Herbert Hoover: The Man and His WorkKellogg, Vernon L. (Vernon Lyman)
History
Herbert Hoover: The Man and His Work
Kellogg, Vernon L. (Vernon Lyman)
Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964; World War, 1914-1918 -- Food supply
Altogether, twenty countries received supplies of food and clothing
under Hoover's control acting as Director-General of Relief for the
Supreme Economic Council. The total amount of these supplies delivered
from December 1, 1918, to June 1, 1919, was about three and a quarter
million tons, comprising over six hundred shiploads, of a total
approximate value of eight hundred million dollars. There were, in
addition, on June 1, port stocks of over 100,000 tons ready for internal
delivery, and other supplies came later.
The twenty countries sharing in the supplies included Belgium and
Northern France (through the C. R. B.), the Baltic states of Finland,
Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, a small part of Russia, Poland,
Czecho-Slovakia, Germany, German Austria, Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria,
Greater Servia, Turkey, Armenia, Italy, and the neutrals, Denmark and
Holland. By the terms of the Congressional Act appropriating the hundred
million dollars for the relief of Eastern Europe, no part of the money
could be used for the relief of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, or
Turkey. But Vienna needed help more quickly and imperatively than any
other eastern capital. Hoover arranged that money should be advanced by
England and France for food purchases in America for Austria and
Hungary. This food was put into Hoover's hands, and to him was left the
problem of getting it into the suffering countries. Germany was supplied
under the approval of the Allies in accordance with the armistice
agreement.
The "relief" of Eastern and Central Europe was, of course, not all
charity in the usually accepted meaning of the term. The American
hundred million dollars and the British sixty million dollars could not
buy the needed eight hundred millions' worth of food and clothing. In
fact, of that American hundred million all but about fifteen are now
again in the U. S. Treasury in the form of promises to pay signed by
various Eastern European Governments. About ten millions of it were
given by Hoover outright, in the form of special food for child
nutrition, to the under-nourished children from the Baltic to the Black
Sea. By additions made to this charity by the Eastern European
Governments themselves and by the nationals of these countries resident
in America, and from other sources, two and a half million weak children
are today still being given (May, 1920) a daily supplementary meal of
special food.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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