CHAPTER XIV

THE REFUGEE CAMPS AND THE FRIENDS’ WORK IN THEM

EANTIME the Dutch were going forward vigorously with their plans for caring for the Belgians. Very many were settled in private families in large and small towns, but for the rest large camps, called Vluchtoorden (literally, Flight-places), were established. It was in reality a work of great magnitude in which this neutral country found itself involved. It consisted, m fact, in making emergency towns for about 20,000 people, for a quite unknown length of time. Of these the four principal ones were at Gouda, Ede, Uden and Nunspeet, while there were others for interned soldiers and sailors at Amersfoort, Harderwyek and Groningen. At Gouda the authorities rented a large expanse of greenhouses from a nursery- gardener, whose trade was ruined by the war, in which to house the refugees. But greenhouses do not make a good substitute for homes, and after a visit, one carried away the impression of people lying on shelves, as useless as bulbs in summer, but not so easily stored.

The other camps were built for the purpose, long low wooden sheds dumped down on the flat moors, unsheltered from heat in summer or cold in winter. These were in charge of a Dutch official, sometimes a civilian, but more often a military officer, who was assisted by a small staff, accommodated in a wooden office in the camp. Here was the centre of administration and here went on from morning to night, quiet, unostentatious, self-sacrificing work. In these camps the Commandant’s word was law, and it speaks volumes for the justice of his rule, when one recalls the

heterogeneous collection of refugees who were under his charge, that at only one of the camps was there anything in the nature of a prison.

On the goodwill of the Commandant, naturally, the whole efficiency of our work in the camps largely depended, and it may be said without reserve, that during the whole period our workers never experienced anything but the most cordial goodwill and assistance, and whatever success attended their efforts may be largely ascribed to the help and kindness of the officials controlling the administration of the respective camps.

The different needs of mankind were provided for in separate buildings; for example, there was an Eetzaal (dining room), Slaapzaal (dormitory), hospital, kitchen clothing store and school. But of privacy or individuality ot taste in such accommodation there could be none. The nearest approach to a home was the cubicle about 15 ft. by 0 ft. curtained off from a passage, rather after the style of an American Pullman sleeper. Sometimes a sloping board provided the families’ bed, table, chair and playground • sometimes straw mattresses covered the floor at night’ Here was the only scope for home-making instincts ; some were certainly tidier than others, some were more miserable rhese, indeed, were communal towns ; in one building all the potatoes for the town’s supper would be peeled, in another all the clothes were made. Inevitably the colour of hfe would depart for most of us if we had to live under such conditions, but it is only fair to see what splendid organisation and friendly help lay behind these dreary places On the other side of the reckoning must be put the fact that here people were housed, fed and cared for in healthy situations, without any fear of starvation or homelessness and one could not fail to be struck by the immense amount which had been done for them.

Philip Burtt and Fred Rowntree approached the Dutch authorities with offers of help in the Camps. It was felt that, despite all the efforts which the Dutch were making there was scope for a great deal of voluntary help in making life for the refugees more interesting, and the exile from their homes less depressing. There was scope, too, for making this exile in some sense a time of training for the future, especially in the case of the numbers of boys who were turned out from the slums of Antwerp and other cities into the difficult life of a large camp. It was found that the Dutch authorities (in particular the Baron von Tuyll, Chairman of the Dutch Government Commission for the employment of Belgians) were very favourable to such help being given, and the summer of 1915 saw the establishment of English workers in the four camps. Before following them into their camp life, we must turn to the Committee’s housing scheme, which was an important part of the whole policy, and mention that the administration of our work was carried on from an office, first in Rotterdam, kindly lent to us by the American Relief Commission, and then at the Hague. By 1916, forty workers of the Friends were established in the country.

