Commission For Relief In Belgium 13: As If It Had Never Happened

Herbert Hoover’s reputation could not have survived the war years without protection from his Secret Elite masters. Once he had been presented as the humanitarian face of the so-called relief programme, and his status transformed from unscrupulous and crooked mining-engineer to quasi-diplomat, he had access to the inner chambers of the American, British and German governments. Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) records show that  between 1914-1916 he had discussions with Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey [1], Prime Minister Henry Asquith [2] and Chancellor Lloyd George, [3] yet interestingly they blank him entirely from their official memoirs. Why? US President Woodrow Wilson and various Secretaries of State discussed policy with Hoover, as did German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann [4] and Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. [5] The Kings of Spain and Belgium and countless senior diplomats across Europe knew Hoover personally, yet their reticence on the subject of Belgian Relief speaks volumes

Critics were silenced, rebutted or otherwise dissuaded in order to protect his reputation as the ‘great humanitarian’. The greater Hoover’s success at the CRB in prolonging the war, the stronger the Secret Elite’s cordon of protection was drawn around him. Almost everyone who spoke out or questioned him was crushed or discredited, beaten into submission or forced to retract their claims in the face of violent threats and legal retribution. It was as if his past history had never happened. Officially.

Convinced that Belgian Relief was  damaging the British war effort as early as April 1915, the Admiralty in London, asked naval intelligence to investigate Hoover’s background. Allegations were made that he was ‘untrustworthy, had sinister business connections with German mining corporations’, and that ‘his foodstuffs had passed into German hands.’ [6] His activities were subjected to a formal investigation headed by Sir Sidney Rowlatt who duly whitewashed his findings and gave his formal stamp of approval to the Foreign Office. Loyal member of the British establishment, Rowlatt was later responsible for the repressive Rowlatt Act in India which led to serious unrest in the Punjab and the shocking Amritsar Massacre in 1919. [7]

Hoover steadfastly lied about his business connections. Initially, he claimed to have resigned from his mining company directorships because the relief programme left him no time for private business. [8] He is famously quoted as saying, ‘let the fortune go to hell’, [9] yet records from Skinner’s Mining Manual show that he served on thirteen boards of directors in 1914 and on sixteen in 1915. By 1916 he not only remained on thirteen boards but was chairman of one and joint manager of both the Burma Corporation and Zinc Corporation. [10] His companies returned immense dividends during the war largely through the unprecedented increase in demand for metals and munitions. When rumours of his impropriety in the dealings of the Zinc Corporation surfaced in 1916, law suits followed. He approached the Foreign Office to directly intervene on his behalf, on the grounds that his work with the CRB was too important to the war effort. At his behest, the Ambassadors from Belgium and France wrote to the Foreign Office to stress Hoover’s vital role in Belgian Relief. The Foreign Office advised Hoover’s solicitor that, if ‘The Court’ sought their opinion about the importance of his work, they would willingly reply. The British establishment knew how to protect its assets.

In legal proceedings taken against his Burma Corporation, he attempted to pervert the course of justice by claiming to have previously resigned from the company. His ‘resignation’ was a sham, a temporary convenience to avoid court proceedings. Back on the Board of the Burma Corporation, Hoover brokered a deal in December 1917 with the head of the CRB office in New York and Ernest Oppenheimer to develop gold mines in the Rand. He organised the finance chiefly through the CRB’s bankers, J P Morgan & Company and Morgan’s Guaranty Trust Company of New York. Thus the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa was born, a mining giant in its field from day one. [11]

Consider these connections. Hoover used the CRB banking agencies [12] to  broker a deal that rewarded him with a huge shareholding (plus options) which reaped him yet another fortune. Who was greasing whose palm?  Hoover’s access to ‘insider-knowledge’ brought him an enormous stroke of ‘good fortune’. Like Lord Rothschild some time before, he liquidated almost all of his direct Russian holdings in late 1916, just in time to avoid the consequent take-overs obligated by the Russian Revolution. Every one of his former Russian enterprises was confiscated. [13], and other unfortunates had to bear the consequent loss. Lies and evasion, deceit and malpractice were laced into Hoover’s mentality. Yet his illegal business practices were successfully covered up by his Secret Elite minders.

At the end of the war Herbert Hoover was given one final task in Europe by the Secret Elite. Their role in causing the war and supplying the German army during the conflict had to be kept buried. Any evidence of CRB impropriety, of its complicity with the German government of occupation in Belgium and of its role in prolonging the war would have been ruinous. Hoover faced a massive undertaking. With registered offices in New York, London, Brussels, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Paris, Lille and Buenos Aires, [14] official documentation for purchasing agents, shipping agents, insurance brokers, bankers and auditors, statisticians and clothing buyers, the CRB had left in its wake a multiple tonnage of bank transactions, ledger entries, accounts, deposits and records of international exchange. The list was potentially endless, at least, theoretically, because no independent records ever saw the light of day. They were systematically taken after the war by Hoover’s agents and shipped to the west coat of America. Ponder long and hard on this fact; the evidence was physically removed from its point of origin. It was to be as if the illegal importations to Germany and the malpractices of Belgian bankers and speculators had never happened.

We do not know what has since been destroyed or what languishes in the darker recesses of the Hoover Institute at Stanford, but a very determined and successful attempt was made to rewrite history while presenting Hoover as a great saviour of humanity. Our research proves that, in reality, he was a ruthless opportunist – a liar and cheat who browbeat, bad-mouthed and took advantage of the weak while greatly increasing his personal fortune throughout the war. And, had there been no CRB to supply Germany, the war would have ended as early as the Spring of 1915. Millions died while he and other millionaires thrived.

Bad as Hoover’s manipulation and removal of the CRB’s records was, it is of relatively minor importance compared to the outrageous theft of the historical record from all across Europe. In 1919 he was given this important task as the Secret Elite set about removing documentary evidence pertaining to the origins of the war. Once more he had to be re-invented. The ‘great humanitarian’ became a ‘lover of books and of history’ who wished to collect manuscripts and reports relating to the causes of the war because they would otherwise ‘easily deteriorate and disappear’. [15] Hoover certainly made sure that anything incriminating ‘disappeared’.

On the basis that his involvement was kept ‘entirely confidential’, Ephraim Adams, professor of history at Stanford University, a close friend of Hoover’s from their student days, went to Paris in April 1919 to coordinate a great heist of documentary evidence, official and unofficial, and dress it in a cloak of academic respectability. Adams resolved to keep a diary, but stopped after a week on the spurious excuse that he was making too many contacts and the work was a too interesting ‘to suffer interruption by recording them.’ [16] The task had to be undertaken immediately. Speed was of the essence. Adams was in Paris by 11 June with no plan of action, other than follow Hoover’s instructions that all the documentation was sent to Stanford University in California. It was about as distant a destination from the European theatre as could be imagined.

Nothing was too unimportant. Decisions about relevance would be left to a later date. Two years later Adams still hadn’t even begun the process of creating a catalogue on the rather spurious basis that doing so too early led to ‘disappointment and vexation’. [17] In Belgium, for example, access to government records was facilitated by ‘M. Emile Francqui, mining engineer and a banker of world reputation’. [18] Of course it was. Who else knew where all the important evidence was buried? Francqui, whose all-powerful Belgian bank, the Societe Generale ended the war cash rich and thriving beyond its dreams, [19] was the one man who knew exactly what had to be buried deep for all time.

Why have historians and investigative journalists failed to unmask this charade? Hoover and Francqui orchestrated the removal of documents that enabled the myth of Belgian Relief to flourish while masking its sinister role.

Hoover had many powerful friends. He persuaded General John Pershing to release fifteen history professors and students serving in various ranks of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe and sent them, in uniform, to the countries his agency was feeding. With food in one hand and reassurance in the other, these agents faced little resistance in their quest.  They were primarily interested in material relating to the war’s origins and the workings of the Commission for Relief of Belgium. They made the right contacts, ‘snooped’ around for archives and found so many that Hoover ‘was soon shipping them back to the US as ballast in the empty food boats’. [20] He recruited an additional 1,000 agents whose first haul amounted to 375,000 volumes of the ‘Secret War Documents’ of European governments. [21] Hoover allegedly donated a $50,000 ‘gift’ for the task. It would only have paid for around seventy of these agents for a year. It has not been possible for us to discover from what source the remaining nine-hundred men were paid.

Hoover’s backers claimed that there would only be ten years within which the most valuable material could be ‘acquired’. According to Ephraim Adams, Hoover himself estimated that the process of ‘collecting’ would go on for twenty-five years [22] but it could take ‘a thousand years’ to catalogue the material. The collection was accelerated to a ‘frenzied pace’. [23] How convenient. The official propaganda insisted that the work was urgent, but it would take a millennium to catalogue. They were stealing history.

Hoover was the US Secretary of State for Commerce from 1921 and as a fitting reward for all of his sterling efforts on behalf of the Secret Elite, he became their chosen candidate in the US presidential election of 1928. His critics in America were systematically harassed or squashed. Books that exposed his malpractices were removed from shelves and whole editions pulped. Hoover had long employed sophisticated public relations to curry favour with the media. Pliant biographers and party hacks were supplemented by use of the FBI to perform background checks on would-be unsolicited authors. [24]

A campaign of determined denigration was launched against the crusading journalist Walter Liggett, whose well researched book, The Rise of Herbert Hoover stands testament to Hoover as a criminal businessman and opportunist, who strove to manipulate and remove the records of his past wrong-doing. [25] Liggett, a fearless reporter and newspaper editor who represented the best of American investigative journalism, was later gunned down for exposing syndicated crime. [26]

Tracy Kittredge, a loyal insider who worked with the CRB in Belgium, wrote a very comprehensive  history of the Commission for Relief in Belgium – now entitled the Primary Source Edition – in 1919. [27] Hoover didn’t like its content, so it remained unpublished. In 1942 he claimed that Kittredge’s work  was deemed ‘inaccurate and unreliable’ and was not be shown to anyone without clarification. [28] Hoover did not explain what the inaccuracies were, but we suspect that Kittredge’s criticism of Francqui and the bad blood between both the CRB and the CNSA was the cause. He ordered an associate to collect and destroy all copies of the unpublished work which had progressed as far as a bound proof. Fortunately for researchers, a few survived the cull. [29] Even when faced with official records from those who were there, the Secret Elite endorsed the party line; nothing irregular had ever happened. Any view to the contrary had to be suppressed.

