ways remain one of the magazine's most noteworthy achievements. This
can be said without reserve here, since the credit is due to no single
person; it was the combined, careful work of its entire staff, weighing
every step before it was taken, looking as clearly into the future as
circumstances made possible, and always seeking the most authoritative
sources of information.

Bok merely directed. Each month, before his magazine went to press, he
sought counsel and vision from at least one of three of the highest
sources; and upon this guidance, as authoritative as anything could be
in times of war when no human vision can actually foretell what the next
day will bring forth, he acted. The result, as one now looks back upon
it, was truly amazing; an uncanny timeliness would often color material
on publication day. Of course, much of this was due to the close
government co-operation, so generously and painstakingly given.

With the establishment of the various war boards in Washington, Bok
received overtures to associate himself exclusively with them and move
to the capital. He sought the best advice and with his own instincts
pointing in the same way, he decided that he could give his fullest
service by retaining his editorial position and adding to that such
activities as his leisure allowed. He undertook several private
commissions for the United States Government, and then he was elected
vice-president of the Philadelphia Belgian Relief Commission.

With the Belgian consul-general for the United States, Mr. Paul
Hagemans, as the president of the Commission, and guided by his intimate
knowledge of the Belgian people, Bok selected a committee of the ablest
buyers and merchants in the special lines of foods which he would have
to handle. The Commission raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, with
which it purchased foods and chartered ships. The quantities of food ran
into prodigious figures; Bok felt that he was feeding the world; and yet
when the holds of the ships began to take in the thousands of crates of
canned goods, the bags of peas and beans, and the endless tins of
condensed milk, it was amazing how the piled-up boxes melted from the
piers and the ship-holds yawned for more. Flour was sent in seemingly
endless hundreds of barrels.

Each line of goods was bought by a specialist on the Committee at the
lowest quantity prices; and the result was that the succession of ships
leaving the port of Philadelphia was