t 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
fl