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they were erecting the beams to make sheds over the market stalls. I said, “This is really wonderful work.” They were working overtime. They were working half the night. “This is wonderful to get this done. How do you manage?”
They shrugged their shoulders. They're not very demonstrative people. They shrugged their shoulders and looked sort of vague and said, “Well, in Belgium every man must do what he can where he is.”
They were doing what they could. We then went East, out through the part where the Battle of the Bulge was and all that, out to Liege, where the great coal-mining center and the great crystalliere of St. Lambert. The great glass-works, in other words, which is beautiful--they turn out perfectly beautiful work, but they have the most horrible working conditions I think I have ever seen. Such crowded floors. I mean, the people so close to each other, and the little boys running around carrying the tongs with which a man takes a piece of glass and whirls it and blows it and hands it to a boy who runs with it to another worker, who cuts off something and does something else. I mean, you just couldn't see how these boys could help but be injured all the time, they were so numerous and so exposed to the hot forges and all that kind of thing.
The visit to Holland was only a brief over-the -
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