She praised the Committee’s method of raising the wage by standardizing the values of certain designs as executed by an average worker; the poorer workers then gained less, the superior ones, more. “I thought I realized,” she said, “how cruelly underpaid our women were, but it was not until I saw their joy when the Committee promised them that at least they should always have a minimum of ten centimes an hour for their work, that I really understood. Ten centimes (two cents), just a postage stamp, for a whole hour’s straining effort; and they were happy because that was so much more than they had been sure of winning before the war!” IV GRAMMONT _Belgian Home of Chantilly_ The Committee was discouraging about Grammont. When I told Madame de Beughem of my plan to go there to see Chantilly lace in the making, she answered, “But that will be a futile journey; the women have had practically no black or white silk thread since the war, and the few who were still working in 1914 will have stopt; that one-time important branch of the industry has almost ceased to exist.” I decided, however, to visit the tomb of Chantilly, the lace so closely identified with Grammont that in Belgium it takes its name from that city, rather than from its original French home. And Grammont itself, a town of 13,000 inhabitants, was well worth the journey, situated as it is in a lovely region of rolling hills, and deriving its name from the steep slope (Grand Mont) to which part of the city clings. The surrounding undulating country is dotted with quaint, clustered villages, some with thatched, some with tiled roofs, and only twenty miles away is the charming town of Audenarde—poor Audenarde, so cruelly wounded by the war! I reached Grammont about noon, having lost an hour on the way through the difficulty of passing camions and artillery and marching companies of Canadian soldiers. Between Ninove and Grammont, too, were many squads of German prisoners at work on the ruined road. They were guarded by the French, but it was a rather lenient surveillance, at any rate the sullen groups in their trailing gray capes appeared to be casually tapping the mud with their spades instead of being genuinely at work. [Illustration: A “MARIE ANTOINETTE” IN CHANTILLY LACE, MADE WITH BOBBINS, NEAR GRAMMONT] [Illustration: CUSHION COVER Center Venise, borders Valenciennes, lace executed by 12 workers in one month, embroidery and mounting by four women in two months, design by M. de Rudder] [Illustration: TEA CLOTH Point de Paris, cock design] My Belgian chauffeur, whose health is broken after three years of forced labor in Germany, would have been delighted to run them down, and at one point did succeed in splashing a group with mud, as he called “Boches” and something I did not catch. I began to understand the ruling that released Belgian prisoners shall not be placed over Germans still held here.