In the latter chapters of the book Hoover, having devoted the earlier chapters to technical methods, treats of the administrative and financial phases of mining. The last chapter is devoted to the "character, training, and obligations of the mining engineering profession" in which he sets up a standard of professional ethics for the engineer of the very highest degree and reveals clearly his own genuinely philanthropic attitude toward his fellow men. In the discussion of mining administration there is a concise but illuminating treatment of the subject of labor unions. After discussing contract work and bonus systems he says:

Three years before publishing the Principles of Mining Hoover had collaborated with a a group of authors in the production of a book called Economics of Mining. And three years later, that is in 1912, he privately published, in sumptuous form, with scrupulously exact reproduction of all of its many curious old woodcuts, an English translation of Agricola's "De Re Metallica," the first great treatise on mining and metallurgy, originally published in Latin in 1556, only one hundred years after Gutenberg had printed his first book. "De Re Metallica" was the standard manual of mining and metallurgy for 180 years. Georgius Agricola, the author, was really one Georg Bauer, a German of Saxony, who, following the custom of his time used for pen-name the literal Latin equivalents of the words of his German name.

This translation, with its copious added notes of editorial commentary, was the joint work of Hoover and his wife—it was Mrs. Hoover, indeed, who began it—and occupied most of their spare time, especially their evenings—and sometimes nights!—and Sundays, through nearly five years. They had been for some time collecting and delving in old books on China and the Far East and ancient treatises on early mining and metallurgical processes, and had accumulated an unusual collection of such books, ransacking the old bookshops of the world in their quest. In 1902, Mrs. Hoover while looking up some geology in the British Museum Library, stumbled again on Agricola, which she had forgotten since the days she was in Dr. Branner's laboratory. By invoking the services of one of their friends among the old book dealers the Hoovers soon owned a copy. Caught especially by the many curious and only half understandable pictures in it they began to translate bits from it here and there, especially the explanations of the pictures, and in a little while they were lost. Nothing would satisfy them short of making a complete translation. It became an obsession; it was at first their recreation; then because it went very slowly it seemed likely to become their life avocation.

They found an early German translation, which, however, helped them little. The translator had apparently known little of mining and not too much of Latin. They went to Saxony, to the home of Agricola, hoping to get clues to the difficult things in the book by seeing the region and mines which had been under his eyes while writing it, and finding traditions of the mining methods of his time. But it was as if a sponge had been passed over Agricola and his days. Fire had swept over the towns he had known and all the ancient records were gone. The towns, rebuilt, and the mines of which he had written were there, but of him and of the ancient methods he wrote about there was hardly record or even tradition. They went to Freiberg, where has long existed the greatest German school of mines, the greatest mining school in the world, indeed, until the American schools were developed—probably the Germans would not admit even this qualification—and there they found no more to help them than in Agricola's own towns. In fact, the Freiberg professors seemed rather irritated by the advent of these searchers for ancient mining history, for, as the savants explained, the Freiberg methods and machines were all the most modern in the world; there were "no left-overs, no worn-out rubbish of those inefficient ages" around Germany's great school of mines.

So the Hoovers were little rewarded by their pilgrimage to Germany for help in their attempt to resuscitate the Saxon Agricola. But they kept on mining in the big tome and finally, in the fifth year of their devoted spare-time labors they had before them a completed translation.

CHAPTER VII

From the first day of the World War Herbert Hoover has been a world figure. But much of what he has done and how he has done it is still only hazily known, for all the general public familiarity with his name as head of the Belgian relief work, American food administrator, and, finally, director-general of the American and Allied relief work in Europe after the armistice. The public knows of him as the initiator and head of great organizations with heart in them, which were successfully managed on sound business principles. But it does not yet know the special character of Hoover's own personal participation in them, his original and resourceful contributions to their success, and the formidable obstacles which he had constantly to overcome in making this success possible. There was little that "just happened" which contributed to this success; that which did just happen usually happened wrong. Things came off because ideals were realized by practical method, decision, and driving power. I should like to be able to give the people of America a revealing glimpse, by outline and incident, of all this. And I should like, too, to be able to make clear the pure Americanism of this man; to disclose the basis of belief in the soundness of the American heart and the practical possibilities of American democracy on which Hoover banked in determining his methods and daring his decisions. This belief was the easier to hold inasmuch as he has himself the soundness of character, the fundamental conviction of democracy, and the true philanthropy that he attributes to the average American. He is his own American model.

To call Herbert Hoover "English" as a cheap form of derogation, is to reveal a surprising paucity of invention in criticism. It is also unfair to about as American an American as can be found. The translation of Agricola, an account of which closed our last chapter, stretched over the long time that it did, not alone because Mr. and Mrs. Hoover could give only their spare hours to it, but also because they could turn to it only while they were in London where the needed reference books were available. And their presence in London was so discontinuous that their translating work was much more marked by interruption than continuity. The constant returns to America where there were the New York and San Francisco offices to be looked after personally, and the many trips to the mining properties scattered over the world, limited Hoover's London days to a comparatively small number in each year. A London office was, to be sure, necessary between 1902 and 1914 because of the advantage to a world miner of being close to affairs in the world's center of mining interests. And it was also necessary during Belgian relief days because of its unequaled accessibility, by persons or cable, from all the vital points in the complex international structure of the relief organization. But in all this period of London connection, except in the Belgian relief period, Hoover was a familiar figure in mining circles in both New York and San Francisco, and although rarely able to cast his vote in America he maintained a lively interest in American major governmental affairs.

Hoover kept up, too, an active interest in the development of his alma mater, Stanford University, and especially in its geology and mining engineering department. In 1908 he was asked to join its faculty, and delivered a course of lectures on the principles of mining, which attracted such favorable comment that he repeated it shortly after in condensed form in Columbia University. On the basis of his experience as a university student of mining, and as a successful mine expert and operator, and as an employer of many other university graduates from universities and technical schools Hoover has formed definite conclusions as to what the distinctive character of professional university training for prospective mining engineers should be. It differs from a widely held view.

