allies of England and France. But at intervals marched the German
patrols.

When our car stopped before a restaurant a knot gathered around it.
Their faces were like all the other faces I saw in Belgium--unless
German--with that restrained, drawn look of passive resistance,
persistent even when they smiled. When? When were the Allies
coming? Their eyes asked the question which their tongues dared
not. Inside the restaurant a score of German officers served by
Belgian waiters were dining. Who were our little party? What were we
doing there and speaking English--English, the hateful language of
the hated enemy? Oh, yes! We were Americans connected with the
relief work. But between the officers' stares at the sound of English
and the appealing inquiry of the faces in the street lay an abyss of
war's fierce suspicion and national policies and racial enmity, which
America had to bridge.

Before we could help Belgium, England, blockading Germany to keep
her from getting foodstuffs, had to consent. She would consent only if
none of the food reached German mouths. Germany had to agree
not to requisition any of the food. Someone not German and not
British must see to its distribution. Those rigid German military
authorities, holding fast to their military secrets, must consent to
scores of foreigners moving about Belgium and sending messages
across that Belgo-Dutch frontier which had been closed to all except
official German messages. This called for men whom both the
German and the British duellists would trust to succour the human
beings crouched and helpless under the circling flashes of their steel.

Fortunately, our Minister to Belgium was Brand Whitlock. He is no