some of them were in Lodz and some in Cracow and others
in Brest-Litovsk and Bielostok and even in towns far out on the Eastern
frontier near the Polish-Bolshevist fighting lines. But of course he
could not visit all of them, and much less could he hope to visit all
the rest of his whole family in Eastern Europe. For while an especially
large part of it was in Poland, other parts were in Finland, Esthonia,
Latvia and Lithuania, and some of it was in Czecho-Slovakia and Austria,
and other parts were in Hungary, Roumania, and Jugo-Slavia. Altogether
this large and diverse family of Mr. Hoover's in Eastern Europe numbered
at least two and a half million hungry children. And it only asked for
his permission to be still larger. For at least a million more babies
and boys and girls thought they were unfairly excluded from it, because
they were sure that they were poor and weak and hungry enough to be
admitted, and being very hungry, and not being able to get enough food
any other way, was the test of admission to Mr. Hoover's family.

When the American Relief Administration, which was the organization
called into being under Hoover's direction in response to President
Wilson's appeal to Congress soon after the armistice, saw that its
general assistance to the new nations could probably be dispensed with
by the end of the summer of 1919, the director realized that some
special help for the children would still be needed. The task of seeing
that the underfed and weak children in all these countries of Eastern
Europe, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, received their
supplementary daily meals of specially fit and specially prepared food,
could not be suddenly dropped by the American workers. There could be no
confidence that the still unstable and struggling governments would be
able to carry it on successfully. But with the abolition of the blockade
and the incoming of the year's harvest, and with the growing possibility
of adequate financial help through government and bank loans, the
various new nations of Eastern Europe could be expected to arrange for
an adequate general supply of food for themselves without further
assistance from the American Relief Administration.

Just what the nature and methods of this assistance were, and how the
one hundred million dollars put into the hands of the Relief
Administration by Congress were made to serve as the basis for the
purchase and distribution to the hungry countries of