In 1917, for instance, Celine appeared at the office to ask for thread. She was twenty years old, and before the war had been one of the 10,000 women employed in the linen spinning mills; her mother was ill with tuberculosis, her father without work, and also ill; there were five younger children. “I know I have not proper fingers,” she said, as she held out her rough hands, “but if you will only promise I may bring my lace, I believe I can learn.” The Committee believed this, too, and because she worked with intelligence and with almost feverish eagerness, she was soon assured the minimum wage of three francs a week, and later the larger sums made possible with the Committee’s success. Shortly before the armistice, the mother died, and only last week Celine came again to the desk to ask anxiously if the Committee could not somehow arrange, that even after they had disbanded, she might continue to make lace. Her father had found a little work; she wanted to remain at home where she might at least direct the younger children, and she could, if only she were sure of her war-time wage. Could not the Committee promise the sale of her laces? Often repeated question during these courage-testing days, when emergency organizations are breaking up, and poor women do not yet see what is to replace them.
Among the more important communes on the Ghent committee list, I found Oosterzele, Baelegem, and Landsanter, all three producing a good quality of Duchesse, Flanders, Needle Point and Venise, and counting together about 160 lace-makers; Gysenzeele and Destelbergen, which make fine Flanders, and Duchesse, Knesselars, with 250 Cluny workers; Asper with 60 in Venise; the convents of Scheldewinkle and Eecke, the first occupied with Venise, the second with Needle Point and Duchesse, which it sells to an American house, and finally, the larger Deynze district, including Vynck, Lootenhulle, Machelin, the Valenciennes convent school at Ruysselede, and Bachte, with perhaps 400 lace-makers in all.
I got my orientation for this last southern district from the Comtesse d’Alcantara, who has been indefatigable in her double rôle of chairman of Deynze and vice-chairman of the regional committee. Constantly throughout the war, she might have been seen starting from the handsome château at Bachte—one of the most imposing in Belgium—on bicycle or on foot on her way to one of the lace villages, with thread and money for the workers, or at night returning with the rolls of lace which she had then to get to Ghent and from there to Brussels. The Germans never succeeded in obstructing her work, nor that of her father and mother, for their villagers and for the orphans of the entire region. Women came between shells to bring laces. It was a moral help just to be able to talk about their work.