rmally and officially and
publicly before the world kick us out as your arch-jingo, Reventlow,
demands.

But we could not say it; we could not risk it; it was too certain to be
starving rather than feeding. So we did not say it, but went on with the
negotiations. In this particular case of the canal boats we finally
compromised by putting up the value of five boats. If one did not come
back the Germans were to take out its value and we were to replace the
money so as to keep the pot full. Of course all the boats did come back,
and now the Belgians and not the Germans have them.

Thus, guarded by guarantees and recognition marks, there came regularly,
and mostly safely, across wide oceans and through the dangerous
mine-strewn Channel or around the Faroe Islands, the rice from Rangoon,
corn from Argentina, beans from Manchuria, and wheat and meat and fats
from America at the rate of a hundred thousand tons a month through all
the fifty months of the relief. At Rotterdam these precious cargoes were
swiftly transhipped into sealed canal boats--a fleet of 500 of them
with 35 tugs for towing was in service--and hurried on through the
canals of Holland and across the guarded border, and then on to the
great central depots in Belgium, and from there again by smaller canal
boats and railway cars and horse-drawn carts under all the difficulties
of carrying things anywhere in a land where anything and everything
available for transport was subject to requisition at any time by an
all-controlling military organization, to the local warehouses and
soup-kitchens of every one of the 5,000 Belgian and French communes in
the occupied territory. And always and ever through all the months and
despite all difficulties on water or land the food had to come _in
time_. This was the transportation undertaking of Hoover's C. R. B.

Finally when the food was brought to the end of its journeying it had to
be protected from hungry Germans and divided fairly among hungry
Belgians. Always the world asked: But don't the Germans get the food?
and it still asks: Yes, didn't they? Our truthful answer then and now
is: No. And you need not take our answer alone. Ask the British and
French foreign offices. They knew almost as much as we did of what was
going on inside of the steel ring around Belgium and occupied France.
Their intelligence services were wonderful. Remember the guarantees of
the German government to us and our protecting ministers and
am