep are borne by Lady Lugard’s Committee.
Your help is asked to carry on this undertaking, which is one of the
attempts to repay a small portion of the immense debt we owe to the
unhappy Belgian nation.
Cheques and postal orders should be made out to Lady Lugard, and
addressed to her at
51, RUTLAND GATE, S.W.
Our first need was obviously a Card Index and Correspondence Department.
This Department has since been placed under the very efficient
management of Mr. Arthur Chadwick, assisted by Mr. Berks and Mr.
Barsdorf, and with the Cashier’s Department under our excellent cashier,
Mr. Bourne, has completely rescued us from the reproaches of the first
days.
We needed a Transport Department to meet refugees at the stations to
convey them to and from the Refuges. We were helped at first by Mr. F.
M. Guedalla, who also did yeoman service with Mr. Basil Williams and
others in the reception of the refugees at Folkestone. By the kindness
of Sir Albert Stanley and the London General Omnibus Company the
services of one of the officers of that Company, Mr. Henry Campbell,
were placed at our disposal, and under Mr. Campbell this Department has
become one of the most important and efficient branches of our practical
organization. Mr. Campbell’s grip and comprehension of the work of the
War Refugees Committee is so complete that I believe if the whole
Committee were swept away and Mr. Campbell were left standing, the work
would still be satisfactorily carried on.
Our next obvious need was an organized system of fitting the refugees
into the offers of hospitality which were received for them. This has
remained from the beginning the most complicated and difficult work we
have had to do. A Department, afterwards known as our Allocation
Department, was organized at once under Lady Gladstone, Mrs. Alfred
Lyttelton, and Mrs. Gilbert Samuel, who have been assisted in the work
by an army of willing volunteers. The work of this Department, of which
a beginning had been made in the Belgian Consulate even before the War
Refugees Committee came into existence, has since been carried on in
four main divisions. There has been our Central Allocation Department,
of which the direction has remainded in the hands of Mrs. Gilbert
Samuel. There has been a very important development of subsidiary
branches in the Rink under Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, helped of course by
many willing workers, to all of whom she would, I am sure, wish to offer
a tribute of gratitude. There has been the Allocation of the Belgian
Consulate, also carried on at Aldwych, under the direction of the Misses
Rothschild and a group of helpers, and there has been the Allocation of
the Catholic Women’s League, under the direction of Miss Streeter,
working always in co-operation with Aldwych, but carried on from their
own headquarters in Victoria Street. In addition to these there has been
also the Allocation, carried on independently of Aldwych, by the Jewish
community, who from their own private offers have provided for upwards
of 6,000 people. The Catholic ladies have allocated upwards of 6,000. In
the Miss Rothschild’s room at Aldwych some 30,000 have been either
allocated or helped in other ways. Our own two branches of Allocation
have since the beginning of the movement arranged for the placing of
between 50,000 and 60,000 persons. In all its branches the War Refugees
Committee has found homes for about 100,000 persons.
A Department taking its rise in the same necessities as the Allocation
Department proper is the Department of Local Committees, which early in
the movement formed themselves throughout the country for the better
management of local offers of hospitality, while working in
correspondence with Aldwych. This Department at Aldwych has been from
the beginning under the supervision of Lord Lytton, who has directed it
with an ability and devotion for which the War Refugees Committee have
every reason to be grateful. The number of Local Committees with which
his Department maintains touch is now nearly 2,000.
To these Departments one other of great importance was added in the
first days. It was our Clothing Department, with headquarters at 23,
Warwick Square. Here Lady Emmott, ably assisted by Lady MacDonnell and
other devoted ladies, has been enabled by the generosity of the public
to distribute nearly a million garments, including much-needed boots and
shoes.
