There is enough food wasted in the average American household in one day to keep a Belgian for a fortnight in health and strength.  They want in Belgium 300,000 tons of food a month.  That is their normal requirement.  The American Relief Committee is asking for 8,000 tons a month, one-quarter of the normal requirements, one-half of a soldier’s rations for each Belgian.  The American Committee needs $5,000,000 a month until next harvest.  It is a huge sum, but it must be forthcoming.

Of all the great powers of the world the United States is the only one not at war or in peril of war.  Of all the foremost nations of the world the United States is the only one that can save Belgium from starvation if she will.  She was the only nation that Germany would allow a foothold for humanity’s and for Christ’s sake in Belgium.  Such an opportunity, such responsibility, no nation ever had before in the history of the world.  Spain and Italy join with her, but the initiative and resources and organization are hers.

Around Belgium is a ring of steel.  Within that ring of steel are a disappearing and for ever disappearing population.  Towns like Dendermonde, that were of 10,000 people, have now 4,000, and in Dendermonde 1,200 houses have fallen under the iron and fire of war.  Into that vast graveyard and camp of the desolate only the United States enters with an adequate and responsible organization upon the mission of humanity.

No such opportunity was ever given to a people, no such test ever came to a Christian people in all the records of time.  Will the American Nation rise to the chance given to it to prove that its civilization is a real thing and that its acts measure up with its inherent and professed Christianity?

I am a profound believer in the great-heartedness of the United States, and there is not an American of German origin who ought not gladly and freely give to the relief of people who, unless the world feeds them, must be the remnant of a nation; and the world in this case is the United States.  She can give most.

The price of one good meal a week for a family in an American home will keep a Belgian alive for a fortnight.

Probably the United States has 18,000,000 homes.  How many of them will deny themselves a meal for martyred Belgium?  The mass of the American people do not need to deny themselves anything to give to Belgium.  The whole standard of living on the American Continent, in the United States and Canada, is so much higher than the European standard that if they lowered the scale by one-tenth just for one six months the Belgium problem would be solved.

I say to the American people that they cannot conceive what this strain upon the populations of Europe is at this moment, and, in the cruel grip of Winter, hundreds of thousands will agonize till death or relief comes.  In Australia in drought times vast flocks of sheep go traveling with shepherds looking for food and water, and no flock ever comes back as it went forth.  Not in flocks guided by shepherds, but lonely, hopeless units, the Belgian people take flight, looking for food and shelter, or remain paralyzed by the tragedy fallen upon them in their own land.