It was obvious that the accommodation provided in the camps was a very poor substitute for the homes left by many of the refugees. Further, it was clear that, whenever they were able to return to Belgium, many new homes would be needed to replace those destroyed, and that many skilled refugees would be thankful for employment in housebuilding during their idleness. A cure for all these ills— on a very modest scale—was found in the Committee’s building scheme which was largely due to Fred Rowntree, who developed it, designed the houses and supervised their making. The houses were of the simplest possible type, wooden one-storied bungalows, containing a sitting-room and two tiny bedrooms, built in pairs in such a way that the two could be afterwards put together to make a larger house. They were known as maisons demontables, for their construction was so simplified that they could be taken to pieces and re-erected on anot her site by ten men in three hours. The Committee financed the building of more than one hundred of such houses at a cost of about £50 each, and, in addition, the Dutch Government asked us to supervise the erection of a village of similar houses at the Ede camp with the sum of £27,000 given for the purpose by the Danish Government, and known as the Deensche Dorp (Danish Village). The Committee’s houses were distributed amongst the various camps, including some at the interned soldiers’ camp at Gaasterland, where the men, with their wives who had come to join them, were found to be living literally in cattle sheds, for which they paid substantial rent. Others were erected at Amersfoort, about which camp we shall speak later.

It was delightful, when visiting the camps, to leave their monotonous and unhomelike expanse and to come suddenly upon one of these groups of little white and green cottages, with gay gardens. To walk down Fred Rowntree Straat, or The Avenue Baron de Tuyll, showed a picture of very proud and happy inhabitants. The carpenters who made them were given houses free, but other applicants paid rent.

In each camp one house at least was reserved for the Friends’ workers, who to this extent shared the camp life and devoted themselves to helping the refugees in all sorts of ways, primarily by providing employment for both men and women, boys and girls ; before leaving the subject of the houses we may mention that some very simple equipment for them was provided by Friends, which the inhabitants paid for by weekly instalments. The pails, jugs and basins were made in the Dutch workshops in the camp, but the curtains were made in the Friends’ workrooms.

The Dutch authorities arranged employment for as many men and women as possible in the various services of the camp (cooking, tailoring, sanitary work, etc.). The Friends were invited to employ as many of the others as possible, but were asked not to pay such wages as would tempt the refugees away from the necessary camp employments. The result was that there were two categories of people in the

Friends’ workrooms : the comparatively unfit, and the few who preferred to work for a small wage in return for which they learned a handicraft. The Friends selected those people whom they felt likely to benefit most from the training given.

The camp authorities generally provided a room, and here day by day the people came to work at a variety of activities. The numbers were not large, perhaps 150 in each camp. The women and girls were taught to make woollen rugs, embroidery, dresses, applique work, raffia shoes and baskets, and the mental change effected by the interest of their work was delightful to see. Reports tell of one girl who, having lost both her brother and her sister, as well as her home, by the war, came a sad, silent and depressed little fugitive, but before long she was bright and happy, taking an intelligent interest in her work, and was a great help to the class.

One of our workers reported :

" The regular hours of work, the games, the sight of the little exhibition of their productions at the end of the workroom, growing larger and more varied every day, all these things are telling on the impressionable lives of the girls and are unconsciously lifting them from the more demoralising influences of the camp life into which they may so easily fall."

It was, of course, this human friendship which was the keynote of the Committee’s work.

In the Gouda camp our workers were asked by the authorities to undertake the making of seaweed mattresses for all the 1,500 refugees. They took on thirty extra workers with a view to coping with the big job, and announced that they were ready to receive the seaweed. What was their horror next morning on arriving at the workroom to find it absolutely deluged with seaweed, piled up everywhere, making even the air almost choking, and to hear that there were twenty more wagon loads following up the streets ! After very energetic measures the seaweed flood was abated.