The creation of our different Departments was, as I have said,
immediately imposed upon us by the conditions of the problem with which
we were dealing. The general work of direction and coordination, and the
creation of new means of meeting each new necessity of the situation had
also to grow from the simple beginnings of the early days. It was soon
found that it was desirable to place the Management under one direction,
and it was decided to ask Lord Gladstone, who was prepared to give the
time and devotion necessary to such a work, to accept a position which
is, I suppose, equivalent to that usually held in a commercial company
by the Managing Director. Mr. Morgan was at first associated in this
direction, but found himself afterwards unable to devote the necessary
time, and Lord Gladstone has from the beginning borne the brunt of the
central work of the Committee. It is only in a later chapter, to which I
shall have occasion to refer, that he has been assisted in a Management
Committee by Lord Lytton, the Rt. Hon. W. H. Dickinson, M.P., and Mr. A.
Allen, M.P., to whom was added in the capacity of Honorary Secretary Mr.
A. Maudslay, who has been from the beginning one of the most constant
and devoted of our voluntary workers. I should mention here that Mr.
Maudslay was among the most active of Mrs. Lyttelton’s helpers in the
first organization of the Rink, and that at a later period he succeeded
our first Secretary, Mr. Hennessy Cook, as Honorary Secretary to the War
Refugees Committee. Lord Gladstone’s position has been no sinecure, and
we all, if I may be permitted to say it, give ungrudging recognition to
the absolute sincerity and unselfishness of purpose with which he has
performed his work. We do not claim as a Committee—and I am sure Lord
Gladstone would heartily agree with me—to have been perfectly organized
or perfectly directed, or that our staff, amounting at one time to
upwards of 500 devoted volunteers, have always perfectly understood or
perfectly carried out the intentions and instructions of headquarters.
We are willing to accept in a chastened spirit all reasonable criticism.
The only claim we are concerned to make is that the War Refugees
Committee throughout has been a willing instrument. In ourselves we have
been nothing. The power by which we have been worked has been the
country. We are proud only to have been privileged to represent a
movement which may claim to take its place in history as the consolation
of a nation by a nation.
It is as a task of consolation that we have from the beginning conceived
of our work. I regret to have detained you so long with a description of
the machinery by which the work was done. I take you back now to the
days when the first refugees, fleeing from the terror of fire and sword,
began to reach our shores. These refugees were different from the
refugees who are now arriving. They had actually borne the first
onslaught of German fury. Men had seen their wives and daughters shot,
and worse than shot, before their eyes. Fathers and mothers had seen
their little children trampled to death under German feet. Old and young
had alike been driven before the bayonet and placed as shields to
protect the enemy from Belgian bullets. Some had been forced to dig
graves, and even to bury men who were not yet dead. All had been smoked
and burned out of their pillaged homes, holding themselves lucky if they
were not forced back to be consumed in the funeral pyres of their
domestic possessions. It has become the fashion now to cast doubt upon
the authenticity of deeds fit only for the annals of the Middle Ages.
Those of us who helped at that time nightly to receive the refugees as
they arrived can never forget the tales of inconceivable horror which
were poured into our ears, nor the convincing simplicity of narration
which made it impossible to doubt their general truth. I remember the
first refugee with whom I happened to speak about herself. It was not a
horrible case—on the contrary, quite simple—but it brought home to me
with a shock of realization what was happening within an ordinary day’s
journey of London. It was only a mother feeding her child with a basin
of bread and milk in one of our Refuges. I asked her where she came
from. She said “Charleroi.” “Then you have seen the fighting?” “Oh, yes,
I carried him—indicating the baby—out under the German guns.” It was
nothing. She had had the luck to escape, but the contrast between the
peacefulness of her actual occupation and her words brought home what
she had escaped from. In the same Refuge on a later day there was a man
whose face was like the face of a tragic fate. He did not speak, he did
not move. The ladies who were working in the Refuge approached him for
some time in vain. One reminded him that he had his wife, while many had
lost their wives, and at last he spoke. “Yes,” he said, “I have my wife!
