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Belgian soldiers wounded in the terrible retreat from Liege to Dixmude were discharged from the hospitals in an even more broken and destitute state than their French comrades in arms. Frenchmen, all but those from the devastated districts of the north, had at least homes to which they could return. Their lot was pitiable enough in its helplessness and enforced idleness, but there was some comfort for them in the ministrations of their families and friends. Belgium, however, except for the narrow strip of sand and marsh behind the bloody Yser, was all a devastated region; homes had been sacked and burned by the invader, families had been slaughtered and carried off into captivity. When a Belgian was of no more use in the army, he could be discharged, but he could not be sent home. He could only be turned adrift and left to work or beg his way along French or English roads. Often it happened that before men's wounds were barely healed, the hospitals where they lay were flooded by a new tide of wounded men from the front, and all who were able to leave were turned out. Belgian soldiers, therefore, were often unfit for work because they had not been able to secure the longer treatment which might have restored to them in some measure the use of injured joints and muscles.

It is said that two of these poor fellows, their clothes in tatters, their feet through their boots, but their breasts covered with medals for distinguished bravery in defense of their country, stopped at a certain house in Havre and asked for food. The house was that of the president of the Belgian House of Representatives, M. Schollaert, who himself listened to the men's stories. Shocked by the situation which he was thus able to image, M. Schollaert took them in and immediately applied to the government for permission to provide a home and medical care for these and other destitute soldiers. The manor-house at Sainte-Adresse in which he placed them and the staff he organized for their physical reconstruction became the nucleus of one of the two great institutions now providing re-education for Belgian soldiers.

The founder and director of this Depot des Invalides at Sainte-Adresse soon saw that he must add vocational training to his program if he was to refit the men under his care for life and work. Workshops of a primitive kind were therefore installed wherever there could be found a place for them in the neighborhood. The brush-makers were set at work in the stable, the carpenters in a hired shed, and the shoemakers in the parlor of a villa. Later when the Belgian government lent its aid to the work, all the shops and dormitories were gathered together in portable wooden barracks in a vast cantonment.

Before the institution at Sainte-Adresse had passed through more than its earliest stages, the government realized that the disabled soldier problem could only be solved by more far-reaching measures. The first action then taken was the announcement by the Minister of War that soldiers who were unable because of their wounds to perform their former work would no longer be discharged at the end of their hospital treatment but would be sent to an institution where they could learn a new occupation. The next was directed at the men who had been previously discharged and who were now in distress in France and England. Agents of the Belgian government rounded up these men, revoked all their discharge papers, and subjected them to new physical examinations. Those that were found sufficiently able-bodied to be of use in the auxiliary services were taken back into the army; the others, unless they had secured well-paid, permanent employment, were sent either to a military hospital for further treatment or to Sainte-Adresse for vocational work.

It was then necessary to make the re-educational facilities of the nation -- exiled though it was -- adequate for training all men in the Belgian army who were or might become incapacitated for their former occupations. To this end the government made grants of money to the institution at Sainte-Adresse and created the Belgian national school for disabled soldiers at Port-Villez. Both are on French soil: Sainte-Adresse just outside of Havre and Port-Villez about half way between Paris and Rouen. The two schools have a capacity for training over three thousand men.

Men are now sent to Sainte-Adresse or Port-Villez directly from the base hospitals at Rouen. If they need re-education, they have no choice but to take it. The compulsory character thus given to their training has been accepted without dispute by Belgians, though in other countries the idea has always been strongly opposed. Belgians have fewer counter-attractions in their lives than have other men. They are more cut off from the past, and they see no future until the invader is driven out. For these reasons, perhaps, they do not rebel at being kept in an institution and made to learn a trade.

But though training of one kind or another is compulsory, the individual can freely express his preference for this or that kind of work, and whenever he is not debarred by mental or physical limitations can take up the kind he desires. Often, however, a man who is cut off from his old occupation can fix upon no other, and the school authorities must then help him to choose. In this matter of choosing a trade -- which is, in fact, one of the most important steps in the whole process of re-education -- the Belgian schools follow a notably good course. Every man on his arrival undergoes a thorough physical examination, which determines what kind of work he is physically capable of and from what he is barred. This is followed by a mental examination designed to bring out the extent of his previous schooling and his general intelligence. Next, he is taken on an informal tour of the shops, during which he can talk with the workmen in the different trades and discover perhaps some latent taste. The several examiners then compare their notes on the man's aptitudes, talk over the matter with him very seriously, and finally place him in one of the shops. If after a week's trial the work appears to be unsuited to him, his case is opened again, and a new start is made.