or 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 availa