But we had five children, and we have not one left. Four of the little
ones were trampled to death under the feet of a German regiment, and my
little girl, my eldest, fourteen years old, was given to the German
soldiery, who misused her before my eyes. Afterwards they took her away
with the regiment.” And he fell back to the only thing he seemed able to
say, “We had five children—we have not one left.” The stories which we
heard at that time, daily and nightly, from not one alone, but from
practically every refugee who reached us, were such as surpass all
imagination of horror and brutality. We heard them; we became in a sense
accustomed to hearing them, but the details of many were such as I could
not possibly repeat in a public assembly such as this. An observant
friend who accompanied me one day to a Refuge said, as we came out,
“These people look as if they had all seen ghosts.” They _had_ seen
ghosts! They had seen spectres of carnage, cruelty, lust, and
brutality—such evil spirits as, thank God, are not often let loose upon
the face of earth. You will readily understand that to us who were with
them at that time, who heard these stories every day, no extenuation of
German conduct which can ever be produced will efface the impression
that these awful things were literally true. It was also abundantly
evident that they were not the isolated acts of brutal or drunken
individuals. Evidence was unanimous, and to our minds conclusive, that
the crimes were committed in pursuance of a general order from above.
I will not hold your imagination in this atmosphere. Let it be placed to
the credit of twentieth-century civilization that the universal
abhorrence aroused by the conduct of the German army towards civilians
was such as to force German authorities to a recognition of the mistake
they had committed. Orders to terrorize the population were apparently
withdrawn, and, so far as we are aware, the brutalities of the first
weeks of the campaign have for the present ceased.
It was on the 24th of August that the War Refugees Committee received
its first refugees. Until the 9th of September they were received, as I
have told you, in our own Refuges, where we tried to make them as
comfortable as we could. Some little difficulty and hesitation existed
at first as to the question of facilitating the transport of refugees
from Belgium. But this and all other doubt upon the matter was set at
rest by the public offer of the hospitality of the nation which was
made, as you will remember, by the Prime Minister in the House of
Commons on the 9th of September. From that day the Government has stood
behind the movement, and the War Refugees Committee has worked in close
and friendly relation with the Local Government Board.
The first chapter of Government intervention was to relieve the War
Refugees Committee of the expense and difficulty of providing Refuges in
London.[1] The Government took the Alexandra Palace, and in that and
other available public institutions it organized immediately, under the
Metropolitan Asylums Board and the Board of Guardians, Refuges which had
a total capacity of about 8,000 persons. After the fall of Antwerp,
Earl’s Court Camp, with a further capacity of 4,000 persons, was added
to the government Refuges. Up to the middle of September the War
Refugees Committee had had difficulty in receiving as many as 500 a day.
Since that time, so far as the great majority, which consisted of
working class refugees, are concerned, the War Refugees Committee has
been relieved of anxiety. The first needs of shelter and food were
supplied, and admirably supplied, by the Government Refuges. I should
like in passing to offer my tribute of praise to the splendid work done
by the officials alike of the Metropolitan Asylums Board and the Board
of Guardians. I was for many weeks in close relation day and night with
what was being done, and I can speak from personal observation of the
devoted zeal, the kindness of heart, and the untiring industry with
which the work of receiving, housing, and feeding the refugees was
carried out.
Footnote 1:
For a full description of what was done by the Local Government Board
the reader is referred to White Book, Cd. 7763.
The organization of the Alexandra Palace, where at first about 1,500
were received, may be taken as a sample of the rest. The Alexandra
Palace, as you know, is a large glass building originally intended for
public recreation, and conveniently situated in its own grounds on a
hill overlooking the North of London. Its central halls, with their
merry-go-rounds and swing-boats, lent themselves readily to the
reception of refugees, and in the early days visitors who went to
condole with the victims of tragic misfortune were usually saluted with
shouts of delight proceeding from children profiting with all the
unconsciousness of their age by the unusual opportunities of enjoyment!
The glass roofs of the building admitted sunshine to every corner. One
of the central halls was converted into a great dining-room, where
sufficient and comfortable meals were served with order and regularity.
Beyond the dining-room there was a nursery and hospital, bright with
white beds and flowers. Beyond the hospital a large hall has been
converted into a bathroom with curtained cubicles, where upwards of 100
baths, fitted with hot and cold water, are at the disposal of the
refugees. Another large room is used as a schoolroom and kindergarten
for the children. A cinema theatre was converted into a chapel. Rooms
were set aside for workrooms and the distribution of clothing. The many
rooms surrounding the central halls were converted into dormitories
holding each from 60 to 100 beds. In one room the beds had pink
coverings, in the next they had blue. Screens covered with chintz gave a
certain privacy to groups of beds. Crucifixes were fixed on the walls.
