sion, aren't you?" I replied, "Yes, but we are going to Warsaw; we are only passing through your country; we can't do anything for you."
"But," he persisted, "you are the Americans, aren't you?"
"Yes, we are the Americans."
"Well, then, it's all right." And he waved an encouraging hand to the band, which responded with increased endeavor, while the crowd cheered and waved the home-made American flags. And we were received and addressed, and given curious things to drink and a little food—we gave them in return some Red Cross prisoner packages we carried along for our own maintenance—and then we were sent on with more cheers and hearty Godspeeds.
Delay so plainly meant sharper suffering and more deaths that even before the necessary financial and other arrangements were completed or even well under way, Hoover had made arrangements with the Secretary of War by which vessels carrying 135,000 tons of American food were diverted from French to Mediterranean ports, and with the Grain Cor
poration, under authority of the Treasury, by which 145,000 tons were started for northern European ports. Thus by the time arrangements had been made for financing the shipments and for internal transportation and safe control and fair distribution, the food cargoes were already arriving at the nearest available ports. Within a few weeks from the time the first mission arrived in Warsaw and had reported back to Hoover the terrible situation of the Polish people, the relief food was flowing into Poland through Dantzig, the German port for the use of which for this purpose a special article in the terms of the armistice had provided, but which was only most reluctantly and by dint of strong pressure made available to us.
Similarly from Trieste the food trains began moving north while there still remained countless details of arrangement to settle. I was in Vienna when the first train of American relief food came in from the South. The Italians were also attempting to send in some supplies, but so far all the trains which had started north had been blocked at some border point. The
American train was in charge of two snappy doughboys, a corporal and a private. When it reached the point of blockade the corporal was told that he could go no farther. He asked why, but only got for answer a curt statement that trains were not moving just now. "But this one is," he replied, and called to his private: "Let me have my gun." With revolver in hand he instructed the engineer to pull out. And the train went on. When I asked him in Vienna if he had worried any at the border about the customs and military regulations of the governments concerned which he was disregarding, he answered with a cheerful smile: "Not a worry; Mr. Hoover's representative at Trieste told me to take the train through and it was up to me to take her, wasn't it? These wop kings and generals don't count with me. I'm working for Hoover."
But the whole situation in these southeastern countries because of their utter disorganization and their hopeless embroilment in conflict with each other, was too impossible. Whatever degree of peace the capitals of these countries recognized as the diplomatic status of the mo
ment, the frontiers had no illusions. There were trenches out there and machine-guns and bayonets. Men were shooting at each other across the lines. Either the trains or cars of one country would be stopped at the border, or if they got across they did not get back. Some countries had enough cars and locomotives; some did not. If one country had some coal to spare but was starving for lack of the wheat which could be spared by its neighbor, which was freezing, there was no way of making the needed exchange. The money of each country became valueless in the others—and of less and less value in its own land. Everything was going to pieces, including the relief. It simply could not go on this way.