eeing Americans despite closed banks, disappearing currency, and
general financial paralysis. When this was finished they readily turned
to the work of helping the Belgians, the more readily because they were
the right sort of Americans.

Their first effort, in cooeperation with the burgomaster of Brussels and
a group of Brussels business men, was the formation of a Central
Committee of Assistance and Provisioning, under the patronage of the
Ministers of the United States and Spain (Mr. Whitlock and the Marques
de Villalobar). This committee was first active in the internal measures
for relief already referred to, but soon finding that the shipping about
over the land of the rapidly disappearing food stocks of the country and
the special assistance of the destitute and out-of-work--the destruction
of factories and the cessation of the incoming of raw materials had
already thrown tens of thousands of men out of employment--must be
replaced by a more radical relief, this committee resolved to approach
the Germans for permission to attempt to bring in food supplies from
outside the country.

Burgomaster Max had already written on September 7 to Major General
Luettwitz, the German Military Governor of Brussels, asking for
permission to import foodstuffs through the Holland-Belgium border, and
the city authorities of Charleroi had also begun negotiation with the
German authorities in their province (Hainaut) to the same end, but
little attention had been paid to these requests. Therefore the
Americans of the committee decided, as neutrals, to take up personally
with the German military authorities the matter of arranging imports.

A general permission for the importation of foodstuffs into Belgium by
way of the Dutch frontier was finally obtained from the German
authorities in Belgium, together with their guarantee that all such
imported food would be entirely free from requisition by the German
army. Also, a special permission was accorded to Mr. Shaler to go to
Holland, and, if necessary, to England to try to arrange for obtaining
and transporting to Belgium certain kinds and quantities of foodstuffs.
But no money could be sent out of Belgium to pay for them, except a
first small amount which Mr. Shaler was allowed to take with him.

In Holland, Mr. Shaler found the Dutch government quite willing to allow
foodstuffs to pass through Holland for Belgium, but it asked him to try
to arrange to find the supplies in England.