Then I was shown an adjoining room, where, in the corners, there were heaps of little white balls rolled in wax paper. From a distance they looked more than anything else like tiny popcorn balls. What could they mean? I took one in my hand and saw that they meant that the most precious prize that can be offered a Belgian mother to-day is a tiny ball of white lard! With the more ignorant, this prize-system is the swiftest means of opening the way. The doctor laughed as he recounted his struggle with one obstinate woman, who argued stoutly that because the cow is a great, strong creature, while she herself is but small and frail, undoubtedly its milk would be infinitely more strengthening to her child than her own! Where argument failed, the prize convinced. If a mother can nurse her baby but neglects to, she is forced to feed it regularly before some member of the committee. Nurses visit all the homes registered. The attempt is being made everywhere to induce mothers who are not actually in want, to enroll in these cantines, while paying for their food, that they may have the benefit of the pure milk and the physician’s care. The “Relief” is not counting the cost of this fundamental work—the baby cantines are the promise of the future. They are already closely watching the development of 53,000 babies. The educational value alone can not be measured; women who had not the faintest conception of the simplest laws of hygiene are being trained, forced to learn, because their own and their children’s food can come to them only from the hand of their teacher. While the war has brought unutterable misery, it has also brought extraordinary opportunity, and Belgium is seizing this opportunity wherever she can. XIII LAYETTES And babies must be clothed, as well as fed! I visited one of the Brussels layette centers with the C. R. B. American advisory physician, whose interest in children had brought him at once face to face with what women are doing to save them. We went to a little cantine consisting of a room and anteroom on the ground floor, and, I might add, the sidewalk—for before we reached it we saw the line of hatless mothers with their tiny babies wrapt in shawls in their arms, waiting their turn. This was a depot where they might receive the articles for the lying-in period and clothing for babies under six months of age. We passed through the anteroom, where a number sat nursing their babies (young mothers mostly, and many of them pretty), into the distributing-room.