Description

Tales from a Famished Land by Edward E. Hunt

71 pages 

Herbert Clark Hoover, chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, once called
that amazing organization, “the door in the wall of steel.” Between November, 1914,
and March, 1917, when America entered the world war, there had passed through
that door millions of dollars in money, thousands of tons of foodstuffs and clothing,
and four or five dozen young Americans, most of them just out of their ’teens, who played a
part in Belgian history which they are still trying to explain in words of one syllable to
admiring relatives and friends!
H
Theirs is a story of sweet romance, gallant adventure, grotesque comedy, and grim tragedy.
The tales which are here set down are a part of their story. These tales are not strictly
truth, but they are not fiction. They are both. They try to describe the state of mind, the
atmosphere in which History—both truth and fiction—is made; the atmosphere behind
long lines of barbed-wire and bayonets, behind waves of poisoned gas, in a famished land
where ten million heroic people, both French and Belgians, have silently and steadily
fought to keep their self-respect, their sanity, and their courage.
These tales have been written in a spirit of gratitude and love; with gratitude and love first
of all to Herbert Clark Hoover, then to the other officers and members of the Commission
for Relief in Belgium, and then, and perhaps most of all, to those unnamed French, Walloon,
and Flemish millions with whom we Americans stood shoulder to shoulder on the inside of
the “door in the wall of steel.”