Herbert Hoover: The Man and His Work

by Vernon L. Kellogg

THE RELIEF OF BELGIUM; ORGANIZATION AND DIPLOMATIC DIFFICULTIES

Despite the general popular knowledge that there was a relief of Belgium and that Hoover was its organizer and directing head, there still seems to be, if I may judge by the questions often asked me, no very wide knowledge of just why there had to be such relief of Belgium and how Herbert Hoover came to undertake it. A fairly full answer to these queries makes a proper introduction to any account, however brief, of his participation in this extraordinary part of the history of the war.

The World War began, as we all most vividly remember, with the successful, although briefly but most importantly delayed invasion of Belgium. And this invasion resulted in producing very promptly not only a situation appalling in its immediate realization, but one

of even more terrifying possibilities for the near future. For through the haze of the smoke-clouds from burning towns and above the rattle of the machine guns in Dinant and Louvain could be seen the hovering specter of starvation and heard the wailing of hungry children. And how the specter was to be made to pass and the children to hush their cries was soon the problem of all problems for Belgium.

Within ten weeks after the first shots of the War all of Belgium except that dreary little stretch of sand and swamp in the northwestern corner of it that for over four years was all of the Kingdom of Belgium under the rule of King Albert, was not only in the hands of a brutal enemy but was enclosed and shut away from the rest of the world by a rigid ring of steel. Not only did the Germans maintain a ring of bayonets and electrified wire fence—this latter along the Belgian-Dutch frontier—around it, but the Allies, recognizing that for all practical purposes, Occupied Belgium was now German territory, had to include it in their blockade of the German coast. Thus no persons or supplies could pass in or out of Bel

gium except under extraordinary circumstances, such as a special permission from both Germany and Allies or a daring and almost impossible blockade-running.

Now Belgium is not, as America is, self-sustaining as to food. If an enemy could completely blockade us, we could go on living indefinitely on the food we produce. But Belgium could not; nor could England or France or Italy. Belgium is not primarily an agricultural country, despite the fact that what agriculture it does have is the most intensive and highly developed in Europe. It is an industrial country, the most highly industrialized in Europe, with only one sixth of its people supporting themselves by agriculture. It depends upon constant importations for fifty per cent of its general food needs and seventy-five per cent of its needed food-grains.

The ring of steel about Belgium, then, if not promptly broken, plainly meant starvation. The imprisoned Belgians saw, with the passing days, their little piles of stored food supplies get lower. They had immediately begun rationing themselves. The Government and

cities had taken possession of such small food stocks as had not been seized by the Germans for their armies, and were treating them as a common supply for all the people. They distributed this food as well as they could during a reign of terror with all railways and motors controlled by their conquerors. They lived in those first weeks on little food but much hope. For were not their powerful protectors, the French and English, very quickly going to drive the invaders back and out of their country? But it soon became apparent that it was the Allied armies that were being driven not only out of Belgium but farther and farther back into France. So the Allies could do nothing, and the Germans would do nothing to help them. Indeed, everything the Germans did was to make matters worse. There was only one hope; they must have food from outside sources, and to do this they must have recourse to some powerful neutral help.

Belgium, and particularly Brussels, has always had its American colony. And it was to these Americans that Belgium turned for help. Many members of the colony left as soon after