Organising Humanitarian Relief and Its Commemoration

Between November 1914 and August 1919, the CRB and the National Committee delivered five million tons of supplies to some nine million Belgian and French citizens in the German-occupied zone for a total expenditure of almost US$900 million.Footnote ¹⁴ Private charity, which was initially stimulated by the ‘poor little Belgium’ propaganda, did indeed make a significant impact in the wake of the German invasion, but the initial surge of solidarity was ultimately short-lived.Footnote ¹⁵ By late 1914, publicly subscribed charity had lost its momentum, forcing the organisers of humanitarian relief to turn to public sources of funding. Published data confirm that up to 80 per cent of the wartime funds received by the CRB and the National Committee stemmed from Allied government subsidies (in the forms of loans advanced to France and Belgium) and the use of Belgian government assets abroad.Footnote ¹⁶ In the case of Belgium, the proportion of government advances constituted 89.68 per cent of the basic capital of both committees. Despite its belated involvement, the United States emerged as the largest creditor accounting for 57.95 per cent of the subsidies. France and Britain followed with 21.02 per cent each. These governmental subsidies transformed the CRB and the National Committee into unprecedented semi-official humanitarian machines.Footnote ¹⁷

The public nature of both organisations’ budgets required a comprehensive reporting to state authorities, as well as a degree of creativity in order to achieve financial stability. In terms of organisational capabilities, it is no coincidence that historians of US institutions would later coin the term ‘Hooverism’ to describe the inclination to act through a network of semi- or completely private agencies operating in coordination with government policy.Footnote ¹⁸ Indeed, Hoover's principle of associative action pre-dates his tenure as US Secretary of Commerce (1921–28) and can be traced back to his humanitarian endeavours. As he explained to his friend-turned-foe Lindon Bates in August 1915, ‘our experience of actual results in soliciting benevolence proves that […] the only real fruitful method of securing what we want is through strong decentralized committee organization. The thing which produces money and material is the personal interest and solicitation of people of standing in each community’.Footnote ¹⁹ Both Hoover and Francqui were accomplished experts at optimising the financial and organisational efficiency of their respective agencies. Already at the very start of the National Committee, Francqui had divided the administration of relief into two departments, ‘Benevolent’ (Secours) and ‘Provisioning’ (Alimentation). While the latter department actually sold foodstuffs to the population that could afford it, the former was responsible for the care of the ‘destitute’ through the free supply of food in canteens, in addition to other essential goods (gifts in kind, provisions and clothing). Initially supported by rapidly waning private donations, the Benevolent Department was funded through a complementary charge on the sale of foodstuffs to those who could still afford to pay.Footnote ²⁰ The so-called ‘marginal charge’, which Francqui designated as an ‘indirect tax’, entailed a slight increase in prices (approximately 10 per cent) on imported products procured by the CRB. However, sales prices were maintained at a level below that of foreign market prices.Footnote ²¹ Over time, this charge was repeatedly justified as a means of ‘[covering] equalization of prices, war destruction, fluctuations in exchange, and [supporting] the destitute through the Benevolent Department’.Footnote ²² The operating surplus yielded a profit that ultimately represented no less than 15.1 per cent of the total amount of CRB and CN financing combined at the end of the war.

The profitability of the humanitarian drive was duly noted. By early 1915, in order to circumvent German interference in the accounts of the National Committee, Francqui and Hoover agreed to have the surplus derived from the marginal charge transferred to London. Furthermore, they resolved that the tax would henceforth be directly levied by the CRB in London ‘for the account of the Comité National’, as Francqui had insisted.Footnote ²³ This accounting ploy, the first in a long series, may have misled the German occupiers, but it surely aroused the suspicion of some members of the Belgian government in exile. The Minister of Finance, Aloys van de Vyvere, in particular, never concealed his opinion that the CRB and the National Committee were excessively autonomous and influential. Hoover was disconcerted by van de Vyvere's assertion that both agencies were but acting as ‘mandatories’ of the government.Footnote ²⁴ However, the crux of the disagreement primarily concerned the profit from the marginal charge, which the government claimed as its own through the use of their loans. In light of the meeting held on 15 July 1916, Hoover sent a brief memorandum to the Belgian minister, in which he posed the question of the profits that were accumulating in London (Francqui had estimated the surpluses at approximately US$20 million in mid-1916). He inquired at their destination. Hoover skilfully distinguished between the portion of profits resulting from currency exchange, which could be transferred to the Belgian government, and the portion due to volunteer service, which could ‘be expended by the CRB and the Comité National for any purpose to the benefit of the Belgian people upon which the CRB and Comité National may agree’.Footnote ²⁵ Van de Vyvere did not deign to reply. It transpired that Hoover and Francqui had already engaged in a discussion regarding the allocation and intended use of this unexpended balance. The summer of 1916 proved to be a pivotal period in this regard.