The biography which most disturbed Hoover was John Hamill’s The Strange Career of Mr Hoover Under Two Flags. [30] It was a hugely controversial expose which resulted in an outpouring of indignation from the Hoover lobby who damned the book as a complete fabrication. Shortly after its launch, Hoover’s legal team reported that Hamill had signed a one hundred and eighty-four page repudiation, admitting ‘false conclusions’. Interestingly Hamill refused in court to admit that his work was entirely false and only went as far as to say that ‘my interpretations were in error in some instances.’ [31] It has since been suggested that Hoover’s own agent, George Barr Baker, wrote the repudiation using strong-arm tactics and thuggery. That is the same George Barr Baker who penned articles published in the New York Times about starving Belgian children, and visited the Pope as the CRB envoy. [32]

Hamill’s conclusion chimes absolutely with ours: ‘The whole scheme of Belgian Relief was planned for the purpose of securing the enormous food supplies of Belgium for Germany. The Belgian Relief …. was the cause of the prolongation of the dreadful war, with all its horrors and miseries, and the loss of millions of lives, including our more than 126,000 brave American boys (not to mention the wounded and crippled).’ [33] It was, and the extent to which the Anglo-American establishment went to cover all traces of its complicity, remains awesome.

And who today has heard of the Commission for Relief in Belgium? Where does it sit in the role of honour for World War 1? No-where. It has been systematically buried; as if it never happened at all. But there was one major political consequence.

On 4 March 1929 the great Belgian Relief ‘humanitarian’ was sworn is as President of the United States of America.

[1] George I. Gay and H H Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Document 18, p. 19.
[2] George H. Nash, Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, pp. 69-70.
[3] George I. Gay and H H Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Document 147 , p. 266.
[4] Ibid., Document 134, pp. 241-2.
[5] Ibid., Document 140, pp. 252-255.
[6] Nash, Herbert Hoover, p. 176.
[7] For further information on the Massacre at Amritsar in 1919, known also as the Jallianvala Bagh Massacre, see; http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/events/jbagh.html
[8] Nash, Herbert Hoover, p. 270.
[9] Walter Liggett, The Rise of Herbert Hoover, p. 209.
[10] Ibid., pp. 210-211.
[11] http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Anglo_American_Corp._of_South_Africa_Limited.aspx
[12] The Commission for the Relief in Belgium, Balance Sheet and Accounts, published 1921 p. 86
http://libcudl.colorado.edu/wwi/pdf/i71185215.pdf
[13] Nash, Herbert Hoover, p. 274.
[14] The Commission for the Relief in Belgium, Balance Sheet and Accounts, published 1921.
[15] Cissie Dore Hill, Collecting the Twentieth Century, p. 1 at http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/8041
[16] Ephraim Adams, The Hoover War Collection at Stanford University, California; a report and an analysis, (1921), p. 7. https://archive.org/details/cu31924031034360
[17] Ibid.
[18] Adams, The Hoover War Collection , (1921), p. 36.
[19] After 1918, the Societe Generale continued its expansion, founding Banque Générale du Luxembourg. Banque Belge pour L’Etranger also grew, opening new branches in New York, Istanbul, and Hong Kong, among other cities. In addition, SG had banking interests in Portugal, Spain, and much of Eastern Europe. The year before its 100th anniversary, in 1922, the bank’s books showed credits amounting to BFr 4.1 billion and debits of BFr 2.1 billion. http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/generale-bank-générale-de-banque-history/
[20] WhittakerChambers, Hoover Library http://whittakerchambers.org/articles/time-a/hoover-library/%5D
[21] New York Times, 5 February 1921.
[22] Adams, The Hoover War Collection, p. 5.
[23] Hill, Collecting the Twentieth Century, p. 1 at http://www.hoover.org/ publications/hoover-digest/article/8041
[24] Roseanne Sizer, Herbert Hoover and the Smear Books, 1930-32, State Historical Society of Iowa, Vol. 47, (Speing 1984) no. 4, p. 347.
[25] Walter Liggett’s The Rise of Herbert Hoover was published in 1932 by the H W Fly company. it can be read on; https://archive.org/details/riseofherberthoo011467mbp
[26] Stopping The Presses, the Murder of Walter Liggett by Martha Liggett Woodbury, his daughter, is an excellent expose of the corruption and sleeze in the USA in the 1920s and 30s and details the victimisation and persecution of a respected journalist who unmasked, amongst other crooks, Herbert Clark Hoover.
[27] Tracy Barrett Kittredge was a member of the Commission for Relief in Belgium from 1914-1917. The Guide to the Hoover Institution Archives includes his correspondence, reports, writing and newspaper clippings, but makes no mention of the book which Hoover ordered to be pulped. See Charles G Palm and Dale Reed, Guide to the Hoover Institution, p. 126.
[28] G Nash, Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, pp. 449-50.
[29] A copy held in the Library of the Free University of Brussels contains a note to the reader in French. It states that ‘the work is both a rare book and a document of real historical interest’. First printed in London in 1920 under the auspices of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation, the note states that Mr Kittrege’s writings included some criticism of ‘certain Belgian persons’ so it was decided, in the interest of good Belgian-American, ‘metre au pilon’ literally, to pound it to dust. The note is dated July, 1964.
[30] John Hamill’s The Strange Career of Mr Hoover under Two Flags, was published by W. Faro in 1931.
[31] New York Times, 5 January, 1933.
[32] New York Times, 21 December, 1916.
[33] Hamill, The Strange Career, p. 306.

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 11: When Thieves Fall Out

Despite the backing of the most powerful and influential men in Britain, France and America, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) frequently ran into both international and local squabbles which threatened to undermine its prime objective; to prolong the war by feeding both Belgium and the German army. Personal relationships, human frailty, including jealousy, and the lure of making even more from the rich pickings, motivated a greed which could well have back-fired in many different ways.

Rumblings at Westminster tended to be muted in the early stages of the war, but by 1916 more and more MPs voiced their concerns about the Relief programme. They asked questions about the total value in Belgium of the foodstuffs imported by the Neutral Relief Commission (another name for the CRB) and the amount of contributions made by the United States, by other neutrals, by the British Empire and by other allied governments. [1] Critics quickly became swamped by an avalanche of information that included the tonnage of foodstuffs, including bacon and lard being exported to Belgium. Lard was of particular interest because glycerine for high explosives could be extracted from it. Statistics were produced to show that in November 1914, 67 metric tons had been imported into Belgium and Northern France; in October 1915 this had risen to over 6,000 metric tons. [2] Parliamentary suspicions were entirely justified. Food was certainly flowing into the German ranks whether by the requisition of home grown products or resale of imports by unscrupulous Belgians but overwhelmingly by secret agreement between the CRB/CNSA and the German government. Baron von der Lancken’s official reports proved that without a doubt. [3]

On 21 January 1916 Lord Eustace Percy at the foreign office, wrote an alarming letter to Herbert Hoover about the volume of rice which had been stockpiled in Belgium by the CRB. He was ‘much disturbed’ to find that large quantities had been re-exported to Germany through Holland and been sold to the Germans ‘by the Relief Committee in Belgium’ [4] Emile Francqui assured Hoover that the matter had been investigated and that the ‘information’ from Lord Percy was exaggerated. Apparently it was the fault of a private German company which bought the food from a Belgian dealer who purchased the rice from ‘consumers’. Hoover’s problem was that while he had foreign office approval to import 5,000 tons of rice per month, between September and November around 34,000 tons had been landed, much more than double the agreed amount. Percy consequently threatened to ban the import of rice until the Germans handed over an equivalent amount from their own stock. Hoover’s response in February was firstly to rebut the statistics used by the foreign office and added that ‘some of the local committees, finding the fabulous price at which they could sell rice, have done so entirely in innocence of heart and have invested the money in potatoes….’ [5] It beggars belief.

In March 1916 Lord Percy wrote another detailed and worrying letter to Hoover. He had received reports from an ‘unusually trustworthy’ source that as much as half of the food imported by the Commission to the district of Ghent was going directly to the German army or being redirected to Breslau in Germany. Between November 1915 and January 1916, British sources claimed that seven boatloads of coffee, rice, beans, flour and oil nuts, some 4,200 tons in total had reached Germany through Holland. Lord Percy named one particular mill-owner in Brussels who was extracting oil from the milling process and selling it to the Germans ‘for munitions purposes’. [6] Hoover’s standard reply was to insist that the total leakage was very small and that the smuggling of overseas material through Holland was much greater than previously believed. [7] Deny, deflect and deceive were his watchwords, but constant complaints that the concession to the CRB was indeed feeding the enemy, gathered volume.

There is a further aspect to this that appears to have been scrupulously ignored. Belgians knew that the system was being abused by their own countrymen. At first the Comite National made little effort to monitor the day to day workings of the provincial committees but by December 1915 they had to acknowledge the ‘innumerable breakages of their instructions’ were leading to serious abuses which had caused adverse comment abroad. The CSNA conceded in their Report on general operations in 1915 that imported foodstuffs were not being exclusively sold in their appointed shops or being distinctively identified as relief produce, [8] which had been part of the basic agreement. In other words, his focus was limited to Belgians who were ignoring the rules and selling or reselling food to the Germans. By so doing, attention was drawn away from the greater scandal – Hoover’s faustian pact with the German government.

In Parliament, honourable members began to sharpen their questions especially when the German government of occupation began to use food provision as an inducement to encourage unemployed Belgians to work for them. ‘What action was the Government going to take in view of the admitted facts that the importation of foodstuffs by the Neutral Relief Commission makes Belgian products available for the Germans, and the distribution of these foodstuffs is being used as a means of obtaining forced labour in Belgium?’ [9] The answer from Lord Robert Cecil, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs was curt. ‘I cannot agree that the alleged facts are admitted’. Later in the same debate he was asked if he knew the exact amount of proceeds from the sale of foodstuffs in Belgium. All he said was ‘No Sir, I cannot answer that without notice’. [10] The foreign office simply closed down discussion.

MPs were also rightly anxious about the volume of maize and other feeding stuffs imported into Holland (the inference being that such product was then re-exported to Germany) The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs assured them that ‘according to the Dutch statistics, only 2 tons of vegetable or animal oils’ had been exported to Germany that year. [11] Two tons. This was simply ridiculous. Time after time valid questions were answered with weak assurances or avoidance. Eventually, in August 1916, two years into the war, the blunt question was put;

‘Is his Majesty’s Government satisfied that the funds of the National Committee for Relief in Belgium are in fact devoted to the relief of loyal Belgians in the occupied territories, and not to that of Germans or of Belgians working for the German Army?’ [12]

Lord Robert Cecil’s reply was hardly convincing. He blustered on about ‘satisfactory guarantees covering all domestic foodstuffs’ but was obliged to concede that ‘violations of these guarantees by the Germans still arise’ although the ‘United States, Spanish and Netherlands Representatives at Brussels are taking energetic steps, [to stop this] and the Germans are well aware that a continuance of such violations will endanger the whole work.’ Was that a serious intention? Did assurances mean anything? He insisted that ‘His Majesty’s Government are satisfied that the foodstuffs imported by the Relief Commission run no risk of appropriation by the enemy.’ [13] Satisfied? He knew what was happening. The Foreign Office had evidence of the German appropriations, of railway trucks rolling from Holland to Germany, of the disappearance of food stocks, but of course admitted nothing. How could it, given the complicity of the Secret Elite?

There was a stock reply. ‘His Majesty’s Government have assisted the relief work in response to the wishes of the Allies, including the Belgian Government, and in the interests of the whole population.’ [14] If necessary, when challenged about the volume of imports into Belgium, the answer was tantamount to, ‘our figures very often do not agree with those published elsewhere.’ [15] The policy was being pursued despite loudly voiced complaint and problematic questions. And the Germans continued to feed their army and their civil population from the well-stocked nest that was occupied Belgium. In mid-November the CRB reported to the American Legation that ‘the Germans were shipping 3,000 head of cattle per week in to Germany, and much grease’. [16] This was not a leakage, it was a torrent behind which a desperate struggle for power was waged.

Tensions between the CRB and the Comite National in Brussels heightened in 1916. By that time the system had been more or less established and the Belgians felt that too much praise had been heaped on the Americans while their immense efforts often went unrecognised. They were jealous. A bitter battle of wills developed with Hoover and his right hand man, Hugh Gibson in one corner and Francqui and the Comite National in the other. It never bodes well when thieves fall out. The Belgian government in exile at Le Havre agreed to recognise the CNSA, or ‘Francqui and Company’ as Brand Whitlock sarcastically dubbed them, as its representative in Belgium, and in return Francqui ‘agreed to abdicate when the king returns’. [17] In the eyes of the head of the American Legation, ‘ Francqui assumed the power and rank of a dictator and has even told Hoover that the CNSA must be shown the respect due to a government.’ [18] While recognising that Whitlock was partisan, his outburst when Francqui declared that Belgium wanted no more charity from America and that the Americans were ‘invaders’, was classic. He found ‘the chicanery, the double-dealing, the black treachery of some participants’ to be so loathsome that words failed him. [19] Yet the world understood that the CRB and its Belgian arm, the CNSA, were as one, united to feed the needy and destitute of Belgium. It was no less than a global scam.

The stakes were enormous. The CNSA bankers were well aware that it was Hoover’s CRB which could cream off the profits from international transportation and trade in foodstuffs and gifts of clothing. They wanted their fair share.

Hoover had admitted to Whitlock in August 1916 that the CRB had accumulated a vast profit running into millions of dollars. He claimed to have suggested to Francqui that it should be used after the war to fund a scholarship for Belgian boys in American Universities and vice-versa. [20] The parallel with Cecil Rhodes and his Oxford University scholarships must have been music to Secret Elite ears.

In private, the name-calling was slanderous. Hoover called Francqui a ‘financial pirate’ and the CRB’s head of the Department of Inspection, Joseph Green, accused Francqui of leading a corrupt financial ring in Brussels, claiming that his dubious reputation ‘was known in financial circles on three continents’. [21] Note the clear emphasis on finance. When the squabbling was reduced to basics, it was all about money, power and control.

Hoover became further embroiled in a heated argument with the Belgian Government in exile when he presented them with an audited account for $65,000,000 which the CRB claimed to have spent to the end of 1915, money that had been channelled from the Allied borrowing in America to the Belgian government. Aloys van de Vyvere, the Belgian finance minister said that he would not finally discharge the claim until the government in exile returned to Brussels and could verify the data. To have automatically  approved Hoover’s accounts without careful scrutiny would have been a dereliction of duty. Herbert Hoover was outraged. His organisation was, in his view, answerable to no government and in a petulant memorandum to Walter Page, which he expected the Ambassador to sign, [22] he asserted that he had no legal liability to the Belgian government and the charitable gifts given to his organisation were his to dispose of as he saw fit. [23] Francqui and Hoover were both hewn from the same rotten elm. Their arrogance was unrestrained.

Both agencies, the CRB and the Comite National behaved like mobsters goading, name-calling and threatening dire consequences as they struggled to assert their domination over the same territory. But it was Hoover who had the protection of big brother. The Foreign Office laid down the law. Sir Edward Grey, recently ennobled as Lord Grey, ordained that the CRB must have undivided responsibility not just for the importation of food, but its distribution and use of the money raised from sales. [24] Lord Eustace Percy joined the attack by warning that British officials were of the opinion that the Comite National was not fulfilling its duty of inspection to ensure that the Germans did not abuse the importation of food. He was right. The Comite’s processes were corrupt and allowed widespread abuse.

Francqui ordered the Prosecuteurs du Roi to stop sending information to the CRB about charges brought against Belgian citizens for violating food regulations. Such reports had to be sent directly to his offices, and any request for information was to be routed through the CNSA. From August 1916 onwards, he entirely suppressed important cases and adjusted and amended official figures so that no-one could accurately measure the extent of Belgian malpractice in selling food to Germany. [25] By October, the CNSA had begun to replace American flags and bill-boards indicating ‘American Relief’ with their own banners at distribution centres. It may seem petty today but Ambassador Page in London was offended. He demanded that the message be clearly understood: ‘The Comite National is not the pivot upon which relief work revolves in Belgium.’ [26]

Every ounce of Secret Elite muscle was brought to bear on Francqui’s stance and by mid-December 1916 the Belgian government changed tack and agreed that the CRB should control the distribution of food in Belgium. Hoover won but Francqui was not cowed. He had to accept the British decision to back Hoover, but in doing so revealed his own ace card. He told the head of the American Legation that he had written a 600 page history of the Belgian Relief, and asked if Hoover ‘wished to risk being shown in his true colours in a book that will remain a standard history?’ [27] According to Brand Whitlock, Francqui added that ‘there is even a chapter on the role of the protective ministers’. Such an expose would have blown away more than Herbert Hoover. Unfortunately the promised book never saw the light of day. The quarrel was glossed over in a barely disguised stand-off, but relationships remained strained.

Thus the flow of food to Germany was protected, and the Secret Elite made clear their confidence in Herbert Hoover. Meanwhile, the real war continued.

[1] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 10 July 1916 vol. 84 c7.
[2] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 18 July 1916 vol. 84 c818.
[3] Micheal Amara et Hubert Roland, Gouverner en Belgique occupee, Oscar von der Lancken-Wakenitz – Rappports D’activite 1915-1918. pp 55- end.
[4] George Gay and HH Fisher, Public Relations for the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Percy to Hoover, 26 January 1916, Document 46, p. 79.
[5] Ibid., Document 48, pp. 80-81.
[6] Ibid., Document 49, pp. 81-82.
[7] Ibid., Document 50, pp. 82-83.
[8] Rapport General sur le functionement et les operations du Comite National de Secours et Alimentation, 1914-1919, p. 35.
[9] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 20 July 16 vol. 84 cc1158-60.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 27 July1916 Vol. 84 cc1841-2.
[12] Mr Evelyn Cecil MP, Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 10 August 1916 vol. 85. cc1201-2.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 23 Nov 1916, Vol. 87 cc1547-8.
[15] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 31 Dec 1916, Vol. 88 cc1588-9.
[16] Brand Whitlock, The Letters and Journal,  Chapter VII, 17 November, 1916,
http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Whitlock/bw07.html
[17] Whitlock, Letters and Journal, Chapter VII, 6 November 1916.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Whitlock, Letters and Journal, Chapter VII, 1 August 1916.
[21] George H. Nash, Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian p. 219.
[22] Memorandum drafted to Walter Hines Page, 3 May, 1916.
[23] Nash and Fisher, Herbert Hoover, p. 204.
[24] Tracy B. Kittredge, The history of the Commission for the Relief in Belgium, 1914-1917, p. 364.
[25] Ibid., p. 371.
[26] Ibid., p. 374.
[27] Whitlock,  Letters and Journal, Chapter VII, 17, 6 November, 1916.

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 8: Solving The Problem With Other People’s Money

In August 1914, the Banque National de Belge transferred its gold reserves and ‘a large number of State bonds’ to the Bank of England and despite protestations from the Germans that these assets should be returned, they remained safely in London vaults along with the printing blocks for official Belgian currency. [1] This arrangement had been secretly agreed in 1913, and though several members of the board of the National Bank of Belgium were sent by the Germans to London in February 1915 to ‘recover’ bonds and gold, the mission was little more than tokenism. There were no circumstances under which gold would have been returned. Which raises the question of what was it all about?  

The critical issue for bankers in early 1915 was the circulation of money which was becoming an ever increasing problem for both the CRB and the occupying forces. A solution had to be found. Without money, commerce would shudder to a halt. Herbert Hoover journeyed to Berlin in February 1915 to meet amongst others, the German Minister of Finance. [2] The Reichsbank offered to solve the impasse by raising a $50,000,000 loan in America, guaranteed by Germany, but to be repaid by Belgium. They suggested the construction of a ‘relief bank’ but the proposal had to be rejected. No matter how important he considered himself, Hoover did not have the power to impose a $50,000,000 debt on the Belgian government. [3]

Another proposition demonstrated just how much the ‘Relief’ business was worth to international bankers. According to Hoover’s memorandum of the meeting on 4 February, 1915, the Germans suggested that the CRB might use ‘ friends of the German Government in New York City’ to discount their bills of exchange through Max Warburg in Hamburg and the New York banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Co. International trade worked effectively through this system whereby one party, say, a German importer pays for American grain by a giving the American exporter a bill, much like a cheque, to be paid in three months time. If the exporter needs the cash early he can take the bill of exchange to a merchant bank which will discount it. That means the bank will instantly pay him a sum of cash at less than the bill’s value. The bank can afford to wait three months and take the full amount. It has always been big business. In wartime it was huge business.

The Warburg brothers, Max and Paul were key players in international finance. Max Warburg was head of the family bank, M.M. Warburg and Co. in Hamburg, and Paul Warburg was senior director at Kuhn, Loeb and Co. in New York. Like the J.P. Morgan empire, both Warburgs had strong Rothschild connections. [4] Paul had been instrumental in the creation of the Federal Reserve System in America, and basically both these men were deeply involved in the business deals which were wrapped around Belgian Relief. How convenient was this for the Secret Elite? Max Warburg offered to take over the market in discounting South American grain bills [5] which would divert the profits from London.

Later that same evening, Warburg met with Hoover at Berlin’s Adlon hotel and talked about his great success in discounting bills for cotton shipments from America to Germany through Kuhn, Loeb in New York. He believed that his firm could offer a better return for discounting the grain bills. [6] Next day, Hoover held talks with Albert Ballin, the Head of the Hamburg-America shipping line, and a frequent visitor to London before war broke out. Indeed Ballin’s connections in Britain gave him access to Secret Elite controlled politicians and, days before the final declaration of war, he went to London ‘ostensibly on business’. Here he met Sir Edward Grey, Richard Haldane and Winston Churchill but we do not know what they talked about. [7] Official histories limit the discussion to assurances given to Ballin that Britain would remain neutral, but was that all? Barely one week later, Albert Ballin and Max Warburg had been put in charge of the Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft, (ZEG) the state-owned organisation charged with purchasing food for Germany from foreign countries. [8]

The Hoover memorandum states that Ballin was keen to have his impounded Hamburg-American freight ships released for use by the CRB, [9] but Hoover knew that it would not have been acceptable to the British public for German ships to freely carry goods across the Atlantic. Having taken a cargo to Rotterdam, it would have been comparatively easy for Ballin’s freight ships to slip into German waters. It was a risk too far even for the Secret Elite. However there is another consideration. Both men were rivals for the scarce commodity, food.

Hoover had the great advantage of access to the world market, while Ballin was restricted to the Romanian grain harvest and what could be imported from America through the sham blockade. [10] Ballin would also have known about the vast quantities of CRB imports flowing through Rotterdam, and precisely how much was being diverted to Germany. Given that Albert Ballin was in charge of German food procurement, and Herbert Hoover headed the Commission for the Relief of Belgium, how likely is it that their talks were limited to shipping and finance?  Are we to believe that Hoover and Ballin failed to talk about food importation? Be mindful that Hoover’s memorandum is the only known record of their discussions.

Hoover’s visit continued with a meeting with the financial advisor to the Imperial government in the company of Max Warburg who repeated ‘two or three times’ that his brother’s influence with the Federal Reserve System would be financially beneficial to the CRB. [11] The Warburgs were desperate to muscle into the markets for discounting bills of exchange and the claim that they had influence over the Federal Reserve in New York was no mean boast. Unfortunately for them, so too did J.P. Morgan. It was a non-starter, but both sides had to find a solution to the tricky problem of money. Without money workers couldn’t be paid, pensioners would go penniless and trade would stutter to a standstill. Faced with that reality-check, both the Belgian government in exile and the German government of occupation accepted a solution which was mutually beneficial.

Emile Francqui’s Societe Generale was appointed to act as the national bank in Belgium, and was granted the exclusive right to issue bank-notes until 20 November, 1918. [12] Instructed by the German authorities, these notes did not carry any national emblem or picture of the Belgian royal family or indeed anything that symbolised patriotic loyalty. [13] By this point Emile Francqui had become the ‘national mediator’ [14] and little wonder, given the power that was devolved to his bank. Naturally, banks charged for their services, and the Societe Generale had much to gain. More pertinently, this arrangement suited all parties, belligerent and neutral, and helped prolong the war.

When Herbert Hoover negotiated the massive loans for Belgian Relief from allied governments he used the J.P. Morgan organisations in America, co-ordinated through Morgan Guaranty Trust of New York which, in turn, made the requisite transfer to Morgan Guaranty in London. Part of the ‘money’ was then transferred on paper to Banque Belge pour L’Etranger in London to pay for civil servants, pensioners, schoolteachers and many other Belgian government workers. From there, the money was transferred to the Societe Generale in Brussels.

Though this was managed on ledger accounts, like all paper currencies, if accepted in exchange, the system worked. The Societe Generale had, under German authorisation, printed acceptable banknotes estimated at 1,600,000,000 Fr which circulated through the economy and underscored trade and commerce. Franqui’s bank was permitted to issue bills to the value of three times its holdings in gold, in foreign currency, in Reichsmarks and in credits on foreign banks. [15] The Societe Generale’s role was therefore, absolute. Francqui was the bankers’ banker. At this point, with an acceptable currency in circulation and used by both the public and by international banks, the German government imposed a 40,000,000 Fr (£1,600,000) tax per month on Belgium. This equates to  £114,5000,000 per month at today’s values. There was muted outrage, but little else. The bankers protested, but paid up rather than risk their personal fortunes. The Germans had agreed an important trade off. They did not interfere with overseas investments held by Belgian Banks. Perhaps that is why their protests amounted to a mere whimper.

There was an additional problem with the lack of money in circulation  because the Belgians were by nature cautious and inclined to save any spare income. In any case there were very few luxuries available outside the American Relief shops in Brussels and Antwerp. However, in September 1916, the occupying force took stringent measures to annex the public savings accounts in both the Banque National de Belge and the Societe Generale. They demanded that the funds held in Reichsbank notes be transferred back to German control or the banks would be sequestered. Whether or not the threat was real, $120,000,000 was collected for the German treasury and transferred to Berlin. [16] Germany firstly imposed a tax and carried off about one quarter of the money which the American loans had guaranteed, and then annexed savings.  This money boosted the Reichsbank’s holdings and was used by the German government to buy foreign goods. So the war was effectively prolonged because Belgian Relief provided Germany with food to sustain her armies and funds to pay for her war effort.

The popular belief was that the funds used for Belgian relief came from public charity, mostly of American origin. Not so. Though Hoover embarked on many fund-raising initiatives and made constant appeals to individuals, national groups, even Pope Benedict XV, whose Papal message to America in early December 1916 was strategically timed to coincide with Christmas gift-giving, [17] the major source of income came from official government loans organised through J.P. Morgan’s American consortium. In early 1915, Hoover had negotiated an Anglo-French-Belgian subsidy of $5,000,000 per month and in 1916 this was increased by 50% to $7,500,000 per month. [18] In 1917, The New York Times ran an article which implied that Hoover was being ‘shamed’ by the paucity of charitable funds sent from the USA, a mere $9,000,000 (under 4%) of the total $250,000,000 spent by the end of 1916, even although ‘fat profits had been made in America from the sale of supplies for Belgium.’ [19] It was a clever ploy, targeted at the American public conscience, for Hoover did not care where his funds came from. Nor do his figures make sense. In America alone, thousands of committees were formed to collect funds.  The Literary Digest alone donated over $300,000 and numerous institutions, magazines and newspapers in America ‘ gave till it hurt’. [20] We will never know the true extent of the fraud.

Once America declared war in April 1917, Hoover was able to access even greater funds from the US government, which agreed to contribute directly.  In May 1917, $75,000,000 was appropriated for his use. And the incredible fact is that these sums were credited to the French, British and Belgian Governments, but spent, as in all cases by the CRB. The money from the American Government was to be advanced in instalments of $12,500,000 per month, of which $7,500,000 was to go to Belgium and $5,000,000 to France, whether or not the afore-mentioned had asked for it. [21] These were awesome figures and the language used signalled Hoover’s primacy in deciding how funds were to be spent. His agencies decided what would be bought from suppliers all over the globe, which shipping agencies would carry the cargoes, which distributors would be employed. Fortunes were made.

Hoover was fearless in overspending other people’s money. By mid-1916 the commission’s expenditure in Belgium exceeded its income by $2,000,000 a month, [22] but Hoover knew that he would be able to source the funding for the simple reason that all of this was planned. The political will was there; it simply had to find reason. Financial muscle was never far from his centre of power. The Morgan/Rothschild axis was wrapped around the entire project; but they were not the givers, they were not donating funds; they acted as suppliers of funds … at a price. They were bankers.

[1] The Times 22 Feb. 1915.
[2] George I. Gay and H.H. Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, pp. 245-250, Documents 135-138.
[3] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, pp. 86-7.
[4] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War. pp. 214-5.
[5] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission, p. 245, Document 135.
[6] Ibid., p. 247, document 136.
[7] Bernhard Huldermann, Albert Ballin, p. 215.
[8] Ibid., pp. 223-228. http://www.archive.org/stream/albertballin00hulduoft/albertballin00hulduoft_djvu.txt
[9] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission, p. 248, Document 137.
[10] See our blogs between December 10 and February 4, 2015.
[11] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission, p. 248, Document 138.
[12] Manfried Pohl and Sabine Freitag, Handbook on the History of European Banks.
[13] Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under German Occupation, p. 214.
[14] Charles D’Ydewalle, Albert King of the Belgians, p. 147.
[15] Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under German Occupation, p. 217.
[16] Ibid., p. 215.
[17] New York Times, 21 December 1916, p.8.
[18] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p.197.
[19] New York Times, 31 January 1917.
[20] John Hamill, The Strange Case of Mr Hoover Under Two Flags, pp. 322-3.
[21] New York Times, 10 May 1917.
[22] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 196.

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 7: The Power Of The Banques

Perhaps the cleverest aspect of the whole CRB business was that it dealt mainly in money and kept its own books, accountable to no-one. It sought more from all possible sources with unbridled avarice. Appeals for Belgian relief were initiated across the English-speaking world from 1914 onwards, and it has been assumed that the generous giving from ordinary people sustained the international programme. This was simply untrue. Although the word American was literally stamped across all that was imported (it was generally called ‘American Relief’ even in Belgium), most of the food for the people of Belgium and Northern France was financed by the Allied governments. So too, were the supplies that sustained Germany and the German army on the western front. The volume of funds required was enormous, and well beyond the scope of charity. Banks, and in particular banks that had international connections, were absolutely central to the control and abuse of Belgian relief.

As early as November 1914, a loan of $3,000,000 had been advanced from the immensely wealthy Belgian Bankers associated with the Comite National for the purchase of food for Belgium. It was a loan, not a gift. However, Herbert Hoover unilaterally announced that these funds had been granted to his organisation to be used for transportation. As we previously explained, that was a lie aimed at undermining a rival organisation under the Rockefeller banner. No such restriction had been laid down by the Belgians. [1] Indeed at exactly the same time as he was dictating that the loan from the Comite National was for transport, Hoover was negotiating with American suppliers for free transportation of grain across the United States. [2] Hoover was absolutely determined to be the sole controller of money, food-purchase and transport and to crush any parallel charitable organisation. Over the next three years he brooked no rival and successfully negotiated with national governments and international banks for loans totalling multiple millions of dollars…. and how and where it was spent. Such was the power he assumed that an independent observer might have believed it was Hoover’s money.

Belgian banks formed a formidable and influential power-base at the core of European and international finance in the last decades of the nineteenth century and grew rich on the exploitation of the Congo, China and South America. The principal independent Belgian bank, the Societe Generale de Belge stood above them all. From 1902 it launched a number of foreign expansions and in 1913, its most significant move was to make the Banque Sino-Belge an official subsidiary of the Societe Generale under the title of the Banque-Belge pour L’Etranger. [3] To all intents this appeared to be a benign decision based on natural expansion, but its branch office in London served as the headquarters of the Societe Generale outside occupied Belgium during the First World War. The connection was absolutely critical to the dealings of the Comite National between 1914-1918.

A second important connection stemmed from the Banque d’Outremer, an international company for commerce and industry. Formed in 1899, its shares were owned by an interesting combination of Rothschild banks, Belgian financiers enriched by the rape of the Congo, and British investors close to the Secret Elite. The Societe Generale was the largest subscriber closely followed by Rothschild’s Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas, Banque Leon Lambert and Cassel & Cie. Both Sir Ernest Cassel, King Edward VII’s banker [4] and Sir Vincent Caillard, of Vickers, friend of Lloyd George and Basil Zaharoff, were shareholders. Co-incidentally, its specialism was mining and metallurgy and Banque d’Outremer bought large shareholdings in companies across the globe. [5]

A further ‘co-incidence’ was that Emile Francqui, the President of the executive committee of the Comite National de Secours et Alimentation, (CNSA) was a director of both banks, the Outremer from 1905-11 and the Societe Generale from 1911 onwards. In 1915, when the Chairman of Outremer, Albert Thys, died suddenly, Francqui took control of both it and the Societe Generale. [6] When one considers the financial and banking power held by these individuals alone and their direct association with the Secret Elite, it is little wonder that the phrase ‘money-power’ became common parlance; the House of Rothschild, both in London and Paris; Ernest Cassel, Nathan Rothschild’s financial associate in creating the armament’s giant Vickers; Baron Leon Lambert, his son-in-law, who ran his own family bank; Emile Francqui had been King Leopold’s man in the Congo. He was associated with Herbert Hoover in China and South Africa, controller of two of the most important banks in Belgium and President of the executive committee of the CSNA. All these men were all linked by blood or money. But that was only the tip of the financial iceberg.

Almost every important Belgian banking houses was represented in the CNSA. Josse Allard, formerly a director of the Belgian mint, headed the Banque Allard et Cie, which in turn was affiliated to the Banque Josse Allard in Brussels and an associate of the Dreschner Bank in Germany. [7] But the links crossed the Atlantic too. Franz Philippson, head of the Banque Philippson which was formed to finance loans for the independent state of Congo in 1888, joined with prominent American-German bankers Kuhn, Loeb and Co. in New York and their Hamburg banking colleagues, the Warburgs, to form a Portfolio company to specialise in selling US securities in Europe. Because these banks were integral to the structure of the commercial life of Belgium and aided the Germans by guaranteeing payments to the occupying force, their foreign investments were not subject to interference. It proved a convenient understanding.

The Banque National de Belge, the National Bank of Belgium, (NBB) its central bank, had formerly printed all of the bank notes for the nation but as punishment for transferring its gold reserves and ‘a large number of State bonds’ to the Bank of England in August 1914 [8] the Germans chose to operate through Francqui’s Societe Generale, thus giving it even more international kudos. The Banque National’s’s auditors had included Baron Leon Lambert of Rothschilds and intriguingly, Edward Bunge, the Antwerp banker and grain importer.

Edward Bunge’s family connections reached into Argentina, where his brother Ernest and his brother-in-law, George Born, emigrated from Antwerp and by 1909 their grain exporting company, Bunge and Born owned Argentina’s largest and most profitable flour mills, grain silos and harbour installations. They were the exporting arm in the joint business. Edward owned Bunge and Co. as the independent European outlet for the massive grain importing business and the operating hub for these companies was Antwerp. [9] Like many other rich entrepreneurs, Bunge and Co. had been involved in King Leopold’s notorious exploitation in the Congo and administered the affairs of the company which was given rights over the 12,000 square miles of the Mongalla district by the Belgian monarch. [10] Trusted by the Belgian royal family, Edward Bunge was in a perfect position to both assist Hoover in purchasing grain and benefit spectacularly from the venture.

While Hoover and the Commission later produced a chart showing membership of the CNSA, the banking connections were hidden in a forest of names. When highlighted below, it reveals the extent of the domination of the CNSA by Belgian banks and business.

Comte National de Secours et d’Alimentation (CNSA)

President
Ernest Solvay
Chairman, Solvay S.A.

Vice-Presidents

Jean Jadot                                     L. Van Der Rest
Vice-Governor, Societe Generale     Vice-Governor, National Bank 

Members

Josse Allard                             Dannie Heineman                 F. Masson

Banque Josse Allard              Director, CNSA Brussels
Director, Belgian Mint           Director, SOFINA

Louis Bertrand                         J. de Hemptinne                Comte de Merode
Belgian Workers Party                                                    Aristocrat

F. Van Bree                        E. De Wouters                       C. Heynderbickx
Societe Generale            Managing Director
Congo Financier             Banque Belgique d’Etranger

Baron Evence Coppee            Baron d’Huart                       C.L. Peten
Mining/Metallurgy              Representative                  Advocate

E. Van Elewyck                      F.M. Philippson                       W. Hulse
National Bank                    Banque Philippson               SOFINA

E. Francqui                           Baron Janssen                       F. Portman
Societe Generale
Banque a Outremer

L. Frank                                 E.M. Janssen                          L. Solvay
Solvay S.A .                                                                      Solvay S.A.

Baron Lambert                       Max Hallet                             E. Hanssens
Banque Lambert                    Lawyer                            Constitutional 
International Financier                                                  Lawyer

A. Harmignie                       Michel Levie                            G. De Laveleye
Catholic Party           ex-Minister of Finance               Business Lawyer

Alfred Orban                        P. van Hoegaerden                  Ed Bunge

Banque Belgique                National Bank                 Banque Bunge & Cie   d’Etranger

Executive Committee

President
Emile Francqui
Chairman, Societe Generale; Banque a Outremer

Vice Presidents

Emmanuel Janssen          Chevalier E De Wouters                       M.F. Van Bree
Solvay S.A.                     Banque Belgique d’Etranger            Societe Generale

Look carefully then, at the names of those who served on the Comite National, headed by its President Ernest Solvay, the wealthiest industrialist in Europe. Solvay’s firms were spread across the world and major plants and factories could be found in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium and America. The Executive committee, the select group which was charged with day to day decision-making was chaired by Emile Francqui, director of the Societe Generale and the single most powerful banker in Belgium. By the end of the war he would become a man whom even wealthy bankers feared. Francqui was supported by men who held high office in the Societe Generale or Solvay’s companies, including Chevalier de Wouters d’Oplinter, the same man who had stood side by side with Herbert Hoover in the infamous London court case of 1905. [11]

They were ably assisted in full committee by Baron Leon Lambert, head of Banque Lambert, the second biggest private bank in Belgium. Both Lambert and Francqui had previously enjoyed direct involvement with the rabid Belgian exploitation of the Congo despite the atrocities that happened there. [12] Francqui had negotiated loans with the US financier Pierpont Morgan on behalf of King Leopold II and on return to Belgium had invested his fortune in banking. [13] As we have shown in our blog of 26 August, Dannie Heineman, an engineer of German descent, though born in America was head of the international SOFINA Group and his associate, William Hulse, also of SOFINA were pro-German. SOFINA was founded in 1898 as a German company which held vital tram and electricity concessions in Spain, Argentina, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, France and Turkey. Heineman and Hulse were consequently very influential with the German governors in Brussels, and Heineman’s voice also carried weight in Berlin. He was their man and Hoover used him as such.

Thus, the Comite National was headed by the most important and influential industrialists and bankers in Belgium whose assets crossed national boundaries. But the interconnections ran much deeper. They had holdings in minerals and ores essential for the war, chemicals that offered new ways of spreading death and foodstuffs located in neutral countries that could provide bread to the warring factions. They could make loans, underwrite borrowings and discount bills of exchange. Everything they did made a profit. This was surely one of the oddest collections of humanitarians in history. When the full committee met together there was also a coterie of the King Albert’s representatives, some high-placed lawyers and genuine politicians representing the complete spectrum of Belgian society, the Workers, the Catholics and the Conservatives, whose aim was to serve a needy people. But they were in a minority, kept away from the power-base executive which made the real decisions and reaped the eventual rewards.

Like the barons of medieval England, the Comite National dictated its own charter on 31 October 1914 and had it rubber-stamped by all of the delegates from across Belgium who depended on it. They announced that two new organisations had been created, one the Commission for Relief in Belgium, by this time, Hoover’s CRB, and a second, the Provincial Committees whose work would be supervised by the delegates appointed by the Comite National. They declared that the Comite National would ‘maintain intimate co-operation’ with the CRB through its offices in Brussels. However the chief feature of this declaration of virtual self-government was the agreement that ‘the Comite National would centralise the accounts, fix the price of merchandise and look after the payment of supplies sold to the provincial committees.’ [14] Through this system, Provincial Committees paid the CNSA for the foodstuffs it received, and resold to consumers at fixed prices so that they could earn a ‘ small profit’. They were also obliged to pay an insurance premium to cover any damage or misfortune that might befall their supplies. [15]

Furthermore, each provincial committee had to maintain a running account with the Societe Generale with sufficient funds to cover at least one month’s shipments of food. This was not charitable humanitarianism; it was monopolistic control. The Comite National fixed the price of the food and clothing, whether donated or bought by Allied funds. Putting aside food allocated for the destitute, everything was sold for cash at a profit with payment guaranteed and the Societe Generale as the central banker. Francqui and his banking associates literally set up a system where they could dictate ever rising prices, allocate the scarce resources, make ever increasing profit. Even the cash flows ran through his all-powerful bank. And they called it benevolence. What impertinence!

Certainly Hoover had the backing of the financial power-houses of New York and London, but the Belgian banks boasted international muscle that challenged even his authority from time to time. The reader might wonder why, with so much wealth, the Belgian banks, did not risk their assets to relieve there fellow-countrymen? What? They were banks, for goodness sake; banks don’t operate charities, do they? Yet they would like you to believe that they played a major role in this relief scheme. That’s what their records claim.

[1] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, pp. 49-52.
[2] Ibid., p. 57.
[3] Manfred Pohl and Sabine Freitag, Handbook on the History of European Banks, p.84.
[4] King Edward VII had a very close relationship with Sir Edward Cassell, whom he trusted and valued. Interestingly, Cassell was the last visitor whom Edward saw before his death in 1910.
[5] R. Brian et J.L. Moreau, Inventaire Des Archives de la Banque d’Outremer S.A., 1899-1957, pp. VII- VII, http://www.avae-vvba.be/PDF/Banque_%20d_Outremer.pdf
[6] Ibid.
[7] Marie Therese Bitsch, La Belgique Entre La France et d’Allemande, 1905-1914, p. 134.
[8] The Times 22 Feb. 1915.
[9] Gabriel Tortella and Gloria Quirega, Entrepreneurship and Growth: An International Historical Perspective, pp. 78-81
[10] E.D. Morel, Affairs of West Africa, p. 331.
[11] The Times, 2 March 1905, p. 9.
[12] Neal Ascherson, The King Incorporated, Leopold and the Congo, p.199.
[13] Charles D’Ydewalle, Albert King of the Belgians, p. 147.
[14] Tracy Barrett Kittredge,The history of the Commission for Relief in Belgium – Primary Source Edition,  p. 77.
[15] Charles de Lannoy, L’Alimentation de la Belgique par le comite national (published 1922) p. 32. https://archive.org/details/lalimentationdel00lann

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 4: A Very Belgian Solution

Shortly after the start of the war and the consequent German invasion of Belgium, hundreds of thousands of refugees trudged westwards to France, across the channel to England and north east to Holland, leaving behind a shocked and disoriented population. Estimates of the number of refugees vary widely from the CRB’s conservative guess of approximately 600,000 [1] to around 1.5 million. [2] The much lower number suited the CRB’s more grandiose claims that it had to feed around 9.5 million ‘otherwise inevitably starving people’ who remained behind. [3] Despite the destruction caused by the invaders, there was at first no shortage of food supplies. [4] However, some areas of the country were particularly badly affected by the German advance, and a number of different local committees set up organisations to provide food, clothing and even accommodation for those in distress. In a very short time, these groups had been amalgamated into an enormous supply chain which none of the belligerents ‘dared or cared’ to stop. [5]

Had the general public in allied countries known how much of the food supplied for ‘starving Belgians’ was destined for Germany, there would have been outrage. Had they realised that these foodstuffs, which eventually totalled over a hundred thousand tons a month, purchased by money which the tax-payer in Britain and France would have to repay, actually sustained the enemy and prolonged the war, governments would have fallen. Had the allied troops known there would have been mutiny throughout the ranks.

A number of important assumptions still exist which have helped conceal the clever sleight of hand behind the organised system that supplied food to both the civilians in Belgium  and the German army on the Western Front. The first and most concerning is the extent to which the illusion of starvation or impending starvation in Belgium was created. Belgium was highly industrialised but at least 60 per cent of the country comprised rich agricultural land which was intensively cultivated. During the war years the general conditions of farming were sound, though modest. [6] When war broke out Belgium found herself in a very favourable position with regard to food stocks. The new cereal crop had been exceptionally good and, despite the presence of an invading army, there was at first no shortage of food and prices hardly rose. [7]

So from where did the myth of a starving nation emerge? Haunting images exist of starving Boer children in South Africa, of starving German families and children in 1919, of the atrocities visited on the starving holocaust victims in 1945, of pitiful Biafran innocents in the 1960s, but not from Belgium in 1914. The immaculately staged images, published by the Hoover Institute, of Belgian children  show masses [8] of adequately clothed youngsters with suppliant begging-bowls, presumably hungry. There is, however, a world of difference between hunger and starvation. There was need, no-one would deny that. But there was no evidence of a starving nation. There are no memorials to victims of starvation in Belgium during the First World War, as there are say, in Ireland to the millions who died in the great famine,  so why has  myth been accepted as fact?

A second assumption spread by journalists and historians who have unquestioningly accepted the claims made by Herbert Hoover and his associates, was that the supply of emergency foodstuffs was undertaken by a single organisation called the Commission for the Relief of Belgium, or as many preferred, the American Relief Committee. It was not. Two organisations were in operation, one from New York and London, the other from Brussels, but they rarely acted as, nor considered themselves to be one body. The third assumption is that these organisations were entirely charitable; indeed ‘benevolence’ was their favoured term. [9] Again, this is not true. Much of the food was sold and the profits allegedly flowed back to the relief fund to purchase more. What this amounted to, we will never know. But this is the essential problem with Belgian relief in all of its guises; it has been successfully covered-up and rebranded, and what is recorded lends itself to myth.

The groups which emerged by the end of 1914 to provide food to Belgium (and later Northern France) gathered immense power and their prestige grew through a combination of bankers, financiers, racketeers, lawyers and politicians. They were unaccountable to any democratic chamber and wrote their own history. Though not all were motivated by self interest and greed, the system that operated favoured the powerful banks. Indeed, with both the King and the Belgian government in exile, by November 1914 the Brussels Committee was regarded by many Belgians as the provisional government. [10]

Consider the initial response to a serious situation. The provision of adequate food for citizens caught up directly in the consequences of the German advance through Belgium towards Paris had caused an immediate problem. Many villages were totally destroyed and towns like Louvain, Dinant and Aerschot razed to the ground as the might of the German army pushed its way westward. Around twenty per cent of the population may have fled the country and the capital, Brussels, sheltered around 200,000 refugees. [11] Factories closed and civil servants and local government employees went unpaid. A ‘private charitable organisation’ was formed in Brussels to counter the growing crisis by raising money to buy food and distribute it to the needy, unemployed or destitute in and the city.

It described itself as a triumph of good organisation and careful preparation which coordinated the disbursement through local volunteer relief agencies, distribution centres and uniform rationing. But food was not supplied free of charge. Only the ‘verifiably poor’ received free rations and those who could, had to pay. [12] In Brussels the organising group called itself the Comite Central and its most unusual feature was that it comprised virtually every senior banker in the land. Banks rarely involved themselves directly in charitable works unless, of course, there was an underlying benefit.

As the history of the Rothschilds has proved, certain banks are always first to know what is about to happen [13] In 1912, two years before the cataclysm of world war, a series of events took place which anticipated what was to come to pass; events which made a mockery of Belgian ‘neutrality’. King Albert convened a secret meeting of the Belgian parliament and disclosed that he had evidence that Belgium was in dire and imminent danger. Two crucial moves followed. Firstly the strength of the Belgian army was raised by 340,000 men, an enormous expansion given the ‘neutral’ status of a small nation. [14] As explained in our book,  long before the war Belgium had  worked under secret military agreements and alliances with Britain and France.

Secondly, the National Bank of Belgium began preparations to cope with the financial emergency that war would bring. In utmost secrecy, they printed 5-Franc notes to replace silver coins and planned the transfer of their reserves of gold and note-making plates to vaults in the Bank of England in London. [15] Not only had the Belgian banks prepared for a war that no-one allegedly knew was coming, they had chosen sides. So much for neutral Belgium.

While this expose focuses on the lesser known and often denied malpractices from which key players made fortunes, there can be no doubt that thousands of volunteers and civic administrators worked ceaselessly to feed and safeguard the ordinary citizen, man soup-kitchens, issue daily rations, provide milk and other suitable food for mothers and babies and shelter the destitute. The infant mortality rate in Belgium fell from 151 per 1,000 live births in 1914 to 119 by 1918 [16] which would surely have been impossible in a nation wracked by starvation. In addition to food, a central warehouse was opened in Brussels in September 1914 to collect, restore, distribute and sell second-hand clothes. [17] This is a history of immense kindness on the part of many, and despicable exploitation by the few.

The task of sourcing foodstuffs from both inside Belgium and from neutral countries was initiated by the Comite Central in Brussels in September 1914. Dannie Heineman, an American-born electrical engineer who had spent most of his life in Germany, apparently suggested to the Comite Central that diplomatic channels might be opened with American and Spanish approval to purchase food abroad. Subsequently, the Comite authorised him to contact the German authorities. The official CRB histories describe Heineman as an American businessman, resident in Brussels, [18] but this is entirely misleading.  He was taken to Germany by his widowed mother when he was eight years old and was educated there, graduating from the Technical College of Hanover in 1895. His first post was in Berlin with a company directly associated with the American giant General Electric. In 1905, he headed a small three-man Belgian-German company which specialised in electric power and transport. Established by Belgian bankers, the Societe Financiere de Transports et d’Enterprises Industrielles (SOFINA) became a powerful player in the nascent energy industry. It grew into an international company employing 40,000 workers and owned tramway and electrical power systems throughout the world. [19] How could Heineman possibly have raised the finance to achieve such success? Who was backing him?

Dannie Heineman, the moving spirit, [20] played a particularly important, though often underrated role in what followed because he was well known and trusted by the Germans. Not everyone approved of him. The Head of the American Legation at Brussels, Brand Whitlock, had reservations about Heinemann. He noted in his diary on 14 October 1914: ‘A call from Heineman towards noon. He has been discussing with his German friends the revictualing of the city and also the affairs of the banks. Heineman, invaluable, clever little Jew, eyes like a rat. Very strong with the Germans.’ [21] Quite apart from the despicable anti-Semitic pejoratives, consider the implications here. Dannie Heinemann was first and foremost a friend of the Germans.

Time and again over the following three years, the chief role in negotiations with the German Governor-General ‘ fell naturally’ to Heineman. [22] By October 1914 he had been elevated to vice-chairman of the CRB and director of the Brussels office. Why? It is our contention that this man who was closely linked to Germany was placed in a key operational role because it gave him ample scope to divert supplies to the occupying forces. Surely the British authorities were aware of this? It stood to reason that, no matter their assurances, the occupiers would abuse the proposed system. Were these not the same ‘heartless’ Prussians lambasted for almost a decade by the British press for their inhumanity? Why would the Germans have agreed to allow the importation of foodstuffs into their area of occupation unless there were substantial benefits to their own war effort? And where does Heineman and ‘the affairs of the banks’ fit into this jig-saw puzzle? The answer is, at the very core of all that the Secret Elite constructed around the facade of humanitarian relief.

Heineman discussed the proposals with the German civil administration which in turn approached the military authority to obtain the requisite permission to purchase food for Belgian citizens. Assurances that imported food would not be requisitioned by the German army were given to the Head of the American Legation, Brand Whitlock. Further promises were made that the Germans would not tax, seize or requisition any supplies imported by the Comite Central for the needs of the civilian population in Belgium. On the face of it, if the British government was prepared to allow the Americans to feed Belgian civilians, then the responsibility for doing so passed from the German occupiers. It was a win-win solution from their point of view. If Belgians were fed with imported food, it would make some of the food actually produced in Belgium available to the Germans to sustain their armies. From the start the German civil administration reserved the right to decide how and where flour and wheat were to be distributed. [23] The Comite would not have absolute control over distribution even though they pretended otherwise.

Dannie Heineman’s close confidante, Millard Shaler, a mining engineer whose background, like that of Emile Francqui, lay in Belgium’s cruel and ruthless exploitation of the Congo, was chosen to make representation to the British government. He duly made his way to London with a credit note for £20,000, and instructions from the Comite Central to buy foodstuffs on their behalf. Critically, he also carried the written assurance from the German Governor-General that they would not seize any of the food imported to feed the civil population. [24] Shaler was also instructed to meet a representative of the Banque Belge pour l’Etranger in London to organise, in co-operation with the Belgian Minister resident there, a sub-committee to raise funds and purchase food on their behalf in England. [25] The important point to recognise is that in these early days this was an all-Belgian affair, organised in conjunction with the Belgian government in exile in association with Belgian banks. Funding and purchasing was to be channelled through the largest Belgian private bank, the Societe Generale de Belgique, a vitally important cog in all that was to transpire. Its London affiliate, the Banque Belge pour l’Etranger was the British connection. In what the bank’s own history terms a ‘providential’ move, a direct link between the main Belgian bank’s headquarters in Brussels and the London branch had been established in 1913. Amazing. What lay behind this providence?

The early success of the Brussels committee attracted the attention of a number of mayors and community representatives in other cities and districts who appealed to them for help, and the Comite Central’s scope was widened to encompass most of occupied Belgium. Under the Presidency of Ernest Solvay, head of the international Solvay Chemical companies, and the patronage of the Spanish and American ‘Ambassadors’ [26] as well as the Dutch Minister at Le Harve, the Comite Central expanded into a more important and influential organisation called the Comite National de Secours et Alimentation. (CNSA)

It is no exaggeration to say that the Belgian people saw the CNSA as a symbol of opposition to German occupation. It had 125,000 agents operating in the cities and provinces, a visible sign of Belgian solidarity. [27] The ordinary people were doing their best to help others. They had no notion whatsoever that the CNSA was working in harmony with the German occupiers. Two vitally important factors should be made clear at this stage. Firstly, the CNSA was a Belgian affair. Secondly it’s controllers were mostly creatures of finance and banking.

So how did Belgian Relief, which originated with the Comite Central in Brussels, mutate in the minds of most of the world into The Commission for Relief in Belgium and, by default, American Relief?

Please note that from next week we will be posting two blogs each week on Wednesday and Friday.

[1] Tracy Barrett Kittredge, The History of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, 1914-1917.  Primary Source Edition, p. 7.
[2] Lipkes J. (2007) Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914, Leuven University Press suggests a figure of around one and a half million.
[3] Kittredge, The History of the Commission, p. 1.
[4] Rapport sur l’activite du Bureau Federal des Co-operatives Intercommunales de Revitaillement,in General Report on the functioning and operations of the Comite National de Secours et Alimentation – Quatrieme Parte, p. 267.
[5] Kittredge, The History of the Commission, p. 1.
[6] Louis Delvaux, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 247, Belgium in Transition (September 1946) p. 144.
[7] Rapport sur l’activite du Bureau Federal des Co-operatives Intercommunales de Revitaillement, in General Report on the functioning and operations of the Comite National de Secours et Alimentation – Quatrieme Parte, p. 267.
[8] http://www.hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/Hooverstory/gallery02/index.html
[9] Heures de Detress, l’oeuvre du comite national de secours et d’alimentation et de la Commission for Relief in Belgium, 1914-1915, p. v. http://uurl.kbr.be/1007553?bt=europeanaapi
[10] Michael Amara and Hubert Roland, Gouverner en Belgique Occupee, p. 39.
[11] Kittredge, The History of the Commission , p. 7.
[12] George Nash, The life of Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, p.18.
[13] Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: The World’s Banker, 1849-1999, vol. II, p. xxvii.
[14] Francis Neilson, How Diplomats Make War, p.179.
[15] Banque Nationale de Belgique, The Centenary of the Great War – the National Bank in wartime. http://www.nbbmuseum.be/fr/2013/11/wartime.htm
[16] Rapport sur les Petites Abeilles, Auot 1914 – December 1918 p. 20. http://www.14-18.bruxelles.be/index.php/fr/vie-quotidienne/femmes-et-enfants/textes-femmes-et-enfants/book/94/Array
[17] Kittredge, The History of the Commission, p. 17.
[18] Ibid., p. 12.
[19] Physics Today (15) 3. 1962. Obituary for Dannie Heineman.
http://scitation.aip.org/docserver/fulltext/aip/magazine/physicstoday/15/3/1.3058089.pdf?expires=1438164099&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=99F881DF2AA9139F38DDD426F550985A
[20] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 18.
[21] Letters and Journal of Brand Whitlock, The Journal, Chapter II. http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Whitlock/bw02.html
[22] Kittredge, The History of the Commission, p. 78.
[23] Ibid., p. 34.
[24] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 18.
[25] Kittredge, The History of the Commission, p. 35.
[26] While the Report (page 18) refers to them as Ambassadors, technically Brand Whitlock was Head of the American Legation. Many writers simply blur the issue and refer to Whitlock as Ambassador.
[27] Michael Amara and Hubert Roland, Gouverner en Belgique Occupee, p. 39.

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 2: The Anatomy of a Humanitarian Saviour

In Herbert Hoover the Secret Elite found the perfect man to lead the great Belgian ‘relief’ deception. His entire career had been built on the back of dubious mining investments and through a cruel, ruthless exploitation of the workers he made fortunes for his employers and for himself. One example of this centred on his exploitation of the Sons of Gwalia Mine in Australia at the turn of the twentieth century, where his cost-saving reduction in the number of safety props led to the injury or death of many miners. He fed the newspapers with stories that the mine was producing $140 worth of gold to the ton when in fact it barely reached $20. Consequently the company he represented, Bewick-Moreing of London, profited by over $120 million on the mine’s flotation. Such was Hoover’s constant modus operandi. [1]

The American–born mining engineer lived in London for years and was a business colleague of the Rothschilds. He was a friend of Alfred Milner, leader of the Secret Elite, and had provided the slave labour to man the Transvaals gold mines, so important to their control of South Africa at the end of the Boer War. He was a confidence trickster and crook who, in 1901, cheated the Chinese out of their rightful ownership of the massive Kaiping Coal fields and put them in the hands of British and Belgian bankers. [2] In addition to the illicit fortunes he made for himself and his backers, Hoover provided the British navy with much needed coaling facilities in the Far East and in doing so gained the trust and gratitude of the Foreign Office in London.

A deeper analysis of Hoover’s activities in defrauding the Chinese of their coal mines, reveals an association with Belgian bankers, industrialists and diplomats, including Emile Francqui, which would prove entirely pertinent to his eventual role in the Commission for Relief in Belgium some thirteen years later. In raising the necessary capital to swindle the Chinese officials out of the mines in 1901, Hoover turned to Belgian backers. They persuaded the Banque d’Outremer of Brussels to invest £100,000 in exchange for a large allocation of stock in an organisation called the Oriental Syndicate. When he returned to China to finalise the fraudulent deal, Hoover was accompanied by Chevalier Emmanuel de Wouters representing the Belgian bankers. [3] De Wouters later became a member of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the Banque Belge pour L’Etranger, to which we will return.

Accusations of malpractice and the total disregard for ‘binding agreements’ with the Chinese authorities brought matters to a head. [4]  On 18 January 1905 the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company of Tientsin, in the person of Chang Yen Moa, Director of Mines, took legal action at the High Court in London against Hoover, De Wouters and the British mining company of Bewick, Moreing and Co. Amongst an impressive array of expensive defence lawyers, Hoover and the company was defended by two powerful Liberal MPs, Rufus Isaacs and Alfred Milner’s loyal friend and Secret Elite member, Richard Haldane. Both held the senior legal post of King’s Counsel. Hoover was questioned in the witness box for two days and was obliged to admit that statements he had previously made were untrue.

Letters were produced which showed that Hoover and De Wouters had tried to take control of the mines despite the objections of the Chinese Board. On 1 March, the judge, Mr Justice Joyce came to the conclusion that the British company had acted in bad faith. Interestingly, Richard Haldane made a special plea to the court on behalf of the Foreign Office claiming that Mr Justice Joyce’s decision might have far reaching diplomatic implications. [5] In reporting the court decision next day in its Editorial, The Times hailed Chang’s success as proof of British impartiality and concluded that the court’s findings ‘will be useful to British capital and enterprise in the struggle now going on against formidable commercial rivals.’ [6] It was nothing less than a classic spin which ended by praising fair British legal practices in a world threatened by ‘formidable commercial rivals’.  In other words, Germany. Neither Herbert Hoover nor the Foreign Office was mentioned by name. Despite a court ruling to the contrary, Hoover remained on the board of the discredited British-based Chinese Engineering Mining Company until 1911, abetted in this defiance by the Foreign Office which considered coal for the navy more defensible than contempt of court.

A clearer picture begins to emerge of Herbert Hoover’s connections with the hidden power controlling British politics. He had assisted Alfred Milner in South Africa. He held shares in the Rothschilds’ Rio Tinto Company and was associated with the same all powerful Rothschild dynasty which invested in his Zinc Corporation. He had aided the South African mining millionaires Abe Bailey and Alfred Beit. All of the above operated at the innermost core of the Secret Elite. [7] He was defended in court by Richard Haldane on behalf of the Foreign Office, and was well acquainted with several high-profile members of the British cabinet. [8] We know for certain that his acquaintance with Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey in the pre-war days was sufficiently close for Grey to ask Hoover if he might borrow his motor-car for a Sunday afternoon drive. [9] Even now you would have to be a close friend of anyone whose car you wished to borrow for an afternoon’s drive. One hundred years ago, it surely indicated a very confident acquaintanceship. Lord Eustace Percy at the foreign office was, as will be shown, Hoover’s strong and loyal supporter, [10] as was Lord Crewe, the Leader of the House of Lords. [11] Hoover’s association with all of these important Secret Elite politicians and financiers is a matter of record. In addition, he had a close links to Belgian bankers like Emmanuel de Wouters and Emile Francqui, and institutions like the Banque d’Outremer and the Banque Belge pour l’Etranger. As the narrative unfolds, please keep all of  these connections in mind.  Herbert Hoover knew, and was known by,  all the ‘right’ people.

Hoover was a rabid opportunist. He had served the masters of international finance and spent his engineering career ruthlessly exploiting the underdeveloped resources of China, Australia, Burma, Russia and South Africa. His dealings mixed human traffic with raw materials, and ensured that he had the confidence of important Secret Elite backers who knew he was the right man to front their new enterprise in Belgium in 1914. After giving unquestioned support to Alfred Milner in South Africa by providing Chinese ‘slave’ workers for the Transvaal gold and diamond mines, Herbert Hoover gravitated to London as the centre of finance for world-wide mining. By August 1914 he had been based there for more than a decade. He held stock in zinc and gold mines in Australia, a fabulous zinc-lead-silver mine in Burma, copper mines and smelters in Russia, vast untapped mineral deposits in Siberia and the re-constituted oil fields in California. [12] Though not yet 40 when war broke out, he was very wealthy with a personal fortune estimated somewhere between three to four million dollars, lived in style in a magnificent Kensington villa, [13] and worked from prestigious offices at no.1 London Wall buildings

Hoover’s biographer would have us believe that in 1914 he experienced a ‘Road to Damascus’ moment whereby his former Quaker background [note] induced a complete change of character such that the mercenary engineer was transformed into a caring humanitarian. No matter how diligently his acolytes have striven to paint Hoover as a noble human being motivated entirely by good works for others, even the few official records made available to the public demonstrate a man who bullied, lied, cheated, manipulated and rewrote events to his own advantage. These were the qualities so admired by the Secrete Elite for they knew that he would do their bidding, protected always by their global influence.

Herbert Hoover cast aside the mantle of the pitiless profit-seeking, opportunist engineer and had himself rebranded as a humanitarian saviour just as the first wave of war refugees spilled into London in August 1914.

[1] John Hamill, The Strange Case of Mr Hoover Under Two Flags, pp. 48-9.
[2] Walter W Liggett, The Rise of Herbert Hoover, pp. 68-70.
[3] The Straits Times, 3 March 1903. [http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19030303.2.3.aspx ]
[4] The Times, 19 January 1903, p. 3.
[5] Liggett, The Rise of Herbert Hoover, pp. 111-12.
[6] The Times, 2 March 1905, p. 9.
[7] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 312.
[8] George H Nash, Herbert Hoover The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, p. 148.
[9] Grey to Hoover, 9 June 1914, cited in Nash, op. cit. p.148.
[10] Gay & Fisher, Public Relations of The Commission for Relief in Belgium, document 190, Dec 1914.
[11] Nash, Herbert Hoover The Humanitarian, p.127.
[12] Ibid., p. 3.
[13] http://rbkclocalstudies.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/elegy-for-the-red-house/