There were outdoor activities as well: girls were taught to garden, and to dye the materials used in their crafts, with heather, alder bark and sundew gathered on the moors. In the men’s workrooms the occupations were very various : fretwork and wooden toys, the speciality of Burleigh Fincken and Felix Eames, fibre mats, largely for use in the camps, inlaid woodwork, chair-making taught by Alfred Powell and Martin Walker, baskets and brushes. To teach this last trade a brushmaker, Thos. Cox, volunteered to go from England and was helped by Gilbert Yeoman. Thomas Cox tells some of his difficulties in the following letter from Uden :—

" We arrived here on Saturday evening at 9 p.m. and fixed our quarters at this hotel in the centre of the town, whence we go on our cycles to the camp at 9 a.m. and return any time from 7 to 10 p.m. Monday was spent at Rotterdam in search of materials, in which we were very successful. We bought fibre on the understanding that we should not interfere with the Dutch brushmakers in cutting down their prices. ... In the meantime we were busy getting our workroom fitted up. . . . After some dumb show amongst the candidates for work, I managed to find a man who said he had a brother who had been a brushmaker in Belgium. Eventually his brother turned up. With a little more dumb show we soon found that he could do sufficient brushmaking to answer our purpose, and made an arrangement to pay him a little more than the others if he would teach them to fill the holes, and although not a brushmaker, as I should term him, he has turned out a useful man and taught about 15 men. ... I should say that we have painted the brush backs with the Belgian colours, which seems to please the Belgians very much indeed. With regard to the men, they are most eager to work, and when we put them on a job we rarely have to speak to them for wasting time. To see men of 40 to 60 years of age trying to learn a trade is most unusual, but they struggle through. . . . They seem to catch the enthusiasm and very soon those who did not want us altered their opinion, and the Dutch have the names of 60 men waiting to be employed."

(It is needless to say that the dumb show was called into play as an exception, as most of our workers became proficient in French or Flemish.)

From these beginnings quite an industry developed. Ten months later 70 men were in the workshop and 70 others had passed through it. Our workers held £83 in the bank, representing the savings of these men from their wages, and the camps were supplied with brushes. Others were sent over for sale in England, until this importation was prohibited. At Nunspeet the camp prisoners, i.e. the drunk and disorderly who had broken camp regulations and were being detained accordingly, were allowed to share in the classes held by our workers.

Considering that the work in Holland was in a neutral country, the difficulties owing to the war were unexpectedly great. Materials needed for the industries very often could not be obtained in Holland, and had to be bought in England. But the difficulties of export were considerable, owing to the intricacies of War Trade Permits and the Netherlands Overseas Trust, which were instituted to guard against the passage of goods into Germany. These produced many delays and put barriers in the way of innocent relief work. Raffia, too, one of our staple materials, became needed secretly for the making of camouflage fences, and we had to use very inferior substitutes.

The difficulties of communication and travel, too, were great. One after another of the boats was torpedoed, and often no regular service at all was maintained. A worker travelling to and from Holland had to wait indefinitely, absolutely ready to leave at a moment’s notice, but when on board there was no certainty of sailing. The passage was only made by day, because of the mines, and a favourable opportunity was awaited. The voyage usually effected in seven or eight hours, took on one occasion ten days and nights, and two or three was quite common. The Customs examination was so strict that even passengers’ sponges were examined in case notes were hidden in them.

To return to the camp work. Great ingenuity and initiative were needed on the part of the workers to keep the work always alive and free from the unreality which the artificial life so easily introduced. Fresh experiments were always being tried, and fresh goods being made. There was a rope- making machine introduced into one camp, there was a loom on which raffia could be woven in another, and many were the wooden coffers made for the refugees to store their possessions in.

To a certain extent our workers suffered from the monotony and weariness of the refugees. They could only rarely come home to visit their families owing to the difficulties of travel, and though in some places so near to Germany that one day some of them inadvertently walked over the frontier, and in others so near to the Belgian coast that one could hear any naval bombardment, there was yet a sense of being shut away in a back-water. Many of the workers remained year after year, including Harold Ellis, who acted as Chairman of the Workers’ Committee and supervised all the work after Grace Vulliamy left.

