American Relief Research Articles

The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief 1919–1922. By Stanley E. Kerr. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1973. xxv + 318 pp. $15.00.

The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief 1919–1922. By Stanley E. Kerr. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1973. xxv + 318 pp. $15.00.

Some Political Dimensions of International Relief: Two Cases

In the closing months of the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War and for about two and one-half years thereafter, the American voluntary agency CARE (Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere) operated a rehabilitation program in Nigeria's East-Central State. With funds largely provided by USAID, it concentrated on rebuilding or extending basic structures, like bridges and water systems, and on distributing badly needed planting material. During much of that period, while the war for Bangladesh's independence still raged, the British voluntary agency Oxfam also sought, in timely fashion and on its own initiative, to improve the condition of refugees who had fled to camps within India. Its major emphases were on supplementary feeding, medical assistance, sanitation, shelter, and clothing.

The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919–1922

The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919–1922

The Aftereffects of the American Relief Mission to Soviet Russia

A great famine in Russia in the spring of 1921 stimulated the first, and to date, the most intimate and extensive, engagement between the United States and the Soviet Union. For twenty-two months, an American relief force under the direction of Herbert Hoover (then Secretary of Commerce) fed millions of Soviet citizens throughout twenty-five provinces in Russia and the Ukraine, and in Moscow and Petrograd.1 This paper is a study of the effect of this experience on subsequent Soviet and American attitudes. In accordance with the terms of the treaty'> concluded between the American Relief Administration (A.R.A.) and the Soviet government on August 20, 1921, a group of some 180 Americans operated as a virtually autonomous authority within Russia under the protection of immunity from arrest or prosecution.2 Soviet suspicion that Hoover might use the privileged position of his relief missionaries for counterrevolutionary purposes was more or less reasonably based on his openly anti-communist activities as Food Administrator in Europe during the Armistice period.3 That Hoover did intend to conduct a new intervention in the form of famine relief can be seen in his secret instructions to all A.R.A. representatives in Russia to abstain entirely not only from action but even from discussion of po-

Eric R. Smith, American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2013).

Eric R. Smith, American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2013).

Herbert Hoover's “Treaty” with Soviet Russia: August 20, 1921

In March 1921 Lenin predicted, “If there is a harvest, everybody will hunger a little and the government will be saved. Otherwise, since we cannot take anything from people who do not have the means to satisfy their own hunger, the government will perish.“ By early summer, Russia was in the grip of one of the worst famines in its history. Lenin's gloomy forecast, however, was never put to the test. At almost the last moment, substantial help in the form of food, clothing, and medical supplies arrived from a most unexpected source —U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.Hoover undertook the relief of Soviet Russia not as an official representative of the United States government but as the head of a private agency —the American Relief Administration (A.R.A.).

Building on Pavlov

A bell sounds, the heart races; electric current courses through the body. It is an experiment in classical conditioning, one of thousands that have been performed at the Pavlovian Laboratory in Baltimore over the past 40 years. The experiments have proved a central fact about the heart: it is emotionally unstable. They have also proved a fact about Pavlovian Dr. W. Horsley Gantt: he's a tough-minded experimental scientist who has spent 40 years bucking the mainstream of American psychiatric opinion. Every schoolboy knows about Pavlov and his classic experiments in the conditioning of dogs to salivate in response to a signal. it is not so well known-or appreciated-that systems as complicated as the human circulation can also be conditioned, or that complicated emotional disorders can be considered in Pavlovian terms. The cardiovascular system for example adapts poorly to the stresses of living and can readily be pushed into permanent imbalance, explains Dr. Gantt. A single episode-shock or traumatic emotional experience-may produce permanent heart changes that linger in the central nervous system as a source of or a trace of pathology. This source then becomes capable of disturbing the body physically and mentally, long after its original usefulness is past. Dr. Gantfs theories-this one is called autokinesis-are based upon years of research with dogs and the classical Pavlovian method. Few other Americans have studied the conditioned reflex so exhaustively; Dr. Gantt is something of an exception among students of psychology. He has been fighting uphill to establish the validity of the Pavlovian approach ever since he introduced it from Russia in the early 30's. U.S. psychologists and psychiatrists, preoccupied with Freud, have cared little for Pavlov, the Russian Nobelist. His conditioned reflex, they say, is too meager an explanation for the complexities of human nature. Dr. Gantt's work, however, has taken Pavlovian concepts far beyond their original mechanistic rigidity. The theory of autokinesis, for example, is closer to Freud than to Pavlov in that it denies that men are controlled by the external facts of their lives. It holds that visceral reactions, once established through conditioning, persist and may even become worse. This focus of latent excitation is capable of acting independently of additional external influences to keep the heart internally stimulated and out of balance. Not only can it act on its own, but it may draw in other organs, such as the liver. So the man who wakes up in the morning with a pounding heart and distressed liver is not out of shape because of his surroundings, but because of his own inner changes. This all begins to resemble Freud's theory of the repressed childhood experience, which, stored in the subconscious, pollutes conscious behavior. There is a similarity, says Dr. Gantt, but whereas Freud lacked labortory evidence to back up his theories, the Pavlovian work on dogs has established the reality of lingering visceral pathology. Conversely, autokinesis may work for the good of the organism if the original conditioning was beneficial rather than harmful. Disaffection with Freudian writings led Dr. Gantt to Russia in the early 20's. He had taken his degree from the University of Virginia Medical School, intending to enter neurology and psychiatry. But I saw so much confusion; I couldn't see that Freud led anywhere, and Dr. Gantt switched to treating digestive diseases. In 1922, he went with the American Relief Administration to Russia, never having heard of the conditioned reflex. There he met Ivan Petrovich Pavlov and was so impressed with the man's methods he decided to stay and learn. That, however, proved difficult. Once the American relief work was done, the Soviet Government accused its members of spying and requested that they clear out. Dr. Gantt landed at University College in London where he continued to apply for readmission to Russia. More than a year later, his request was granted and Dr. Gantt returned to spend four and a half years with Pavlov. Pavlov never lost a chance to challenge the Communist regime, says Dr. Gantt. He always waited until an official was around before he let out his worst barbs against the regime and on one occasion would not even let a government minister, his own superior, in the door. During the years of famine, Pavlov lived on a piece of fish twice a week and

