Commission For Relief In Belgium Research Articles

Beyond Hoover. Rewriting the History of the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) through Female Involvement

The Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) was among the largest and most prominent humanitarian undertakings of the First World War. From October 1914 to mid-1919, the American-led organization provided one billion dollars’ worth of food aid (unadjusted) to Belgium and Northern France, saving about nine million civilians from slow starvation. Though fairly well-known, the history of this remarkable organization and the relief of Belgium more generally is usually told from a near exclusively male and American perspective, focusing on the CRB’s director and later U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, and a small group of American volunteers. This article challenges this conventional narrative by exploring the involvement of women in the CRB’s vast humanitarian operations. It highlights their essential roles as symbolic victims, fundraisers and relief workers. In so doing, it exposes a very different side of the relief of Belgium, raising broader questions about why female involvement was omitted or forgotten in the first place, and about who is assigned the noble epithet of ‘humanitarian’. As the history of humanitarianism—a buzzing field of late—matures, it seems especially important to ponder these issues.

The domestic uses of Belgian–American ‘mutual understanding’: the commission for relief in Belgium educational foundation, 1920–1940

An offspring of a precocious large-scale humanitarian enterprise to save occupied Belgium from starvation during the First World War, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) Educational Foundation was established in 1919 as an exchange programme for Belgian and American university students. The CRB Educational Foundation was originally designed as a commemoration monument celebrating the relief drive and its main architects – the businessman and future president of the USA, Herbert Hoover, and its counterpart on the Belgian territory, the financier Emile Francqui. In a few years’ time, the programme rapidly grew out from a successful private initiative to a political project corresponding to different needs. While Hoover saw in this transatlantic exchange programme the expression of a policy which in many ways anticipated the activities of ‘cultural diplomacy’ during the Cold War and allegedly promoted ‘mutual understanding’ in international affairs, Francqui conceived it as a purely domestic instrumen...

Belgium relief fund, post war food shortages and the “True” cost of living

A key criteria in measuring the true cost of living is the absence of non-price rationing. To examine how non-price rationing distorts conventional measures of the cost of living, we examine the case of Belgium following WWI. The economic fallout from WWI to Belgium was so severe that the Commission for Relief in Belgium provided considerable assistance after the war ended. Nonetheless, food shortages persisted even after international assistance ceased in 1919 and production in Belgium did not return to pre-war levels until the end of 1924. A nonparametric revealed preference test for fifteen food categories shows shortages for eggs, butter, potatoes, vegetables, and sugar for periods from 1920 to 1924. Estimated virtual prices for these five foods, in conjunction with actual prices for the other ten goods, show that the actual cost of living was severely underestimated. The virtual prices of these five goods are the prices at which consumers would have willingly paid to purchase them, given the observed quantities, along with their other purchases. In this respect they can be viewed as market clearing prices. Our findings reinforce the view that Belgium's population continued to endure the effects of constrained consumption and a lower standard of living after the war ended. Further the results show how much the welfare of the Belgium people improved when shortages began to decrease.

The Life of Herbert Hoover: Imperfect Visionary, 1918‐1928. By Kendrick A.Clements. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 607 pp.

The Life of Herbert Hoover: Imperfect Visionary, 1918-1928. By Kendrick A. Clements. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 607 pp. Who was Herbert Hoover? Answering that question depends not only on perspective from which query is made but also time period of his life. America's thirty-first president had several distinct careers in his adult life, and he achieved varying degrees of success in each. Upon graduating from Stanford University with a degree in geology, Hoover worked around world in mining industry, and he was a millionaire by 1914. Hoover changed course with advent of World War I, abandoning private sector employment for remainder of his life. Between 1914 and 1917, Hoover led successful Commission for Relief in Belgium, and, in 1918, he took charge of U.S. Food Administration where he oversaw a voluntary conservation program. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding named him secretary of commerce, a post he held until his four years in White House. Finally, Hoover had a prodigious postpresidential career during which he commented on public policy questions in numerous books and he advised several presidents, especially Democrat Harry S. Truman. Kendrick A. Clements's The Life of Herbert Hoover: Imperfect Visionary, 1918-1928 explores years immediately before and during Hoover's service in cabinet for Presidents Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Hoover remained involved with war-related problems after armistice, namely, feeding of entire European continent. Hoover was nothing if not peripatetic, and scope and breadth of his activity during 1920s carries through nicely in these pages. Clements tells story of these years in chronological fashion, a wise choice on his part as biographer. As he explains in his preface, had he told story topically, reader would miss the degree to which a large number of issues landed on his desk all at once, interacted with each other, and demanded simultaneous consideration (p. xiii). Indeed, Hoover remade role of commerce secretary, away from its limited nineteenth-century scope, into activist position needed to oversee burgeoning national economy. Among problems Hoover addressed as cabinet secretary included unemployment, Russian famine, child health issues, flooding along Mississippi River and in New England, organization of industry by type, railroad reorganization, agricultural production and consumption, disorganization in coal industry, electrical power generation and distribution, pollution, eight-hour day in steel industry, adequate and affordable housing, international trade, European war debts, emergence of radio and aviation, and status of fisheries. …

