Committee for Relief in Belgium

Committee for Relief in Belgium

The Commission for Relief in Belgium or C.R.B. − known also as just Belgian Relief − was an international (predominantly American) organization that arranged for the supply of food to German-occupied Belgium and northern France during the First World War.

Its leading figure was chairman Herbert Hoover (later president of the US).

Contents

Origins

When the Great War broke out, Hoover was a mining engineer and financier living in London. When hostilities erupted, he found himself surrounded by tens of thousands of American tourists trying to get home; their paper securities and travelers' checks were not being recognized and very few of them had enough hard currency to buy passage home, even if any ships had been sailing; most voyages had been canceled. Hoover set up and organized an "American committee" to "get the busted Yankee home," making loans and cashing checks as needed. By October 1918 the American Committee had sent some 120,000 Americans home, and in the end lost just $300 in unpaid debt.[1]This episode brought Hoover and his organizational talents to the attention of the American ambassador, Walter Hines Page, and several other key people in London, who came to him in late October with a request for his help with a much larger problem:

After being invaded by Imperial Germany in 1914, Belgium suffered a food shortage. The tiny nation, at the time among the most urbanized countries in Europe, only grew enough food to meet 20 to 25 percent of its needs. Nonetheless, the German occupiers were requisitioning what was there to help feed their army. The civilian population, in addition to the demoralizing effect of being conquered in a few days by Germany, faced imminent starvation unless a lot of food were brought in, fast.[2]

But it wasn't such a simple thing as buying food and bringing it in, as American expatriate mining engineer Millard Shaler found out when he tried to do just that. Great Britain had imposed an economic blockade on Germany and its occupied countries. If Shaler brought food in, the British figured, the Germans would just requisition it.

Seeking a solution to this dilemma, Shaler contacted ambassador Page, and Page contacted Hoover.

How it worked

The commission's task was to obtain foodstuffs from abroad and ship it into Belgium, where C.R.B. monitors would supervise its distribution by members of the Comite National de Secours et d'Alimentation (C.N.), the Belgian organization headed by Emile Francqui. This was necessary because C.N. employees, living under the German occupation, were not citizens of a neutral country and were legally required to obey the orders of German soldiers, whereas C.R.B. people were not. The food imported by the C.R.B. remained the property of the American ambassador to Belgium, Brand Whitlock, throughout the distribution process and right up to the point of being placed on a plate.

Obstacles and challenges

Keeping the C.R.B. going was a full-time job and then some for Hoover and his associates. The Germans resented the presence of the foreigners in the country and were bitter about the British blockade, which they saw as the reason for Belgium needing foreign aid in the first place. Many influential British policymakers, notably Lord Kitchener and Winston Churchill, felt that Germany needed to either feed the Belgians themselves or deal with the resulting starvation riots right behind their lines, and that international help to relieve that pressure was helping the Germans and thereby lengthening the war. At several points both sides tried to shut down the relief, and throughout the war there was a constant issue with German submarines sinking relief ships, especially at times when tensions with the U.S. were highest.[3]

In the end, the C.R.B. spent $895 billion to buy and ship 11.4 billion pounds (5.7 million tons) of food to 9.5 million civilian victims of the war.[4] The committee chartered ships to carry the food to Belgian ports under safe conduct terms arranged by Hoover in meetings with the British and German authorities.

Notwithstanding the special C.R.B. flags flown by ships and enormous banners covering them, there were losses: the Harpalyce returning from Rotterdam after delivering a shipment was torpedoed by the German submarine SM UB-4 in April 1915 with the loss of 15 lives.

See also

Sources

References

  1. ^ Kittredge, Tracy B. _The History of the Commission for Relief in Belgium_. Privately published, circa 1917.
  2. ^ Nash, George H. _The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian, 1914-1917_. New York: Norton, 1988.
  3. ^ Nash, George H. Ibid.
  4. ^ Gay, George I. _Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium_, vol. 2 Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1929.

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем решить контрольную работу

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Commission for Polish Relief — The Commission for Polish Relief (CPR), also known unofficially as Comporel[1] or Hoover Commission,[2] was initiated in late 1939 by former US President Herbert Hoover, following the German and Soviet occupation of Poland. The Commission… …   Wikipedia

  • American Relief Administration — was an American relief mission to Europe and later Soviet Russia after World War I. Herbert Hoover, future president of the United States, was the program director.The ARA s immediate predecessor was Committee for Relief in Belgium, also headed… …   Wikipedia

  • Belgium — /bel jeuhm/, n. a kingdom in W Europe, bordering the North Sea, N of France. 10,203,683; 11,779 sq. mi. (30,508 sq. km). Cap.: Brussels. French, Belgique /bel zheek /; Flemish, België /bel khee euh/. * * * Belgium Introduction Belgium Background …   Universalium

  • International Committee of the Red Cross — ICRC redirects here. For other uses, see ICRC (disambiguation). The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. The community of states has given the ICRC a unique role,… …   Wikipedia

  • Belgium — This article is about the country. For other uses, see Belgium (disambiguation). Belgian redirects here. For the article on the people, see Belgians. Kingdom of Belgium Koninkrijk België (Dutch) Royaume de Belgique …   Wikipedia

  • AMERICAN JEWISH JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE — (known as JDC or The Joint), independent, non political American Jewish relief and welfare organization dedicated to providing both emergency aid and long term assistance to individual Jews and Jewish communities throughout the world outside… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Outline of Belgium — …   Wikipedia

  • Troubled Asset Relief Program — TARP redirects here. For other uses, see Tarp. This article is about the Treasury fund. For the legislative bill and subsequent law, see Public Law 110 343. For the legislative history and the events leading to the law, see Emergency Economic… …   Wikipedia

  • United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda — The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) was a mission instituted by the United Nations to aid the implementation of the Arusha Accords, signed August 4, 1993, which were meant to end the Rwandan Civil War. The mission lasted… …   Wikipedia

  • History in For Want of a Nail — For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga is an alternate history novel by Robert Sobel that takes the form of a history of North America from 1763 to 1971. Over the course of its 441 pages, For Want of a Nail details the failure of the …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”