Early in the War the American Relief Administration, organised by
Herbert Hoover, fed day by day many millions of people in the areas of
enemy occupation. A great deal of these food supplies were contributed
by Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and other countries, as it is
only fair to say, but the American contributions were enormous, and
the organisation by American officials was a model of efficiency and
zeal. As soon as the War ended, the A.R.A., as Hoover’s administration
was universally known, extended its operations and intensified its
appeals to the charity of the American people on behalf of the stricken
populations on both sides of the war zone. The American Government
supported this work by immense subsidies of surplus stocks, which
perhaps was good business as well as good will. But the good will
was there, and it was reinforced by a volume of generosity which
welled up from an almost inexhaustible source of private charity. The
A.R.A. sent its officers and its food trains into Austria, Germany,
Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Serbia, Hungary, Armenia, Esthonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, and many other countries. It established feeding centres
and kitchens in the most necessitous cities and areas. It measured
millions of children by a rough-and-ready system which showed the
standard of under-nourishment and vital debility. It rushed food out
to the innocent victims of war’s cruelty, and helped, prodigiously,
to save the world’s childhood, without distinction of race, religion
or politics. It was a divine work, inspired by God’s love, after four
years of hate and horror. In Europe other societies, like the Save the
Children Fund, the Society of Friends, the Imperial Relief Committee,
and the International Red Cross, did splendid work too, with less means
and out of increasing poverty, on behalf of all this mass of human
suffering left as the heritage of war, but the A.R.A. was the most
powerful crusade of rescue, and by its far-reaching aid did undoubtedly
give the stricken peoples time and chance to recover their power of
self-subsistence after a period when physical weakness, moral despair,
and the ravages of war had deprived them of the means of life above the
hunger line.
It was when famine took possession of the most fertile territories of
Russia that the A.R.A. did its greatest work. In the United States
of America, as in England and France, the cry for help that came out
of Russia, so long cut off from human intercourse, so long hidden by
closed doors behind which lay the tragedy of a great people, many
men and women, shocked to their inmost soul by stories of Bolshevik
atrocities, refused to listen to the voice of charity. Many were
certain that any food or help sent to Russia would be used by the
Communist leaders to save themselves from destruction or to support the
Red Army and the Reign of Terror. In any case, as some of them said,
why feed Russian peasants who have adopted the pernicious philosophy of
Bolshevism, or submitted to it; and why feed Bolshevik babies who will
grow up to threaten the civilised code of decent peoples? Let Russia
pay the penalty of its atrocious crimes.
There was no country in the world where there was a greater loathing
of Bolshevism than in the United States. It was to the majority of
American citizens, as it is still, the Unspeakable Thing, because it
denied the rights of private property, declared war upon Capital,
and conspired for the overthrow of all Governments based upon the
Capitalist system. So much the more wonderful then is the charity of
those people who, with that enormous prejudice in their minds, heard
the voice of charity.