While both Hoover and Francqui concurred on the general principle of transferring a portion of the remaining funds of both agencies to a permanent institution that would commemorate the wartime relief operation, the objectives of such an institution remained somewhat vague.Footnote ²⁶ Each of the two visions grew stronger and increasingly diverged. Francqui, inspired by the limitations of his own educational experience, insisted on promoting a wider access to Belgian higher education, which he referred to as ‘democratisation’. Hoover, however, was most impressed by the role played by the Oxford Rhodes Scholars, whom he had selected as volunteers in November 1914.Footnote ²⁷ To Brand Whitlock, the US ambassador in Brussels, Hoover conceded that he held the view that a scholarship exchange program between Belgian and American university students would be a valuable initiative.Footnote ²⁸

With the benefit of home-court advantage, Francqui made swift progress. A preliminary round of seven meetings involving academics from all Belgian universities was held in secret between 8 April and 24 July 1916. This so-called ‘temporary commission’ was chaired by the financier Félicien Cattier, who was also the chief executive officer of the Banque d'Outremer, a law professor at the University of Brussels, and a close adviser to Francqui. These meetings, which were held at the headquarters of the Banque d'Outremer, were not directly connected to the various study committees that were being held concurrently in occupied Belgium on the initiative of the Institute of Sociology, which was founded by the industrialist Ernest Solvay.Footnote ²⁹ However, apart from the interpersonal links (Solvay was chairman of the National Committee, of which Francqui was chief executive), it seems clear that this temporary commission shared the same hallmarks for preparing for the post-war period. These included elite groups operating underground, representation of the main political and ideological sensitivities and private initiatives that carefully avoided any interference with public authorities at any level. At its very first meeting, Francqui and Cattier set forth the objectives of this commission, which were ‘to increase the efficiency of the Universities and to help them to foster the development of the community, as well as to enable young men and women who are deprived of material means to enter the Universities’. The participants proposed that the scope be narrowed down to three key areas: university endowment, scientific research stimulation and scholarship provision.Footnote ³⁰ However, when it came to the sources of funding, the members of the committee, who had seen their respective universities shut down at the outbreak of the war, were kept in the dark. The chancellor of the University of Leuven, Paulin Ladeuze, was informed of the commission's work by two of its members, the natural scientist Vincent Grégoire and the legal scholar Alfred Nerinckx. Upon learning of the establishment of a mysterious ‘Fifty-Million Foundation’, he expressed immediate suspicion and hinted at the ‘legitimate claims’ of the Belgian government.Footnote ³¹ This was a prescient observation in many respects. By July 1916, it came to the attention of the Belgian government that Francqui and Cattier were plotting to implement significant postwar reconstruction reforms. These rumours prompted Hoover to inform Aloys van de Vyvere about the project Francqui's ‘countrymen’ were planning:

This was the first time ever that a postwar educational project was officially disclosed. It is not entirely clear what Hoover had in mind when he informed van de Vyvere – with whom he was precisely in disagreement about the allocation of ‘unexpended balances’ – of the link between the profits issue, on the one hand, and the planned institution, on the other. He had not consulted with Francqui, though he hoped his letter expressed what Francqui ‘would naturally raise in this matter’.Footnote ³³ In fact, the information Hoover had at his disposal was rather vague and there was no mention of the exchange programme anymore. Probably alerted by various sources, Francqui outlined the project of a University Foundation (Fondation universitaire) to Baron Eugène Beyens, Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs. The planned foundation, Francqui explained, would provide university loans to students from low-income families, offer subventions to duly recognised scientists and furnish ‘recent PhDs intending to start a scientific career the requisite resources enabling them to pursue their studies in Belgium or abroad’.Footnote ³⁴ This was the sole, albeit indirect, reference to the concept of student exchange, with no specific mention of the United States. Although Francqui concluded his missive by stating that a proposed law to establish the foundation was already available and awaited the return of the government to Belgium, the sudden deportation to Germany of Félicien Cattier and the historian Henri Pirenne, who was then rector of the University of Ghent and a member of the ‘temporary commission’, resulted in a further delay in the development of the foundation until the end of the war.Footnote ³⁵ Furthermore, with the United States’ entry into the war in April 1917, American delegates were gradually replaced by Dutch and Spanish representatives.Footnote ³⁶ Hoover himself was recruited by President Woodrow Wilson to head the United States Food Administration in Washington, from where he continued to oversee the relief operations in Belgium.

The Gift and Its Discontents

‘Our past operations have left us with rather significant profits’, Francqui wrote to Hoover on 23 December 1918, ‘and I would like that these profits be allocated to the work (l’œuvre) we have discussed several times’.Footnote ³⁷ At that time, Hoover was leading the ARA in Central and Eastern Europe, while Francqui was part of the Belgian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, where he negotiated the amount of reparation claims his government intended to submit to the Allied powers. Nevertheless, they would still find the time to consider the legacy of the relief programmes, especially since both wartime committees were now officially starting their lengthy process of liquidation (the final auditing of the CRB's financial statements took place in 1927). In a long memorandum sent to the French and Belgian treasuries on 10 May 1919, Hoover laid out the methods and principles for closing the accounts. The memorandum was replete with technical details, yet one particular observation stood out. Hoover proposed that the profits from the sales of foodstuffs, which consisted in the ‘charitable aspects of the Commission [for Relief in Belgium]’, should be affected to ‘the benefit of populations in Belgium and Northern France as shall be determined by the Commission and the internal committees’.Footnote ³⁸ While Prime Minister Delacroix fully endorsed the arrangement, French Minister of Finance Lucien Klotz was more reluctant. Klotz respectfully assumed that such profits ‘should normally be employed for the reduction of the budgetary charges’ of the French state. This reaction, which remarkably echoed the rationale of his Belgian counterpart three years before, prompted Hoover and Francqui to handle these sums swiftly and with the greatest caution. Their campaign to honour their respective humanitarian enterprises now took the form of a rescue operation from what they considered to be state interventionism.

While Hoover estimated the ‘unexpended profits’ of the CRB to be somewhere between US$5 and 6 million, Francqui proudly claimed he could retrieve 120 million Belgian francs (approximately US$17.5 million) of the profits ‘made by the Comité National on behalf of the CRB’ (pour compte de la CRB)’.Footnote ³⁹ Both parties agreed to utilise the same creative bookkeeping technique that had been employed in 1915 to prevent German interference. However, this time the objective was to circumvent governmental appropriation. Consequently, a significant portion of the profits generated by the National Committee was transferred to the London-based accounts of the CRB.Footnote ⁴⁰ On 28 August 1919, while in Brussels, Hoover drafted a letter with Francqui announcing the outstanding gift of 150 million Belgian francs for the ‘extension’ of higher education in Belgium.Footnote ⁴¹ The ‘Hoover plan’, as it was now called, was presented to the public as a result of American generosity. Herbert Hoover contributed to the legitimisation of this official narrative. In his memoir, he stated that he had ‘determined the disposal’ of the gift ‘at the request of Prime Minister Léon Delacroix’.Footnote ⁴² The initial assertion is open to question in light of the consistent pressure exerted by Francqui to implement the commemorative scheme. Moreover, how could Hoover himself ‘determine’ the appropriation of a funding source comprising 80 per cent of the surplus generated by the sales of the National Committee? Francqui was evidently wielding considerable influence through his American ally. The seminal letter they jointly wrote to Delacroix – who was himself close to Francqui and very likely privy to the pitch – stated that the available sum stemmed from ‘the unexpended gifts and the profits of the Commission for Relief in Belgium applicable to Belgium in all its agencies in America, England, Holland and in Belgium through the operations carried on by the Comité National as the agents of the Commission for Relief in Belgium’. The National Committee was depicted as a mere ‘agent’ of the CRB, with the obvious intention of maintaining its ancillary position.

The decision to brand the donation as an exclusively American gift was motivated by domestic political considerations. General elections were due in Belgium in November 1919, marking the first elections with universal (male) suffrage to be held in the country's history.Footnote ⁴³ For many observers, there was little doubt that a return to partisanship would shatter the remaining pieces of the Sacred Union façade that had marked the war era. Francqui, in particular, was concerned that the controversy surrounding the extensive role played by the National Committee in occupied Belgium – at the expense of the government in exile – would resurface and undermine his project. His political intuition proved to be accurate. Although the planned University Foundation had been presented in a neutral manner and had involved universities from all sides of Belgium's cultural spectrum (the Catholic University of Louvain, the liberal and secular University of Brussels and the state-controlled universities of Ghent and Liège), it still required legislative action and was, therefore, a fully-fledged political object. A minority of MPs, tipped off by van de Vyvere, could not hide their resentment. They used all their skills to reduce the reforming scope of the foundation to-be or to reduce its autonomy. For instance, Léon Mabille, a seventy-four-year-old Catholic representative, argued that the representation of American delegates in the planned foundation's board may seem ‘excessive’. In light of the ‘great influence’ that the University Foundation was poised to exert on Belgian higher education, Mabille posited that ‘foreign influence should not be allowed to be felt too much’.Footnote ⁴⁴ His colleague Paul Segers, former minister of transportation and communication in the government-in-exile, proposed a cap on funding at 75 million Belgian francs, noting, not without irony, that ‘what we know is that the balance is not exclusively an American generosity’.Footnote ⁴⁵ It is evident that Segers and his colleagues of the Catholic right sought to demonstrate that they were not misled by the ‘American’ branding that Hoover, Francqui and Delacroix had employed. However, such objections exposed the representatives to the charge of ingratitude, a line of argument that Minister of Science and Arts Jules Destrée was willing to explore.

Segers replied vehemently, ‘We are all grateful, we have expressed our gratitude to the American nation. However, we cannot admit to not being extremely sparing with the funds intended for the country’. This last rhetorical defence was ultimately futile, as the socialist group and the liberal majority had successfully isolated the conservative protesters. The subsequent legislation, which permitted the establishment of the University Foundation, was ultimately enacted in July 1920.Footnote ⁴⁷ The donation had a profound impact on the Belgian higher education system, enabling the State Universities of Liège and Ghent, as well as the Mining School of Mons, to obtain civil status. Furthermore, the parliamentary measures taken to establish the University Foundation facilitated the legal recognition of non-profit associations. Between the conclusion of the war and the summer of 1919, Hoover, Francqui and their associates concentrated their efforts on devising a strategy that would avoid any state intervention in the allocation of the 150-million-franc donation to Belgian higher education. The instigators of the ‘Hoover plan’ sought to commemorate the humanitarian effort by inscribing it in the continuity of the war-time humanitarian action itself. This had been done according to the principle of private initiatives acting jointly for the common welfare and general interest, beyond partisan divisions. However, while this plan was being considered by Parliament in accordance with the expectations of its designers, the amicable relationship that had previously existed between Hoover and Francqui began to deteriorate. This was due to significant disagreements over the use of the funds that were about to be released. The extent of these disagreements was such that there were doubts not only about the joint nature of the commemoration scheme but also about the shared nature of the humanitarian endeavours it was supposed to highlight.

Temporary Exchange Programmes through Permanent Institutions

On 30 September 1919, just a month after presenting his plan to Prime Minister Delacroix, Hoover appointed a few close advisers to head a ‘temporary committee to put into practice the idea of exchanging scholarships between Belgian and American universities’. It is evident that Hoover had not abandoned this long-held notion, which was of great personal significance to him. He was obviously aware that it was absent from the plan he had officially submitted to Delacroix. Furthermore, was the notion of presenting this transatlantic student exchange program as ‘temporary’ a reference to the ostensibly ‘temporary’ nature of the university committee that Francqui and Cattier had organised during the war, the conclusions of which were to have a decisive impact on subsequent stages? In any case, the initiative was met with considerable enthusiasm by Francqui and the Belgian academic group, who saw it as an opportunity to resume their meetings while awaiting the establishment of the University Foundation.Footnote ⁴⁸ However, the legal validation of the University Foundation, a necessary condition for the release of the funds, was becoming an obstacle to ensuring reciprocal funding for the scholarships that were to cover the stay of a dozen American students in Belgium. Francqui proposed an ingenious financial arrangement to Hoover based on the advance of money that the CRB ‘owed’ to the planned foundation.Footnote ⁴⁹ The response was not what Francqui had anticipated.

In fact, by late November 1919, Hoover and his CRB associates had decided to establish a ‘permanent Trust’ to be incorporated in the United States with an American executive administration and a joint Belgian-American board.Footnote ⁵⁰ The proposed aim of this new organisation was to ‘manage such funds of the Commission as were invested in Belgium’ in order to ‘carry out the purposes stated in Mr. Hoover's letter of 28 August’.Footnote ⁵¹ In essence, Hoover not only planned to establish an organisation of his own on US territory and under US (Delaware) jurisdiction, but he explicitly intended to do so with part of the profits that were disclosed in the original letter. Hoover's coup was in full conformity with the proposal he had made to Delacroix. The announcement did not specify that the planned foundation should be established in Belgium or that it referred specifically to the University Foundation. Indeed, this was an assumption Francqui and the Belgians held as the most blatant evidence.Footnote ⁵² Hoover, on the other hand, had expressed his ‘own idea’ to invest the ‘unexpended profits of the CRB’ in the United States ‘under the direction of the CRB’ by August 1919.Footnote ⁵³ The rapid depreciation of the Belgian franc was also used as a rationale for establishing a foundation on American soil. It is likely that this argument resonated with Francqui. Also, it is crucial to understand Hoover's assertion of achieving ‘complete stability free from any national or political influence’ in light of the political landscape of the general elections in Belgium on 16 November 1919. These elections resulted in a significant breakthrough for the Belgian Workers’ Party, which led to the Catholic Party losing its absolute majority and relegating the Liberal Party to third place. Furthermore, Hoover was aware of the broader context of international relations, particularly the US Senate's recent opposition to the peace treaties negotiated in Paris. ‘If the whole Foundation is set up under purely Belgian auspices’, Hoover declared, ‘the project will at once have lost all American interest’.Footnote ⁵⁴

One additional factor may have influenced Hoover's decision, or at least its timing. It is known that Hoover was aware that the Rockefeller Foundation was engaged in discussions with a number of prominent figures from the Faculty of Medicine at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) with a view to contributing to the advancement of higher education and medical research. On 12–14 January 1920, Doctors Richard Pearce and Wickliffe Rose, respectively Director of the Rockefeller Foundation's Division of Medical Education and General Director of the International Health Division, were in Belgium on a mission. They met several academics from ULB active in the committee working to develop the University Foundation (Paul Héger, Jules Bordet).Footnote ⁵⁵ It seems likely that scientist Vernon Kellogg, the first permanent secretary of the newly established National Research Council and a collaborator with Hoover at the ARA, had painted a particularly pessimistic picture of the state of public health in Europe for the trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation.Footnote ⁵⁶ It can be speculated that Kellogg, as a member of the temporary committee for scholarship exchange between Belgium and the United States, apprised his superior of the Rockefeller Foundation's intentions in Belgium and the potential impact they might have on the action Hoover wanted to develop with universities there. It is therefore necessary to take the supply side into account. In the growing traffic of transatlantic philanthropic initiatives, Hoover sought to maintain the upper hand in directing US-based patronage to Belgian universities in the same way he had endeavoured to reinforce the CRB's monopoly in the humanitarian drive in occupied Belgium.Footnote ⁵⁷

The CRB Educational Foundation, incorporated on 16 January 1920, was thus the reflection of rapidly changing political and monetary circumstances, of competing visions of commemoration, as well as of an increase in philanthropic initiatives of American origin with the objective of assisting in the development of higher education and research in Europe. The foundation's name, its direct reference to the wartime commission, and its emphasis on the broad educational dimension, in stark contrast to a purely academic instrument, bore a distinct Hooverian stamp. This creation largely caught the Belgians by surprise, a quite unhappy one for that matter. To Millard Shaler and Hallam Tuck, who were later appointed as delegates of the CRB Educational Foundation in Brussels, Francqui denounced Hoover's ‘fait accompli’.Footnote ⁵⁸ In one of the few letters he sent directly to Hoover, the discreet Cattier forcefully opposed the incorporation of the ‘American Foundation’, citing both financial and political reasons. Cattier argued that it was crucial to have confidence in the ability of the Belgians to organise and manage a foundation that was so vital for the overhaul of the country's ‘backward legal ideas’. ‘You must show’, Cattier implored Hoover without mincing his words, ‘that you trust the Belgian people fully and without reservation’.Footnote ⁵⁹ Even Delacroix, one of Hoover's most ardent supporters, expressed his regret to the commissioner about the ‘misunderstanding that may have occurred’ between them.Footnote ⁶⁰ In summary, the Belgian response to the newly-established American organisation was initially characterised by a degree of disapproval and reluctance.

Contrary to Francqui's alarmist intuitions, however, the creation of the CRB Educational Foundation did not compromise the viability of his brainchild. Conversely, it may be posited that the incorporation of the ‘American Foundation’ may have even hastened the establishment of its Belgian counterpart. Although Hoover's prime-mover initiative had inevitably transformed the Belgian operation into a reaction, the birth of this dual structure of commemoration ushered in an era of fragile appeasement between the two organisers. Behind the lyrical promises of building ‘a permanent bridge of fine and high relationship between the two countries’ (Hoover) or erecting ‘a monument […] to the solidarity of the two peoples’ (Francqui), underlying tensions remained palpable.Footnote ⁶¹ Following a period of over a year of persistent correspondence, the CRB Educational Foundation finally transferred the sum of 30 million francs, which Francqui had claimed as a starting capital for the University Foundation. Upon completion of the transaction, Hoover's secretary, Perrin Galpin, expressed relief, stating that the payment had ‘satisfied all obligations which the American Foundation had previously undertaken in respect to the Belgian Foundation’.Footnote ⁶² On the other hand, the cessation of accounting obligations paved the way for an extension and a diversification of the CRB Educational Foundation's investment in Belgian scholarly activities.

The student exchange programme, which was still perceived as a temporary arrangement on the American side, was implemented in September 1920. It was inevitably regarded as a real-life pilot experiment to assess the potential for collaboration between both foundations.Footnote ⁶³ The outcome was indeed more favourable than anticipated. The inaugural voyage included twenty-four carefully selected Belgian fellows sailing to the United States, while twenty-two American were engaged in a reciprocal journey (the gender contrast was striking: there were five US female students versus one Belgian).Footnote ⁶⁴ The selection process was conducted in accordance with a well-established division of tasks. The University Foundation had established an internal ‘Fellowship committee’ to examine applications from students at Belgian universities. Chaired by Francqui and Cattier, the committee comprised university rectors and a dozen professors from the four main universities, the Mons Mining School and the newly created Colonial School based in Antwerp. As early as October 1919, Paul Héger, President of the ULB, had proposed that, in addition to academic background and sufficient knowledge of the English language, the selection criteria should include the personality of the candidates (‘être gentleman’). Additionally, it was anticipated that they would serve as informal ambassadors for their country.Footnote ⁶⁵ Given these circumstances, it is understandable that the typical profile of the ‘CRB Fellows’ selected in the inaugural year (and in subsequent years) largely reflected the economic elite of Belgian high society. Nevertheless, this elitism was somehow offset by the stipulation that the conditions of the exchange were pursued with the objective of achieving ‘a clearly scientific and not purely professional goal’, as stated by Héger. In contrast to the Belgian system, the selection process on the American side was more iterative. With the exception of Vernon Kellogg, the majority of Hoover's companions were industrialists and engineers with limited knowledge of the academic machinery. Consequently, the pre-selection process was decentralised, with a series of prestigious universities (Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, not forgetting Stanford, Hoover and Kellogg's alma mater) responsible for forwarding pre-selected applications to the New York office of the CRB Educational Foundation, which handled the final selection.Footnote ⁶⁶

Interestingly, the efficiency of the Brussels Fellowship committee reflected favourably on the work of the University Foundation in general. ‘I should like to tell you’, reported CRB delegate in Brussels, Millard Shaler to Hoover, ‘how much I am impressed with the serious purpose which is evidently behind the members of the Belgian Foundation. At each meeting which I attended I discovered more and more of this purpose which is directed towards a real betterment of educational conditions in Belgium’.Footnote ⁶⁷ The promising start of the programme was confirmed the following years and its appeal would not wane over time – on the contrary, it would soon be extended to other categories, such as visiting researchers and professors. The ‘temporary affair’ thus became the landmark of the CRB Educational Foundation, inspiring other enterprises of scholarship diplomacy such as the Fulbright-Hays Program at the onset of the Cold War.Footnote ⁶⁸ The success of the operation was contingent upon the pivotal role played by Hoover's Brussels-based agents. The circumstances that led to the involvement of Millard K. Shaler and W. Hallam Tuck, two businessmen with extensive connections within Belgian industrial circles, in these missions of cultural diplomacy were not immediately apparent. Shaler, a graduate of the University of Kansas, became a mining engineer with the Société Internationale Forestière et Minière du Congo (better known as Forminière), a diamond mining company operating in the Kasaï region of Belgian Congo and jointly owned by US entrepreneurs Thomas Fortune Ryan, Daniel Guggenheim, and the powerful Société Générale de Belgique. At the outbreak of war, Francqui entrusted Shaler, as a neutral American citizen, with the mission of travelling to London to ensure the shipment of food to Brussels. It was in this context that he met Hoover through Edgar Rickard, a mutual friend who was also one of the driving forces behind the CRB and its educational program.Footnote ⁶⁹ A graduate of Princeton, Tuck joined the CRB in 1915 and settled permanently in Belgium in the service of the Solvay chemical industry and its American subsidiary, Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation. In 1920, Tuck married Hilda Bunge, the heiress to one of Antwerp's most prominent business dynasties.Footnote ⁷⁰

The Uses of US Philanthropy and the Logics of Stabilisation

Spurred by this successful outcome, targeted interventions aimed at lifting up Belgian universities followed suit. Drawing on a report prepared by CRB special representative Alexander Smith, executive secretary of Princeton University and future co-author of the US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Smith-Mundt Act), the CRB Educational Foundation entered into a contract with the University of Brussels. During his study trip to Belgium in the summer of 1922, Smith had highlighted the financial disarray of the institution. The American Foundation decided to invest 15 million Belgian francs to complete the planning and construction of its new American-style campus located in the south-east of Brussels that included buildings for the library and administration, the Faculties of Philosophy and Law, as well as for dormitories for men and women students.Footnote ⁷¹ The University of Brussels benefited from a favourable position due to the location of the University Foundation in Brussels but most of all to the liberal and pro-business values shared by the university and its industrial patrons, from Solvay to Francqui. During his tour of Belgian universities in January 1920, Wickliffe Rose of the Rockefeller Foundation described the University of Brussels as ‘the one free institution which has throughout its history stood for independent thought [and] is in organization and spirit the logical center for the training of men who are to inspire and guide the new development’.Footnote ⁷²

On other hand, the CRB Educational Foundation's commitment to these projects necessitated its adherence to a principle of neutrality, which involved maintaining a balanced position within the Belgian academic landscape, particularly between the opposing universities of Louvain and Brussels, two institutions that were unable to rely on financial support from the state. ‘In anything that may be done for Brussels, we should probably remember that Louvain must also be taken care of, though perhaps no to so great an extent’, warned Smith.Footnote ⁷³ The destruction of the Louvain University library, which had been a symbol of German aggression in occupied Belgium, constituted at the time the focal point of a well-publicised campaign to raise funds in the United States, spearheaded by the president of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler. Faced with mounting pressure from his entourage, Hoover ultimately consented to assume the role of chairing the fundraising committee for the rebuilding of the library, succeeding Butler.Footnote ⁷⁴ The requisite sum of one million Belgian francs was procured through a direct donation from the CRB Educational Foundation and through a complementary fundraising appeal. Having transcended the constraints of ideological and partisan interests, Hoover's Foundation had become a pivotal force in the advancement and consolidation of higher education in Belgium.

The expansion of Hoover's philanthropic domain in Belgium largely overlapped with his domestic agenda as secretary of commerce and confirmed the United States’ growing presence in transatlantic cultural affairs.Footnote ⁷⁵ For a period of time, Hoover and his team had been developing the concept of transferring the residue of the Belgian franc holdings of the CRB Educational Foundation directly to Belgian universities. Francqui and Cattier, who were engaged in arduous negotiations with the US World War Foreign Debts Commission for a settlement of the Belgian debt, had consistently expressed their desire to repatriate this capital once the domestic political unrest that followed the war had abated. The transfer was to be made on the basis of three criteria: ‘firstly, that it should be considered a special endowment fund; secondly, that it should be under the control of a “business man”; and thirdly, that it should be accompanied by a special annual accounting to the CRB Educational Foundation’.Footnote ⁷⁶ The charter and by-laws of the newly-established trusts, which constituted a novel approach to the governance of Belgian universities, were drafted in the fall of 1925 (and approved by the Belgian government in June 1926). Although it was initially believed that both foundations would ‘perpetuate the name and memory of the CRB wartime effort in Belgium’, Hoover gave his blessing to name the endowments the Hoover Foundation for the Development of the University of Brussels, on the one hand, and the Hoover Foundation for the Development of the University of Louvain, on the other.Footnote ⁷⁷ The former foundation received an endowment of 34.5 million Belgian francs, while the latter foundation received approximately 20 million, all of which were earmarked for the completion of the building programmes of these universities.Footnote ⁷⁸ In light of the circumstances, the secretary of the CRB Educational Foundation made the following announcement: ‘With these gifts of practically all the Belgian funds of the Foundation, our activities in Belgium will be necessarily reduced to the minimum needed to insure our proper representation and to care for the interests of our Fellows’.Footnote ⁷⁹ After years of tension about the precise provenance of the ‘gift’, this operation assumed the form of a repatriation of funding. However, it represented more than just a practical achievement; it was also a symbolic one. Hoover and Francqui had invested a considerable time and effort into developing a strategy that would avoid state intervention, with the aim of advancing the best interests of the Belgian population. Their common aspiration to enhance the quality of higher education in Belgium was informed by divergent motivations. Francqui's concept of ‘democratisation’ of higher education encompassed two key elements: the expansion of access to higher education for less privileged social classes and the autonomy of universities from their respective guardians (the Church or the State). At first sight, Hoover's approach was less ideologically marked. The system of student exchanges he favoured was a lever for the policy of commemorating the CRB's work with young people, reminiscent of the internationalist spirit of the Rhodes Scholars. In spite of their different motivations, however, both men sought to build non-state national institutions as permanent instruments of stabilisation and reconstruction.

A recently unearthed letter in the archives of the University Foundation in Brussels may exemplify this point and, at the same time, serve to summarise the main argument of this article. In a fifteen-page self-congratulatory document written in January 1921, one year after the peak of tensions with Hoover, Francqui set out to provide his own account of the historical circumstances surrounding the establishment of the University Foundation. Francqui postulated that presenting the foundation as an American organisation had been a prudent strategy, as it was the only viable means of ensuring its future. ‘Without this subterfuge’, he asserted, ‘the financial reserves of the National Committee would have been absorbed into the state budget, resulting in no net gain for anyone and no improvement to the Belgian Treasury’.Footnote ⁸⁰ The document's mere existence can be seen as Francqui's attempt to reclaim authorship of the gift and a fair degree of credit – and visibility – for his role behind the scenes. Nevertheless, the testimony was also motivated by an underlying nationalist agenda, which posited that only a Belgian-based foundation could serve the interests of the Belgian people, and notably the interests of the Belgian elites. Francqui's intuition was ultimately incorrect. In conjunction with the more limited scope of the Rockefeller Foundation, the CRB Educational Foundation did not supersede the University Foundation. In the aftermath of the First World War, these US philanthropic foundations contributed to the restoration of bourgeois class interests through the stabilisation of the Belgian higher education system.