The way in which this food was put up was original and quite American.
Boxes were filled with nourishing food suited to the needs of three
classes of refugees--infants, convalescents, and adults.
"A package for infants and young children should include thirty pounds
of evaporated, unsweetened milk; about two pounds of milk sugar, five
pounds of barley flour, five pounds of cornmeal, five pounds of oatmeal,
and two ounces of salt. This will sustain from two hundred to two
hundred and fifty infants or young children for one day.
"For packages for convalescents the following is recommended: Fifteen
pounds of evaporated milk, fifteen pounds of malted milk; one pound can
of olive or cottonseed oil; two pounds of canned chicken, five pounds of
brown rice, seven pounds of whole wheat or white flour, three pounds of
sugar, two pounds of tea, and six ounces of salt. It is estimated that
this will sustain from one hundred to one hundred and fifty
convalescents for one day.
"A package for well adults should contain: Five pounds of canned baked
beans, eight pounds of dried lentils, peas or beans, five pounds of
canned salmon, five pounds of oatmeal, five pounds of cornmeal, fifteen
pounds of whole wheat or white flour, two pounds of sugar and six ounces
of salt. This will furnish a sustaining ration for fifty adults for one
day."
"Not one mouthful has gone down a German throat yet, nor do I believe it
ever will," wrote Mr. Hoover; "we have had nothing but help from the
Germans in the distribution of American foodstuffs in Belgium. Belgium
raises less than forty per cent. of its own food. The war struck it in
the midst of the harvest, and Belgium had made no provision to feed
itself in time of trouble. The minimum monthly requirements of the
Belgian population are sixty thousand tons of grain, fifteen thousand
tons of maize, three thousand tons of rice and peas, at a cost of four
or five million dollars."
There was no milk for thirty thousand babies at the end of November. The
cows had all been killed or taken by the Germans for the army. The
starving mothers could give little nourishment to their infants, and the
supply of condensed milk was quickly used up. This picture was brought
by an American from Belgium:
"I stood one morning by the back door of a German cook camp,
watching a group of Belgian women grubbing through the trash
heap piled up behind the camp. All these women carried babies.
'What are they doing?' I asked a German sergeant with whom I
had struck up an acquaintance. 'Scraping our condensed milk
cans,' he said. 'It is the only way to get milk for their
babies. I have seen them run their fingers round a can which
looked as bright as a new coin, and hold them into the babies'
mouths to suck."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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