And this brings us to the American organization inside of Belgium. The New York and London and Rotterdam C. R. B. offices had their hard-working American staffs and all important duties but it was those of us inside the ring that really saw Belgian relief in its pathetic and inspiring details. We were the ones who saw Belgian suffering and bravery, and who were privileged to work side by side with the great native relief organization with its complex of communal and regional and provincial committees, and at its head, the great Comité National, most ably directed by Emile Francqui, whom Hoover had known in China. Thirty-five thousand organized Belgians gave their volunteer service to their countrymen from beginning to end of the long occupation. And many thousands more were similarly engaged in unofficial capacity. We saw the splendid work of the women of Belgium in their great national organizations, the "Little Bees," the "Drop of Milk," the "Discreet Assistance," and all the rest. My wife, who was inside with us, has tried to tell the story of the women of Belgium in another book, but as she rightly says: "The story of Belgium will never be told. That is the word that passes oftenest between us. No one will ever by word of mouth or in writing give it to others in its entirety, or even tell what he himself has seen and felt."

But the Americans inside know it. Its details will be their ineffaceable memories. It is a misfortune that so few Americans could share this experience. For we were never more than thirty-five or forty at a time; the Germans tried to limit us to twenty-five. We were always, in their eyes, potential spies. But we did no spying. We were too busy doing what Herbert Hoover had us there to do. Also we had promised not to spy. But it was a hard struggle to maintain the correctly neutral behavior which we were under obligation to do. And when the end of this strain came, which was when America entered the War, and the inside Americans had to go out, they all, almost to a man, rushed to the trenches to make their protest, with gun in hand, against German Kultur as it had been exemplified under their eyes in Belgium.

Altogether about two hundred Americans represented the C. R. B. at various times inside of Belgium. They were mostly young university men, representing forty different American colleges and universities in their allegiance. A group of twenty Rhodes Scholars whom Hoover hurriedly recruited from Oxford at the beginning of the work was the pioneer lot. All of these two hundred were selected for intelligence, honor, discretion, and idealism. They had to be able, or quickly learn, to speak French. They had to be adaptable and capable of carrying delicate and large responsibility. They were a wonderful lot and they helped prove the fact that either the American kind of university education, or the American inheritance of mental and moral qualities, or the two combined, can justly be a source of American self-congratulation.

They were patient and long-suffering under difficulties and provocation. Ted Curtis, whose grandfather was George William, did, on the occasion of his seventeenth unnecessary arrest by German guards, express his opinion of his last captor in what he thought was such pure Americanese as to be safely beyond German understanding. But when his captor dryly responded in an equally pure argot: "Thanks, old man, the same to youse," he resolved to take all the rest in silence. And it was only after the third stripping to the skin in a cold sentry post that Robert W., a college instructor, made a mild request to the C. R. B. director in Brussels to ask von Bissing's staff to have their rough-handed sleuths conduct their examinations in a warmer room.

The relation of the few Americans in Belgium to the many Belgian relief workers was that of advisors, inspectors and final authorities as to the control and distribution of the food. The Americans were all too few to hand the food out personally to the hosts in the soup lines, at the communal kitchens, and in the long queues with rations cards before the doors of the bakeries and the communal warehouses. They could not personally manage the children's canteens, the discreet assistance to the "ashamed poor," who could not bring themselves to line up for the daily soup and bread, nor the cheap restaurants where meals were served at prices all the way from a fourth to three fourths of their cost. The Belgians did all this, but the Americans were a seeing, helping, advising, and when necessary, finally controlling part of it all.

The mills and bakeries were all under the close control of the Commission and the Belgian National Committee. The sealed canal boats were opened only under the eyes of the Americans. The records of every distributing station were constantly checked by the Americans. They sat at all the meetings of National and Provincial and Regional committees. They raced about the country in all weathers and over all kinds of roads in their much-worn open motor-cars, specially authorized and constantly watched and frequently examined by the Germans, each car carrying the little triangular white and red-lettered C. R. B. flag, that flapped encouragement as it passed, to all the hat-doffing Belgians.

I am constantly asked: What were Hoover's personal duties and work in the relief days? It is a question one cannot answer in two words. His was all the responsibility, his the major planning, the resourceful devising of ways out of difficulty, the generalship. But the details were his also. He kept not only in closest touch with every least as well as greatest phase of the work, but took a personal active part in seeing everything through. Constant conferences with the Allied foreign offices and treasuries, and personal inspection of the young men sent over from America as helpers; swift movements between England and France and Belgium and Germany and America, and trips in the little motor launch about the harbor at Rotterdam examining the warehouses and food ships and floating elevators and canal boats; these were some of his contrasting activities through day following day in all the months and years of the relief.

