More about Peter and the work done on the Isle of Man.

August 1917

The world is still talking about the children at Fatima. Each week at church we hear more of the stories.

Lucia asked Mary to take them to heaven and was reassured in this way: “I will take Jacinta and Francisco shortly; but you will stay here for some time to come. Jesus wants to use you to make me known and loved. He wishes to establish the devotion to My Immaculate Heart throughout the world. I promise salvation to whoever embraces it; these souls will be dear to God, like flowers put by me to adorn his throne.”

One of the witnesses to this apparition, Maria Carreira, described how Lucia then cried out and pointed as Mary departed. She herself heard a noise like, “a rocket, a long way off,” and looked to see a small cloud a few inches over the tree, rise, and move slowly towards the east until it disappeared. The crowd of pilgrims then returned to Fatima where they reported the amazing things they had seen, thus ensuring that there were between two and three thousand people present for the July apparition.

But the rest of us have a normal life to live so here is my latest letter from Peter.

“Dear Barbara, Rebecca and darling Beth,

Thank you so much for sending me a cake for my birthday. However not much of it was left after the censors had a go at it. They have to examine all articles most meticulously. They are so worried that you might be sending me something useful to me, considered dangerous by them, that they cut and poke into everything sent. Even walnuts are opened, as messages have been found in them. They scrutinize every letter and even postcards for some secret code in the decoration. It is really very upsetting and frustrating for those of us who are trying to do our best.
Now that the United States has come into the war, our interests are now looked after by the Swiss Legation, and those of the Austrian prisoners by the Swedish Legation. We have had a visitation by our representatives. I wonder if things will become better as a result.

I am now on the committee which helps distribute the goods made in camps for sale, so I will tell you some of the problems we have had and some of the successes.  Each morning we have a guard bringing representatives of the Industrial Committees in the four camps, with hand trucks to take in any raw materials that have arrived for our use, and to take out to the hut completed articles for packing. Our entertainment hut has been enlarged so that it can serve as a store for the goods made in our camp. We are now in business.

This growth did not take place without difficulties. On one occasion the Industrial Adviser was told that his permit was withdrawn and that all our work must cease, because a few baskets made in camp had appeared in a local mart. There followed some anxious weeks of negotiation before we started again under a new permissive charter. The last stage was reached when our Industrial Adviser became also the official Industrial Superintendent for the Isle of Man Government, of all the work performed by the interned men. It would have been impossible for one of our workers to take such an official position, but as James Baily had already won the complete confidence of the prisoners, he was able to retain it and give them fuller assistance in the new position.

Love from Peter”

“Dear Barbara, Rebecca and Beth,

These small sheets of paper are so frustrating. I never get to finish what I start saying to you. So I will continue here.

Do you want to know how we managed to dispose of the huge quantity of articles made in the camp work-shops? The task at times seems almost impossible. Many of the articles sent at first were unsaleable anywhere. They were beginners’ attempts, of poor design, and often falling to pieces before they arrived. This difficulty was largely surmounted by a system of double inspection before the goods left the camp—first by the industrial committee, and then by our own visitor. Even then it was often difficult to refuse some article on which a poor man might have spent days of close labour, in the hope of getting a few shillings to send out to his wife, only to be told at the end that his work was not up to the necessary technical standard.

The second difficulty is that all the ordinary trade markets are closed to us. The condition on which any products are sent out of camp is that they should not be publicly advertised for sale, nor disposed of to any shop or firm. The sales, therefore, have to be entirely sympathetic and personally arranged. Our general Camp Visitor takes around with him cases of articles which he exhibits and sells at his meetings amongst friends, and also keeps a good stock in a showroom in London, where visitors of all sorts are induced to come and buy.

Some of the smaller articles are sold readily enough. There are, for example, the dainty little animals of all kinds made from cuttlefish moulds filled with the melted silver-paper, which children were set to work to collect all over the country. There was the menagerie of wooden animals with jointed limbs, the wriggly snakes with shining eyes, and the neat little inlaid match cases. Boxes of every size, shape, colour and design are being made in all the camps, and innumerable shinbones of beef have been transformed into elaborately carved vases, or cut into sections and fashioned into napkin-rings. In fact, we have used all of our supply of bones, and are now having bones from Liverpool butchers sent in to us.

