Hoover's most serious time in connection with the overseas transportation, and the most critical period as regards supplies in the whole course of the relief was just after the putting into effect by the Germans, in February, 1917, of the unrestricted submarining of all boats found in the so-called prohibited ocean zones. These zones covered all of the waters around the United Kingdom, including all of the English Channel and North Sea. This cut us off entirely from any access to Rotterdam from the West or North. But it also cut Holland off. And between our pressure and that of Holland the German authorities finally arranged for a narrow free, or "safe," north-about route extending from the Dutch coast north to near the Norwegian coast, thence northwest to the Faroe Islands, and thence west to the Atlantic beyond the barred zone. At one point this "safe" zone was only twenty miles wide between the German and English mine-fields in the North Sea and any ship getting a few rods across the line either east or west was in great danger from mines and was exposed to being torpedoed without warning. Imagine the state of mind of a skipper who had not seen the sun for three or four days in a North Sea fog, trying to make out his position accurately enough by dead reckoning to keep his boat in that "safe" channel. But even this generous concession to the Commission and Holland was not arranged until March 15, and in the six weeks intervening between February 1 and this time we did not land a single cargo in Rotterdam. Belgium suffered in body and was nearly crazed in mind as we and the Belgian relief heads scraped the very floors of our warehouses for the last grains of wheat. Another almost equally serious interruption in the food deliveries had occurred in the preceding summer (July, 1916), when, without a whisper of warning, Governor General von Bissing's government suddenly tied up our whole canal-boat fleet by an order permitting no Belgian-owned canal boat--although chartered by us--to pass out from Belgium into Holland without depositing the full value of the boat in money before crossing the frontier. The Governor General had reason to fear, he said, that some of the boats that went out would not come back, and he was going to lose no Belgian property subject to German seizure without full compensation. As the boats were worth, roughly, about $5,000 each, and we were using about 500 boats it would have tied up two and a half million dollars of our money to meet this demand, and tied it up in German hands! We simply could not do it. So we began negotiations.