Everything that could be done to give a homely and pleasant aspect to
the place was done with the utmost goodwill. These were the arrangements
made before the fall of Antwerp for the general mass of refugees.
Upstairs in a more private wing of the building there was accommodation,
with a comfortably furnished sitting-room and dining-room, for about 100
persons who might for any reason on their first arrival be distinguished
from the ordinary crowd. Before the fall of Antwerp, since which period
the rush of refugees has caused too great a pressure of overcrowding,
there was a grace, almost a certain charm, in the arrangements. Her
Majesty the Queen showed her sympathy with the refugees by visiting them
in the Alexandra Palace, and expressed her gracious approval of the
arrangements which had been made for them.
Alexandra Palace was, of course, only one place. The spirit which
dictated its organization presided also over the organization of the
other Refuges. At Alexandra Palace the ladies of Wood Green and the
locality gave devoted service in the development of Clothing, Sewing,
and other departments designed for the comfort of the refugees. At
Earl’s Court Camp the ladies of the Local Government Board have taken
these departments under their charge, and have devoted themselves to the
development of educational and other facilities.
The first refugees arrived usually in a state of absolute destitution.
Their constant prayer was that they might be immediately allowed to work
and to earn for themselves some portion back of what they had lost. But
an opinion was at that time held that no attempt should be made to
obtain employment for these refugees in the ordinary labour market of
the country, and the lavish hospitality which was offered to them
encouraged the hope that they might be amply provided for by private
beneficence during the continuance of the war.
The first work of the War Refugees Committee when the refugees arrived
in the Government Refuges was, therefore, to supply them as far as
possible with immediate necessaries. They needed everything. Besides the
substantial requirements of clothes and shoes, they wanted combs,
brushes, soap, hair-pins, boot-laces, braces, needles, cotton,
thimbles—everything that even the poorest find necessary in daily life.
The men, of course, urgently wanted tobacco; the women wanted
knitting-needles and wool to knit. We did our best to supply all these,
and among the small articles which at that time were distributed freely
none were more eagerly accepted than rosaries. We gave them away by
thousands. The exodus had been so sudden that they had apparently in
many cases been left behind, and men and women alike among the first
arrivals from the Walloon country seemed anxious to possess themselves
of this usual accompaniment of prayer.
There are subjects about which one hesitates to speak in public, yet I
would like just to place on record the impression we received from these
first refugees of simple faith. They seemed themselves to realize, in
the tragic extremity of their distress, that they had lost everything
except their God, and I cannot easily convey the touching fervour of the
prayers in the chapels of the Refuges at which I once or twice
incidentally assisted. Piety, courage, extraordinary fortitude, and
overflowing heartfelt gratitude for all that was being done for them in
England were the principal characteristics that enlisted our sympathy
and admiration for our guests.
I know it may be said that the heroic note has not been consistently
sustained. That is only to say that human nature remains human in all
circumstances. And I would ask, if Oxford had suffered the fate of
Louvain, if Canterbury had been destroyed instead of Rheims, if
Manchester or Birmingham or Leeds had been bombarded and their
population driven out homeless and penniless to foreign shores, do you
believe that the whole exodus would have been an exodus of heroes? From
the days of Israel onward some members of every great migration have
been found to murmur and to cry for quails as well as manna in the
desert. None grieve for this occasional backsliding more sincerely than
the majority of the better-disposed Belgians themselves. I only wish to
bear testimony to the other side, which I have myself seen and admired,
of patient and even magnificent endurance.
The refugees were supposed to remain in the London Refuges for a period
of only three to five days at the outside. Once rested and re-fitted it
was the work of the War Refugees Committee to pass them on to the
permanent homes so cordially offered by the hospitality of the country.
