With the 100th anniversaries of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo in June and the actual start of World War I two days ago, there have been countless books and articles about World War I. They all say, either explicitly or implicitly, that the America did not get involved in the war until 1917. While it is true that the United States did not declare war on Germany until April 6, 1917, America, or rather, Americans, were involved from almost the start. It was, after all, Herbert Hoover and the Committee for Relief in Belgium that fed Belgium for four years.
When Herbert Hoover is mentioned today, Americans think of the President who tried, and failed, to get us out of the Great Depression. What is forgotten is what first made Hoover an international hero: the establishment of the CRB and its success in feeding Belgium, and German-occupied northern France, throughout World War I.
When World War I started in early August 1914, Herbert Hoover was living in London. He was a world-renowned mining engineer with interests on six continents. When the war erupted, thousands of Americans were stranded in England and Europe. At the request of Walter Page, the American ambassador in London, Hoover, and his wife Lou, helped organize the return of over 100,000 Americans to the United States.
By early October, Hoover was ready to return to the United States, as his wife and two sons had already done. But it was not to be. Under the Schlieffen Plan, Germany had attacked France through Belgium. Within days, Belgium was overrun. Within weeks, Belgium was in dire straits. Before the war, Belgium had imported three-quarters of its cereal grains. Now, most of the 1914 harvest had been lost in the fighting, while much of Belgium’s supplies were either destroyed or taken by the military. The Belgians were caught between a German occupying army and a British naval blockade.
Calling on fellow mining engineers and others, Hoover organized the CRB to get food to Belgium. The problems were immense. The British said that it was up to the Germans to feed the Belgians, since they had attacked and were occupying the country, but the Germans said they would not do it, with the British blockading all of their ports. For their part, the British refused to let food go through the blockade for fear it would be taken by the Germans.
Hoover and the CRB had to convince the British to let the food through the blockade while at the same time getting German guaranties not to seize the food or interfere with the CRB’s efforts in Belgium. Plus they had to figure out a way to pay for it all.
Hoover took charge. By the end of November, he had convinced most American railroads to carry Belgian grain donations for free. But grain in the US would take two months to get to Belgium. Belgium needed food before that. Hoover got a loan of 10,000 tons of flour from neutral Holland, but he needed more. He went to British Prime Minister Asquith, asking for a loan of 20,000 tons of Canadian flour until American flour could arrive. Asquith was not sympathetic, but Hoover wouldn’t give up, asking Asquith how the British could claim to be fighting on behalf of Belgium if they wouldn’t do this to feed them. Also, Hoover said Britain would lose the battle for American public opinion if it refused to help Belgium. Asquith acquiesced, telling Hoover: “You told me you were no diplomat, but I think you are an excellent one, only your methods are not diplomatic.”
In January of 1915, when the CRB did not have enough money to pay for the grain it needed, Hoover ordered the grain anyway, signing a personal note for $600,000 as part of the transaction. At the same time, Hoover knew that donations would not cover the need. He needed a funding source for the CRB. He turned to England for a subsidy, but David Lloyd George, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, objected. Once again, Hoover went straight to the top and convinced Lloyd George to approve it, turning him into a strong supporter of the CRB. Hoover then traveled to Berlin to get the necessary German approvals, talking to the finance minister, foreign minister, and even Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg.
In April 1915, Hoover and CRB added the French population behind the trenches, in German-occupied northern France, to its responsibilities. The CRB and its related operations in northern France were now feeding 9,000,000 Belgians and French.
When one problem was solved, another would arise, but Hoover never faltered. According to Hoover biographer George Nash:
“No obstacle, it seemed, was too formidable, no custom or bureaucratic regulation too sacred, to stymie the relentless chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. … [W]hen the going was roughest, said his colleague and admirer Hugh Gibson, Hoover would sometime remark: ‘But we must remember that we are here to feed the Belgians.’”
For its first two years, the CRB received much of its funding indirectly from the British and French governments. But by early 1917, both countries were running short on money. At the same time, Germany’s declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare both endangered CRB’s ships, as well as making America’s entry into the war more likely. Hoover worked feverishly to get the Germans to not attack CRB ships. At the same time, he convinced President Wilson and the United States to take over most of the funding for the CRB.
In April of 1917, Hoover sailed back to the United States to take on his new job as head of the United States Food Administration. Behind him, he left a CRB that would continue to feed Belgium and northern France until the end of the war. In the almost two and one-half years Hoover ran the CRB, it had raised, in contributions and subsidies, more than $200,000,000, with an administrative overhead of less than 1%. The CRB had acquired and shipped over 2,500,000 tons of food to Belgium and northern France, saving more than 9,000,000 people from hunger. In 1917, three quarters of Belgian children were receiving daily hot lunches from the CRB. And Hoover did it all without pay or even reimbursement for his expenses.
Herbert Hoover is one of a very select number of American presidents who would be justifiably famous even if they never became president. The Founders, of course. Andrew Jackson, maybe. Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower, definitely. They won wars. And Herbert Hoover. In 1914, Belgium needed to be fed. Herbert Hoover stepped up. Did he do it alone? Of course, not. But could anybody else have done it? Almost certainly not. It was Hoover’s combination of aggressiveness, compassion and refusal to quit that enabled him to do what needed to be done. As George Nash said, “The sufferings of the children of Belgium drove him on.”
--------------
The quotations are from George N. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917 (1988), pages 70, 366 and 371, respectively.
Comments