The work of the War Refugees Committee
Date: 2025-11-24T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: World War; 1914-1918 -- Refugees; War refugees committee; London; 1914-

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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

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77327

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THE WORK OF
THE WAR REFUGEES COMMITTEE

AN ADDRESS
GIVEN BY
LADY LUGARD
TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS
MARCH 24th, 1915

LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1915

THE WORK OF THE
WAR REFUGEES COMMITTEE

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.

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.

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