Accounts of the starving children are likely to create the impression that the countries in which they starve are callous. The case is quite the opposite. Hungary, for instance, used to lead the world in its legislation for child-conservation. If the parent failed, the State automatically became the parent. If an unprotected woman were about to become a mother, the State undertook a man's responsibilities, both for the woman and the life unborn. The way in which the law operated was peculiarly humane. There were no barrack-like asylums for the care of these unfortunates. They were placed in the homes of peasants and visited at regular intervals by inspectors whose business it was to see that they were being treated kindly. The mother was not separated from her illegitimate child; they were placed together in surroundings where their position would become normal. Since the war this system has broken down; but as far as is possible it is still maintained. One needs to disabuse his mind of the prejudice against peoples who are starving, that they are starving because of their own intolerance. One finds instances of spiritual generosity which go far beyond the capacity of the Anglo-Saxon mind.

In Buda there is a mosque, which has stood there for centuries. It marks the tomb of the Mohammedan who brought the first rose to Europe. Because the beauty of his gift has made life more fragrant, religious bigotry, has kept aloof from his sleeping-place. There has never been a day since he was buried there that the call to prayer has not sounded from the minaret, proclaiming the greatness of Allah above the roofs of a city which serves a rival god. What does it matter, say the citizens of Buda, if it helps the soul of the giver of our first rose to rest? A people so poetically magnanimous are not likely to be wilfully cruel to children.

I visited the Foundling hospital in Budapest where parentless children are first adopted by the State. It is more like a palace than a hospital—an imposing series of buildings covering several acres; but it is only imposing from the outside. It is over-crowded and under-staffed. The war, with its retreats and invasions, has filled the land with tuberculosis and rickets. Five hundred are cared for in the cots; thirteen thousand have to be lodged elsewhere. The nurses are in patched clothing and rags. The doctors are worn and pale as ghosts. I saw many of the attendants trudging through the snow without stockings. The wards smell like menageries. They have no soap, no linen, no anything. And this is the institution which once led the world in child-conservation!

Do not think that these conditions are due to carelessness; they are caused by the national bankruptcy. Hungary's exchequer has been pillaged by both Bolshevists and Roumanians. In the money that is left a depreciation has taken place which would be equalled in American currency if the spending value of the dollar were to become less than that of one cent. Moreover, very many medical requirements have become absolutely unobtainable. Commodities so common as soap, powder, vaseline, linen are not to be purchased. The children born in the hospital are wrapped in paper. Even paper is so scarce that it has to be washed. After it has been washed it cracks. Its edges become sharp as a razor. There is not a baby in that hospital whose tender little body is not covered with cuts and sores. Yet what can the nurses do? Babies have to be clad. There is nothing but paper.

I wish the people who read this chapter could have accompanied me through those wards. It was the Christmas season. The occupants of the cots were little children; the mothers who bent over them, giving them the last of their strength, were more outcast than Mary.

Because of the coal shortage, no ward in the hospital was properly heated. I was wearing a coat and had to keep it on. In the little railed beds, the babies shivered against the bars on bare mattresses. They wore nothing but a single patched shirt, which left off at the legs for the sake of economy. The impression they created was not even remotely human; they looked like sick monkeys from the tropics who had not became acclimatised. There were lines and lines of them, their bodies blue with cold and criss-crossed with scars. Most of them could not shift themselves; their heads were bumpy and their legs withered. The thing that first struck me was their silence; they had finished all their crying. The doctor informed me that the mortality among them is over thirty per cent. Their ages were anything from the newly born to ten years old. It seemed that into those buildings was crowded the child misery of all the world.

I stopped to enquire who were their parents. They did not know. Their fathers had been killed in the war and their mothers had died. Some of them had been picked up in the streets where they had been abandoned by parents who could drag no further.

I found myself in the maternity ward. The women were as naked as the children. Of the old stock of gowns only a few were left, which had been patched and darned till there remained scarcely anything of the original fabric. Again, as in the case of the children, the mattresses were bare of coverings. The napkins of the new-born babies were of paper, broken and washed to shreds. And this was the hospital which for mercy once led the world!

I was taken to the laundry to see how the paper was laundered. It so happened that we arrived in time to catch a laundress using a brush to one of the tattered maternity garments. The fury of the Director, who escorted me, was extravagant. It knew no bounds. He shouted and thumped and gesticulated. It was as though the woman had dared to scrub a priceless piece of tapestry. I thought he would have struck her. Later he apologised to me for his passion, “On our retention of that gown some mother's life may depend.”

It was the kind of clout with which no self-respecting housewife in America would have deigned to mop her floor.