Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

that a foreigner came to see them. Fears as to my purpose in coming would be aroused. If I were ob- served going there several times, it might cast suspicion on both of us. But one day he was at home; and I learned that he was well acquainted with Froese; that they had worked together on the All Russia Council of Sects, made UNSEALING THE CLOSED DOOR WS up of representatives of those groups who refused to take part in military activities. By some odd chance there yet remained in the rooms where he lived a telephone. Froese was living in a Red Cross building where he could also be reached by telephone. Pavlov called, asking for Piotr Franzevitch—the Russian way of addressing Peter Froese, whose father’s first name was Franz. (In Russia they seldom call a man by his family name). Fortunately, he was at home. He was overjoyed to hear that a repre- sentative of the American Mennonites had actually ar- rived in Moscow and was even then standing by the tele- phone. It was almost unbelievable. If possible, he would come to see me the next day. The letter I had sent from Rostow, carried by a man who did it as a favor, had reached Froese, and he was already acquainted with our efforts in the South. The next morning he came to the Savoy Guest House. I had waited a while in my room that morning, then decided to go out for a short time to look after our nego- tiations. As I came near the stairway, I observed a man approaching whose features were noticeably different from those of the people with whom I had now for some time been dealing. [It was neither a Russian (Slavic) nor a Hebrew face. Neither could he be of the foreign group in the Savoy, for his clothing was not foreign. His face was lighted up and full of expectation. We realized, each of us, that we were looking at each other intently, un- certain whether to speak or not, yet each feeling that this was the man. Then he greeted me in German, and we were at once acquainted. It was Peter Franz Froese. There were many things to discuss; my plans; what had been accomplished thus far; how best to proceed. He was a well read man, had studied in the higher schools in Germany, knew history, and was able to stand aside and look at the volcanic upheaval in Russia in an objective 176 FEEDING THE HUNGRY way, as something almost inevitably following the abuses of the old regime. Yet he had a sympathetic under- standing and fine appreciation of things Russian. In the course of five strenuous years of close cooperation with him I was to learn more of his high idealism, his enduring perseverance, and unfaltering courage and faith. We did not like to converse very freely at the Savoy, so he invited me to his crowded quarters about four miles out, at the edge of the city, on the road over which the exiles banished to Siberia by the Tsars used to shuffle along with chains on their feet, starting on the long jour- ney to the far away frontiers of civiliz