“But in the beginning I couldn’t see it; I simply couldn’t believe C. was going to be able to handle his end of our terrific problem. But day by day I watched this lad quietly getting a sense of the situation, then plunging into it, getting under it, developing an instinct for diplomacy along with his natural genius for directness and practicality that bewildered me. It has amazed us all. “We soon learned that we need not fear to trust ourselves to that type of character, to its adaptability and capacity, no matter how young it seemed.” Of course there have been older Americans who have brought to their Belgian co-workers equal years as well as experience, but one of the pictures I like best to remember is this of Monsieur ..., a Belgian of fifty-five or sixty, in counsel with his eager American délégué of twenty-eight. To the partnership, friendship, confidence, the Belgian added something paternal, and the American responded with a devotion one feels is lifelong. Between the visits to mills and docks, and the grinding over accounts, orders of canal boats and warehouses, there are hours for other things. I remember one restful one spent at this same Monsieur’s table—he is an excellent Latin scholar and a wise philosopher—when he and his young American friend for a time forgot the wheat and fat in their delight to get back to Virgil and Horace. Young D., a Yale graduate, furnished another example of these qualities Monsieur stressed. If he had been a Westerner, his particular achievement would have been less surprizing, but he came from the East. He reached Belgium at the time of a milk crisis. We were attempting, and, in fact, had practically arranged, the plan to establish C. R. B. herds adjacent to towns, to insure a positive supply for tiny babies. The local committees went at it, but one after another came in with discouraging reports. Even their own people were often preventing success by fearing and sometimes by flatly refusing to turn their precious cows into a community herd. Then one day D., who, so far as I know, had never in his career been within speaking distance of a cow, put on something that looked like a sombrero and swung out across his province. We had hardly had time to speculate about what he might accomplish, before he returned to announce that he had rounded up a magnificent herd, and that _his_ district was ready to guarantee so much pure milk from that time on! “What had he done, where we had failed?” asked Monsieur. “He had called a meeting of farmers in each commune, and said: ‘We, the Americans, want from this commune five or ten cows for the babies of your cities. We give ourselves to Belgium, you give your cows to us. We will give them back when the war is over—if they are alive!’ And he got them!” They would have given this cheerful beggar anything—these stolid old Flemish peasants. VIII ONE WOMAN