Hoover had to make his headquarters in London at the Commission's central office. Here he could keep constantly in touch by cable and post with the offices in New York, Rotterdam, and Brussels. The Brussels office was allowed to send and receive German-censored mail three times a week by way of Holland, and we could do a limited amount of censored telegraphing to Rotterdam over the German and Dutch wires and thence to London by English-censored cable. But Hoover came regularly every few weeks to Brussels, taking his chances with mines and careless submarines. These were no slight chances. A Dutch line was allowed by England and Germany to run a boat, presumably unmolested, two or three times a week between Flushing and Thamesmouth. These jumpy little boats, which carried passengers only—the hold was filled with closed empty barrels lashed together to act as a float when trouble came—were the only means of bringing our young American relief workers to Belgium and of Hoover's frequent crossings. After seven of the ten boats belonging to the line had been lost or seriously damaged by mines the thrifty Dutch company suspended operation. We had then to cross secretly by English dispatch boats, protected by destroyers and specially hunted by German submarines.

On the occasion of one of Hoover's crossings two German destroyers lying outside of Flushing harbor ordered the little Dutch boat to accompany them to Zeebrugge for examination. This happened occasionally and was always exciting for the passengers, especially for the diplomatic couriers, who promptly dropped overboard their letter pouches, specially supplied with lead weights and holes to let in the water and thus insure prompt sinking. As the boat and convoying destroyers drew near to Zeebrugge, shells or bombs began to drop on the water around them. Hoover thought at first they were coming from English destroyers aiming at the Germans. But he could see no English boats. Suddenly an explosion came from the water's surface near the boat and the man standing next to him fell with his face smashed by a bomb fragment. Hoover seized him and dragged him around the deck-house to the other side of the boat. Another bomb burst on that side. He then heard the whir of an airplane and looking up saw several English bombing planes. Their intention was excellent, but their aim uncertain. The anti-aircraft guns of the German destroyers soon drove them away, and the convoy came into Zeebrugge harbor where the Dutch boat and passengers were inspected with German thoroughness. On Hoover's identity being revealed by his papers, he was treated with proper courtesy and after several of the passengers had been taken off the boat it was allowed to go on its way to Tilbury.

Hoover enjoyed an extraordinary position in relation to the passport and border regulations of all the countries in and out of which he had to pass in his movements connected with the relief. He was given a freedom in this respect enjoyed by no other man. He moved almost without hindrance and undetained by formalities freely in and out of England, France, Holland, occupied Belgium and France, and Germany itself, with person and traveling bags unexamined. It was a concrete expression of confidence in his integrity and perfect correctness of behavior, that can only be fully understood by those who had to make any movements at all across frontiers in the tense days of the war.

Governor General von Bissing once said to me in Brussels, apropos of certain charges that had been brought to him by his intelligence staff of a questionable behavior on the part of one of our men in Belgium—charges easily proved to be unfounded: "I have entire confidence in Mr. Hoover despite my full knowledge of his intimate acquaintance and association with the British and French Government officials and my conviction that his heart is with our enemies." As a matter of fact Hoover always went to an unnecessary extreme in the way of ridding himself of every scrap of writing each time he approached the Holland-Belgium frontier. He preached absolute honesty, and gave a continuous personal example of that honesty to all the C. R. B. men inside the steel ring.

Each time he came to Brussels all of us came in from the provinces and occupied France and gathered about him while he told us the news of the outside world, and how things were going in the New York and London offices. And then he would talk to us as a brother in the fraternity and exhort us to forget our difficulties and our irritations and play the game well and honestly for the sake of humanity and the honor of America. After the group talks he would listen to the personal troubles, and advise and help each man in his turn. People sometimes ask me why Hoover has such a strong personal hold on all his helpers. The men of the C. R. B. know why.

The Belgian relief and the American food administration and the later and still continuing American relief of Eastern Europe have been called, sometimes, in an apparently critical attitude, "one man" organizations. If by that is meant that there was one man in each of them who was looked up to with limitless admiration, relied on with absolute confidence, and served with entire devotion by all the other men in them, the attribution is correct. No man in any of these organizations—and Hoover gathered about him the best he could get—but recognized him as the natural leader. He was the "one man," not by virtue of any official or artificial rank but by sheer personal superiority in both constructive administrative capacity and effective practical action.