The Peace Corps in Our Past

America is a land of habits, attitudes, or re sponses, whether one wishes to call them traditions or not. Many of these have been agents preparing the way for the ap pearance of the Peace Corps. The concept of an American world mission, first associated with Protestantism but broad ened to include world peace and the dissemination of our tools of economic success, certainly falls into this category. An interest in the fate of common men everywhere, expressed through numerous privately financed American relief and de velopment projects overseas, is another instance of an attitude which has been extended by the Peace Corps. John F. Ken nedy's 1960 campaign proposal came after a decade of dis cussion and lobbying on behalf of an official "people-to-people" program involving volunteer technicians. The Peace Corps is a product of American anti-Communist foreign policy. But more than that, it is an expression of ongoing American opti misms in the fate of man. Whether Americans, who have not yet succeeded in making their own land a model of brotherly harmony and general prosperity, can succeed in their global enterprise, remains to be seen.

Food for Russia: the Story of the American Relief Administration

Food for Russia: the Story of the American Relief Administration

American Relief in the Russian Famine of 1891-1892

American Relief in the Russian Famine of 1891-1892

American Friends and Russian Relief: 1917-1927 (Part II)

AMERICAN FRIENDS AND RUSSIAN RELffiF 1917 - 1927 (Part II) By John Forbes* State Department Dealings LINCOLN Steffens, the journalist, and William C. Bullitt, later i to be American Ambassador to Russia, made, in February, 1919, an unofficial tour of investigation in Russia at the instance of Colonel House, who needed first-hand information on conditions there for his work in Paris. They returned to make a secret report to the effect that the Soviets wanted peace and food, and would give the first for the latter. This was seen by some Peace Conference delegates as one more factor favoring the erection of the cordon-sanitaire. But Henry Scattergood of the American Friends Service Committee in Paris informed the home office that the French believed the American relief organizations and financial interests, by working together, would capture the Russian market from France. The private agencies and the governments ought rather, said the French, to form some sort of international committee for Russian relief under Herbert Hoover and Fridtjof Nansen, a committee to which the League of Nations, the League of Red Cross Societies, and the Comité Internationale de la Croix-Rouge ought to be invited to give support . Hoover carried these proposals to the attention of the organizatons concerned, but the plan became involved in the tangles of inter-allied military intervention in Russia, and nothing further came of this potentially tremendous project.1 * John Forbes is a member of the faculty of Blackburn College, Carlinville, Illinois. The first part of this article appeared in the Spring Number. xSee The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 1847-1920 (New York: Macmillan, 1951), chap. 45. It is doubtful, incidentally, whether all the foreign and domestic relief agencies in Russia ever fed more than one-quarter of the people who, at any one moment, needed food. It is also doubtful whether the main officers of the private or governmental agencies working in Russia often enjoyed one-quarter the comradeship experienced by obscure and happily interdenominational workers running about in pursuit of their duties at the farthest reaches of the distribution web. 121 122Bulletin of Friends Historical Association United States government agents kept close watch, both at home and in the field, on the AFSCs Russian relief as it developed, as did the State Department. In December, 1919, the State Department, replying to the AFSC, declared that relief supplies could now be sent to Russia without any violation of State Department or War Trade Board policy, but that no passports to Russia would be issued. But, the Department added, if your people are willing to go at their own risk, and to make no claim upon the United States for protection once they enter Russia, and if they will surrender their passports at the border to a United States representative, expecting them to be returned at the time of their last exit from Russia, they may go. Dealings with the State Department in regard to the securing of passports and permissions to ship supplies continued, subject to the exigencies of the Department's Russian policies. In August, 1921, on the occasion of a security campaign, the American Relief Administration induced President Harding, who approved Friends Russian work both in principle and practice , to instruct the State Departments to issue no passports to AFSC personnel whom the ARA could not endorse. But in January, 1922, the AFSC learned from the ARA office in New York that the State Department had, without public announcement , instructed its European representatives henceforth to amend the passports of Quaker personnel entering Europe in transit to Russia, or already in Russia, so as to allow these workers in pursuit of their duties to enter Russia at any point. The Committee expressed thanks to the State Department for ". . . making it possible for the American Friends Service Committee to continue its work in Russia under its own name." Wilbur Thomas, the AFSCs resolute executive director, noted at this time, "We are just beginning to see light after a long, extremely complex and hazardous season of trouble with the State Department and the public over our work in Russia. Many of our Executive Board have often said, 'What's the use? Let's close the Service...

