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[[annotation in left margin]] [[black underline]] Oscar Crosby [[/black underline]] [[/annotation]]
Supper at Cosmos Club. [[red underline]] Met Capt. Crosby [[/red underline]], just back from [[red underline]] Belgian Relief Commission [[/red underline]] Gave me freely his impressions in [[red underline]] Belgium [[/red underline]].  Says devastation is not by any means as big as one would be led to suppose.  Outside of such places as [[red underline]] Louvain, Malines, Dinant etc. country looks as before [[/red underline]] and everything seems [[red underline]] to go on as usually. [[/red underline]]  I was disappointed to hear from him that even in their afflictions the [[red underline]] "clericals" [[/red underline]] are trying to play petty tricks on the [[red underline]] "liberals" [[/red underline]] in the [[red underline]] distribution of food or relief [[/red underline]] and the "liberals" retaliate in same kind.  Old petty feuds and political intrigues are going on as before wherever present monotony of events has succeeded the acute disturbances of beginning of the war.  He also expresses himself unequi-
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vocally on the [[strikethrough]] stubbornness and [[/strikethrough]] [[red underline]] narrow-minded stubbornness of Englishmen [[/red underline]] who act in a way most irritating to some of the very men who try to serve their interests.  For instance they stirred up much bad blood among some 
[[red underline]] americans [[/red underline]] who hold the [[red underline]] Rhodes [[strikethrough]] schlo [[/strikethrough]] scholarship at Oxford and who served in the Belgian Relief Commission. [[/red underline]]  The british have spies in Belgium and reported that the young americans were too friendly with the german officers with whom they transacted business.  [[red underline]] Crosby [[/red underline]] says that the Germans had selected for this [[red underline]] delicate task [[/red underline]] some specially [[red underline]] pleasant fellows [[/red underline]] who by their manner and disposition would be best suited to cooperate in a friendly way with the americans.  [[red underline]] Then the english reproach them of too much camaraderie [[/red underline]] and similar petty complaints.  One american on returning to London