hens were set up. The burgomaster and aldermen and doctors and all
the other "leading citizens" took off their coats and worked. The best
women in the place were cooking, serving tables, nursing, making
clothes, doing all they could for their involuntary guests.

In the picturesque old city of Bergen-op-Zoom--famous in history--I saw
the same thing. There a large tent-camp had been set up for the overflow
from the houses. It was like a huge circus of distress. The city hall
was turned into an emergency storehouse of food: the vaulted halls and
chambers filled with boxes, bags, and barrels. When I went up to the
bureau of the burgomaster, his wife and daughters were there, sewing
busily for the refugees.

I visited the main hospital and the annexes which had been established
in the schoolhouses. Twice, as we climbed the steep stairs, we stood
aside for stretchers to be carried past. They bore the bodies of people
who had died from exposure and exhaustion.

In one ward there were a score of the most ancient women I have ever
seen. They had made the flight on foot. God knows how they ever did it.
One of them was so weak that she could not speak, so short of breath
that she could not lie down. As she sat propped with pillows, rocking
slowly to and fro and coughing, coughing, feebly coughing her life out,
she looked a thousand years old. Perhaps she was, if suffering measures
years.

Another room was for babies born in the terror and the flight. A few
were well-looking enough; but most of them were pitiful scraps and
tatters of humanity. They were tenderly nursed and cared for, but their
chance was slender. While I was there one of the little creatures
shuddered, breathed a tiny sigh, and slipped out of a world that was too
hard for it.

It was part of my unofficial duty to visit as many as possible of the
private shelters and hospitals and workrooms and the public camps,
because the Belgian Relief Committee and other friends in New York had
sent me considerable sums of money to use in helping the refugees. In
the careful application of these funds I had the advice of Mr. Th.
Stuart, President of the "Netherlands Relief Committee for Belgian and
Other Victims of War," and of Baron F. van Tuyll van Serooskerken, a
great friend of mine, whom the Queen had appointed as General
Commissioner to oversee all the public refugee camps.

Three of these, Nunspeet, Ede, and Uden, were improvised villages, with
blocks of long com