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 fo