The camps differed somewhat in character. Gouda was less formal, though the discomfort of its greenhouses has been described and before the end of the war the refugees were moved elsewhere. Nunspeet, the largest camp, housing 10,000 refugees, was, on the other hand, under quasimilitary discipline. One of our workers, Mary Rees, thus describes her arrival at the camp:—

" Miss Vulliamy, Miss Pim and I arrived at Nunspeet on Tuesday, October 12th (1915), to begin work there. We were met at the station in the afternoon by Miss Lelyveld, a Dutch lady, who has charge of the women’s work in the camp, and leaving our luggage at the station hotel, we were driven up with her in General Dryber’s red car to the camp.

. . . The General's chauffeur rushed us through the entrance to the camp and rattled us up through the barracks, along earthy roads paved with discarded sheets of asbestos, to where our own white and green hut, made by the refugees in Gouda, awaited us. It stands on a sandy ridge facing the southern boundary of the camp, so that out of our five south windows we look over the barbed wire fence below, on to the road made by the refugees, where two sentinels walk up and down, comforting our hearts on dark nights with their measured tread. By and bye we hope to have our own private gate in the fence, so that we can step right across the sand-dunes covered with patches of straggling pine scrub and heather to full-grown pine woods. At present, one must approach the house as we approached it through the camp and its not too pleasant odours and up between the camp ‘Magazyn,’ where the clothes for the refugees are kept, and the sewing school. The space between these two buildings, on to which our six north windows look, is generally full of children playing, or queues of Belgians waiting at the door of the ‘ Magazyn. W e excited much curiosity therefore when we drove up. We sent to fetch the key of the house, and meantime peering in at the windows we could see the chairs and tables of white pine made for us at Gouda, the chairs with a special inset ot carving on the back to welcome us.

Though that is a detailed impression of first days, it gives a good idea of the life, always on the edge of a crowd, and under very primitive conditions, none too comfortable m winter.

In addition to the workrooms, much was done by way ot recreation. In the evenings the " Zaal " was opened and perhaps one hundred people would come for various quiet amusements, or reading and writing, and later on, very lively games would hold the field. English classes, too, were everywhere a very favourite occupation. Music, country dances and outdoor games were taught, with all their attendant virtues of hardihood and fair play, and one of the most helpful influences was that introduced by the Scouts and " Friendly Girls," whose activities were received with gusto by the boys and girls, and several troops of Pad- vinders," as they are called in Dutch, were formed. Burleigh Fincken, leader of the work at Nunspeet, writes of the first beginnings thus :—

" We have started a troop here and have about 90 already. We’re teaching them their knots, Scout signs and law, etc.,

and on Sunday took them all out, and incidentally half the camp who followed—for a Scouting game in the woods. You never saw such excitement! They turned up in the nearest approach to Scout clothes they could manage out of old coats, shirts, mothers’ stockings, and dented hats ! The enthusiasm was terrific, and we’re getting about ten times as many salutes as the General himself ! They haven’t got the same ideas as the English boy as to ‘ playing the game ’ yet, and it’s quite O.K. for 6 or 7 to set on a small opponent and punch him black and blue. Scratching, kicking, etc., are recognised as weapons and a favourite trick is to get behind your enemy, dig your finger-nails deep into his cheeks or forehead and then hang on for all you’re worth. Enemy generally looks like a Zebra afterwards ! "

At one time a great enthusiasm for first-aid was kindled among them, for one of the Belgian boys broke his leg when out on an expedition. Two scouts were dispatched to tell his mother, and to report that a stretcher was being made on which he was being brought home in state. But within a few minutes the tale was transformed to the effect that one of the English " Heeren " had fallen out of a tree, and that his neck was thoroughly broken in several places, and the crowd which turned out was worthy of this remarkable spectacle ! There were some very cheering incidents. One small boy and his brother had been confirmed thieves, but were allowed to become Scouts. They came of a very poor family, and temptation was once more too strong for them. After this, the Scout leader had them alone with him, camping out on the moor each night and trusting them with everything. One evening the older boy came into the Friends’ hut, and saluting the Scout leader very solemnly, said : "I hear you are going to England to-morrow. I come to pay you the balance of the money," handing over 5d., the final repayment of the stolen money.

