The relation of the few Americans in Belgium to the many Belgian relief workers was that of advisors, inspectors and final authorities as to the control and distribution of the food. The Americans were all too few to hand the food out personally to the hosts in the soup lines, at the communal kitchens, and in the long queues with rations cards before the doors of the bakeries and the communal warehouses. They could not personally manage the children's canteens, the discreet assistance to the "ashamed poor," who could not bring themselves to line up for the daily soup and bread, nor the cheap restaurants where meals were served at prices all the way from a fourth to three fourths of their cost. The Belgians did all this, but the Americans were a seeing, helping, advising, and when necessary, finally controlling part of it all. The mills and bakeries were all under the close control of the Commission and the Belgian National Committee. The sealed canal boats were opened only under the eyes of the Americans. The records of every distributing station were constantly checked by the Americans. They sat at all the meetings of National and Provincial and Regional committees. They raced about the country in all weathers and over all kinds of roads in their much-worn open motor-cars, specially authorized and constantly watched and frequently examined by the Germans, each car carrying the little triangular white and red-lettered C. R. B. flag, that flapped encouragement as it passed, to all the hat-doffing Belgians. I am constantly asked: What were Hoover's personal duties and work in the relief days? It is a question one cannot answer in two words. His was all the responsibility, his the major planning, the resourceful devising of ways out of difficulty, the generalship. But the details were his also. He kept not only in closest touch with every least as well as greatest phase of the work, but took a personal active part in seeing everything through. Constant conferences with the Allied foreign offices and treasuries, and personal inspection of the young men sent over from America as helpers; swift movements between England and France and Belgium and Germany and America, and trips in the little motor launch about the harbor at Rotterdam examining the warehouses and food ships and floating elevators and canal boats; these were some of his contrasting activities through day following day in all the months and years of the relief.