n off the boat it was allowed to go on its way to Tilbury.

Hoover enjoyed an extraordinary position in relation to the passport and
border regulations of all the countries in and out of which he had to
pass in his movements connected with the relief. He was given a freedom
in this respect enjoyed by no other man. He moved almost without
hindrance and undetained by formalities freely in and out of England,
France, Holland, occupied Belgium and France, and Germany itself, with
person and traveling bags unexamined. It was a concrete expression of
confidence in his integrity and perfect correctness of behavior, that
can only be fully understood by those who had to make any movements at
all across frontiers in the tense days of the war.

Governor General von Bissing once said to me in Brussels, apropos of
certain charges that had been brought to him by his intelligence staff
of a questionable behavior on the part of one of our men in
Belgium--charges easily proved to be unfounded: "I have entire
confidence in Mr. Hoover despite my full knowledge of his intimate
acquaintance and association with the British and French Government
officials and my conviction that his heart is with our enemies." As a
matter of fact Hoover always went to an unnecessary extreme in the way
of ridding himself of every scrap of writing each time he approached the
Holland-Belgium frontier. He preached absolute honesty, and gave a
continuous personal example of that honesty to all the C. R. B. men
inside the steel ring.

Each time he came to Brussels all of us came in from the provinces and
occupied France and gathered about him while he told us the news of the
outside world, and how things were going in the New York and London
offices. And then he would talk to us as a brother in the fraternity
and exhort us to forget our difficulties and our irritations and play
the game well and honestly for the sake of humanity and the honor of
America. After the group talks he would listen to the personal troubles,
and advise and help each man in his turn. People sometimes ask me why
Hoover has such a strong personal hold on all his helpers. The men of
the C. R. B. know why.

The Belgian relief and the American food administration and the later
and still continuing American relief of Eastern Europe have been called,
sometimes, in an apparently critical attitude, "one man" organizations.
If by that is meant that there was one man in each of them who was
looked