Whenever Hoover came, he tried to keep his presence unknown except to us and Minister Whitlock and the heads of the Belgian organization and the German Government with whom he had to deal. He would not go, if he could help it, to the soup lines and children's canteens. Like many another man of great strength, he is a man of great sensitiveness. He cannot see suffering without suffering himself. And he dislikes thanks. The Belgians were often puzzled, sometimes hurt, by his avoidance of their heart-felt expression of gratitude. Mr. Whitlock was always there and had to be always accessible. So they could thank him and thank America through him. But they rarely had opportunity to thank Hoover.

I remember, though, how their ingenuity baffled him once. He had slipped in quietly, as usual, at dusk one evening by our courier automobile from the Dutch border. But someone passed the word around that night. And all the next day, and for the remaining few days of his stay there went on a silent greeting and thanking of the Commission's chief by thousands and thousands of visiting cards and messages that drifted like snowflakes through the door of the Director's house; engraved cards with warm words of thanks from the nobility and wealthy of Brussels; plainer, printed ones from the middle class folk, and bits of writing paper with pen or pencil-scrawled sentences on them of gratitude and blessing from the "little people." My wife would heap the day's bringing on a table before him each evening and he would finger them over curiously—and try to smile.

When the Armistice had come the Belgian Government tried to thank him. He would accept no decorations. But once again Belgian ingenuity conquered. One day just after the cessation of the fighting he was visiting the King and Queen at La Panne in their simple cottage in that little bit of Belgium that the Germans never reached. After luncheon the members of the Cabinet appeared; they had come by motors from Le Havre. And before them all the King created a new order, without ribbon or button or medal, and made Hoover its only member. He was simply but solemnly ordained "Citizen of the Belgian Nation, and Friend of the Belgian People."

I have spoken only of Belgium. But of the ten million in the occupied regions for whom Hoover waged his fight against starvation, two and a half million were in occupied France. Over in that territory things were harder both for natives and Americans than in Belgium. Under the rigorous control of a brutal and suspicious operating army both French and Americans worked under the most difficult conditions that could be imposed and yet allow the relief to go on at all.

The French population, too, was an especially helpless one, for all the men of military age and qualifications had gone out as the Germans came in. They had time and opportunity to do this; the Belgians had not. Each American was under the special care—and eyes—of a German escort officer. He could only move with him at his side, could only talk to the French committees with his gray-uniformed companion in hearing. He had his meals at the same table, slept in his quarters. The chief representative of the Commission in occupied France had to live at the Great German Headquarters at Charleville on the Meuse. I spent an extraordinary four months there. It is all a dream now but it was, at the time, a reality which no imagination could equal. The Kaiser on his frequent visits, the gray-headed chiefs of the terrible great German military machine, the schneidige younger officers, were all so confident and insolent and so regardless, in those early days of success, of however much of the world might be against them. One night my officer said at dinner: "Portugal came in today. Will it be the United States tomorrow? Well, come on; it's all the same to us." When the United States did come in we Americans were no longer at Headquarters, so what my officer said then I do not know. But I am sure that it was not all the same to him.

And so the untellable relief of Belgium and Northeast France went on with its myriad of heart-breaks and heart-thrills following quickly on each other's heels, its highly elaborated system of organization, its successful machinery of control and distribution, and all, all centering and depending primarily on one man's vision and heart and genius. He had faithful helpers, capable coadjutors. One cannot make comparisons among them, but one of these lieutenants was so long in the work, so effective, so devoted, so regardless of personal sacrifice of means and career and health, that we can mention his name without hesitation as the one to whom, next to the Chief, the men of the C. R. B. and the people of Belgium and France turned, and never in vain, for the inspiration that never let hope die. This is William Babcock Poland, like his chief an engineer of world-wide experience, who served first as assistant director in Belgium, then as director there, and, finally, after Hoover came to America to be its food administrator, director, with headquarters in London, for all the work in Europe.