He believes that the collegiate training should be less practical than fundamental. The attempts, more common a decade ago than now perhaps, to convert schools of mining and departments of mining geology into shops and artificial mines, do not meet with favor in his eyes. Vocational, or professional, training in universities should leave most of the actual practice to be gained in actual experience and work after graduation. If the student is well-grounded in the fundamental science of mining and metallurgy, in geology and chemistry and physics and mechanics, he can quickly pick up the routine methods of practice. And he can do more. He can understand their raison d'être, and he can modify and adapt them to the varying conditions under which they must be applied. He can, in addition, if he has any originality of mind at all, devise new methods, discover new facts of mining geology—the interior of the earth is by no means a read book as yet—and add not only his normal quota of additional wealth to the world, as a routine worker, but an increment of as yet unrealized possibilities, as an original investigator. In Hoover's own choice of assistants he has selected among men fresh from the universities or technical schools those who have had thoroughly scientific, as contrasted with much technical, or so-called practical, training.

His interest in universities and university administration and methods has always been intense. It has been reciprocated, if his honorary degrees from a dozen American colleges and universities can be assumed to be evidence of this. In 1912 he was made a trustee of Stanford and from the beginning of this trusteeship until now he has taken an active part in the university management, giving it the full benefit of his constructive service. His most recent activity in this connection has concerned itself with the needed increase and standardization of faculty salaries so that for each grade of faculty position there is assured at least a living minimum of salary. He was the originating figure and principal donor of the Stanford Union, a general club-house for students and faculty, which adds materially to the comfort of home-wandering alumni and to the democratic life of the University. In all the great University plant there was no place for a common social meeting-ground for faculty, alumni, and undergraduates. The Union provided it. If Stanford did much for Hoover in the days when he was one of its students, he has loyally repaid his obligation.

But all of these accounts of Hoover's various activities still leave unanswered many questions concerning the more intimate personal characteristics of the man to whom the World War came in August, 1914, with its special call for service. He was then just forty years old, known to mining engineers everywhere and to the alumni and faculty and friends of Stanford University and to a limited group of business acquaintances and personal friends, but with a name then unknown to the world at large. Today no name is more widely known. Today millions of Europeans call him blessed; millions of Americans call him great. My own belief is that he and his work did more to save Europe from complete anarchy after the war than any other influence exerted on its people from the outside, and that without it there was no other sufficient influence either outside or inside which would have prevented this anarchy.

Hoover's kinds of work are many, but his recreations are few. His chief form of exercise—if it is exercise—is motoring. He does not play outdoor games; no golf, tennis, but little walking. He has no system of kicking his legs about in bed or going through calisthenics on rising. And yet he keeps in very good physical condition, at least he keeps in sufficiently good condition to do several men's days' work every day. He has a theory about this which he practices, and which he occasionally explains briefly to those who remonstrate with him about his neglect of exercise. "You have to take exercise," he says, "because you overeat. I do not overeat, and therefore I do not need exercise." It sounds very simple and conclusive; and it seems to work—in his case.

He likes social life, but not society life. He enjoys company but he wants it to mean something. He has little small talk but plenty of significant talk. He saves time by cutting out frills, both business and social. His directness of mental approach to any subject is expressed in his whole manner: his immediate attack in conversation on the essence of the matter, his few words, his quick decisions. He can make these decisions quickly because he has clear policies to guide him. I recall being asked by him to come to breakfast one morning at Stanford after he had been elected trustee, to talk over the matter of faculty standards. His first question to the two or three of us who were there was: What is the figure below which a professor of a given grade (assistant, associate, or full professor) cannot maintain himself here on a basis which will not lower his efficiency in his work or his dignity in the community? We finally agreed on certain figures. "Well," said Hoover, "that must be the minimum salary of the grade."

He knows what he wants to do, and goes straight forward toward doing it; but if difficulty too great intervenes—it really has to be very great—he withdraws for a fresh start and tries another path. I always think of him as outside of a circle in the center of which is his goal. He strikes the circle at one spot; if he can get through, well and good. If not he draws away, moves a little around the circumference and strikes again. This resourcefulness and fertility of method are conspicuous characteristics of him. To that degree he is "diplomatic." But if there is only one way he fights to the extreme along that way. And those of us who have lived through the difficult, the almost impossible, days of Belgian relief, food administration, and general European after-the-war relief, with him, have come to an almost superstitious belief in his capacity to do anything possible to human power.

He has a great gift of lucid exposition. His successful argument with Lloyd George, who began a conference with him on the Belgian relief work strongly opposed to it on grounds of its alleged military disadvantages to the Allies, and closed it by the abrupt statement: "I am convinced; you have my permission," is a conspicuous example, among many, of his way of winning adherence to his plans, on a basis of good grounds and lucid and effective presentation of them. He has no voice for speaking to great audiences, no flowers of rhetoric or familiar platitudes for professional oratory, but there is no more effective living speaker to small groups or conferences around the council table. He is clear and convincing in speech because he is clear and precise in thinking. He is fertile in plan and constructive in method because he has creative imagination.

The first of his war calls to service came just as he was preparing to return to America from London where he had brought his family from California to spend the school vacation of 1914. Their return passage was engaged for the middle of August. But the war came on, and with it his first relief undertaking. It was only the trivial matter—trivial in comparison with his later undertakings—of helping seventy thousand American travelers, stranded at the outbreak of the war, to get home. These people, rich and poor alike, found themselves penniless and helpless because of the sudden moratorium. Letters of credit, travelers' checks, drafts, all were mere printed paper. They needed real money, hotel rooms, steamer passages, and advice. And there was nobody in London, not even the benevolent and most willing but in this respect powerless American ambassador who could help them. At least there seemed none until Hoover transferred the "relief" which had automatically congested about his private offices in the "city" during the first two days to larger headquarters in the Hotel Savoy. He gathered together all his available money and that of American friends and opened a unique bank which had no depositors and took in no money, but continuously gave it out against personal checks signed by unknown but American-looking people on unknown banks in Walla Walla and Fresno and Grand Rapids and Dubuque and Emporia and New Bedford. And he found rooms in hotels and passage on steamers, first-class, second-class or steerage, as happened to be possible. Now on all these checks and promises to pay, just $250 failed to be realized by the man who took a risk on American honesty to the extent of several hundred thousand dollars.

