These men had their offices just around the corner from that of the American Consulate in London. As they knew London well, they had at different times given some useful advise to the Consulate. When the war broke out, Hoover was still in London, while Bates was on his farm in New York State. One morning in early August one of the men in the Consulate sent word to Hoover: "There are about one thousand Americans out in front of my office demanding transportation home. Won't you come around and help me out?" Hoover did help him out, and in getting these Americans home free, a neutral body had been formed which could deal with, and was respected by, Germans as well as English and French. The need in Belgium was emphasized by Brand Whitlock, our Minister in Brussels, who, when The Hague Convention was being discussed pro and con, declared that the people of Belgium could not eat neutrality conventions; that what they needed was food. It was easy enough to send out a plea that Belgium was starving, that she should be fed. It was another story to feed her. This heavy work devolved upon the shoulders of Hoover at the London office and Bates at the American office, established at No. 71 Broadway, New York. It was up to them not only to find four million dollars a month with which to buy food, but to find the proper kind of food at reasonable prices, and then to get this food by rail and by ship into Belgium. My common sense tells me that it is an insurmountable job to deal with the State Department of the United States, with the corresponding department in London, with the corresponding department in Berlin, and with the corresponding department in The Hague-without dwelling on the difficulties of dealing with the German military authorities in Belgium. My common sense tells me that it is the work of a lifetime to build up a steamship line of thirty steamers. With steamers scarce, and with charter money the highest in the history of the world the past winter, it has proved an insurmountable job for some business firms to get even one ship. My common This kitchen is located in the now useless sorting room of the express office, and the cooks are chefs from the best hotels. THE MAN WHO DID IT The holder of this meal ticket was entitled to draw rations for five each day during December. The proper date in the margin was canceled when Herbert C. Hoover was the prime mover of the enterprise for the relief of Belgium. sense tells me that men have spent a lifetime learning how to handle traffic on the railroads of the United States. My common sense also tells me that it requires ability little short of genius to make people contribute money for any object, no matter how worthy. Yet, all these things have been done. by the members of The Commission for Relief in Belgium. Any of my readers who has had experience in politics knows the difficulty of forming an effective national organ ization, yet every State in the Union has been organized with sub-committees, and the work of every State directed by Lindon W. Bates. These organizations have acted as food- and money-gatherers. Ex-Governor W. R. Stubbs of Kansas organized every county in Kansas and gathered the food that went over in the ship Hannah. The ninety-nine counties of Iowa each gave a carload or more of food. California organized early, and she has stayed organized. Her people collected three hundred thousand dollars' worth of food within three weeks, and ter, an electrical engineer, established what is known as the Traffic Department. This department has had dealings with every railroad president in the United States. Many of these presidents have been exceedingly generous in giving free transportation for freight intended for ships going to Belgium. Some of them have not been so generous. It has been a hard winter in the United States, with freight not always plentiful. One railroad which needed some freight practically stole seventy-two cars of food and routed it over its line, so it could obtain In this one "cantine" alone, fourteen hundred school children are given two meals a day. by December 8 had it aboard the steamer Camino and started on its way to Rotterdam, via the Panama Canal. The State of Washington loaded in part the steamer Washington late in January. The people of Louisiana and of Alabama joined together and helped fill the steamer Wabana early in February. It would seem as if the people of the South remembered their sorrows of the Civil War and understood exactly the need of Belgium. Despite the cotton situation, Georgia and North and South Carolina united and helped to make a cargo for the ship St. Helena. Ohio took the biggest ship of the lot, the steamer Naneric, and in early March loaded her with 8500 tons. All the millers of the United States, organized by William C. Edgar, of Minneapolis, gave a half-million-dollar cargo which went to Belgium in February. Early in the work, Robert D. McCar a high freight rate. Another railroad carried freight for nothing for a period of