In April, 1917, America entered the war, and Minister Whitlock came out of Belgium with his shepherded flock of American consuls and relief workers, although a small group of C. R. B. men, with the director, Prentis Gray, remained inside for several weeks longer. In the same month Herbert Hoover heard his next call to war service. For almost immediately after our entrance into the war President Wilson asked him to come to Washington to consult about the food situation. This consultation was the beginning of American food administration. It did not end Belgian relief for Hoover, for the work had still to go on and did go on through all the rest of the war and even for several months of the Armistice period, with the C. R. B. and its Chief still in charge, although Dutch and Spanish neutrals replaced the Americans inside the occupied territory. But the new call was to place a new duty and responsibility on Hoover's broad shoulders. Responding to it, he arrived in New York on the morning of May 3, 1917, and reached Washington the evening of the same day. On the following day he talked with the President and began planning for the administration of American food.

CHAPTER X

Put yourself in Hoover's place when the President called him back from the Belgian relief work to be the Food Administrator of the United States. Here were a hundred million people unaccustomed to government interference with their personal affairs, above all of their affairs of stomach and pocketbook, their affairs of personal habit and private business. What would you think of your chance to last long as a new kind of government official, set up in defiance of all American precedent and tradition of personal liberty, to say how much and what kinds of food the people were to eat and how the business affairs of all millers and bakers, all commission men and wholesale grocers and all food manufacturers were to be run?

The stomach and private business of Americans are the seats of unusually many and delicate nerve-endings. To hit the American household in the stomach and the American business man in the pocketbook is to invite a prompt, violent and painful reaction. Yet this is what President Wilson asked Hoover to do and to face.

Hoover realized the full possibilities of the situation. He had seen the rapid succession of the food dictators in each of the European countries; their average duration of life—as food dictators—was a little less than six months. "I don't want to be food dictator for the American people," he said, plaintively, a few days after the President had announced what he wanted him to do. "The man who accepts such a job will lie on the barbed wire of the first line of intrenchments."

But besides trying to put yourself in Hoover's place, try also to put yourself again in your own place in those great days of America's first entry into the war, and you will get another, and a less terrifying, view of the situation. Remember your feelings of those days as a per-fervid patriotic American, not only ready but eager to play your part in your country's cause. Some of you could carry arms; some could lend sons to the khaki ranks and daughters to the Red Cross uniform. Some could go to Washington for a dollar a year. Yet many could, for one sufficient reason or another, do none of these things. But all could help dig trenches at home right through the kitchen and dining-room. You could help save food if food was to help win the war. You could help remodel temporarily the whole food business and food use of the country to the great advantage of America and the Allies in their struggle for victory.

Well, Hoover put himself both in your place and in his own place. And he thought that the food of America could be administered—not dictated—successfully, if we would try to do it in a way consonant with the genius of American people. Hoover had had in his Belgian relief work an experience with the heart of America. He knew he could rely on it. He also believed he could rely on the brain of America.

So he put the matter of food control fairly and squarely up to the people. He asked them to make the fundamental decisions. He showed them the need and the way to meet it, and asked them to follow him. He depended on the reasoned mass consent and action of the nation, the truly democratic decision of the country on a question put openly and clearly before it. It could choose to do or not do. The deciding was really with it. If it saw as he did it would act with him.

He was to be no food dictator, as the German food-minister was, nor even a food controller as the English food-minister was officially named. He was to be a food administrator for the people, in response to its needs and desire for making wise food management help in winning the war. So while the food controllers of the European countries relied chiefly on government regulation to effect the necessary food conservation and control, the American food administrator trusted chiefly to direct appeal to the people and their voluntary response.

And the response came. Even where governmental regulation seemed necessary, as it did especially in relation to trade and manufacturing practices, he attempted to have it accepted by voluntary agreement of the groups most immediately concerned before announcing or enforcing it. To do this he held conference after conference in Washington with groups of from a score to several hundreds of men representing personally, and in addition sometimes by appointment from organized food-trade or food-producing groups, the point of view of those most affected by the proposed regulation. He explained to these men the needs of the nation, and their special opportunities and duties to serve these needs. He put their self-interest and the interests of their country side by side in front of them. He showed them that the decision of the war did not rest alone with the men in the trenches: that there were service and sacrifice to render at home in shops and stores and counting rooms as well as on the fighting lines. He debated methods and probable results with them. He laid all his cards on the table and, almost always, he won. He won their confidence in his fairness, their admiration for his knowledge and resourcefulness and their respect for his devotion to the national cause.