Russian Science Symposium: VII Bolshevik Principles and Russian Physiology

The following article, based on a report to the AAAS symposium in Philadelphia last December, is written by the director of the Pavlovian Laboratory of the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Gantt first visited Russia with the American Relief Administration in 1922. After a year of this work and another year in London, he returned to Russia and worked with Pavlov until 1930. He visited Russia in 1933 and again in 1935. He is the author of two books on Russian medicine, a biography of Pavlov, and is the editor of Pavlov's lectures.

MAGNETIC AMPLIFIERS A RISING STAR IN NAVAL ELECTRONICS

Journal of the American Society for Naval EngineersVolume 63, Issue 4 p. 903-954 MAGNETIC AMPLIFIERS A RISING STAR IN NAVAL ELECTRONICS LIEUTENANT COMMANDER A. M. VINCENT, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER A. M. VINCENT U. S. NAVY THE AUTHOR: was born in Montevideo, Minnesota. After elementary and high school at Havre, Montana, he attended the English Engineering Institute at Riga, Latvia (1921–1923) while employed as communication officer for the American Relief Administration. Upon disestablishment of this activity in 1923 he joined the U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey, and assisted in the development of electronic applications for use in hydrographic depth and position finding equipments. Upon declaration of war in 1942 he was transferred from the U. S. C. & G. S. to the Navy Department, Bureau of Ships, Washington, D. C. While serving as Lieutenant, he attended various Naval training schools in sonar and radar, later being assigned duty as Naval representative to the National Defense Research Committee, operating under the Office of Scientific Research. In 1944 he was transferred to the Philippine Sea Frontier as assistant Electronics Officer. In 1945 he was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander, later assigned as Electronics Officer to Naval Forces Philippines. In 1948 he requested and received permission to revert to inactive duty to accept a commission with the State Department in Manila, as Electronics Training Officer, for the Republic of the Philippines, under the Rehabilitation program. Upon completion of this assignment in 1950, he was recalled to active duty in the Navy, and reassigned to the Electronics Design and Development Division of the Bureau of Ships.Search for more papers by this author LIEUTENANT COMMANDER A. M. VINCENT, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER A. M. VINCENT U. S. NAVY THE AUTHOR: was born in Montevideo, Minnesota. After elementary and high school at Havre, Montana, he attended the English Engineering Institute at Riga, Latvia (1921–1923) while employed as communication officer for the American Relief Administration. Upon disestablishment of this activity in 1923 he joined the U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey, and assisted in the development of electronic applications for use in hydrographic depth and position finding equipments. Upon declaration of war in 1942 he was transferred from the U. S. C. & G. S. to the Navy Department, Bureau of Ships, Washington, D. C. While serving as Lieutenant, he attended various Naval training schools in sonar and radar, later being assigned duty as Naval representative to the National Defense Research Committee, operating under the Office of Scientific Research. In 1944 he was transferred to the Philippine Sea Frontier as assistant Electronics Officer. In 1945 he was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander, later assigned as Electronics Officer to Naval Forces Philippines. In 1948 he requested and received permission to revert to inactive duty to accept a commission with the State Department in Manila, as Electronics Training Officer, for the Republic of the Philippines, under the Rehabilitation program. Upon completion of this assignment in 1950, he was recalled to active duty in the Navy, and reassigned to the Electronics Design and Development Division of the Bureau of Ships.Search for more papers by this author First published: November 1951 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-3584.1951.tb03896.x AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume63, Issue4November 1951Pages 903-954 RelatedInformation

