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I had always bought--not always, but for many years--a particular kind of shoes that were made in Belgium. Hans Bouchet of Bruges makes them, and they're very, very comfortable. I saw them on sale in the shop called the Vendome in Brussels. I said, “How can this be?”

“Oh,” he said, “did you not know how we managed in Bruges?” It's a sweat-it-out industry, you know. People take their work home. It's a homework job. The making of the shoes is done largely by hand and partly by machine, but, you know, very careful.

He said, “When the Germans were coming every family around had leather, they had thread, they had sales--they had the materials to make shoes with. They hid them. Each family hid their own. And,” he said, “when you do that, you don't have to put 'em all in one place. The Germans might find some of them, but they never found them all. So the minute the War was over, they all go to work and make shoes. They had the leather, hidden away somewhere. And they took care of it, and they've got it.”

Of course there was still a scarcity, but they were back in the market making things before anybody else was. And I remember that one of our attaches at the Embassy told me that he had arrived there since the War and had been perfectly astonished to find that they could buy in Belgium all