Some of the incidents of this "relief" were pathetic, and some were comic. One day the banker and his staff, which was composed of his wife and their friends, were startled by the apparition in the front office of a group of American plains Indians, Blackfeet and Sioux, all in the most Fenimore Cooperish of full Indian dress, feathers and skins, war-paint and tomahawks. They had been part of a Wild West show and menagerie caught by the war's outbreak in Austria, and had, after incredible experiences, made their way out, dropping animals and baggage as they progressed, until they had with them only what they had on, which in order to save the most valuable part of their portable furniture, was their most elaborate costumes. They had got to London, but to do it they had used up the last penny and the last thing they could sell or pawn except their clothes, which they had to wear to cover their red skins. Hoover's American bank saw these original Americans off, with joyful whoopings of gratitude, for Wyoming.

But the work was not limited to lending the barely necessary funds to those who wished to borrow. He raised a charitable fund among these same friends for caring for the really destitute ones until other relief could come. This came in the shape of the American Government's "ship of gold," the battle-ship Tennessee, sent over to the rescue. Hoover was then asked by Ambassador Page and the Army officers in charge of the London consignment of this gold to persuade his volunteer committee to continue their labors during its distribution. With this money available all who were able to produce proof of American citizenship could be given whatever was necessary to enable them to reach their own country.

And then came the next insistent call for help. And in listening to it, and, with swift decision, undertaking to respond to it, Herbert Hoover launched himself, without in any degree realizing it, on a career of public service and corresponding abnegation of private business and self-interest, that was to last all through the war and through the armistice period, and is today still going on. In all this period of war and after-war service he has received no salary from government or relief organizations but, on the contrary, has given up a large income as expert mining engineer and director of mining companies. In addition, he has paid out a large sum for personal expenses incurred in connection with the work.

The call was for the relief of Belgium. I know the story of Hoover in his relation to the relief of Belgium very well because I became one of his helpers in it soon after the war began and remained in it until the end. But it is a hard story to tell; there is too much of it. My special duties were of a kind to keep me constantly in touch with "the Chief," and I was able to realize, as only a few others were, the load of nerve-racking responsibility and herculean labor carried by him behind the more open scene of the public money-gathering, food-buying and transporting, and daily feeding of the ten million imprisoned people of occupied Belgium and France. In the relief of these helpless peoples Hoover put, perhaps for the first time, certainly for the first time on any such enormous scale and with such outstanding success, philanthropy on a basis of what dear old Horace Fletcher, shut up with us in Belgium during the Occupation, would permit to be referred to by no other phrase than the somewhat hackneyed one of "engineering efficiency," unless we would use a new word for it which he coined. In fact he used the new word "Hooverizing" as a synonym for efficiency with a heart in it, two years before it became familiar in America with another meaning. And I prefer his meaning of the word to that of the food-saving meaning with which we became familiar in Food Administration days.

CHAPTER VIII

The World War began, as we all most vividly remember, with the successful, although briefly but most importantly delayed invasion of Belgium. And this invasion resulted in producing very promptly not only a situation appalling in its immediate realization, but one of even more terrifying possibilities for the near future. For through the haze of the smoke-clouds from burning towns and above the rattle of the machine guns in Dinant and Louvain could be seen the hovering specter of starvation and heard the wailing of hungry children. And how the specter was to be made to pass and the children to hush their cries was soon the problem of all problems for Belgium.

Within ten weeks after the first shots of the War all of Belgium except that dreary little stretch of sand and swamp in the northwestern corner of it that for over four years was all of the Kingdom of Belgium under the rule of King Albert, was not only in the hands of a brutal enemy but was enclosed and shut away from the rest of the world by a rigid ring of steel. Not only did the Germans maintain a ring of bayonets and electrified wire fence—this latter along the Belgian-Dutch frontier—around it, but the Allies, recognizing that for all practical purposes, Occupied Belgium was now German territory, had to include it in their blockade of the German coast. Thus no persons or supplies could pass in or out of Belgium except under extraordinary circumstances, such as a special permission from both Germany and Allies or a daring and almost impossible blockade-running.

Now Belgium is not, as America is, self-sustaining as to food. If an enemy could completely blockade us, we could go on living indefinitely on the food we produce. But Belgium could not; nor could England or France or Italy. Belgium is not primarily an agricultural country, despite the fact that what agriculture it does have is the most intensive and highly developed in Europe. It is an industrial country, the most highly industrialized in Europe, with only one sixth of its people supporting themselves by agriculture. It depends upon constant importations for fifty per cent of its general food needs and seventy-five per cent of its needed food-grains.

The ring of steel about Belgium, then, if not promptly broken, plainly meant starvation. The imprisoned Belgians saw, with the passing days, their little piles of stored food supplies get lower. They had immediately begun rationing themselves. The Government and cities had taken possession of such small food stocks as had not been seized by the Germans for their armies, and were treating them as a common supply for all the people. They distributed this food as well as they could during a reign of terror with all railways and motors controlled by their conquerors. They lived in those first weeks on little food but much hope. For were not their powerful protectors, the French and English, very quickly going to drive the invaders back and out of their country? But it soon became apparent that it was the Allied armies that were being driven not only out of Belgium but farther and farther back into France. So the Allies could do nothing, and the Germans would do nothing to help them. Indeed, everything the Germans did was to make matters worse. There was only one hope; they must have food from outside sources, and to do this they must have recourse to some powerful neutral help.

Belgium, and particularly Brussels, has always had its American colony. And it was to these Americans that Belgium turned for help. Many members of the colony left as soon after the war began as they could, but some, headed by Minister Brand Whitlock, remained. When the Belgian court left Brussels for Antwerp, and later for Le Havre, part of the diplomatic corps followed it, but a smaller part stayed in Brussels to occupy for the rest of the war a most peculiar position. Mr. Whitlock elected to stay. It was a fortunate election for the Belgians. Also it meant many things, most of them interesting, for the sympathetic Minister.