Touring occupied Belgium: American humanitarians at ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ (1914–1917)

This essay investigates how representative American members of the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) engaged with the world of occupied Belgium during their mission as neutral humanitarian agents. The essay uses the diaries and recollections of several members of the CRB to argue that while neutral and professional, the American members of the CRB engaged with the world around them often as tourists would in an effort to better understand their outsider status and better associate with those they were trying to help. These insights help us better understand how a humanitarian identity was formed during the First World War era and the role non-governmental American citizens played in continuing to develop the USA's place in the world during this important historical moment.

Hugh S. Gibson’s diplomatic service in Poland after the First World War

Hugh S. Gibson was a career diplomat who had gained experience from 1908 at several diplomatic posts in Tegucigalpa, London, Havana, and Brussels, as well as at the State Department. He marked himself as a diplomat and humanitarian activist during World War I by being closely associated with Herbert C. Hoover and the Commission for Relief in Belgium. In Paris in 1918–1919 he became acquainted with many European politicians and several leaders from Central Europe. At the end of World War I, because of his plans and expectations, he was firstly considered as the chief of the U.S. diplomatic post in Prague. From the autumn of 1918 he became involved in contacts with Edvard Benes and Emanuel Voska and became more and more involved in the problems of Czechoslovakia. He was also a member of the Coolidge Mission to the countries of the former Austria-Hungarian Empire dealing with the economic and political problems of Central Europe1. According to his correspondence it looks that there were some plans (probably of his mentor and supporter, and later close friend, Hoover) to send him to the newly established U.S. diplomatic post in Prague. On December 14, 1918 in Diary (in the form of “letters to mother”) he mentioned, “It would be most interesting job to our first representative to Bohemia but I don’t imagine it will be done”2. Till mid-March, 1919 Gibson, cooperating with Coolidge Mission, was sent six times to Vienna, three times to Prague and two times to Budapest to study the economic and food situation in the countries of the region. He talked to various

The Commission for Relief in Belgium and the Political Diplomatic History of the First World War

During the First World War, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) supplied occupied Belgium with food, provoking discord between military and political leaders on both sides. The CRB's work undermined the Allies' economic blockade of the enemy, attracting military criticism. In Germany, politicians favoured sustaining the food supply to prevent unrest, whilst the Army wanted to exploit Belgium's resources. From 1916 onwards, the CRB became a bone of contention in Germany in the dispute between military and political leaders about unrestricted submarine warfare. It also loomed large in the political and military debate about the attitude to neutral countries: the Allies wanted them to brave the German threat and cooperate with the blockade policy—otherwise, food imports from Allied countries would be forbidden. Tonnage and food for the CRB were incorporated into the negotiations with neutral countries about their imports and the use of home-grown produce. The debates about the CRB thus exemplify the relationship between military events and the war's economic and social significance. This study of the CRB shows that political/diplomatic historiography can bridge the gap between the military and socioeconomic history of the First World War.

