The first appeal to undertake the work reached the League from relief agencies and from governments which found themselves incapable of coping with the refugee problem in the dimensions which it had assumed by the end of 1920. The voluntary organizations, with resources already strained by their relief work during and after the war on behalf of starving and destitute persons in Central and Eastern Europe and of the migrants caused by the movements of armies during the war and the redrawing of frontiers after it, found themselves overwhelmed by the task of meeting the needs of the disorganized masses of Russian refugees flooding into the border countries. The governments of the receiving countries, most of which