When the American expatriates in Belgium who wished to leave after the war began, applied to Minister Whitlock for help to become repatriates, he called to his assistance certain American engineers and business men then resident in Brussels, notably Messrs. Daniel Heineman, Millard Shaler, and William Hulse. He also had the very effective help of his First Secretary of Legation, Mr. Hugh Gibson, now our Minister to Poland. These men were able to arrange the financial difficulties of the fleeing Americans despite closed banks, disappearing currency, and general financial paralysis. When this was finished they readily turned to the work of helping the Belgians, the more readily because they were the right sort of Americans.

Their first effort, in coöperation with the burgomaster of Brussels and a group of Brussels business men, was the formation of a Central Committee of Assistance and Provisioning, under the patronage of the Ministers of the United States and Spain (Mr. Whitlock and the Marques de Villalobar). This committee was first active in the internal measures for relief already referred to, but soon finding that the shipping about over the land of the rapidly disappearing food stocks of the country and the special assistance of the destitute and out-of-work—the destruction of factories and the cessation of the incoming of raw materials had already thrown tens of thousands of men out of employment—must be replaced by a more radical relief, this committee resolved to approach the Germans for permission to attempt to bring in food supplies from outside the country.

Burgomaster Max had already written on September 7 to Major General Luettwitz, the German Military Governor of Brussels, asking for permission to import foodstuffs through the Holland-Belgium border, and the city authorities of Charleroi had also begun negotiation with the German authorities in their province (Hainaut) to the same end, but little attention had been paid to these requests. Therefore the Americans of the committee decided, as neutrals, to take up personally with the German military authorities the matter of arranging imports.

A general permission for the importation of foodstuffs into Belgium by way of the Dutch frontier was finally obtained from the German authorities in Belgium, together with their guarantee that all such imported food would be entirely free from requisition by the German army. Also, a special permission was accorded to Mr. Shaler to go to Holland, and, if necessary, to England to try to arrange for obtaining and transporting to Belgium certain kinds and quantities of foodstuffs. But no money could be sent out of Belgium to pay for them, except a first small amount which Mr. Shaler was allowed to take with him.

In Holland, Mr. Shaler found the Dutch government quite willing to allow foodstuffs to pass through Holland for Belgium, but it asked him to try to arrange to find the supplies in England. Holland already saw that she would need to hold all of her food supplies for her own people. So Shaler went on to England. Here he tried to interest influential Americans in Belgium's great need, and, through Edgar Rickard, an American engineer, he was introduced to Herbert Hoover.

This brings us to Hoover's connection with the relief of Belgium. But there was necessary certain official governmental interest on the part of America and the Allies before anybody could really do much of anything. Hoover therefore introduced Shaler to Dr. Page, the American Ambassador, a man of heart, decision, and prompt action. This was on October 7. A few days before, on September 29, to be exact, Shaler together with Hugh Gibson, the Secretary of the American Legation in Brussels who had followed Shaler to London, had seen Count Lalaing, the Belgian minister to England, and explained to him the situation inside of Belgium. They also handed him a memorandum pointing out that there was needed a permit from the British Government allowing the immediate exportation of about 2,500 tons of wheat, rice, beans, and peas to Belgium. Mr. Shaler had brought with him from Brussels money provided by the Belgian Comité Central sufficient to purchase about half this amount of foodstuffs.

The Belgian Minister transmitted the request for a permit to the British Government on October 1. On October 6 he received a reply which he, in turn, transmitted to the American Ambassador in London, Mr. Page. This reply from the British Government gave permission to export foodstuffs from England through Holland into Belgium, under the German guarantees that had previously been obtained by Mr. Heineman's committee, on the condition that the American Ambassador in London, or Americans representing him, would ship the foodstuffs from England, consigned to the American Minister in Brussels; that each sack of grain should be plainly marked accordingly, and that the foodstuffs should be distributed under American control solely to the Belgian civil population.

On October 7, the day that Hoover had taken Shaler to the American Embassy and they had talked matters over with Mr. Page, the Ambassador cabled to Washington outlining the British Government's authorization and suggesting that, if the American Government was in accord with the whole matter as far as it had gone, it should secure the approval of the German Government. After a lapse of four or five days, Ambassador Page received a reply from Washington in which it was stated that the American Government had taken the matter up with Berlin on October 8.

After an exchange of telegrams between Brussels, London, Washington, and Berlin, Ambassador Page was informed on October 18 by Ambassador Gerard, then American Ambassador in Berlin, that the German Government agreed to the arrangement, and the following day confirmation of this was received from Washington.

Sometime during the course of these negotiations Ambassador Page and the Belgian authorities formally asked Hoover to take on the task of organizing the relief work, if the diplomatic arrangements came to a satisfactory conclusion. His sympathetic and successful work in looking after the stranded Americans, all done under the appreciative eyes of the American Ambassador, had recommended him as the logical head of the new and larger humanitarian effort. Hoover had agreed, and his first formal step, taken on October 10, in organizing the work, was to enlist the existing American Relief Committee, whose work was then practically over, in the new undertaking. He amalgamated its principal membership with the Americans in Brussels, and on October 13, issued in the name of this committee an appeal to the American people to consolidate all Belgian relief funds and place them in the hands of the committee for disposal. At the same time Minister Whitlock cabled an appeal to President Wilson to call on America for aid in the relief of Belgium.

Between October 10 and 16 it was determined by Ambassador Page and Mr. Hoover that it was desirable to set up a wholly new neutral organization. Hoover enlisted the support of Messrs. John B. White, Millard Hunsiker, Edgar Rickard, J. F. Lucey, and Clarence Graff, all American engineers and business men then in London, and these men, together with Messrs. Shaler and Hugh Gibson, thereupon organized, and on October 22 formally launched, "The American Commission for Relief in Belgium," with Hoover as its active head, with the title of chairman, Ambassador Page and Ministers Van Dyke and Whitlock, in The Hague and Brussels, respectively, were the organization's honorary chairmen. A few days afterward, at the suggestion of Minister Whitlock, Señor Don Merry del Val, the Spanish Ambassador in London, and Marques de Villalobar, the Spanish Minister in Brussels, both of whom had been consulted in the arrangements in Belgium and London, were added to the list of honorary chairmen. And, a little later, there were added the names of Mr. Gerard, the American Ambassador at Berlin, Mr. Sharp, our Ambassador at Paris, and Jongkeer de Weede, the Dutch Minister to the Belgian Government at Le Havre where it had taken refuge. At the same time the name of the Commission was modified by dropping from it the word "American" in deference to the official connection of the Spanish diplomats with it. The new organization thus became styled "The Commission for Relief in Belgium," which remained its official title through its existence. This name was promptly reduced, in practical use by its members, with characteristic American brevity, to "C. R. B.," which, pronounced "tsay-er-bay," was also soon the one most widely used in Belgium and Occupied France by Belgian, French, and Germans alike.