Campaigning In 1928

While the military and political accomplishments of World War I were clearly limited, the war, nonetheless, established a foundation for unparalleled economic growth in the United States during the 1920s. A significant consumer economy grew as many Americans worked fewer hours, earned higher salaries, invested in the stock market, and bought everything from washing machines to Model T Fords. This culture of consumerism in the 1920s changed the politics of American society and set the tone for American attitudes about economic political issues for decades to come. In the early 1920s, President Warren G. Harding's policies were generally conservative, especially regarding taxes, tariffs, immigration restriction, labor rights, and business regulation. Continuing Republican policies, President Calvin Coolidge included federal tax cuts and high tariffs. The expansive economy of the 1920s was fueled by the use of factory machine manufacturing and standardized mass production. The economic boom also resulted from the effects of World War I on technology, scientific management, the rapid increase in worker productivity, the psychology of mass consumption (with installment credit) behind the purchase of radios, motion picture tickets, electric appliances, and automobiles. Certainly, federal policies that supported big business with high tariffs, cutbacks in the authority of the Federal Trade Commission to regulate unfair trade practices, and the reduction of corporate and personal income taxes contributed to the boom as well. It was with this backdrop that Herbert Hoover and Al Smith squared off in the election of 1928. Hoover was born in Iowa and orphaned as a child. He began a career as a mining engineer soon after graduating from Stanford University in 1895. Within twenty years he had used his engineering knowledge and business skills to make a fortune as an independent mining consultant. In 1914, Hoover administered the American Relief Committee and during World War I he headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium and the U.S. Food Administration and was chairman of the Interallied Food Council. After the war he directed the American Relief Administration. Then Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt said of Hoover in 1920, "He is certainly a wonder and I wish we could make him President of the United States. There could be no better one." In 1919 Hoover founded the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. As Secretary of Commerce in the Harding and Coolidge administrations from 1921 to 1929, Hoover was widely celebrated for his leadership. The man who had fed Belgium, had run the U.S. Food Administration, revolutionized the Department of Commerce, and ministered to victims of the 1927 Mississippi flood appeared the ideal candidate in 1928. Hoover seemed more practical than Woodrow Wilson, glowed with respectability compared to the Harding administration, was easily more inspired than Coolidge, and was generally considered more "purely American" than his Democratic opponent, New York Governor Alfred E. Smith.

Migration and Americanization: The special case of Belgian economics*

One of the distinguishing features of Belgian economics is that, from the early 1920s, so many of Belgium's best economists pursued postgraduate studies at top American universities, a case of ‘temporary’ migration. This was made possible by the fellowships granted by the Commission for Relief in Belgium, a legacy of the First World War. After a stay in the US of a few years, most returned to Belgium. However, they maintained strong links with the US. Also, they tried to recreate in Belgium the most valuable elements of their American experience. It would lead to a strong and early Americanization of Belgian economics. Moreover, they were at the forefront of several initiatives to organize economics on a European scale, such as the European Economic Review and the European Economic Association.

The «Commission for Relief in Belgium» and the Château de Mariemont

Résumé : Quelques semaines après l’invasion de la Belgique par les Allemands en août 1914, les Américains créèrent la « Commission for Relief in Belgium » (Commission de secours en Belgique). Ils voulaient par ce moyen venir en aide à la population be !ge au bord de la famine provoquée par le blocus des nations alliées. Herbert Hoover fut à la tête de cette entreprise humanitaire sans précédent qui consistait à nourrir plus de sept millions d'hommes. Il parvint à persuader la France et l’Angleterre, très opposées à ce projet de peur que l’Allemagne n’en tire profit, de participer à cette vaste opération. Le bureau central se trouvait à Bruxelles mais un besoin urgent de délégués dans les provinces se faisait sentir. Avant que les représentants permanents n’arrivent des Etats-Unis, Hoover fit appel à des volontaires. C’est ainsi que dix étudiants américains qui séjournaient alors à Oxford, débarquèrent à Anvers le 5 décembre 1914. Parmi ceux-ci, Spaulding [l'auteur du récit] et Low-dermilk furent désignés pour le Hainaut. Leur travail qui consistait à aller de ville en ville pour s’informer des ressources alimentaires et organiser des comités de distribution nécessitait de nombreux déplacements. Malgré les réquisitions allemandes, Raoul Warocqué put mettre une voiture à leur disposition et leur offrit l’hospitalité au château de Mariemont. Raoul Warocqué était un homme jovial et sympathique de même que son secrétaire personnel. En dépit de ses problèmes de santé, il avait le goût de la vie et de multiples centres d’intérêt. C’était un grand collectionneur de jades, de porcelaines, de sculptures, de livres. Quel privilège de s’installer à la bibliothèque pour y admirer les chefs-d’œuvre ! Il possédait aussi de nombreuses serres où étaient cultivées des plantes exotiques, des orchidées et même des vignes... La vie au château s’organisa avec une certaine routine. Une fois par semaine au moins, un commandant allemand et ses officiers étaient invités à déjeuner. Warocqué s’expliqua souvent sur cette façon d’agir. En entretenant de bons rapports avec les autorités allemandes, il espérait que celles-ci seraient moins sévères et moins exigeantes pour la population. Le soir, en général, le repas était pris à quatre sauf dans les grandes occasions où on avait le plaisir de rencontrer M. et Mime Guinotte et leurs filles. A la fin de janvier 1915, les délégués permanents étant arrivés, ce fut le signal du départ, la fin de huit semaines magnifiques bien différentes de la vie dure que les étudiants américains avaient imaginée.

