Commission for Relief in Belgium

The Commission for Relief in Belgium or C.R.B. − known also as just Belgian Relief − 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.

Its leading figure was chairman Herbert Hoover (later president of the US).

When the Great War broke out, Hoover was a mining engineer and financier living in London. When hostilities erupted, he found himself surrounded by tens of thousands of American tourists trying to get home; their paper securities and travelers' checks were not being recognized and very few of them had enough hard currency to buy passage home, even if any ships had been sailing; most voyages had been canceled. Hoover set up and organized an "American committee" to "get the busted Yankee home," making loans and cashing checks as needed. By October 1918 the American Committee had sent some 120,000 Americans home, and in the end lost just $300 in unpaid debt. This episode brought Hoover and his organizational talents to the attention of the American ambassador, Walter Hines Page, and several other key people in London, who came to him in late October with a request for his help with a much larger problem:

In 1914, after being invaded by Imperial Germany, Belgium suffered a food shortage. The tiny nation, at the time among the most urbanized countries in Europe, only grew enough food to meet 20-25% of its needs. Nonetheless, the German occupiers were requisitioning what was there to help feed their army. The civilian population, in addition to the demoralizing effect of being conquered in a few days by Germany, faced imminent starvation unless a lot of food were brought in, fast.

But it wasn't such a simple thing as buying food and bringing it in, as American expatriate mining engineer Millard Shaler found out when he tried to do just that. Great Britain had imposed an economic blockade on Germany and its occupied countries. If Shaler brought food in, the British figured, the Germans would just requisition it.

Seeking a solution to this dilemma, Shaler contacted ambassador Page, and Page contacted Hoover.

The commission's task was to obtain foodstuffs from abroad and ship it into Belgium, where C.R.B. monitors would supervise its distribution by members of the Comité National de Secours et d'Alimentation (C.N.S.A.), the Belgian organization headed by Émile Francqui. This was necessary because C.N.S.A. employees, living under the German occupation, were not citizens of a neutral country and were legally required to obey the orders of German soldiers, whereas C.R.B. people were not. The food imported by the C.R.B. remained the property of the American ambassador to Belgium, Brand Whitlock, throughout the distribution process and right up to the point of being placed on a plate.

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