A Report on Friends' Famine Relief in India 1945, together with a Report of American Relief for India, Inc., supporting the work of the American Friends' Service Committee, Report of the American Famine Mission to India. India's Hunger, A Picture of India. Its History, People and Government and The Campaign in Burma

A Report on Friends' Famine Relief in India 1945, together with a Report of American Relief for India, Inc., supporting the work of the American Friends' Service Committee, Report of the American Famine Mission to India. India's Hunger, A Picture of India. Its History, People and Government and The Campaign in Burma

Belgian-American Relations, 1944-45

In the First World War, Belgian and American troops fought side by side and American relief saved many thousands of Belgian lives. After the war, American assistance helped to rebuild and modernize Belgian universities. Since then, the regular exchange of students and lecturers has helped to keep alive cultural relations and to assist in developing a common understanding between the two countries. Trade between Belgium and the United States was important in the interwar period in spite of tariff barriers. Under the commercial Belgian-American treaty of 1935, Belgium imported from the United States, in 1938, goods valued at 84 million dollars, representing 11 per cent of her total imports, and her exports to the United States for that year were valued at 48.7 million dollars. When Belgium was attacked and occupied by Germany in May 1940, the Belgian Government moved to London in order to carry on the war. It found its allies bewildered by the sudden success of German arms in Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, and the causes of that success. Explanations which appeared in the press and were heard over the radio were not altogether accurate, and, as Mr. Georges Theunis has observed, information from foreign sources was attempting to lay on Belgium almost the entire blame for the disaster.1 In time, hasty judgments were corrected, and from the mists of misunderstanding there emerged the unshakable rock of Belgian faith and resistance.

Russian Medicine

Journal Article Russian Medicine Get access Russian Medicine. By IF. Horsley Gantt, M.D., Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; formerly Chief of Medical Division, American Relief Administration, Leningrad Unit (1922-23), Collaborator in Pavlov’s Laboratories (1925-29). Cloth. Price, $2.50. Pp. 214, with 12 illustrations. New York: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1937. Physical Therapy, Volume 25, Issue 5, September 1945, Page 260, https://doi.org/10.1093/ptj/25.5.260 Published: 01 September 1945

Organization of American Relief in Europe, 1918-1919: Including Negotiations Leading up to the Establishment of the Office of Director General of Relief at Paris by the Allied and Associated Powers

Organization of American Relief in Europe, 1918-1919: Including Negotiations Leading up to the Establishment of the Office of Director General of Relief at Paris by the Allied and Associated Powers

The Blockade of Germany after the Armistice, 1918–1919: Selected Documents of the Supreme Economic Council, Superior Blockade Council, American Relief Administration, and other Wartime Organizations. Selected and edited by Suda Lorena Bane and Ralph Haswell Lutz. [The Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace, Publication No. 16.] (Stanford University: Stanford University Press. 1942. Pp. viii, 874. $6.00.)

The Blockade of Germany after the Armistice, 1918–1919: Selected Documents of the Supreme Economic Council, Superior Blockade Council, American Relief Administration, and other Wartime Organizations. Selected and edited by Suda Lorena Bane and Ralph Haswell Lutz. [The Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace, Publication No. 16.] (Stanford University: Stanford University Press. 1942. Pp. viii, 874. $6.00.)

Organization of American Relief in Europe, 1918–1919, Including Negotiations Leading up to the Establishment of the Office of Director General of Relief at Paris by the Allied and Associated Powers. Documents selected and edited by <italic>Suda Lorena Bane</italic> and <italic>Ralph Haswell Lutz</italic>. [The Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace, Publication No. 20.] (Stanford University: Stanford University Press. 1943. Pp.

Organization of American Relief in Europe, 1918–1919, Including Negotiations Leading up to the Establishment of the Office of Director General of Relief at Paris by the Allied and Associated Powers. Documents selected and edited by Suda Lorena Bane and Ralph Haswell Lutz. [The Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace, Publication No. 20.] (Stanford University: Stanford University Press. 1943. Pp. xxi, 745. $6.00.) Organization of American Relief in Europe, 1918–1919, Including Negotiations Leading up to the Establishment of the Office of Director General of Relief at Paris by the Allied and Associated Powers. Documents selected and edited by Bane Suda Lorena and Lutz Ralph Haswell. [The Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace, Publication No. 20.] (Stanford University: Stanford University Press. 1943. Pp. xxi, 745. $6.00.) Henry James Henry James New York City Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 49, Issue 4, July 1944, Pages 721–722, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/49.4.721 Published: 01 July 1944

The Blockade of Germany After the Armistice, 1918-1919: Selected Documents of the Supreme Economic Council, Superior Blockade Council, American Relief Administration, and Other Wartime Organizations

The Blockade of Germany After the Armistice, 1918-1919: Selected Documents of the Supreme Economic Council, Superior Blockade Council, American Relief Administration, and Other Wartime Organizations