value of 5,000,000 were supplied to combatants, patients in military hospitals, allies and prisoners of war, by the 267 recognized head associations, composed of approximately 400,000 workers, grouped into 2,983 branches, all financially independent. These ranged from bodies of village women and shop girls to factories like the Bel- gravia War Hospital Supply Depot and the Kensington War Hos- pital Supply Depot ; the latter with an average daily attendance of 1,200 workers turned out 6,000,000 articles, making a speciality of elaborate orthopaedic appliances. A number of men did valuable work in the woodwork annexes of the depots.
In addition to comforts made by hand the D.G.V.O. sent out 232,599,191 cigarettes, 256,487 Ib. of tobacco and 62,193 games. The supply of books to the troops was in the hands of Dame Eva Anstruther, who had established the Camps Library in Oct. 1914 (afterwards affiliated to the D.G.V.O.) and despatched 16,000,000 books and magazines to fighting men. The War Library, run by Mrs. Gaskell and Dr. Hagbert Wright under the British Red Cross Society, furnished 6,000,000 books to the hospitals.
The provision of artificial teeth and dental treatment for soldiers and sailors was undertaken by the Soldiers and Sailors Dental Aid fund under Miss Banister Fletcher. When it was founded in Dec. 1914 there was no arrangement for the supply of dentures to soldiers ; but from March 1915 onwards the War Office gave a grant to meet the cost of treatment for their own men, and in Nov. took over the work. The Fund was reconstituted later under the name of the Ivory Cross, to provide treatment for discharged service men, for Home Army men and for the mercantile marine.
Ten thousand people, mostly women, worked in 1918 for the welfare of soldiers on leave in the London area alone, under the control of the General Officer Commanding the London District. In that year 3,068,135 men, 232,495 officers and 28,450 cadets were accommodated in rest houses in London. The Maple Leaf Club, the Victoria League Club and Peel House (started by Mrs. Moncrieffe and Mrs. Graham Murray) had been opened as residential clubs for the Overseas forces in the autumn of 1915, on the same lines as .the Union Jack Club, founded as a memorial to the men who had lost their lives in the Boer War. Motor volunteer corps, such as the Motor Transport Volunteers, the Y.M.C.A. Baltic Night Transport, and the Women's Reserve Ambulance (Green Cross Corps) drove nearly a million men from station to station in 1918, and 8,000,000 men were fed at the free buffets at Victoria, Paddington, London Bridge, Liverpool Street, Euston, Waterloo and Charing Cross the same year. These buffets were maintained and staffed in night and 'day shifts entirely by women voluntary workers, and 12,000,000 men were fed during the war at Victoria station at a cost of 60,000. .Similar buffets were organized at the big junctions in the provinces, such as Preston. It is impossible to estimate the additional number of women who worked throughout the country in canteens for soldiers in training and on home service.
Parallel with the supply of tangible comforts such as food and clothing went the provision of entertainment for men in camp and patients in hospital. The " Music in War Time " committees, sub- sidized in part as relief work for musicians by the Professional Classes War Relief Council, gave 15,000 concerts in hospitals and camps at home, 2,000,000 wounded soldiers being entertained in the Manchester area alone. Individuals and organizations such as the Y.M.C.A. at home, the Lena Ashwell concert parties at the front, 'the Three Arts Club and the Soldiers Entertainment Fund, did the same work.
The labour of the nursing staff in hospitals was lessened by the organizations which provided drives for the wounded, free bus rides and river trips, and arranged for the visitation of patients and the teaching of handicrafts. The friendships formed in hospital led to voluntary after-care work for the disabled. (For a list of funds, associations and societies for the assistance of service and ex-service officers, men, women, and their dependents, see H4/Gen. No. 6198, compiled by the secretary C-3 department, War Office.)
The Auctioneers and Estate Agents Institute of the United King- dom bought the Star and Garter Hotel, Richmond Hill, as a home for the totally disabled in 1915 and presented it to Queen Mary; a sum of 224,000 for the building was raised by the British Women's Hospitaltommittee under the chairmanship of Dame May Whitty as a tribute from the women of the Empire.
VI. Work for Belgian Refugees in Great Britain. In Aug. 1914 the gaze of the Allies was focussed upon Belgium, where one of the greatest tragedies of history was being enacted. After the first accounts of the German atrocities perpetrated at Vise and Liege, but before the extent of the German invasion of Belgium was fore- seen, it occurred to Lady Lugard that a large number of Belgian women and children might be brought to the protection of English hospitality, by means of the organization recently improvised in Ulster for the removal of Irish women and children from the area which in July 1914 threatened to become a theatre of war. Prepara- tions on these lines proceeded, with the cooperation of Ulster, the Catholic Church, the Foreign Office, the Local Government Board and the Belgian Government. Meanwhile the situation in Belgium was becoming more acute, and on Aug. 22 an official of the Exhibi- tions Branch of the Board of Trade, who was in Belgium on business, announced to Lady Lugard that he hoped to arrive from Ostend on the 24th with a transport carrying from 100 to 1,000 Belgians.
