For Belgium is a great shop in the midst of a garden. Her towns are so close together that they seem only suburbs of Brussels and Antwerp. She has the densest population in Europe. She raises only enough food to last her for two months of the year. The food for the other ten months she buys with the products of her factories. In 1914-15 Belgium could not send out her products; so we were to help feed her without pay, and England and France were to give money to buy what food we did not give.
But with the British navy generously allowing food to pass the blockade, the problem was far from solved. Ships laden with supplies steaming to Rotterdam--this was a matter of easy organisation. How get the bread to the hungry mouths when the Germans were using all Belgian railroads for military purposes? Germany was not inclined to allow a carload of wheat to keep a carload of soldiers from reaching the front, or to let food for Belgians keep the men in the trenches from getting theirs regularly. Horse and cart transport would be cumbersome, and the Germans would not permit Belgian teamsters to move about with such freedom. As likely as not they might be spies.
Anybody who can walk or ride may be a spy. Therefore, the way to stop spying is not to let any one walk or ride. Besides, Germany had requisitioned most of the horses that could do more than draw an empty phaeton on a level. But she had not drawn the water out of the canals; though the Belgians, always whispering jokes at the expense of the conquerors, said that the canals might have been emptied if their contents had been beer. There were plenty of idle boats in Holland, whose canals connect with the web of canals in Belgium. You had only to seal the cargoes against requisition, the seal to be broken only by a representative of the Relief Commission, and start them to their destination.
And how make sure that only those who had money should pay for their bread, while all who had not should be reached? The solution was simple compared to the distribution of relief after the San Francisco earthquake and fire, for example, in our own land, where a scantier population makes social organisation comparatively loose.
The people to be relieved were in their homes. Belgium is so old a country, her population so dense, and she is so much like one big workshop, that the Government must keep a complete set of books. Every Belgian is registered and docketed. You know just how he makes his living and where he lives. Upon marriage a Belgian gets a little book, giving his name and his wife’s, their ages, their occupations, and address. As children are born their names are added. A Belgian holds as fast to this book as a woman to a piece of jewellery that is an heirloom.