FRANK PARKHURST BRACKETT, 1865-1951

Dr. Frank Parkhurst Brackett, the last member of the original faculty of Pomona College when it was founded in 1888, passed away on September 3, 1951, in his eighty-seventh year. Because of his rare genius for teaching, his love of scientific research, and his passion for the maintenance of high scholastic standards, Pomona College owes much of her academic distinction to his guiding spirit. The high regard in which he was continually held by all who knew him is well exemplified in the Frank P. Brackett Observatory of Pomona College, which was built over the years from gifts, both large and small, of a great company of admiring alumni and friends. The first observatory building, which he designed, was dedicated in 1909 and the latest in 1950, sixteen years after his retirement from active teaching. Dr. Brackett was not only an outstanding educator but also a scholar, mathematician, musician, historian, and astronomer. He was the author of several books, among which are A History of the San Jose Rancho and Granite and Sagebrush, a reminiscent history of Pomona College. A member and fellow of many scientific societies, he was also active in civic, national, and international affairs, having served as secretary of the local district exemption board during the first World War and also as a member of the Commission for Relief in Belgium under Herbert Hoover. Frank Parkhurst Brackett was born in Provincetown, Massachusetts, June 16, 1865, of sturdy New England stock. He worked his way through Dartmouth College, doing odd jobs and teaching between semesters, and was graduated in 1887 with high scholastic honors, including Phi Beta Kappa. He received the degree of Master of Arts from Dartmouth in 1890 and her honorary Doctor of Science degree on the fortieth reunion of his class in 1927. In 1947, Pomona College awarded him another Doctor of Science degree on the sixtieth anniversary of her founding, an event in which he had played so prominent a role.

Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium: Documents. By George I. Gay, Commission for Relief in Belgium, with the collaboration of H. H. Fisher, Stanford University. Two volumes. (Stanford University: Stanford University Press. 1929. Pp. xvii, 606; xiii, 539. $10.00)

<italic>Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium: Documents</italic>. By <sc>George I. Gay</sc>, Commission for Relief in Belgium, with the collaboration of <sc>H. H. Fisher</sc>, Stanford University. Two volumes. (Stanford University: Stanford University Press. 1929. Pp. xvii, 606; xiii, 539. $10.00)

Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium: Documents

Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium: Documents

Commission for Relief in Belgium. Statistical Review of Relief Operations. Five Years, November 1, 1914, to August 31, 1919, and to Final Liquidation.

Commission for Relief in Belgium. Statistical Review of Relief Operations. Five Years, November 1, 1914, to August 31, 1919, and to Final Liquidation.

The Commission for Relief in Belgium. Herbert Hoover, Chairman. Statistical Review of Relief Operations, by George I. Gay. Five Years, November 1, 1914 to August 31, 1919 and to Final Liquidation. — California Stanford University [1925]. In-4 (22×28), 439 p., carte.

The Commission for Relief in Belgium. Herbert Hoover, Chairman. Statistical Review of Relief Operations, by George I. Gay. Five Years, November 1, 1914 to August 31, 1919 and to Final Liquidation. — California Stanford University [1925]. In-4 (22×28), 439 p., carte. - Volume 7 Issue 82

The Commission for Relief in Belgium. Herbert Hoover, Chairman, 42 Broadway, New-York. Executive personnel. Balance sheet and accounts; French government accounts, Belgian government accounts, supporting schedules. Statistical data. Covering six years from commencement of operations, October, 1914, to 30th September, 1920. — (New-York, M. B. Brown, Ier mars 1921). In-40, 157 p.

The Commission for Relief in Belgium. Herbert Hoover, Chairman, 42 Broadway, New-York. Executive personnel. Balance sheet and accounts; French government accounts, Belgian government accounts, supporting schedules. Statistical data. Covering six years from commencement of operations, October, 1914, to 30th September, 1920. — (New-York, M. B. Brown, Ier mars 1921). In-40, 157 p. - Volume 3 Issue 35