Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

el as we would find necessary for the work, and we had verbal permission to bring twenty. Rev. Koekebakker felt compelled to leave for home though the contract was not yet signed. Neither was there much hope for a separate contract for the Holland Mennonites. About the only prospect was to have an appendix added to our own contract to the effect that the terms of our contract equally apply to the Holland Men- nonite Relief. Before his departure Rev. Koekebakker had written several formal authorizations, one of which empowered me to sign for him on behalf of the Holland Mennonites, but the guarantee from the latter was lack- ing. <A telegram to Riga reached Rey. Koekebakker, and he wired back a guarantee satisfactory to the Government. The telegrams were written into the agreement appendix. On the first day of October, 1921, the contract be- tween the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the American Mennonite Relief was signed by Lev Kame- nev on behalf of the Central Commission for Combatting Famine, of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, and Alvin J. Miller as Director of the American Mennonite Relief, representing the Mennonite Central Committee. The signing of the contract was immediately an- nounced to the Mennonite Central Committee by cable transmitted through, and at the expense of, the Soviet Foreign Office at Moscow. Throughout our negotiations constant emphasis was put on our policy of feeding all the neediest in our territory regardless of race or religion. That policy was put into actual effect. It seems advisable UNSEALING THE CLOSED DOOR 151 therefore to correct an apparently inadvertant error in the book: “The Famine in Soviet Russia,’ by H. H. Fisher, Chief of the Historical Department of the Amer- ican Relief Administration, in which work he relates the operations of that organization in Russia. On page 163 he refers to various organizations including the American Mennonite Relief, and states that they ‘‘devoted their funds to the relief of members of their faith in Russia.” The fact is that our organization received into its feeding centers non-Mennonites on exactly the same basis as Men- nonites. Besides, we conducted the first American Relief Kitchens in the villages of Prischib volost (county) where no Mennonites lived, but the whole population was Lu- theran and Roman Catholic. Later also we took over the Krasno Shavkai volost with a Russian population of Bap- tists, Christian Evangelicals, and Orthodox Greek church members, but no Mennonites. RELATIONSHIP WITH THE A.R.A. During this period of negotiations, I had called oc- casionally at the headquarters of the American Relief Ad- ministration in order to maintain some degree of contact. But my negotiations with the Government were not dis- cussed. Rumors were floating about to the effect that our own government was setting certain restrictions on relief organizations p