They were brought by their mothers or friends before seven in the morning, to be taken care of until seven at night. They were bathed, their clothing was changed to a sort of simple uniform, and then they were turned loose outside to play, or to be amused in various ways by the faithful nurses. They were weighed regularly, examined by a physician, and daily given the nourishing food provided by the relief committee. In fact, they had the splendid care common to the 1,900 crèches or children’s shelters in Belgium. But this crèche was alone in its strange, tragic setting. In the midst of utter ruin are swung the white cradles. In front of them, under the guardianship of gay cocks and lions, golden-haired babies are laughing and romping. Further on more ruins, desolation, silence! IV “THE LITTLE BEES” I Madame ... has charge of a Cantine for Enfants Débiles (children below normal health) in one of the crowded quarters of Brussels. These cantines are dining-rooms where little ones come from the schools at eleven each morning for a nourishing meal. They form the chief department of the work of the “Little Bees,” a society which is taking care of practically all the children, babies and older ones, in this city, who are in one way or another victims of the war. And in July, 1916, they numbered about 25,000. The cantines have been opened in every section of the city, in a vacant shop, a cellar, a private home, a garage, a convent—in any available, usable place. But no matter how inconvenient the building, skilful women transform it at once into something clean and cheery. In the whole of Belgium I have never seen a run-down or dirty relief center. In some the kitchen is simply a screened-off corner of the dining-room, in others it is a separate and excellently equipped quarter. I visited one crowded cantine where every day the women had to carry up and down a narrow ladder stairway all the plates and food for over 470 children. But they have so long ago ceased to think in terms of “tiredness,” that they are troubled by the question suggesting it. And these are the women who have been for over nine hundred days now—shoulder to shoulder with the men—ladling out one and one-quarter million pints of soup, and cooking for, and scrubbing for, and yearning over, hundreds of thousands of more helpless women and children, while caring always for their own families at home. If after a long walk to the cantine (they have neither motors nor bicycles) madame finds there are not enough carrots for the stew, she can not telephone—she must go to fetch whatever ingredient she wants! Each cantine has its own pantry or shop with its precious stores of rice, beans, sugar, macaroni, bacon and other foodstuffs of the C. R. B., and in addition the fresh vegetables, potatoes, eggs and meat it solicits or buys with the money gathered from door to door, the gift of the suffering to the suffering.