With few exceptions, Belgian local officials had not fled the country. They realised that this was a time when they were particularly needed on the job to protect the people from German exactions and from their own rashness. There were also any number of volunteers. The thing was to get the food to them and let them organise local distribution. The small force of Americans required to oversee the transit must both watch that the Germans did not take any of the food and retain both British and German confidence in the absolute good faith of their intentions. The volunteers got their expenses and the rest of their reward was experience; and it was “some experience” as a Belgian said, who was learning a little American slang. They talked about canal-boat cargoes as if they had been from Buffalo to Albany on the Erie Canal for years; they spoke of “my province” and compared bread lines and the efficiency of local officials. And the Germans took none of the food; orders from Berlin were obeyed. Berlin knew that any requisitioning of relief supplies meant that the Relief Commission would cease work and announce to the world the reason. However many times the Americans were arrested they must be patient. That exception who said, when he was put in a cell overnight because he entered the military zone by mistake, that he would not have been treated that way in England, needed a little more coaching in preserving his mask of neutrality. For I must say that nine out of ten of these young men, leaning over backward to be neutral, were pro-Ally, including some with German names. But publicly you could hardly get an admission out of them that there was any war. As for Harvard, 1914, hand a passport carried around the Sphinx’s neck and you have him done in stone. Fancy any Belgian trying to get him to carry a contraband letter or a German commander trying to work him for a few sacks of flour! When I asked him what career he had chosen he said, “Business!” without any waste of words. I think that he will succeed in a way to surprise his family. It is he and all those young Americans of which he is a type, as distinctive of America in manner, looks, and thought as a Frenchman is of France or a German of Germany, who carried the torch of Peace’s kindly work into war-ridden Belgium. They made you want to tickle the eagle on the throat so he would let out a gentle, well-modulated scream, of course, strictly in keeping with neutrality. Red lanterns took the place of red flags swung by Landsturm sentries on the run to Brussels as darkness fell. There was no relaxation of watchfulness at night. All the twenty-four hours the systematic conquerors held the net tight. Once when my companion repeated his “Again!” and held out the pass in the lantern’s rays, I broke into a laugh, which excited his curiosity, for you soon get out of the habit of laughing in Belgium.