It was in these homes that their real reception awaited them, and in
these that was prepared for them by the kindness of individual English
hearts the “haven where they would be.” With what happened after they
left our hands we had, of course, little or nothing to do. Everyone gave
to his own guests according to the fullness of his means. We received
many letters of enthusiastic thanks expressing the content and joy of
the refugees, but our business was only to organize the passing of the
refugees from the London Refuges to their homes.
The brunt of this work fell, of course, on our Allocation Department,
which, as the pressure grew more and more acute through the months of
September and October, was obliged steadily to increase its forces. It
employed at one time upwards of 100 volunteers. The work of these ladies
and gentlemen consisted in receiving from the Correspondence Department
overnight cards upon which the offers of hospitality made to the
Committee were indexed. With the cards they went on the following day
into the Refuges, and subsequently into hotels in which better-class
refugees were housed, and their object was—acting with as much tact and
sympathy as possible—to find from the information given on the cards the
most suitable accommodation for the many differing parties of refugees
who presented themselves. At the beginning of the movement refugees had
to be dealt with only at the rate of 100 or 200 per day. From the date
of the public offer of national hospitality made by the Government, the
number increased steadily until, during the rush created by the fall of
Antwerp, which marked the maximum pressure of the movement, it became
necessary for the Allocation Department to deal with upwards of 2,000
persons every day. It is difficult for the public to realize the
magnitude of the task thus performed. It involved not only the delicate
personal decisions which had to be made by each individual Allocator,
but it carried with it all the complicated arrangements of registration,
transport, and warning of hosts. All four branches of the Allocation
Department were at this time worked to their utmost.
The arrangements for transport of these separate branches fell upon the
Transport Department. Every refugee who arrived from the Continent had
to be met and taken to a Refuge or a hotel. Every refugee who left one
of the Refuges or a hotel to take up the hospitality allotted to him in
the country had to be provided with a pass over the railway, had to be
convoyed to the railway station, and his host had to be warned at what
hour and at what station he was to be received. During the stress
created by the fall of Antwerp, when upwards of 4,000 refugees arrived
in one day in London by trainloads from the Continent, and as many as
2,000 had to be sent in small individual groups to different stations of
the British Isles, a total of 6,000 had to be handled every day! It has
been estimated that during this period as many as 8,000 and 10,000
refugees crossed the Channel daily to our shores. No warning nor
preparation could be given as to the numbers to be dealt with. While the
crisis lasted they poured in day and night, taxing the energies of the
whole organization almost to breaking-point. Not only Transport and
Allocation, but Clothing, Correspondence, and Local Committees, with all
their subsidiary branches, were heavily overworked. They bore the
strain. There was no break-down. We were able to meet and deal with the
crisis. It may readily be imagined that in work of a delicate nature
accomplished under such pressure, some mistakes were inevitable; but we
worked with the consoling thought present to our minds, that if the
public could have realized the conditions under which the work was done,
it would have been surprised rather at the few than at the many errors
into which we fell.
The fall of Antwerp brought us to a new chapter of our work, of which I
would have much to say but that I have already kept you longer than I
would have wished. I must touch only as briefly as possible on the
aspects of the question which now present themselves.
The crisis lasted only a couple of weeks. The occupation of Ostend by
the Germans on October 17th closed the Belgian coast and stopped the
daily transport service. Since that time refugees have been only able to
reach us by way of Holland, and though this country has continued to
provide such facilities as are possible for their transit, the figures
of the daily arrivals have fallen considerably. The total for November
was the lowest for any month since the beginning of the war. In December
and January the numbers again mounted, giving a total of 12,000 for
December and 14,000 for January. Refugees are still, notwithstanding the
dangers of mines and submarines and the prohibition of our blockade
zone, arriving in numbers which are to be counted daily in three
figures. But the rush is over. We are no longer working under the same
conditions of pressure.
