nmark 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.

Hoover's experience in Belgium and Northern France had taught him how
necessary was the special care of the children. All the war-ravaged
countries have lost a material part of their present generation. In some
of them the drainage of human life and strength approaches that of
Germany after the Thirty Years War and of France after the Napoleonic
wars. If they are not to suffer a racial deterioration the coming
generation must be nursed to strength. The children, then, who are the
immediately coming generation and the producers of the ones to follow,
must be particularly cared for. That is what Hoover gave special
attention to from the beginning of his relief work and it is what he is
now still giving most of his time and energy to.

For the general re-provisioning of the peoples of Eastern and Central
Europe all of the various countries supplied were called on to pay for
the food