But the work was not limited to lending the barely necessary funds to those who wished to borrow. He raised a charitable fund among these same friends for caring for the really destitute ones until other relief could come. This came in the shape of the American Government's "ship of gold," the battle-ship _Tennessee_, sent over to the rescue. Hoover was then asked by Ambassador Page and the Army officers in charge of the London consignment of this gold to persuade his volunteer committee to continue their labors during its distribution. With this money available all who were able to produce proof of American citizenship could be given whatever was necessary to enable them to reach their own country. And then came the next insistent call for help. And in listening to it, and, with swift decision, undertaking to respond to it, Herbert Hoover launched himself, without in any degree realizing it, on a career of public service and corresponding abnegation of private business and self-interest, that was to last all through the war and through the armistice period, and is today still going on. In all this period of war and after-war service he has received no salary from government or relief organizations but, on the contrary, has given up a large income as expert mining engineer and director of mining companies. In addition, he has paid out a large sum for personal expenses incurred in connection with the work. The call was for the relief of Belgium. I know the story of Hoover in his relation to the relief of Belgium very well because I became one of his helpers in it soon after the war began and remained in it until the end. But it is a hard story to tell; there is too much of it. My special duties were of a kind to keep me constantly in touch with "the Chief," and I was able to realize, as only a few others were, the load of nerve-racking responsibility and herculean labor carried by him behind the more open scene of the public money-gathering, food-buying and transporting, and daily feeding of the ten million imprisoned people of occupied Belgium and France. In the relief of these helpless peoples Hoover put, perhaps for the first time, certainly for the first time on any such enormous scale and with such outstanding success, philanthropy on a basis of what dear old Horace Fletcher, shut up with us in Belgium during the Occupation, would permit to be referred to by no other phrase than the somewhat hackneyed one of "engineering efficiency," unless we would use a new word for it which he coined. In fact he used the new word "Hooverizing" as a synonym for efficiency with a heart in it, two years before it became familiar in America with another meaning. And I prefer his meaning of the word to that of the food-saving meaning with which we became familiar in Food Administration days. CHAPTER VIII THE RELIEF OF BELGIUM; ORGANIZATION AND DIPLOMATIC DIFFICULTIES