But he knew always that he was playing with dynamite. He could not see or talk to everybody at once, and the news that ran swiftly over the country about what the Food Administration was doing or going to do was not always the truth, but it always got listened to. And the first reaction to it was likely to be one of indignant opposition. This was well expressed by the cartoon of black Matilda in the kitchen: "Mistah Hoover goin' to show me how to cook cawn pone? Well, I reckin not." So with the business man. But the second reaction, the one that came after listening to Hoover and thinking about the matter overnight, was different.

I remember a group of large buyers and sellers of grain, men who dealt on the grain exchanges of the Middle West, who came to Washington, not at his request but on their own determination to have it out with this man who was threatening to interfere seriously with their affairs; indeed, who threatened to put many of them out of business for the period of the war. They came with big sticks. They met in the morning for conference with the object of their wrath. Then they went off and met in the afternoon together. They came the next morning for another conference. And they met again alone to pass some resolutions. The resolutions commended the Food Administrator for the regulations he was about to put into force, and recommended that they be made more drastic than he had originally suggested!

But among the hundred million people of the United States there were some who did not justify Hoover's belief in American patriotism and American heart. Just as there were some among the seven million Belgians who tried to cheat their benefactors and their countrymen by forging extra ration cards. So when a measure to regulate some great food trade or industry, as the wholesale grocery business or milling, was agreed to and honestly lived up to by eighty-five or ninety per cent of the men concerned, and for these could have been left on a wholly voluntary basis, there were a few for whom the regulations had to be legally formulated and energetically enforced. They were the ones who made the reluctant gifts to the American Red Cross, which was the Food Administrator's favorite form of penalization, when he did not have to go to the extreme of putting persistent profiteers out of business.

The Food Control Law, passed by Congress in August, 1917, under which the Food Administrator, acting for the President, derived his authority, was a perfectly real law, but it left great gaps in the control. For example, it exempted from its license regulations, which were the chief means of direct legal control, all food producers (farmers, stock-growers, et al.) and all retailers doing a business of less than $100,000 a year. It did not give any authority for a direct fixing of maximum prices. It carried comparatively few penalty provisions. But it did provide authority for three primary agencies of control: First, the licensing of all food manufacturers, jobbers, and wholesalers, and of retailers doing business of more than $100,000 annually, with the prescription of regulations which the licensees should observe; second, the purchase and sale of foodstuffs by the Government; and, third, the legal entering into agreements with food producers, manufacturers or distributors, which if made only between the members of these groups themselves would have been violations of the anti-trust laws. All of these powers contributed their share to the success of what was one of the most important features of the food control and one to which Hoover devoted most determined and continuous effort, namely, the radical cutting out, or at least, down, of speculative and middleman profits. But with the limited authority of the Food Administrator it was only through the voluntary coöperation of the people and food trades that these three kinds of powers were made really effective.

The most conspicuous features of the voluntary coöperation which Hoover was able to obtain from the people and the food-trades by his conferences, his organization of the states, and his great popular propaganda, were those connected with what was called "food conservation," by which was meant a general economy in food use, an elimination of waste, and an actual temporary modification of national food habits by an increased use of fish and vegetable proteins and fats and lessened use of meat and animal fats, a considerable substitution of corn and other grains for wheat, and the general use of a wheat flour containing in it much more of the total substance of the wheat grain than is contained in the usual "patent" flour.

It was with the great campaign for food conservation, too, that the Food Administration really started its work, beginning it as voluntary and unofficial war service. For although consideration of the Food Control Act began before the House Committee on Agriculture about April 21, it was not until August 10 that the bill became a law. On the same day, the President issued an Executive Order establishing a United States Food Administration and appointing Herbert Hoover to be United States Food Administrator. Hoover accepted the appointment with the proviso that he should receive no salary and that he should be allowed to build up a staff on the same volunteer basis.

But long before this, indeed immediately after the May consultation with Hoover for which he had been asked to come from Europe to Washington, President Wilson had announced a tentative program of stimulation of food production and conservation of food supply. The need was urgent, and the country could not wait for Congressional action. There was really a war on and there was an imperative need of fighting, and fighting immediately and hard in all the various and unusual ways in which modern war is fought. One of these ways which the President recognized and which Hoover, by virtue of his illuminating experience in Europe, knew as no other American did, was the food way. The President wanted something started. So again, just as at the beginning of the Belgian relief work in October, 1914, Hoover found himself in the position of being asked to begin work without the necessary support behind him; in the Belgian case he lacked money, in the present case he lacked authority. But in both cases action was needed at once and in both cases Hoover got action. He is a devotee of action.

