MME. VAN DER TELDE'S REPATRIATION FUND.
[To THE Burros CP THIS " SPECTATOE.:1 Sra,—Will you allow us to bring before your readers the needs of the above Fund? The Fund was inaugurated by Mme. Van der Velde (wife of the Belgian Secretary of State and well-known pacifist) before she sailed for America, where she is raising a
fund for the same purpose. Another fund? Yes, but how much greater the cost of this war might have been but for the courage of the Belgian people, who gave to France and to ourselves an invaluable space of time wherein to collect our forces. To quote Lord Hugh Cecil: "The Belgians had acted as the maiden in Scottish history, who thrust her naked arm through the bolts of the door of the King's Palace in order to stay the onrush of his assassins." That brave woman's arm was broken. And this little country is also broken. But not broken past repair if only we will all help to its recovery.
It is difficult for those living in England to realize the terrible state to which our allies have been reduced. But one of us has had the privilege of receiving at Folkestone the daily influx of refugees from Belgium, has seen the men, women, and children who have lost their all and have been harried on from town to town by their cruel oppressors, and has heard the stories they tell of the outrage and cruelty to which they have been subjected.
It may be argued that the time has not come to think of repatriation. The answer to that is that it is the one thought of the refugees themselves, and therefore it is not too soon for us to begin raising a fund such as this, as a token to these brave people that they will not be left alone to the awful task of building up their ruined country. They have spared us so much that surely we can spare something to them. A Westmorland farmer told one of us the other day that (without knowing anything of the forma-. Lion of this Repatriation Fund) he had been collecting money from other farmers in the neighbourhood "to buy seed for the Belgian farmers against the time they go back home." "Why," said ho, "we might have had them brutes of Germans all over our own fields if it hadn't been for them plucky little fellows that stood in their road. And mind you they had to stand alone, too. Now it's time we did our bit for them, just to show them that they're not standing alone any more." It is in the hopes that others may be of the same mind as that farmer that we venture to appeal to your readers to support this Repatriation Fund.
Donations towards the Fund will be gratefully received by Mr. Basil Williams, Hon. Treasurer, 36 Carlyle Square, Chelsea; or by the bankers of the Fund, Lloyds Bank, St. James's Street, S.W. Cheques should be made payable to Mme. Van der Velde's Repatriation Fund.—We are, Sir, &c., Rum Wrr..LIAles, Hon. Treasurer. ELEANOR ACLAND, Hon. Secretary (5 Cheyne Place).
Previous page