several months. Thus, within the space of eight weeks following November 1 last, was built a huge food pipe-line, with one mouth in the United States and the other over the seas in Belgium. This pipe-line will be in service all this summer and until the next harvest. Mr. H. C. Davis, for thirty-four years in the railroad business, early in February took charge of the Traffic Department. "The work of the Relief Committee has not been done according to railroad methods," he told me, "because no man but a railroad man knows anything about such methods. Mr. Bates and Mr. McCarter seem to have done the work merely by main strength and common sense." Without long years of organization work, of doing big jobs as a matter of FOR THE BELGIAN BABIES Each box contains food enough to feed a baby for a month. THE MAN AT HOME Lindon W. Bates is in charge of the work in the United States. course, the members of this Commission could never have fed Belgium. "I never knew what work was until now," said Mr. Bates, to me late one night, after spending a day on the job. If there were any precedents, the members of the Commission were not familiar with them. They went blithely about their job until they were using every railroad depot, every express and parcel post office in the United States. When they wanted a carload of freight hauled free, if there was any hitch, they wired the general traffic manager or president of the railroad the facts and asked that the car be hauled. Generally they got action, and quick action. Just plain common sense was used in the buying of wheat, flour and other foods. Mr. Bates last November felt that the grain market would go skyward. So, out of funds obtained by Mr. Hoover, he bought a round million bushels of wheat at a little over a dollar a bushel. When, in early January, wheat went to a dollar and a half a bushel, he had enough wheat on hand to last for a couple of months. In the same way he bought flour in large quantities at a little over five dollars a barrel. By the force of the same common sense Mr. Hoover met many of the problems in Belgium. His sole capital in the beginning, as with Mr. Bates, was the personality and prestige of the Commission's members. His first move in London was to pledge certain securities of the Belgian people and buy a million dollars' worth of foodstuffs on the Baltic Exchange (London). There were three barriers between this first stock of food and the people of Belgium. One was its probable capture in the North Sea by either Germans who needed it or English who were afraid the Germans would seize it. Another was the fact that Germany occupied Belgium. A third was that the network of railroads and canals in Belgium were either abandoned or destroyed. The moral issue forced reluctant safety guarantees from the English and German Governments. Then Captain J. F. Lucey, a former U. S. Army officer and now a business man, volunteered to clear up the transportation problem into Belgium. "It was like developing transportation routes in a new country," he told me recently. "Besides, I had to use Rotterdam, a neutral port, as a base and it was not the natural port of entry into Belgium." November 1 the first cargo of 3500 tons of food reached him. At that time word came that there was a bread riot in starving Liege. A special train was chartered to the Dutch frontier sta where a fresh difficulty was met and overcome, until early in January every canal in Belgium had been cleared of débris and used by the Commission. Once, Cardinal Mercier, at Malines, sent a delegation to Rotterdam asking for condensed milk, stating that the women of his province were unable to nourish their children. That morning there had been no condensed milk in the stores of the Commission. That night the steamer Orn arrived from Philadelphia with 125 tons of such milk, and the next day a barge had delivered some of it. Beginning with no food and no money October 22 last, by March 1 of this year the Commission had handled or arranged for 327,481 tons of food worth from $60 to $100 a ton. It had a fleet of forty ships. It was doing business on a scale of $36,000,000 a year. Today, with all the destitute of Belgium in a bread line that would reach 2500 miles, if the people were placed one behind the Contributions collected in the Golden State bought the cargo of food which this ship is carrying to Rotterdam. tion of Eysden. The only automobile there was hired by Captain Sunderland, U. S. Military Attaché at The Hague, and in it he rushed to the German military headquarters at Liege, with a request for a locomotive and a clear track. His request was granted and that night Liege was succored. This incident was re other, it is doing business at the rate of $144,000,000 a year. The job is as big as feeding all the armies of Europe. And all this being true, do not, while rewarding Messrs. Hoover and Bates, forget the kind hearts of their fellow citizens. If it can be said that there has been any glory in this war, surely some of it will |