In writing in to Wilbur Thomas, then General Secretary, she says the following excerpted :. Our offices are in the Hamburg American Haus. I have known Caroline Nicholson spending a whole morning interviewing people about things far removed from our child feeding. For example, there is a knock on the door. He has a pleasant frank open face but rather sad.
He is working but only receives M a month and on that he must support a wife which he is finding almost impossible to do with prices almost sky high. He says that in his wanderings over the high seas he has picked up a bunch of American stamps and he comes to us hoping we can tell him someone who would buy them. He hands us an envelope full of stamps. A Schwester asks for some of our food to sell in one of the booths at a fair they are having to raise money to help children in a certain home.
A blind man wants us to tell him of someone in America who will loan him some money at a moderate rate of interest so that he may continue his literary pursuits. And just today a woman was in who was traveling shortly to California via New York asking that we have a Quaker meet her at the dock and put her on the right train to California. Although a large part of my work so far has been confined to the office, I have had the privilege of visiting several of our feeding centers, both here and in Berlin, where I was stationed for the first months of my stay.
It is the public feeding stations where the Kleinkinder and Mutter come that I have been most impressed with the great good that our work can do. Of course in the schools one is impressed by the great number of very pale children and where ages are discovered by the stunted growth. And the whole truth is that even more vividly among the home when one sees four boys or more standing side by side, all about the same height, and discover that they range in age from nine to fourteen years.
But the wee little tots with their beautiful curls and lovely faces but oh so pale and eyes much too big -- they are the ones that grip me hardest. We stand at the door and watch them toddle in with their bowls and spoons β sometimes alone and sometimes with an older brother or sister. And it is no mere form to them but they really mean it and put their whole heart into it, for these tiny tots in their way are just as thankful as are their parents and older brothers or sisters.