There are noticeable also some other remarkable differences. We are
working now with a different class of refugee. The simple country folk
of the first exodus have given place to the urban population of the
great towns, and they come to us under different conditions. The early
refugees had, as I have told you, suffered in their own persons all the
worst horrors of war. Since the fall of Antwerp the flight has been
rather—though not of course wholly—from “the wrath to come.” Many
refugees are fleeing from what they fear may happen rather than from
what has actually happened. I speak chiefly for the moment of the
working-classes. Many of those now coming have been attracted to this
country by the accounts sent back in the first moments of relief and
gratitude by the earlier refugees. In the Refuges and Hostels we saw
many of the postcards written by the first refugees, and they
represented this country and people as something so near Paradise and
the angels, that expectation based upon such description could hardly
fail of disappointment. It need not therefore be a matter of surprise if
some difference is observable between the attitude and tone of the
refugees housed in the Government Refuges to-day, and those with whom
the same Refuges were filled in the earlier stages of the movement.
The gradual development of the situation which has brought us a
different class of refugee has also brought about a very important
modification of opinion with regard to the conditions of their
reception. It has been decided that the employment of refugees instead
of being deprecated should now be encouraged, and that instead of
depending for subsistence on the hospitality of the country they should,
as far as possible, be enabled to support themselves. A Government
Committee has been appointed, as you know, under the Chairmanship of Sir
Ernest Hatch, to consider the conditions under which effect can be given
to this new view of the situation. Belgian Labour Bureaux working in
connection with the Central Labour Bureaux have been established in the
Government Refuges, as also in the Rink at Aldwych. Recruiting Bureaux
have been established in the Government Refuges, by means of which
Belgians of military age are enabled to join their colours and return to
the front at Flanders. By these agencies in conjunction with the
Government Refuges, and other forms of Government Relief for urgent
cases the problem of the reception of working class refugees may, I
think, be said to have been met and disposed of.
Outside these questions the problem with which since Christmas we have
been most acutely preoccupied is the problem of giving suitable help to
the urgent needs of the propertied and professional classes. This is a
class with which I have myself been thrown into close and constant
touch, and the sorrows and difficulties of their position are very vivid
to me. They have suffered, of course, horribly in regard to their
material possessions, and the numbers increase daily of persons
accustomed to live in the comfort of comparative affluence who are
reduced to absolute penury. Such cases call for the sincerest sympathy
and for practical help. Where only material possessions are concerned
they do not, it must be recognized, make quite the same poignant appeal
to elemental emotions that was made by the earlier refugees. But there
is seldom a day in which some special case does not present itself. A
day or two ago it was a case of a man of good position and once ample
means who had seen his wife and daughter shot by the Germans, and who
came in search of some educational facilities for his little boy, the
only member of the family now left to him. He was entirely penniless.
The next day it was a manufacturer from Louvain who had shared in all
the horrors attending the destruction of that town. His town house and
his country house, with all that they contained, had been destroyed. He
himself had been taken as a hostage by the Germans. He was three times
blindfolded and ordered to be shot, and three times at the last moment
the order was countermanded. He was beaten and spat upon. He was forced
to march with other Belgians as a covering rank in front of the German
advance. As he said in very quietly relating these experiences: “It is
doubted whether the Germans really used Belgian civilians as a
covering-shield for their soldiers. I _know_, because they have used me.
They put us in the front of their attack, and bullets whistled between
us as we advanced.” But these things were all as nothing to the anguish
of knowing that the soldiery which had marched him away in one direction
had taken his wife away in another. It was impossible for him to know
anything of her fate. After some days of marching in front of the German
troops they came in touch with Belgian outposts. He was able to effect
his escape, and he reached Antwerp through the Belgian lines. Still
unable to obtain any news of his wife, he advertised in the hope that
the news he gave of himself might reach her eyes. It did. After long
delay the news was brought to him that she was alive, that she had
escaped without serious injury from the Germans, and that she was in
hiding in the neighbourhood of Louvain. To reach her he went on foot
from Antwerp to Louvain, passing as he could through the German lines,
hiding at times in ditches and swamps, wading through rivers to avoid
the guarded roads. He told me the whole story with absolute calm, and
only when he came to the climax of their meeting he suddenly broke
down—“My wife!” he said, “she had been living in the woods and fields
with practically nothing to eat. She was a black skeleton, mere skin
drawn over her bones.” He could say no more. I didn’t wish that he
should. My business was merely to find him some means of living now that
he and his wife were together in a place of safety. You can understand
that after hearing such a story one’s only feeling is that peace and
security must somehow be assured.
