at cost, plus transportation, to the extent of their
possibilities. Gold, if they had it--all of Germany's supply was paid
for in gold--paper money at current exchange, government promissory
notes, and commodities which could be sold to other countries, made up
the payments. The charity was in making loans, providing the food,
getting ships and barges and trains and coal for its transportation,
selling it at cost, and giving the service of several hundred active,
intelligent, and sympathetic Americans, mostly young and khaki-clothed,
and a lesser group of Allied officers, all devoted to getting the food
where it was needed and seeing that it was fairly distributed.

It is impossible to depict the utter bewilderment and helplessness of
the governments of the liberated nations of Eastern Europe at the
beginning of the armistice period. Nor is it possible to explain
adequately the enormous difficulties they faced in any attempt at
organizing, controlling, and caring for their peoples. With uncertain
boundaries--for the demarcation of these they were waiting on a hardly
less bewildered group of eminent gentlemen in Paris; with a financial
and economic situation presenting such appalling features of
demoralization that they could only be realized one at a time; with
their people clamoring for the immediately necessary food, fuel and
clothing, and demanding a swift realization of all the benefits that
their new freedom was to bring them; and with an ever more menacing
whistling wind of terror blowing over them from the East--with all this,
how the responsible men of the governments which rapidly succeeded each
other in these countries retained any persistent vestiges of sanity is
beyond the comprehension of those of us who viewed the scene at close
range.

For a single but sufficient illustration let us take the situation in
the split apart fragments of the former great Austro-Hungarian Empire,
which now constitute all or parts of German Austria, Hungary,
Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia and Roumania. For all these regions (except
Roumania) Vienna had for years been the center of political authority
and chief economic control. In Vienna were many of the land-owners, most
of the heads of the great industries, and the directors of the
transportation system. It was the financial and market center, the hub
of a vast, intricate, and delicate orb-web of economic organization. But
the people and the goods of the various separated regio