I have given this account of the organization and status of the Commission in so much detail because it reveals its imposing official appearance which was of inestimable value to it in carrying on its running diplomatic difficulties all through the war. The official patronage of the three neutral governments, American, Spanish and Dutch, gave us great strength in facing the repeated assaults on our existence and the constant interference with our work by German officials and officers. I have earlier used the phrase "satisfactory conclusion of diplomatic arrangements." There never was, in the whole history of the Commission, any satisfactory conclusion of such arrangements; there were sufficiently satisfactory conditions to enable the work to go on effectively but there was always serious diplomatic difficulty. Ministers Whitlock and Villalobar, our "protecting Ministers" in Brussels, had to bear much of the brunt of the difficulties, but the Commission itself grew to have almost the diplomatic standing of an independent nation, its chairman and the successive resident directors in Brussels acting constantly as unofficial but accepted intermediaries between the Allies and the Germans.

The "C. R. B." was organized. It had its imposing list of diplomatic personages. It had a chairman and secretary and treasurer and all the rest. But to feed the clamoring Belgians it had to have food. To have food it had to have money, much money, and with this money food in large quantity had to be obtained in a world already being ransacked by the purchasing agents of France and England seeking the stocks that these countries knew would soon be necessary to meet the growing demands of their armies and civilians drawn from production into the great game of destruction. Once obtained, the food had to be transported overseas and through the mine-strewn Channel to Rotterdam, the nearest open port of Belgium, and thence by canals and railways into the starving country and its use there absolutely restricted to the civil population. Finally, the feeding of Belgium had to begin immediately and arrangements had to be made to keep it up indefinitely. The war was not to be a short one; that was already plain. It was up to Hoover to get busy, very busy.

The first officials of the C. R. B. and all the men who came into it later, agree on one thing. We relied confidently on our chairman to organize, to drive, to make the impossible things possible. We did our best to carry out what it was our task to do. If we had ideas and suggestions they were welcomed by him. If good they were adopted. But principally we worked as we were told for a man who worked harder than any of us, and who planned most of the work for himself and all of us.

He had the vision. He saw from the first that the relief of Belgium would be a large job; it proved to be a gigantic one. He saw that all America would have to be behind us; indeed that the whole humanitarian world would have to back us up, not merely in funds but in moral support. For the military logic of the situation was only half with us; it was half against us. The British Admiralty, trying to blockade Germany completely, saw in the feeding of ten million Belgians and French in German-occupied territory a relief to the occupiers who would, by the accepted rules of the game, have to feed these people from their own food supplies. The fact that the Germans declared from the first that they never would do this and in every test proved that they would not, was hard to drive home to the Admiralty and to many amateur English strategists safely far from the sufferings of the hungering Belgians.

On the other hand other influential governmental officials, notably the Prime Minister and the heads of the Foreign Office, saw in the Allied help for these people the only means to prevent them from saving their lives in the one other way possible to them, that is, by working for the Germans. Fathers of families, however patriotic, cannot see their wives and children starve to death when rescue is possible. And the Germans offered this rescue to them all the time. Never a day in all the four years when German placards offering food and money for their work did not stare in the faces the five hundred thousand idle skilled Belgian workmen and the other hundreds of thousands of unskilled ones shut up in the country.

Germany, also, had two opinions about Belgian relief. There were zu Reventlow and his great party of jingoes who cried from beginning to end: Kick out these American spies; make an end of this soft-heartedness. Here we have ten million Allied hostages in our hands. Let us say to England and France and the refugee Belgian cabinet at Le Havre: Your people may eat what they now have; it will last them a month or two; then they shall not have a mouthful from Germany or anywhere else unless you give up the blockade and open the ports of Belgium and Germany alike to incoming foods.

On the other side were von Bissing and his German governing staff in Belgium, together with most of the men of the military General Staff at Great Headquarters. Von Bissing tried, in his heavy, stupid way, to placate the Belgians; that was part of his policy. So he would offer them food—always for work—with one hand, while he gave them a slap with the other. He wanted Belgium to be tranquil. He did not want to have openly to machine-gun starving mobs in the cities, however many unfortunates he allowed to be quietly carried out to the Tir National at gray dawn to stand for one terrible moment before the ruthless firing squad. And the hard-headed men of the General Staff knew that starving people do not lie down quietly and die. All the northern lines of communication between the west front and Germany ran through the countries of these ten million imprisoned French and Belgians. Even without arms they could make much trouble for the guards of bridges and railways in their dying struggles. At least it would require many soldiers to kill them fast enough to prevent it. And the soldiers, all of them, were needed in the trenches. In addition the German General Staff earnestly desired and hoped up to the very last that America would keep out of the war. And these extraordinary Americans in Belgium seemed to have all of America behind them; that is what the great relief propaganda and the imposing list of diplomatic personages on the C. R. B. list were partly for. Hoover had realized from the beginning what this would mean. "No," said the higher German officials, "it will not do to interfere too much with these quixotic Americans."

But the Germans, most of them at least, never really understood us. One day as Hoover was finishing a conversation with the head of the German Pass-Zentral in Brussels, trying to arrange for a less vexing and delaying method of granting passes for the movements of our men, the German officer said: "Well, now tell me, Herr Hoover, as man to man, what do you get out of all this? You are not doing all this for nothing, surely." And a little later, at a dinner at the Great Headquarters to which I had been invited by one of the chief officers of the General Staff, he said to me, as we took our seats: "Well, how's business?" I could only tell him that it was going as well as any business could that made no profits for anybody in it.