At the other end of the scale there are the most interesting and intricate carvings and mechanical models, and private orders are taken, even to the extent of suites of furniture.

Fortunately we discovered openings abroad. A Prisoners of War Relief Committee in New York, formed chiefly to try to aid prisoners in Siberia, undertook to dispose of camp-made goods for the benefit of the makers. Our camp is making full use of this opportunity and sending across consignments by boat after boat.

Love from Peter”

“Dear Barbara, Rebecca and Beth,

A second foreign market has emerged due to the energetic efforts of the late Crown Princess of Sweden to help prisoners of war in all lands. She organised in Stockholm an exhibition and sale of articles made in the prison camps of Russia, Germany and England. To this we sent thirty-three cases of goods, valued at well over a thousand pounds, and they were sold within an hour or two. A second similar exhibition is being held later at Gothenburg.

Small consignments are being sent to Norway and Denmark, and a large one was disposed of in the Prussian House of Lords. This happened almost accidentally. We had sent the goods to Dr. Hartmann, the president of the Zurich Committee for helping interned civilians in all countries. He arranged to sell these in Zurich, but they were so long upon the road that his market was gone by the time they arrived. Not realising that we had no permit to send the goods to Germany, he forwarded them to Dr. Rotten, who arranged the exhibition and sale in Berlin.

It has become the policy of the British Government, after production of goods began to suffer from the effects of conscription, to try to make use of the man-power of the interned aliens for national ends. In this they were not very successful, partly because of the unwillingness of a large number of the men to be so used, and partly because of the opposition of the traders in any particular industry in which competition from Germans was suggested.

We are able to use the energies of some of the workers in the camp shops to more useful employment than the making of miscellaneous fancy articles, and men are often more willing to do this under the Friends’ Emergency Committee auspices than for the Government, because they know that our primary object is their own benefit and that they will receive fair treatment under any arrangements we make. These arrangements are difficult and elaborate. Every proposal to make goods for trade sale, whether it was one article or a thousand, has to be submitted in full detail to the Home Office for approval before work can begin.

Drat, no more space to write. I will continue in another letter.

Love from Peter”

“Dear Barbara,

Among the products the internees offer are the making of dolls’ wigs, construction of some of the Montessori Educational material, and the assembling and painting of small model ships and railway trains. The most considerable amount of work, however, is that provided for the watchmakers, of whom there are a large number in camp, and the basket-makers. There were on now a hundred men are kept busy in turning out baskets of every size and shape. The Industrial Adviser is very anxious, in this enterprise, to leave behind a permanent new industry in the Island. Parties of men are taken out to the marshy parts of the Island to cut willows, and prepare the ground for future growths, and a local employer has helped to fit up a disused mill, near Peel, as a basket-making shop, to which our stock will eventually be transferred.

A still more satisfactory form of employment, which is developed in different ways, is the making of articles by those suffering in internment for other victims of the war who are in worse plight than ourselves.

I know you asked me some time ago to ask my friends about the visitations in Fatima. I have not yet done so, and I am so very busy with my work at the moment, but I will try to see if I can answer your question later.

Love
Peter”

I must write to John and Peter both with the news about the Labour party convention which is being held in Manchester at the Albert Hall on Peter Street. They mostly are talking about industrialization due to the workers involvement and naturalisation of the Irish.

And again at church I have been updated on the Fatima children’s visions.

Lucia asked the lady who she was and for a miracle so everyone would believe. “Continue to come here every month. In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle for all to see and believe.”

Lucia made some requests for sick people, to which Mary replied that she would cure some but not others, and that all must say the rosary to obtain such graces. “God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI.

“When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church.
“The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

“When you pray the Rosary, say after each mystery, ‘O my Jesus, forgive us, save us from the fire of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are most in need.’” After assuring Lucia that there was nothing more, Mary disappeared off into the distance.

I would like to say I believe that it is all true, but I know that John thinks it is absolute nonsense, preying on our susceptibilities at this very difficult time.

I wonder what the miracle she has promised will be. John did say to take note of the visions corresponding to light features, as he thinks they are related to sun spots – and I must say references to light or the sky are often a part of what is said or seen. For instance she said, "night illumined by an unknown light" - maybe something like the aurora boreallis, or so John would think.