In the early part of the movement such cases as these were provided for
by private hospitality, and I come now to the greatest change of all
which the movement has undergone. The movement of private hospitality,
which has provided from first to last for a figure approaching to
something like a quarter of a million refugees, has, as was to a certain
extent inevitable, exhausted its first impulse. About Christmas time we
began to realize that the offers of hospitality had ceased. No fresh
offers came, and hosts who had previously had Belgians in their houses
wrote that they would shortly be needing this accommodation for other
purposes. Our Allocation Department became a Department of
Re-Allocation. Gifts of clothing also sensibly diminished.
The funds of the War Refugees Committee, which have been devoted to the
relief of Belgians in England, have never been very great. Public
contributions in money have been more usually given to the Belgian
Relief Fund, which is entirely devoted to the relief of Belgians in
Belgium. We have sometimes thought that the public did not clearly
understand the distinction between the two Funds. Our wealth has
consisted mainly in offers of hospitality and gifts in kind. When these
began to cease we saw ourselves in danger of being unable to continue
our work for want of means, and this situation introduced the present
and latest chapter upon which we have entered.
I am sorry that I am not able at present to enter into a full
explanation of schemes which are as yet imperfectly developed. A time
will come when all necessary information will be freely given. For our
present purpose I will ask you only to take from me that we have under
certain conditions a command of funds which enable us to give relief in
cases of strict necessity. The money so available is not to be regarded
as a substitute for, but as a supplement to, private generosity. It is
in certain cases sufficient for the necessities of a working man. The
part of private generosity for better-class refugees still remains to
bring the bare necessities of life up to the standard which the nation
would wish to offer in such cases as those I have just now cited.
There are many obvious ways in which this can be done. Among the most
generally successful so far has been the organization of large houses on
the basis of gratuitous hotels. I have myself organized two or three
such houses, notably, one at Harrington House in Kensington Palace
Gardens, lent to me for the purpose by Lord Harrington, another at
Hambro House in Prince’s Gate, lent by Mr. and Mrs. Eric Hambro, and a
third in the King’s Weigh House Parsonage, furnished and lent by the
congregation of the King’s Weigh House Church in Duke Street. In these
three houses I have been able to receive about 120 refugees, who make
with regard to them very charming expressions of content. What I have
done has also been done by many others. Houses of this description are
springing up like mushrooms through the country, and it has been thought
that many people who are no longer able to entertain Belgian refugees in
their own homes may be willing to contribute towards a system of
organized hospitality under which suitable homes can be provided.
Another way of meeting the necessities of the class of refugees of whom
we are now speaking is by paying the rent of furnished flats, in which a
very small grant is sometimes enough to render domestic life a
possibility. Among the propertied and professional classes there are
some who have still some small resources. For these the active brain of
Mrs. Lyttelton has devised, in consultation with Lord Gladstone, a
scheme which she is administering as a branch of the War Refugees
Committee, of flats furnished by the Committee, and placed at the lowest
possible prices at the service of the refugees. The scheme deserves a
fuller description than I am able to give it. In all schemes of
hospitable relief the National Food Supply, the Belgian Refugee Food
Supply, and other charitable organizations, of which the gratuitous food
is in great part contributed as a free gift by our Colonies, play an
important part.
I would like to have been able to do justice to other institutions for
the assistance of refugees which have from the beginning of the movement
developed as branches of the various Departments at Aldwych. I can only
permit myself just to name the Education Department, under Lady
Gladstone, Mr. Englehart (of Leper Island fame), Father Christie and the
Abbé Michiele, where, by a movement of Educational hospitality offered
by the public schools, the Catholic institutions, and the universities
of the country, free education has been provided for nearly 2,000
Belgian young people. In this movement I am glad to be able to say that
Eton, Oxford, and Cambridge have handsomely done their part.