Within two days the War Refugees Committee was formed to pro- vide for them, mainly by the exertions of Lady Lugard and Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton. Lord Hugh Cecil became chairman and Viscount Gladstone treasurer. The response of the first appeal in the press brought offers of private hospitality for 100,000 persons, and hot one of the refugees who poured into the country in an increasing stream was left without food, lodging and a warm welcome from the 500 volunteers who at first did the work. But the Committee was not rich in funds. A large proportion of the money, subscribed in England for the Belgians, went to the Belgian minister's fund for Belgian relief, which was earmarked to be spent upon the Con-; tinent. 106,500 was subscribed to the War Refugees Committee, and this had to be conserved for the expenses of organization, and for emergency relief. It. was soon obvious that a national exodus could not be dealt with by private effort alone. In the House of Commons, on Sept. 9, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Herbert Samuel, then President of the Local XSovernment Board, offered the hospitality of the British nation to Belgium, and from that day a department of the Local Government Board, under Sir Frederick Willis, worked in close relation with the War Refugees Committee. At f\rst the Belgians had been received in refuges improvised by the War Refugees Com- mittee; but it was then arranged that the Local Government Board should provide accommodation for the refugees in London and should superintend their reception at the ports and bear the cost of their transport. The War Refugees Committee was to allocate the refu- gees to private hospitality and organize the transport.
The Women's Emergency Corps had provided a body of inter- preters to meet trains early in Aug. and did valuable work for the Belgians of the middle and upper classes who were able to pay their way temporarily. The greatest rush occurred during the week after the fall of Antwerp, when 26,000 refugees arrived at Folkestone and were welcomed by the local committee; 2,000 a day were dealt with in London by the allocation department of the War Refugees Committee under Dame Victoria Samuel (Mrs. Gilbert Samuel), and 6,opo a day by the transport department under Mr. H. Camp- bell. The occupation of Ostend by the Germans on Oct. 17 closed the Belgian coast, and all refugees arriving in England after that date came by way of Holland, and in far smaller numbers.
The early refugees had borne the first onslaught of German fury, and families arrived separated from each other and with no material possessions whatsoever. British women, protected from the same fate by the sea, and with few opportunities at that time of helping actively with other war work, poured out money and sympathy lavishly on the Belgians. By Jan. 1915, it was estimated that private hosts had spent 2,000,000 on hospitality. The central register of refugees compiled under the Registrar General's Department showed that 265,000 refugees arrived in England; they cost the Government approximately 3,500,000; but the total spent on them by private hosts and local committees was estimated in 1917 as at least 6,000,000. Over 6,000 Jews were cared for at the cost of the Jewish community in London. 2,500 local Belgian relief committees, of which about 1,500 were really effective, were formed in Great Britain, to which the refugees, after spending a few days at the Government refuges, were allocated by the loo voluntary allocators of the War Refugees Committee; by the allocators at the office of the Belgian consulate, working in the same building; as well as by the Catholic Women's League and the Women's Emergency Corps. Four large refuges holding 8,oop persons, at Alexandra Palace, Earl's Court, Edmonton and Millfietd House, were managed for the Local Government Board by the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and during the period of the greatest rush several boards of guardians lent other buildings. Edmonton and Earl's Court through which 100,000 refugees passed, remained open till the end of the war.
When the local relief committees, originally organized by the Earl of Lytton, had received their refugees from headquarters, they worked in complete independence. The Glasgow Corporation Bel- gian Refugee Committee under Mr. Alexander Walker acted as a central authority for receiving and distributing refugees all over Scotland. The Scotch committees raised 360,000. Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Exeter, to mention only a few, looked after many thousands of refugees each. The university of Cambridge invited professors and students from the four Belgian universities to come into residence and organized lectures for them and hos- pitality for their families. The Chelsea Committee, with Mrs. Erskine Childcrs as hon. sec., started industries for the refugees on a large scale, and spent 72,000 of English and American money. The National Food Fund and the Belgian Refugee Food Fund, with the substantial assistance of the Smithfield Markets Belgian Relief Fund (which divided gifts of meat between the two funds), supplied an allowance of free food to hostels and Belgian households in London ; this made it possible for a large number to do without other financial assistance.
In Jan. 1915, owing to the natural drying up of the sources of private hospitality, the Government undertook to make grants in aid! to refugees when private offers were not available, and in this way wholly or partially maintained an average of 6,500 persons till May 1919. In Nov. 1915 it took over the cost of the staff of the War Refugees Committee. When this organization took definite shape, it consisted of a staff of 400 paid workers, who by degrees assumed the places of the original volunteers, though some of these
