Philanthropy

===War and postwar: Belgium and Eastern Europe===
[[File:"Wanted Immediately. 2,000,000 Garments for destitute Men, Women, and children in occupied Northern France and... - NARA - 512616.jpg|thumb|right|upright=0.9|Poster requesting clothing for occupied France and Belgium]]

The [[Commission for Relief in Belgium]] (CRB) was an international (predominantly American) organization that arranged for the supply of food to German-occupied Belgium and northern France during the First World War. It was led by [[Herbert Hoover]].<ref>{{cite journal|first=George H.|last=Nash|title=An American Epic: Herbert Hoover and Belgian Relief in World War I|journal=Prologue|year=1989|volume=21|number=1|pages=75–86}}</ref> Between 1914 and 1919, the CRB operated entirely with voluntary efforts and was able to feed eleven million Belgians by raising money, obtaining voluntary contributions of money and food, shipping the food to Belgium and controlling it there. For example, the CRB shipped 697,116,000 pounds of flour to Belgium.<ref name=Burner>{{cite book|first=David|last=Burner|title=Herbert Hoover: A Public Life|url=https://archive.org/details/herberthooverpub0000burn|url-access=registration|year=1978|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|isbn=978-0-394-46134-2 }}</ref>{{rp|[https://archive.org/details/herberthooverpub0000burn/page/72/mode/2up 72]–95}} Biographer George Nash finds that by the end of 1916, Hoover "stood preeminent in the greatest humanitarian undertaking the world had ever seen."<ref>{{cite book|first=George H.|last=Nash|title=The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian, 1914–1917|year=1988|page=249}}</ref> Biographer William Leuchtenburg adds, "He had raised and spent millions of dollars, with trifling overhead and not a penny lost to fraud. At its peak, his organization fed nine million Belgians and French daily.<ref name=Leuchtenburg>{{cite book|first=William E.|last=Leuchtenburg|title=Herbert Hoover |url=https://archive.org/details/herberthoover00leuc|url-access=registration|year=2009|publisher=Macmillan |isbn=9781429933490 }}</ref>{{rp|[https://archive.org/details/herberthoover00leuc/page/30/mode/1up 30]}}

When the war ended in late 1918, Hoover took control of the [[American Relief Administration]] (ARA), with the mission of food{{clarify|reason=delivering? distributing? cultivating? need some sort of verb here to describe the mission|date=August 2023}} to Central and Eastern Europe. The ARA fed millions.{{r|Burner|pages=[https://archive.org/details/herberthooverpub0000burn/page/114/mode/2up 114]–137}} U.S. government funding for the ARA expired in the summer of 1919, and Hoover transformed the ARA into a private organization, raising millions of dollars from private donors. Under the auspices of the ARA, the European Children's Fund fed millions of starving children. When attacked for distributing food to Russia, which was under Bolshevik control, Hoover snapped, "Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!"{{r|Leuchtenburg|page=[https://archive.org/details/herberthoover00leuc/page/58/mode/1up 58]}}<ref>{{cite book|first1=Frank M.|last1=Surface|first2=Raymond L.|last2=Bland|title=American food in the world war and reconstruction period: operations of the organizations under the direction of Herbert Hoover, 1914 to 1924|publisher=Stanford University Press|year=1932|url=https://archive.org/details/americanfoodinwo00fran}}</ref>