It was impressive to see Hoover in the crises. We expected a major crisis once a month and a minor one every week. We were rarely disappointed in our expectations. I may describe, for illustration, such a major crisis, a very major one, which came in August, 1916. The Commission had been making a hard fight all summer for two imperatively needed concessions from the Germans. We wanted the General Staff to turn over to us for the civil population a larger proportion of the 1916 native crop of Occupied France than we had had from the 1915 crop. And we wanted some special food for the 600,000 French children in addition to the regular program imported from overseas. We sorely needed fresh meat, butter, milk and eggs for them and we had discovered that Holland would sell us certain quantities of these foods. But we had to have the special permission of both the Allies and Germany to bring them in.

Hoover, working in London, obtained the Allied consent. But the Germans were holding back. I was pressing the General Staff at Great Headquarters at Charleville and von Bissing's government at Brussels. Their reasons for holding back finally appeared. Germany looked on Holland as a storehouse of food which might some time, in some way, despite Allied pressure on the Dutch Government, become available to Germany. Although the French children were suffering terribly, and ceasing all growth and development for lack of the tissue-building foods, the Germans preferred not to let us help them with the Dutch food but to cling to their long chance of sometime getting it for themselves.

Hoover came over to Brussels and, together, we started for Berlin. We discovered von Bissing's chief political adviser, Baron von der Lancken and his principal assistant, Dr. Rieth, on the same train. These were the two men who, after the armistice, proposed to Hoover by wire through our Rotterdam office, to arrange with him for getting food into Germany and received by prompt return wire through the same intermediary: "Mr. Hoover's personal compliments and request to go to hell. If Mr. Hoover has to deal with Germany for the Allies it will at least not be with such a precious pair of scoundrels."

When these gentlemen, who had helped greatly in making our work and life in Belgium very difficult, saw us, they were somewhat confused but finally told us they were called to Berlin for a great conference on the relief work. When we reached Berlin we found three important officers from Great Headquarters in the Hotel Adlon. Two of them we knew well; they had always been fairly friendly to us. The third was General von Sauberzweig, military governor of Brussels at the time of Miss Cavell's execution, and the man of final responsibility for her death. As a result of the excitement in Berlin because of the world-wide indignation over the Cavell affair he had been removed from Brussels by promotion to the Quartermaster Generalship at Great Headquarters!

The Berlin conference of important representatives of all the government departments and the General Staff had been called as a result of the influence of zu Reventlow and the jingoes who wished to break down the Belgian relief. We were not invited; we just happened to be there. We could not attend the conference, but we could work on the outside. We went to Ambassador Gerard for advice. The Allies were pressing the Commission to get the concessions on the 1916 native crop. Our effort to get the food for the children was entirely our own affair. Mr. Gerard advised Hoover to rely entirely on the Commission's reputation for humanity and neutrality; to keep the position of the Allies wholly out of the discussion. But this was indeed only the confirmation by a wise diplomat of the idea of the situation that Hoover already had.

Most of the conference members were against the relief. At the end of the first session Lancken and one of the Headquarters officers told us that things were almost certainly going wrong. They advised Hoover to give up. What he did was to work harder. He forced the officials of the Foreign Office and Interior to hear him. He pictured the horrible consequences to the entire population of Belgium and Occupied France of breaking off the relief, and painted vividly what the effect would be on the neutral world, America, Spain, and Holland in very sight and sound of the catastrophe. He pleaded and reasoned—and won! It was harder than his earlier struggle with Lloyd-George, already entirely well inclined by feelings of humanity, but in each case he had saved the relief. Not only did the conference not destroy the work, but by continued pressure later at Brussels and Great Headquarters we obtained the agreements for an increase of the civilian allotment out of the 1916 French crop and for the importation of some of the Dutch food for the 600,000 suffering children. It was a characteristic Hooverian achievement in the face of imminent disaster.

Hoover and the C. R. B. were in Belgium and France for but one purpose, to feed the people, to save a whole nation from starvation. To them the political aspects of the work were wholly incidental, but they could not be overlooked. So with the Germans disagreeing among themselves, it was the impossibility of France's letting the two and a half million people of her own shut up in the occupied territory starve under any circumstances possible to prevent, and the humanitarian feeling of Great Britain and America, which Hoover, by vivid propaganda, never allowed to cool, and the strength of which he never let the diplomats and army and navy officials lose sight of, that turned the scale and enabled the Commission for Relief in Belgium to continue its work despite all assault and interference. Over and over again it looked like the end, and none of us, even the sanguine Chief, was sure that the next day would not be the last. But the last day did not come until the last day of need had passed, and never from beginning to end did a single commune of all the five thousand of Occupied Belgium and France fail of its daily bread. It was poor bread sometimes, even for war bread, and there were many tomorrows that promised to be breadless, but no one of those tomorrows ever came.

CHAPTER IX

The ring of steel did not immediately make beggars of all the Belgians enclosed within it. Many of them still had money. But, as I have already said, the Germans would not allow any of this money to go out. It could buy only what was in Belgium. And as Belgium could produce only about half the food it needed to keep its people alive, and only one fourth of the particular kind of foodstuffs that were necessary for bread, and as it was arranged, by control of the mills and bakeries, that these bread-grains should be evenly distributed among all the people, it meant that even though banker this or baron that might have money to buy much more, he could really buy, with all his money, only one fourth as much bread as he needed. There had to be, in other words, a constant bringing in of enough wheat and flour to supply three fourths of the bread-needs of the whole country, and another large fraction of the necessary fats and milk and rice and beans and other staples. This was the ravitaillement.

But even with the food thus brought in there were many persons, and as the days and months and years passed they increased to very many, who had no money to buy this food. They were the destitute, the families of the hundreds of thousands of men thrown out of work by the destruction of the factories and the cessation of all manufacturing and commerce. And there were the Government employees, the artists, the lace-making women and girls, and a whole series of special kinds of wage-earners, with all wages suddenly stopped. To all these the food had to be given without pay. This was the secours.

