The Low Countries. Jaargang 15

History

Remembering Herbert Hoover

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 marked the beginning of difficult times for the majority of the Belgian population. On the one hand the invading German troops prevented goods being brought in, and on the other the British blockaded access by sea. Seven million Belgians were threatened with starvation. A handful of politicians and business people tried to do something about the situation. Adolph Max, the Mayor of Brussels, organised aid for the inhabitants of the Belgian capital together with the American businessman Dannie Heinemann. They also received financial support from the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay, and set up the Central Aid and Food Committee, the leadership of which was entrusted to the dynamic businessman Emile Francqui. Not long after this, the Committee ceased to limit its activities to the capital alone and was reconstituted as the National Aid and Food Committee.

This Committee began negotiations with the German and British governments to make it possible for grain to be imported into occupied Belgium. Thanks to the diplomatic support of America and Spain, two neutral states, these discussions could only lead to a favourable outcome. In London the Belgians who had come to plead the cause had a conversation with the American businessman Herbert Hoover. The latter remembered Emile Francqui from the time when they both worked in China in competition with each other. Hoover was prepared to take on the management of a newly established organisation, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB). It was the responsibility of this organisation to centralise the funds that had been raised in Belgium and abroad for the provisioning of the country. In an astonishingly short time Hoover made the American people aware of the problem in Belgium. He succeeded in making Belgium a national problem for America.

A campaign was mounted throughout the whole of America. The Chicago Daily Tribune was given permission by the Belgian government to film at the front and its reports moved the people of America.

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Foodship for Belgium Poster.
Photo courtesy of the crb collection, Hoover Institution Archives.

Hoover organised ‘Save Belgium Festivals’ all over the place and posters were put up with slogans such as ‘Hoover calls for clothes for Belgium’ or ‘Keep Belgium warm this winter’. At a rough estimate the man who was elected in 1929 as the 31st President of the United States amassed some two and a half billion dollars. The money did not come directly to Belgium but was used mainly to buy grain and other foodstuffs. Between January 1915 and December 1918 3.2 million tons of goods were shipped to Belgium They reached Belgium via Rotterdam, because the port of Antwerp was blockaded by the British.

In Belgium these goods were distributed by the National Committee, the CRB's partner. Together they succeeded in successfully organising food supplies for the Belgian population. This still required a lot of diplomatic discussion because both the Germans and the British had to be convinced that the food was really going to the people of Belgium and not to the enemy. Hoover knew that he had to maintain as neutral a position as possible. Naturally that became problematic when the US became actively engaged in the war in 1917. At that point the role of the CRB was taken over by the Spanish-Dutch Committee; Spain and the Netherlands were of course still neutral.

Co-operation between the CRB and the National Committee and the Belgian government, which was in exile in Le Havre, did not always run very smoothly. The Belgian government had very little control over the running of the Committee, despite the fact that it was the chief source of funds. Moreover there was repeated tension between the CRB and the National Committee. The conflict came to a head in 1916 when Hoover made known his plan to intervene much more directly in the distribution of aid in Belgium and of the funds raised from the sale of foodstuffs. The Belgian Minister of Finance spoke of ‘an attempt by Hoover to gain absolute power’ and the Spanish ambassador in Belgium, Villalobar, spoke of ‘Hoover the adventurer’. But Francqui was reluctant to lose the support of the Americans and therefore agreed to certain of their conditions. So in 1916 a new agreement was reached between the CRB and the National Committee. The CRB was given a greater role in the organisation of supplies to Belgium and the fact that three-fifths of the funds came from Belgium itself was quietly ignored.

At the end of the First World War a considerable amount of the ‘Hoover-money’ which had been collected still remained unspent. Hoover and Francqui both believed strongly in the role of the universities and the importance of the intellectual development of young people. Some of the money went directly to the large Belgian universities and another part was used in 1920 to establish the University Foundation. In the same year Hoover gave some of the profits from the sale of surplus foodstuffs to the Belgian American Educational Foundation. Ever since then this organisation has been responsible for arranging exchanges

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of students and researchers between the US and Belgium. In the 86 years of its existence it has helped 3,719 people: 2,853 Belgians and 866 Americans.

Various streets and squares in Belgian cities remind us of the activities of Herbert Hoover - among them the Herbert Hooverplein in Leuven. This is right by the University Library that was destroyed in the First World War. Hoover himself raised funds for the rebuilding of this library. When the first stone was laid in 1921 the American ambassador, Brand Whitloch, noted in his diary: ‘And why should American Protestants build up a Roman Catholic seat of learning, even though it were destroyed by furor Germanicus?’ But the ambassador immediately corrected himself and noted: ‘But perhaps all these are unworthy reflections.’ They were certainly just that for Herbert Hoover, because when the building of the university was halted in 1926 through lack of funds, in his own name he collected 11.5 million Belgian francs and added a further 10 million francs from the CRB Educational Foundation. The presidential elections in 1928 prevented him from attending the inauguration of the university library, but in 1938 he was entertained there in grand style.

On his arrival in Brussels the former US ambassador, Tom Korologus, wondered why Hoover was held in such affection in Belgium. He received his answer during the Remembering Herbert Hoover exhibition organised at the end of 2006 in the Royal Army and Military History Museum in Brussels.

Dirk Van Assche

Translated by Sheila M. Dale

www.rememberinghoover.be