THE BELGIAN REFUGEES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 305, 23 December 1914, Page 6

THE BELGIAN REFUGEES.

FROM RELCIUW TO ENGLAND.

The people of WestliougUon., Bolton, Lancashire, England, are proud today (writes M.S.S: in the Bolton Uuardiati of October 16), for it has fallen to their lot to extend hospitauty and shelter to a party of the forlorn fugitives from gallant little Belgium, the innocent, peace-loving people, sacrificed in the cause, of Honor, whom the whole civilised world is regarding with admiration and pity. Westlioughtou generally has shared in the preparations for their welcome; clothing, food,-coal unlimited, furniture, cooking utensils have been' forthcoming from willing friends; and the poor, weary, dazed travellers slept in good beds for the first time after what must have seemed a life-time of terror and hardship. How little do we know of war and its horrors, war in particular, as waged by the pitiless Hun, is borne in upon ns by. the spectacle of these “strangers within our.-gate’s.” Bereft of everything—home, money, possessions, even their native country gone, driven out, remorselessly from. village to vijlage, hunted, robbed, threatened, separated from friends and relatives, the wonder is that , there is any hope . or good cheer or. laughter left, in them at ail. They .arrived, poor souls, quite worn out and exhausted; scarcely able to do more than falter a few broken words of gratitude to their hosts, ,a n ,d V ready to weep at sight of the good bods that, awaited itbem, and'the appetising smell of .their own natiqnal soup which had been prepared. They wept,for re-, - lief, poor helpless ones, relief and thankfulness to the English friends. One wonders if. they realise how huge c debt of gratitude we owe to their x gallant.arms, and,for the cruel losses ' their devastated homeland has sustained.

The Klutz family, father, brother, and eight children,

are, as one sees at a glance country 'folk, “du pays,” peasants from the village of Ehrenthals, not far from Antwerp. A dreadful story the poor father of these eight fine children told, in his emphatic native Klamaud patois, which the vivacious French-speaking woman from Brussels translated into French for us. It brought the whole scene vividly to the imagination. The father, a shoemaker, singing at his work in his shop in the village street, the thrifty mother washing in her cottage—a big wash she would have for that tribe of weight boys and girls—the eldest lad digging in the gardenplot, and the little ones playing about in the street. The little hoy ran in to Ins-mother, screaming; “The Germans ! The Germans are coming 1” The m ; her ’• did not believe it so quiet and remote was their village they had heard but faint rumours of the storm that was brewing. She went to the door, her baby on her arm, just, as a roar of cannonfiring broke over the village, aqd fifty houses went up in flames, while the church lay a heap of ruins. There was no more doubting,the. The Germans were upon theip.

Pouring through the village streets, they seized the men, and set aside all those who bore the tattooed number that shows a Belgian is liable for military service. Each man was made to bare his arm, and all those with, the military number were, set against ii wall and shot in cold blood. Mme. Klutz got her children together, and having warned her husband of his danger—he bore the number on his. arm, but had boon rejected for service through ill-health, they fled before the butchers. The younger children were crowded on a cart drawn by dogs, the bigger. ones helped the weaker, the mother'stumbled along with her young baby in her arms—and day after day they fled, seeking refuge and finding none. Shelled opt of Lierre, shelled out of Courtrai, sleopr ing in the open on heaps of straw, in cinema .houses, without, food,, boots worn tq shreds,-at last they reached Ostend. Whence to London seems more like 'a muddled nightmare in their recollectipn: a dim vista of flight and terror, and want, and r,linand at the back of it, a peaceful little home dhat is no more.

Mme. Kli/tz rocks her. baby in her , arms* dazed, not unhappy now in kind sproundings, but cbwed. and puzzled, with tho patient suffering of. a dumb animal cruelly used. The flaxen-, haired baby is.ailing—no wonder, poor mite! —and she lulls it to sleep with a plaintive little folk refrain, “Do.‘ do-do-kineko.” Very gentle, lowvoiced, scrupulously clean in person and habits, a simple, loving family as* might be found in any English village.