the amount that the Germans had spent in a single day in the
destruction of the town of Ypres with shells. Later they were to go to
Poland; then to Serbia.

With them was Herbert C. Hoover, a celebrated mining engineer, the
head of the Commission. When American tourists were stranded
over Europe at the outset of the war, with letters of credit which could
not be cashed, their route homeward must lie through London. They
must have steamer passage. Hoover took charge. When this work
was done and Belgium must be helped, he took charge of a task that
could be done only by a neutral. For the adjutants and field officers of
his force he turned to American business men in London, to Rhodes
scholars at Oxford, and to other volunteers hastening from America.

When "Harvard, 1914," who had lent a hand in the American
refugees' trials, appeared in Hoover's office to volunteer for the new
campaign, Hoover said: "You are going to Rotterdam to-night." "So I
am!" said Harvard, 1914, and started accordingly. Action and not red
tape must prevail in such an organization.

The Belgians whom I wished to see were those behind the line of
guards on the Belgo-Dutch frontier; those who had remained at home
under the Germans to face humiliation and hunger. This was possible
if you had the right sort of influence and your passport the right sort of
visés to accompany a Bescheinigung, according to the form of "31
Oktober, 1914, Sect. 616, Nr. 1083," signed by the German consul at
Rotterdam, which put me in the same motor-car with Harvard, 1914,
that stopped one blustery, snowy day of late December before a
gate, with Belgium on one side and Holland on the other side of it, on
the Rosendaal-Antwerp road. "Once more!" said Harvard, 1914, who