Hoover's experience in Belgium and Northern France had taught him how necessary was the special care of the children. All the war-ravaged countries have lost a material part of their present generation. In some of them the drainage of human life and strength approaches that of Germany after the Thirty Years War and of France after the Napoleonic wars. If they are not to suffer a racial deterioration the coming generation must be nursed to strength. The children, then, who are the immediately coming generation and the producers of the ones to follow, must be particularly cared for. That is what Hoover gave special attention to from the beginning of his relief work and it is what he is now still giving most of his time and energy to. For the general re-provisioning of the peoples of Eastern and Central Europe all of the various countries supplied were called on to pay for the food at cost, plus transportation, to the extent of their possibilities. Gold, if they had it--all of Germany's supply was paid for in gold--paper money at current exchange, government promissory notes, and commodities which could be sold to other countries, made up the payments. The charity was in making loans, providing the food, getting ships and barges and trains and coal for its transportation, selling it at cost, and giving the service of several hundred active, intelligent, and sympathetic Americans, mostly young and khaki-clothed, and a lesser group of Allied officers, all devoted to getting the food where it was needed and seeing that it was fairly distributed. It is impossible to depict the utter bewilderment and helplessness of the governments of the liberated nations of Eastern Europe at the beginning of the armistice period. Nor is it possible to explain adequately the enormous difficulties they faced in any attempt at organizing, controlling, and caring for their peoples. With uncertain boundaries--for the demarcation of these they were waiting on a hardly less bewildered group of eminent gentlemen in Paris; with a financial and economic situation presenting such appalling features of demoralization that they could only be realized one at a time; with their people clamoring for the immediately necessary food, fuel and clothing, and demanding a swift realization of all the benefits that their new freedom was to bring them; and with an ever more menacing whistling wind of terror blowing over them from the East--with all this, how the responsible men of the governments which rapidly succeeded each other in these countries retained any persistent vestiges of sanity is beyond the comprehension of those of us who viewed the scene at close range.