fice 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 RELIEF OF BELGIUM; SCOPE AND METHODS

I have dropped the thread of my tale. Our narrative of the organization
of the Commission for Relief in Belgium had brought us only to the time
when the Commission was actually ready to work, and we have leaped to
the very end of those bitter