To obtain the food from America and Argentina and India and wherever else it could be found a constant supply of money in huge amounts was necessary. Hoover realized from the beginning that no income from charity alone could provide it. His first great problem was to assure the Commission of means for the general ravitaillement. He solved the problem but it took time. In the meanwhile the pressure for immediate relief was strong. He began to buy on the credit of a philanthropic organization which had so far no other assets than the private means of its chairman and his friends.

The money, as finally arranged for, came from government subventions about equally divided between England and France, in the form of loans to the Belgian Government, put into the hands of the Commission. Later when the United States came into the war, this country made all the advances. Altogether nearly a billion dollars were spent by the C. R. B. for supplies and their transportation, at an overhead expense of a little more than one half of one per cent. This low overhead is a record in the annals of large philanthropic undertaking, and is a measure of the voluntary service of the organization and of its able management.

For the secours, fifty million dollars worth of gifts in money, food and clothing were collected by the Commission from the charitable people of America and Great Britain. The Belgians themselves inside the country, the provinces, cities, and well-to-do individuals, added, under the stimulus of the tragic situation and under the direction of the great Belgian National Committee, hundreds of millions of francs to the secours funds. Also the Commission and the Belgian National Committee arranged that a small profit should be charged on all the food sold to the Belgians who could pay for it, and this profit, which ran into millions of dollars, was turned into the funds for benevolence. All this created an enormous sum for the secours, which was the real "relief," as benevolence. And this enormous sum was needed, for by the end of the war nearly one-half of all the imprisoned population of over seven million Belgians and two and a half million French were receiving their daily bread wholly or partly on charity. Actually one half of the inhabitants of the great city of Antwerp were at one time in the daily soup and bread lines.

Of the money and goods for benevolence that came from outside sources more than one third came from England and the British Dominions—New Zealand gave more money per capita for Belgian relief than any other country—while the rest came chiefly from the United States, a small fraction coming from other countries. The relief collections in Great Britain were made by a single great benevolent organization called the "National Committee for Relief in Belgium." This Committee, under the chairmanship of the Lord Mayor of London and the active management of Sir William Goode as secretary and Sir Arthur Shirley Benn as treasurer, conducted an impressive continuous campaign of propaganda and solicitation of funds with the result of obtaining about $16,000,000 with which to purchase food and clothing for the Belgian destitute.

But in the United States the C. R. B. itself directly managed the campaign for charity, using its New York office as organizing and receiving headquarters. Part of the work was carried by definitely organized state committees in thirty-seven states and by scattered local committees in almost every county and large city in the country. Ohio, for example, had some form of local organization in eighty out of the eighty-eight counties in the state, and California had ninety local county and city committees all reporting to the central committee.

The American campaign was different from the English one in that instead of asking for money alone, the call was made, at first, chiefly for outright gifts of food, the Commission offering to serve, in connection with this benevolence, as a great collecting, transporting and distributing agency. This resulted in the accumulation of large quantities of foodstuffs of a wide variety of kinds, much of it in the nature of delicacies and luxuries and most of it put up in small packages. Tens of thousands of these packages were sent over to Belgium, but the cry came back from the Commission's workers there that food in this shape was very difficult to handle in any systematic way. It was quickly evident that what was really needed was large consignments in bulk of a few kinds of staple and concentrated foods, which could be shipped in large lots to the various principal distribution centers in Belgium and thence shipped in smaller lots to the secondary or local centers, and there handed out on a definite ration plan.

A number of states very early concentrated their efforts on the loading and sending of "state food ships." California sent the Camino in December, 1914, and in the same month Kansas sent the Hannah loaded with flour contributed by the millers of the state. In January and March, 1915, two Massachusetts relief ships, the Harpalyce (sunk by torpedo or mine on a later relief voyage) and Lynorta, sailed. Oregon and California together sent the Cranley in January, 1915, loaded with food and clothing, and several other similar state ships were sent at later dates. A gift from the Rockefeller Foundation of a million dollars was used to load wholly or in part five relief ships, and the "Millers' Belgian Relief" movement organized and carried through by the editor of the Northwestern Millers, Mr. W. C. Edgar, resulted in the contribution of a full cargo of flour, valued at over $450,000, which left Philadelphia for Rotterdam in February, 1915, in the steamer South Point. The cargo was accompanied by the organizer of the charity, who was able to see personally the working of the methods of the C. R. B. inside of Belgium and the actual distribution of his own relief cargo. His Good Samaritan ship was sunk by a German submarine on her return trip, but fortunately the philanthropist was not on her. He returned by a passenger liner, and was able to tell the people of America what was needed in Belgium, and what America was doing and could further do to help meet the need.

Later, when it became necessary to obtain food from other primary markets in addition to those of America, appeal was specifically made for gifts of money in place of goods. In response to this call various large gifts from wealthy individual donors were made, among them one of $210,000, another of $200,000, and several of $100,000 each, and various large donations came from the efforts of special organizations, notably the Daughters of the American Revolution, the New York Chamber of Commerce, the Cardinal Gibbons' Fund from the Catholic children of America, the Dollar Christmas Fund organized by Mr. Henry Clews, the "Belgian Kiddies, Ltd.," fund, organized by Hoover's brother mining engineers of the country, and, largest of all, the Literary Digest fund of more than half a million dollars collected by the efforts of Mr. R. J. Cuddihy, editor of the Digest, in sums ranging from a few pennies to thousands of dollars from children and their parents all over the land.

By far the greater part of the money that came to the Commission through state committees or through special organizations, or directly from individuals to the New York office, was made up from small sums representing millions of individual givers. And it was a beautiful and an important thing that it was so. The giving not only helped to save Belgium from starvation of the body, but it helped to save America from starvation of the soul. The incidents, pathetic, inspiring, noble, connected with the giving, gave us tears and smiles and heart thrills and thanksgiving for the revelation of the human love of humanity in those neutral days of a distressing pessimism.