Thus, before there was an official food administration there was an unofficial beginning of what became the food administration's most characteristic and most widely known undertaking, its campaign for food conservation. It was the most characteristic, for it depended for success entirely on popular consent and patriotic response. It was the most widely known, for it touched every home and housewife, every man and child at the daily sitting down at table. In planning and beginning it Hoover had the special assistance of his old-time college chum and lifelong friend, President Ray Lyman Wilbur, of Stanford University, who brought to this particular undertaking a far-reaching vision, a convinced belief in democratic possibilities, and a constructive mind of unusual order.

It is well not to forget that the first appeal for food-saving was made primarily to the women of the land. And theirs was the first great response. From the very first days, in May, of general discussion in the press of the certain need of food-saving in America if the Allies were to be provided with sufficient supplies to maintain their armies and civilian populations in the health, strength, and confidence necessary to the fullest development of their war strength, the voluntary offers of assistance from women and women's organizations, and inquiries about how best to give it, had been pouring into Hoover's temporary offices in Washington. And through all of the Food Administration work the women of America played a conspicuous part, both as heads of divisions in the Washington and State offices and as uncounted official and unofficial helpers in county and town organizations and in the households of the country.

The picturesque details of the great campaign for food conservation and its results on the intimate habits of the people are too fresh in the memories of us all to need repeating here. A whole-hearted coöperation by the press of the country; an avalanche of public appeal and advice by placards, posters, motion pictures, and speakers; an active support by churches, fraternal organizations, colleges and schools; the remodeling of the service of hotels, restaurants and dining-cars; and a pledging of twelve out of the twenty million households of the country to follow the requests and suggestions of the Food Administration, resulting in wheatless and meatless meals, limited sugar and butter, the "clean plate," and strict attention to reducing all household waste of food—all these are the well-remembered happenings of yesterday. The results gave the answer, Yes, to Hoover's oft-repeated questions to the nation: Can we not do as a democracy what Germany is doing as an autocracy? Can we not do it better?

These results are impossible to measure by mere statistics. Figures cannot express the satisfied consciences, the education in wise and economical food use, and the feeling of a daily participation by all of the people in personally helping to win the war, which was a psychological contribution of great importance to the Government's efforts to put the whole strength of the nation into the struggle. Nor can the results to the Allies be measured in figures. But their significance can be suggested by the contents of a cablegram which Lord Rhondda, the English Food Controller, sent to Hoover in January, 1918. This cable, in part, was as follows:

I remember very well the thrill and the shock that ran through the Food Administration staff when that cable came. It seemed as if no more could be done than was already being done. The breathless question was: Could Hoover do the impossible? I suppose his question to himself was: Could the American people do it? He did not hesitate either in his belief or his action. His prompt reply was:

He then appealed to the people to intensify their conservation of wheat. The President issued a special proclamation to the same end. The wheat was saved and sent—and the threatened breakdown of the Allied war effort was averted.

Hoover felt justified in July, 1918, in making an attempt to indicate the results of food conservation during the preceding twelve months by analyzing the statistics of food exports he had been able to make to the Allies. It was, of course, primarily for the sake of providing this indispensable food support to the Allies that food conservation was so earnestly pushed. The control of these exports and the elimination of speculative profits and the stabilization of prices in connection with home purchases were the special features in the general program of food administration that were pushed primarily for the sake of our own people.

In a formal report by letter to the President on July 18, 1918, Hoover showed that the exports of meats, fats and dairy products in the past twelve months had been about twice as much as the average for the years just preceding the war, and fifty per cent more than in the year July, 1916—June, 1917. Of cereals and cereal products our shipments to the Allies were a third more than in the year July, 1916—June, 1917.

The conservation part of the Food Administration's work was picturesque, conspicuous and important. But it was, of course, only one among the many of the Administration's activities. On the day of his appointment Hoover outlined his conception of the functions and aims of the Food Administration, as follows:

From the beginning of the war the food necessities of the Allies and European neutrals had led them to make the most violent exertions to meet their needs, and these exertions were intensified as the war went on. Food was war material. It existed in America and was imperatively demanded in Europe. By any means possible, without regard to price or dangerous drainage away from us Europe meant to have it. Hoover early saw the danger to America in this. Things had to be balanced. We were ready to exert every effort to supply the Allies every pound of food we could afford to let go out of the country, but there was a limit, a danger-line. Hoover could not trust to appeal to the European countries to regard this danger; they were in a state of panic. It required recourse to legal regulation. There was necessary an effective control of exports. Without such control the tremendous pressure of demand from the European countries, with the sky-rocketing of prices incident to it would have broken down the whole fabric of Hoover's measures for guarding the food needs of our own people and of stabilizing prices and preventing an actual food panic and consequent industrial break-down in our country at a moment when we were calling on our industries and our people as a whole for their greatest efforts.