On several occasions they were taken away for real camping.

The girls, who had most interesting activities arranged for them, would come to exhibit their small brothers and sisters with washed hands and cleaned teeth to qualify them for their nursemaid’s badge. Playing games was a furious occupation, in which, owing to their temperaments, they appeared to be violently angry with each other.

Dipping into the future we find that after the end of the war, when the refugees returned to their homes, Cuthbert Clayton, who had been one of the prime movers in the Scout work in Holland, went back with his troops for six months, and helped them to keep up the traditions learnt in the camps. Many subsequent visits have been paid by him and other workers who find keen memories of scouting days, and Scout troops still maintained. They united in this work in Belgium with one or two workers from our French unit who had given help with a colony of Belgian children at Le Glandier, in France.

Christmas gave great scope for camp activities. It was pleasant to find the men in the workrooms willingly coming to work overtime to make toys for the poor children. Our workers gave delightful parties to the refugees, and I well remember the interest of that given at Nunspeet on the occasion of the last Christmas in the camp—1918. There was a cinematograph of the entry of the King and Queen of Belgium into Brussels after the Armistice, showing the immense enthusiasm of the vast crowds. To this pictured enthusiasm was added the very real one of the hundreds of refugees round us, realising that at long last their homes were open to them mice more, and that the days of their exile were nearly over.

The work in Ede and Amersfoort needs especial mention. In the summer of 1917, the Dutch authorities, having already given up the camp at Gouda, determined further to consolidate the camps. They therefore moved most of the Ede camp to Nunspeet. The Danish village already described Was, however, left, and the Friend workers were asked by the Dutch authorities to take over complete supervision. This was agreed to, and there ensued a very paternal, or more accurately maternal, government in which the refugees turned to Edith Attenborough and Agnes Rutter (now

Moreton) in every problem, whether social or medical! The latter gave cookery lessons, too, but found that the food allowance of 6d. per diem did not admit of great variety in menus, so the lessons were of necessity restricted.

Fred Rowntree and the writer were asked to visit Amersfoort on a journey to Holland in August, 1915. We found there that the small town was cruelly overcrowded with the wives and families of the interned soldiers, who had flocked thither to be near the husbands and fathers. Even the poor accommodation of a granary, in which some of them were living, was soon to be taken from them. It seemed exactly the place for more wooden houses, and twenty were afterwards erected, the work being done by carpenters taken from the ranks of the interned soldiers. Gradually the " Village Elisabeth," as it was called, grew (with the addition of houses built by the Belgian Repatriation Fund) till the population was nearly 1,000 persons. Early in its history some of our workers settled there, including Frederick Braithwaite, Mabel Cash (now Lunnon), Agnes Parley and Reginald C. Price, and carried on the same kind of activities as in the other camps. At the Armistice, precedence of return was given to the interned soldiers and their families, and it was to their deserted camp at Amersfoort that there came late in 1918, the wave of refugees which must have been almost the last in the war. They came from the Cambrai district, whence at length they were driven by military and economic pressure. Instead of the land of plenty which they hoped they would reach, they came to the wretched conditions already described, and our workers were able to extend some help to them, including a recreation room where they taught Swedish drill, etc., to the boys, who were thoroughly undisciplined owing to the war.

As the war went on, conditions in Holland, and con- quently in the camps, grew harder and harder. The position of the country as a neutral one was increasingly difficult, and the temptation to join in and be allied, at all events to one side, was very great. As it was, the country was suspected by both sides, and subjected to harsh restrictions and indignities, and her determination to keep at peace calls out one’s respect and admiration. The position was so unsettled that for some time no new workers were sent, and it became more and more difficult for those who were there to keep up the courage of the refugees whose unrest and dis-content were obvious. Food conditions, too, were really hard, and added to the unhappiness. Even when the immense relief of the Armistice came there was a difficult time to go through, for it was not for several months that it was possible for all the refugees to return to their homes. The occupations and distractions offered by our workers were of especial utility during these trying months.