A DESOLATE LAND

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2393, 24 February 1915, Page 2

A DESOLATE LAND

. BELGIAN MOTHERS. ■N

[By Imogen.]

The appeal which has been made to Australia and New Zealand by the Belgian Commission for help for their unhappy country is one that surely cannot fail to touch the Government and the hcajts of the people of New Zealand. So far, in Australasia, wero it not for the men who have left the country for the front, and for commercial disturbances we might hardly know of the horrors that are taking place on the other side of the world. \V kilo tho people of Belgium have been torn , and disintegrated as a nation by a war, so vast, 6o crushing, so pitiless, that it seems as though no power, human or divine, will ever end it, we have been going gaily upon our way, feeling no pinch of poverty, taking our pleasures as they come without thought of the morrow and without realisation of what war means. We can even show a record of money that has passed through the totalisator, and yet wo think' we know what sacrifice for the Empire means. As a matter of fact, we are perhaps hardly to blame in failing to realise the terrors that war brings upon a people. Wo 6ee nothing of the wounded, nothing of the blackened homes, the physical and mental wrecks, the outoast families, .dying mothers and children—nothing of a country laid waste over every part, so how can we realise what war means.

Nothing So Terrible as Truth. To know how great is the need of help, we have only to read the authenticated reports, the descriptions and statistics, published in English and American newspapers and magazines, statements by reliable eye-witnesses and by commissions that have studied and seen for themselves the things of which they speak to the world outside. . Terrible they are,beyond belief, and.whero war is, all the reserves of life .are stripped ruthlessly away, and wo reach the bedrock of humanity.

No worn mi in New Zealand could road of the sufferings of Belgian mothers and. babies without a freezing of the blood.

"There have been 40,000 births in Belgium since the Gorman came there; ■and there will likely be 40,000 more in this winter of hardship and privation. 'How many of tho newly-arrived 40,000 have already died unnecessarily—underrated, unsung victims of this warno one will ever know,' says Mr; Will Irwin, whe is one of the American journalists who Lave seen Belgium since it became a conquered country. .'How many of the coming 40,000 will die this winter,' he continues in tho Springfield 'Republican,' 'depends upon us in America—how inucn food we send to the nursing mothers, how much, milk to the babes.'

The lists of the dead issued by Franco and England and Germany are mounting day by day to a ghastly total. "But these take account only of the' strong young men who have died in the lightmg." There might be made lists of tho uncounted dead:

"They do not list the women wno, foolisjily or ignorantly,' sticking to .tlieir homes,' have died under the shell-fire of enemies or friends. They do not list the .weak and helpless _ who have dropped out from the' pathetic caravans of refugees to perish along the edges of the roads. They do not take fist of those who are beginning to dio by hunger in stricken Belgium. And finally, they do not list these babes ofBeigiiiiii', dropping off before their liveß have fairly begun, because there is no milk."

A Disintegrated Country. !' Nino newly-born babes snatched from a burning hospital in Antwerp formed, says the Amsterdam "Handelsblad," a group before which men were moved to tears on the arrival at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange of the little party in the arms of the Rod Cross nurses that had rescued them. In describing the flight of the Belgian poor toward food aud safety iu the Netherlands, the correspondent of the "Handelsblad" goes on to say. • i "Afterward, as I tramped for hours among them, one thing impressed itself strongly upon my memory: the noise of so many little wooden shoeschildren's shoes —that click-clacked. on the cobblestones in the characteristic short run of frightened people. My memory holds a whole collection of noises, but none quite as pathetic as the quick 'tok-tok-tok' of these hordes of children trying desperately with then tired little legs to keep up with father and mother." . Mr. J. H. Whitehouse, m the ."Nineteenth Century," gives a record of his personal experiences in Belgium: "Ihe whole life'of the nation has been arrested." he writes. "The food ■supplies, which would ordinarily reach the civilian population, are being taken by the German troops for their- own suppprt. Tlie poor, and many others, are without the necessaries of life, and the conditions of starvation grow more acute every day. Even where,- as in some cases happens, there is a supply of wheat available, the peasants are not allowed 'to .use their milsl owing to the German fear that they will send signals to the Belgian army. "Wo are face to face," he continues, "with a fact perhaps jmique in the history of the world. The lite of an entire nation has been suspended, its armies are driven to the borders oi another country, the bulk of its civilian population are refugees, . Of those who remain many are panic-stricken wanderers from village to village. . No factories are working, no trade is dolie, agriculture is at an end. All is decay and ruin, and great as the ruin ; 5 a t the moment, it grows worse day is the picture (part of it) • of Belgium to-day. Nothing she has suffered can ever be made good. Ihe lives that liavo been poured out like water for our-benefit as well as for,her own freedom have gone for ever, and the noble buildings which weto a joy and an inspiration-to all who had the understanding to sec and to feel are nothing but ruined piles of desolation, becauso Belgium fought for her freedom and integrity, and by being the sacrifice has saved or helped to save. England from a similar fato.