"The occupying government has seized considerable supplies of raw material intended for our national industry; it has seized and shipped to Germany the machinery, tools, and metals of our factories and our workshops. The possibility of national labor being thus suppressed, there remained one alternative to the workman: to work for the German Empire, either here or in Germany; or to remain idle. Some thousands of workmen, under the pressure of fright or of hunger, accepted, with regret for the most part, work for the enemy; but four hundred thousand workmen and workwomen preferred to resign themselves to unemployment, with its privations, rather than injure the interests of the fatherland; they lived in poverty, with the aid of a meager relief allowed them by the _Comité national de secours et d' alimentation_, under the supervision of the protecting ministers of Spain, America, and Holland. Calm, dignified, they bore without a murmur their painful lot. In no part of the country was there a revolt or even the semblance of one. Employers and employees awaited with patience the end of our long martyrdom. Meanwhile, the communal administrations and private initiative endeavored to alleviate the undoubted inconveniences of unemployment. But the occupying power paralyzed their efforts. The _Comité National_ attempted to organize a professional school for the use of the unemployed. This practical instruction, respectful of the dignity of our workmen, was meant to keep up their skill, increase their capacity for work, and prepare for the restoration of the country. Who opposed this noble movement, the plan of which had been elaborated by our large manufacturers? Who? The occupying government. [Sidenote: Communes not allowed to furnish work for unemployed.] "Notwithstanding all this, the communes made every effort to give work to the unemployed upon undertakings of public utility; but the governor general made these enterprises depend upon permission which, as a general rule, he refused. There are numerous cases, I am assured, where the General Government authorized undertakings of this kind upon the express condition that they should not be undertaken by unemployed. "They were seeking to create unemployment. They were recruiting the army of the unemployed. * * * "The letter of October 26th says that the first responsibility for the unemployment of our workmen rests upon England, because she has not allowed raw materials to enter Belgium. [Sidenote: England not to blame.] "England generously allows foodstuffs to enter Belgium for the revictualling [of the country], under the control of neutral States--Spain, the United States, and Holland. She would allow raw materials necessary for industry to enter the country under the same control if Germany were willing to agree to leave them to us, and not to seize the finished products of our industrial work.