"_In order to understand fully the situation it is necessary to go back to the autumn of 1914. At the time we were organizing the relief work, the Comité National--the Belgian relief organization that collaborates with the Commission for Relief in Belgium--proposed an arrangement by which the Belgian Government should pay to its own employees left in Belgium, and other unemployed men besides, the wages they had been accustomed to receive. The Belgians wished to do this both for humanitarian and patriotic purposes; they wished to provide the unemployed with the means of livelihood, and, at the same time, to prevent their working for the Germans. I refused to be connected in any way with this plan, and told the Belgian committee that it had many possibilities of danger; that not only would it place a premium on idleness, but that it would ultimately exasperate the Germans. However, the policy was adopted, and has been continued in practice, and on the rolls of the Comité National have been borne the names of hundreds of thousands--some 700,000, I believe--of idle men receiving this dole, distributed through the communes._ [Sidenote: German cupidity excited.] "_The presence of these unemployed, however, was a constant temptation to German cupidity. Many times they sought to obtain the lists of the chômeurs, but were always foiled by the claim that under the guarantees covering the relief work, the records of the Comité National and its various suborganizations were immune. Rather than risk any interruption of the ravitaillement, for which, while loath to own any obligation to America, the Germans have always been grateful, since it has had the effect of keeping the population calm, the authorities never pressed the point, other than with the burgomasters of the communes. Finally, however, the military party, always brutal, and with an astounding ignorance of public opinion and of moral sentiment, determined to put these idle men to work._ "_General von Bissing and the civil portion of his entourage had always been and even now are opposed to this policy and I think have sincerely done what they could, first, to prevent its adoption, and secondly, to lighten the rigors of its application._" (Continued on page 53.) In the early days of the German advance into Belgium, the people had learned to fear the worst. This was particularly true in Antwerp. In order to alleviate their fears and to obtain guarantees which might hasten the restoration of settled conditions, Cardinal Mercier secured from the German governor of Antwerp promises, and in a circular letter dated October 16th, 1914, asked the clergy of the Province of Antwerp to communicate them to the people: [Sidenote: Solemn promises of Germans not to exploit Belgians.]