Another branch of activity which has been of the greatest value
throughout the whole movement has been the Health Department, which,
under Mrs. George Montagu, assisted by Miss Page, the daughter of the
American Ambassador, has given help and relief to hundreds of cases of
the sick and otherwise disabled. In connection with this department
there is also a dispensary, where gratuitous medicine and medical advice
from Belgian doctors can be obtained. Nor is it only in the Allocation
and Health Departments that secondary branches of utility have blossomed
forth. The Rink is full of useful minor institutions, brought into being
by the necessities of the situation. The Transport Department has many
subsidiary activities. Work done for _réformé_ soldiers who have served
their country to the limits of their strength, and work done for
“undesirables” who can serve no country, are at different ends of the
scale, alike branches of benevolent utility.
A Department which is probably doing in its way as much humane work as
any other is what we call the “Missing Relatives” Department. It is
divided into two sections—the Poste Restante section and the section
which deals with Lost Relatives. We receive a great number of letters
addressed to refugees, care of our Committee. For a time they lay
unclaimed. Then our Correspondence Department conceived the idea of
endeavouring to trace their owners, in order that they might be
forwarded. We have, of course, now registered the addresses of many
thousands of refugees. By the courtesy of the Registrar-General we are
allowed to search also daily the files of Somerset House, and in the
last three weeks alone over 500 letters have been traced and forwarded
to their owners. In the “Lost Relatives” section all urgent cases, such,
for instance, as a father or mother searching for their lost children,
or a husband his wife, etc., are handled immediately by our
Correspondence Department, who make every effort to trace the missing
person. The machinery which is used for tracing the letters is put in
operation, and I am glad to say that we frequently succeed in finding
and uniting the members of families who have lost each other in the
flight.
In the Belgian Consulate room Monsieur Grumbar and the two Misses
Baschewitz, with their helpers, continue to earn the gratitude of their
compatriots by their constant and willing service. Of the Consulate as
such I do not, of course, venture to speak. From the beginning of the
movement it has had offices under the same roof as the War Refugees
Committee, and has been closely associated with our work. Its own work
is outside the scope of the present paper.
I cannot leave this branch of my subject without mentioning
collectively, as I only wish I could mention individually, the admirable
quality of the voluntary work which has been freely given in every
department. The few developments I have enumerated only serve to
indicate the activity that exists, and they have nearly all been carried
out by volunteer effort. Those of us who happen to be at the head of
Departments are spoken of, and our work obtains recognition and
gratitude often far beyond its deserts. I would like to say that our
work would have been absolutely impossible had it not been for the
devoted, generous, and regular support of hundreds of volunteers who
have given every bit as much as we have given, and who have been content
to do it—to come early, to stay late, to work day after day
unflinchingly at the least interesting tasks, to spend their strength,
their emotions, their money, and their time in the background, so to
speak, of our organization, without a thought of anything but the help
that they could give. These volunteers have come from every rank. I have
mentioned 500. Had we wanted 5,000 we could have had them. I am almost
ashamed even to speak of thanks or recognition where it has been so
little sought. I would only say of many of our unmentioned helpers that
their names should be written in letters of gold, were it possible that
any true record could be kept of the service which this movement has
called forth.
All the Departments I have mentioned and many others are still active at
Aldwych. Lord Gladstone, Lord Lytton, Mr. Dickinson, and Mr. Allen, who
have been associated in the Management Committee since the opening or
our latest chapter, have their time fully occupied. There is no sign of
any diminution of work. Neither is there on our part any diminution of
energy or of interest in the work which still remains to be done.
You may be inclined to think from some of the particulars which I have
given you of the latest chapter of the work that the heroic moment of
the movement has passed—for England as well as for our guests. I would
only venture to say that in heroic moments resolutions are conceived—it
is for subsequent acts to give them shape. In the details which I have
given you we are simply working out the national resolution that the
exiles now in our midst shall be cared for, helped, and protected to the
limits of our ability until the day dawns for them, when they may return
to the homes they love. We see no end, and we desire to see no end, to
our exertions but the day of repatriation. Be that day near or far, it
is our hope to continue our work till it is reached, and we look with
quiet confidence and absolute assurance to the public we know to give us
the full support of its sympathy and its help.
CHISWICK PRESS: PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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