The Food Law alone was not sufficient to give Hoover the strength he needed for this control. But casting about for assistance he formed a close working alliance between the Food Administration and the War Trade and Shipping Boards to effect the needed regulation. The combination had the power to establish an absolutely effective control of exports and imports. Not a pound of food could be sent out of the country without the consent of the Food Administration.

Growing out of this export control and really including it, was the wider function of the centralization and coördination of purchases not only for the Allies and Neutrals but in connection with the buying agencies of our Army, Navy, Red Cross, and other large philanthropic organizations. Under the pressure of the need for food control, the foreign governments had taken over almost completely, early in the war, the purchases of outside foodstuffs for their peoples, and the Allies had so closely associated themselves in this undertaking that they had it in their power, if they cared to use it, to dominate prices to the American farmer. Hoover very early saw the advisability of an American centralization of the purchases for foreign export as an offset to this danger. He further recognized in such a coördinating centralization the possibilities of much good in the stimulation of production and stabilization of home prices. A Division of Coördination of Purchase was therefore formally set up about November 1, 1917, under the efficient direction of F. S. Snyder.

In a memorandum dated November 19, the Food Administrator stated that he considered it vital to the general welfare that all large purchases of certain commodities should be made by plans of allocation among food suppliers at fair and just prices, "the efforts of the Federal Trade Commission to be directed to see that costs are not inflated." The memorandum further stated that all allotment plans between Allied countries and the food industries should be entered into with the Allied Provisions Export Commission through the Division of Coördination of Purchase; and that all estimated and specific requirements of food products of all characters for the Allied countries should be furnished the Division of Coördination of Purchase by the Allied Provisions Export Commission and that such requirements shall bear the approval of the Allied Provisions Export Commission. Also, that on the question of issuing licenses for the exporting of the purchases, the approval to export will be arranged by the Food Administration's Division of Coördination of Purchase, and the War Trade Board; and the final action taken on each requirement shall have the approval of the head of the Division of Coördination of Purchase.

The general plan outlined in this memorandum was the one followed. The Allied Provisions Export Commission acted as the buying agency for the Allies and informed the Division of Coördination of Purchase of the Food Administration of the requirements of the Allies; the Food Purchase Board acted as the recommending buying agency for the Army and Navy and gave the Food Administration the necessary information as to the requirements of these agencies. Grains and grain products were not included in this scheme of buying for the Allies, as this buying was done through the Food Administration Grain Corporation.

The Allied purchasing was therefore completely controlled. The license to export was not issued by the War Trade Board until the application for the same had been approved by the Food Administration, and this approval would not be given if the rules of its Division of Coördination of Purchase had not been followed. It should be noted that the Food Administration did not actually complete the transaction of purchase and sale for any of the commodities. Its function was completed when buyer and seller had been brought together and the terms of sale agreed upon and approved by it. The total volume of purchases of all supplies made under the coördination of the various agencies set up by the Food Administration aggregated over seven and a quarter billion dollars during the course of its existence.

CHAPTER XI

Hoover's answer was that unrestricted sky-rocketing of prices would certainly curtail consumption, but it would be the consumption by the poor, the hosts of wage-earners and the small-salaried. It would not cut down consumption by the rich, and it would promptly lead to sharp class feeling, widespread popular dissatisfaction and resentment, even revolt. War time was no time to force any such situation as this.

The remedy offered by supply and demand was one which would only bring on another and worse illness. But Hoover realized and declared over and over again that even a necessary interference with the law of supply and demand was at best an evil. But it was less of an evil, under the circumstances, than not to interfere with it to some degree. These were not normal but abnormal times, and regulation by supply and demand is primarily a process for normal times. And it is a process that requires time to do its remedial work, and there was no time.

But Hoover did not and does not believe in price-fixing or immediate government control of commerce where they can be avoided. In his statement before the Senate Committee on Agriculture in June, 1917, he said: