V
I do not propose to describe the magnificent work of the "Commission for Relief in Belgium." It is too well known. Besides, it is not my story; it is the story of Herbert Hoover, who made the idea a reality, and of the crew of fine and fearless young Americans who worked with him. England and France furnished more money to buy food; but the United States, in addition to money and wheat, gave the organization, the personal energy and toil and tact, the assurance of fair play and honest dealing, without which that food could never have gotten into Belgium or been distributed only to the civil population.
Holland was the door through which all the supplies for the C. R. B. had to pass. The first two cargoes that went in I had to put through personally, and nearly had to fight to do it. My job was to keep the back of the United States against that door and hold it open. It was not always easy. I was obliged to make protests, remonstrances, and polite suggestions about what would happen if certain things were not done.
Once the Germans refused to give any more "safe-conduct passes" for relief ships on the return voyage. Of course, that would have made the work impossible. A German aircraft bombed one of these ships. I put the matter mildly but firmly to the German Minister. "This work is in your interest. It relieves you from the burden of feeding a lot of people whom you would otherwise be bound to feed. You want it to go on?" "Yes, certainly, by all means." "Well, then, you will have to stop attacking the C. R. B. ships or else the work will have to stop. The case is very simple. There is only one thing to do." He promised to take the matter up with Berlin at once. In a couple of days the answer came: "Very sorry. Regrettable mistake. Aviator could not see markings on side and stern of ship. Advise large horizontal signs painted on top deck of ships, visible from above. Safe-conducts will be granted."
When this was told to Captain White, a clever Yankee sea-captain who had general charge of the C. R. B. shipping, he laughed considerably and then said: "Why, look-a-here, I'll paint those boats all over, top, sides, and bottom, if that'll only keep the —— Germans from sinkin' 'em."
From a million and a half to two million men, women, and children in Belgium and northern France were saved from starving to death by the work of the C. R. B. The men who were doing it had a chance to observe the conditions in those invaded countries. They came to the Legation at The Hague and told simply what they knew. We got the real story of Miss Cavell, cruelly done to death by "field-gray" officers. We got full descriptions of the system of deporting the civil population—a system which amounted to enslavement, with a taint of "white slavery" thrown in. When the Belgian workmen were suddenly called from their homes, herded before the German commandant, and sent away, they knew not whither, to work for their oppressor, as they were entrained they sang the "Marseillaise." They knew they would be punished for it, kept without food, put to the hardest labor. But they sang it. They knew that France, and England too, were fighting for them, for their rights, for their liberty. They believed that it would come. They were not conquered yet.
Here I must break off my story for a month. It has not been well told. Words cannot render the impression of black horror that lay upon us, the fierce indignation that stirred us, during all those months while we were doing the tasks of peace in peaceful Holland.
We were bound to be neutral in conduct. That was the condition of our service to the wounded, the prisoners, the refugees, the sufferers, of both sides. We lived up to that condition at The Hague without a single criticism from anybody—except the subsidized German-American press in the United States.
But to be neutral in thought and feeling—ah, that was beyond my power. I knew that the predatory Potsdam gang had chosen and forced the war in order to realize their robber-dream of Pan-Germanism. I knew that they were pushing it with unheard-of atrocity in Belgium and northern France, in Poland and Servia and Armenia. I knew that they had challenged and attacked the whole world of peace-loving nations. I knew that America belonged to that imperilled world. I knew that there could be no secure labor and no quiet sleep in any land so long as the Potsdam Werwolf was at large.