But finding the money and food and clothing was but the first great problem for the resourceful C. R. B. chairman to solve. Next came the serious problem of transportation, both overseas and internal. Ships were in pressing demand; they constantly grew fewer in number because of the submarine sinkings, and yet the Commission had constant need of more and more. Some way Hoover and his associates of the New York and London offices got what it was necessary to have, but it was only by a continuous and wearing struggle. Altogether the C. R. B. delivered seven hundred and forty full ship cargoes and fifteen hundred part cargoes of relief food and clothing into its landing port, Rotterdam. The seventy ships under constant charter as a regular C. R. B. fleet crossed the seas under guarantees from both the Allies and Germany of non-molestation by sea raiders or submarines. A few accidents happened, but not more than twenty cargoes were totally or partly lost at sea. Most of the losses came from mines, but a few came from torpedoes fired by German submarines which either did not or would not see the C. R. B. markings on the ships. The signals were plain—conspicuous fifty-foot pennants flying from the mast-heads, great cloth banners stretching along the hull on either side, a large house flag, wide deck cloths, and two huge red-and-white-striped signal balls eight feet in diameter at the top of the masts. All these flags and cloths were white, carrying the Commission's name or initials (C. R. B.) in great red letters. Despite all these, a few too eager or too brutal submarine commanders let fly their torpedoes at these ships of mercy.

Hoover's most serious time in connection with the overseas transportation, and the most critical period as regards supplies in the whole course of the relief was just after the putting into effect by the Germans, in February, 1917, of the unrestricted submarining of all boats found in the so-called prohibited ocean zones. These zones covered all of the waters around the United Kingdom, including all of the English Channel and North Sea. This cut us off entirely from any access to Rotterdam from the West or North. But it also cut Holland off. And between our pressure and that of Holland the German authorities finally arranged for a narrow free, or "safe," north-about route extending from the Dutch coast north to near the Norwegian coast, thence northwest to the Faroe Islands, and thence west to the Atlantic beyond the barred zone. At one point this "safe" zone was only twenty miles wide between the German and English mine-fields in the North Sea and any ship getting a few rods across the line either east or west was in great danger from mines and was exposed to being torpedoed without warning. Imagine the state of mind of a skipper who had not seen the sun for three or four days in a North Sea fog, trying to make out his position accurately enough by dead reckoning to keep his boat in that "safe" channel.

But even this generous concession to the Commission and Holland was not arranged until March 15, and in the six weeks intervening between February 1 and this time we did not land a single cargo in Rotterdam. Belgium suffered in body and was nearly crazed in mind as we and the Belgian relief heads scraped the very floors of our warehouses for the last grains of wheat.

Another almost equally serious interruption in the food deliveries had occurred in the preceding summer (July, 1916), when, without a whisper of warning, Governor General von Bissing's government suddenly tied up our whole canal-boat fleet by an order permitting no Belgian-owned canal boat—although chartered by us—to pass out from Belgium into Holland without depositing the full value of the boat in money before crossing the frontier. The Governor General had reason to fear, he said, that some of the boats that went out would not come back, and he was going to lose no Belgian property subject to German seizure without full compensation. As the boats were worth, roughly, about $5,000 each, and we were using about 500 boats it would have tied up two and a half million dollars of our money to meet this demand, and tied it up in German hands! We simply could not do it. So we began negotiations.

Oh, the innumerable beginnings of negotiations, and oh, the interminable enduring of negotiations, the struggling against form and "system," against obstinate and cruel delay—for delay in food matters in Belgium was always cruel—and sometimes against sheer brutality! How often did we long to say: Here, take these ten million people and feed them or starve them as you will! We quit. We can't go on fighting your floating mines and too eager submarines, your brutal soldiers and more brutal bureaucrats. Live up to your agreements to help us, or at least do not obstruct us; or, if you won't, then formally and officially and publicly before the world kick us out as your arch-jingo, Reventlow, demands.

But we could not say it; we could not risk it; it was too certain to be starving rather than feeding. So we did not say it, but went on with the negotiations. In this particular case of the canal boats we finally compromised by putting up the value of five boats. If one did not come back the Germans were to take out its value and we were to replace the money so as to keep the pot full. Of course all the boats did come back, and now the Belgians and not the Germans have them.

Thus, guarded by guarantees and recognition marks, there came regularly, and mostly safely, across wide oceans and through the dangerous mine-strewn Channel or around the Faroe Islands, the rice from Rangoon, corn from Argentina, beans from Manchuria, and wheat and meat and fats from America at the rate of a hundred thousand tons a month through all the fifty months of the relief. At Rotterdam these precious cargoes were swiftly transhipped into sealed canal boats—a fleet of 500 of them with 35 tugs for towing was in service—and hurried on through the canals of Holland and across the guarded border, and then on to the great central depots in Belgium, and from there again by smaller canal boats and railway cars and horse-drawn carts under all the difficulties of carrying things anywhere in a land where anything and everything available for transport was subject to requisition at any time by an all-controlling military organization, to the local warehouses and soup-kitchens of every one of the 5,000 Belgian and French communes in the occupied territory. And always and ever through all the months and despite all difficulties on water or land the food had to come in time. This was the transportation undertaking of Hoover's C. R. B.

Finally when the food was brought to the end of its journeying it had to be protected from hungry Germans and divided fairly among hungry Belgians. Always the world asked: But don't the Germans get the food? and it still asks: Yes, didn't they? Our truthful answer then and now is: No. And you need not take our answer alone. Ask the British and French foreign offices. They knew almost as much as we did of what was going on inside of the steel ring around Belgium and occupied France. Their intelligence services were wonderful. Remember the guarantees of the German government to us and our protecting ministers and ambassadors, the diplomatic representatives of neutral America and Spain and Holland. The orders of von Bissing and the General Staff were explicit. Official German placards forbidding seizure or interference by German soldiers or officials were on all the canal boats and railway cars and horse carts and on all the warehouses used by the Commission.

Of course there were always minor infractions but there were no great ones. The Germans after the early days of wholesale seizure during the invasion and first few months after it, got but a trifling amount of food out of Belgium and almost none of it came from the imported supplies. Every Belgian was a detective for us in this ceaseless watch for German infractions and we had our own vigilant service of "Inspection and Control" by keen-eyed young Americans moving ceaselessly all over the country and ever checking up consumption and stocks against records of importation.