in a year of universal food shortage in the
Northern Hemisphere, all of these people joined together against Germany
have come through into sight of the coming harvest not only with health
and strength fully maintained, but with only temporary periods of
hardship. The European Allies have been compelled to sacrifice more than
our own people, but we have not failed to load every steamer since the
delays of the storm months of last winter.

Our contributions to this end could not have been accomplished without
effort and sacrifice, and it is a matter for further satisfaction, that
it had been accomplished voluntarily and individually. It is difficult
to distinguish between various sections of our people--the homes, public
eating places, food trades, urban or agricultural populations--in
assessing credit for these results, but no one will deny the dominant
part of the American woman.

But the work of the Food Administration did not come to an end with the
close of the war. Insistent cries for food came from the members of the
defeated Teutonic alliance, as well as from the suffering Allied and
neutral nations. To meet those demands, Mr. Hoover sailed for Europe to
organize the food relief of the needy nations. The State Department,
explaining his mission, stated that as the first measure of assistance
to Belgium it was necessary to increase immediately the volume of
foodstuffs formerly supplied, so as to physically rehabilitate this
under-nourished population. The relief commission during the four years
of war sent to the 10,000,000 people in the occupied area over 600
cargoes of food, comprising 120,000,000 bushels of breadstuffs and over
3,000,000,000 pounds of other foodstuffs besides 20,000,000 garments,
the whole representing an expenditure of nearly $600,000,000. The
support of the commission came from the Belgian, British, French and
American governments, together with public charity. In addition to this
some $350,000,000 worth of native produce was financed internally in
Belgium by the relief organization.

The second portion of Mr. Hoover's mission was to organize and determine
the need of foodstuffs to the liberated populations in Southern
Europe--the Czecho-Slovaks, the Jugo-Slavs, and Serbians, Roumanians and
others.

To meet the conditions in Europe following the armistice of November 11,
1918, the employment service of the United States set to work laying
far-reaching plans for meeting the problem of wo