Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1944

WAR AND THE SOCIAL SERVICES

9

ade by Herbert Hoover, as Allied Director of Relief as well as his
attempts to bring into Germany food for which that country was
prepared to pay, should not be forgotten; for Mr. Hoover maintained that the Allies had not been fighting women and children and
should not do so after the war. It should also be remembered that
Congress in appropriating $1oo,ooo,ooo for European relief in 9199
passed an amendment framed by Senator Lodge which prohibited
the use of these funds in the ex-enemy countries and, therefore,
relief measures in Germany were carried on through the voluntary
efforts of the American Society of Friends. I like to recall that along
with the supplies which this organization distributed went this
message: "To those who suffer in Germany with a message of good
will from the American Society of Friends (Quakers) who for 250
years and also all through this great war, have believed that those
who were called enemies were really friends separated by a great
misunderstanding."
In the sphere of American governmental action the later Congressional provisions for Russian relief during the great famine
of 1921 and the administration of this program by the American
Relief Administration down through 1923 should not go unmentioned. Mainly, I have referred to the failure of official action, for
it is apparent that a similar relief problem of even greater magnitude
will exist after this war, and the problem can be tackled only
through the cooperation of the American government and the
United Nations. That this is to be the policy is, fortunately, indicated by the establishment of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which should be able to provide the basis
for broad financial participation, planning, and the administration
of relief well in advance of the coming armistice.
That the immediate postwar span was one of political reaction
and fear of any type of social experimentation was amply illustrated
on the domestic front where many forces raged against those who
sought to control the labor of children through the ratification of
the Child Labor Amendment and denounced as "un-American"
those who through the United States Children's Bureau sought to
lower our infant and maternal mortality rates. Among social workers, social reform or social action was largely shoved out of the spotlight by the findings of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, the application of which resulted in an overemphasis upon personal inadequacy and individual adjustment to the "realities" of social life,
"realities" that were far too often conceived of in static terms. The
general feeling that all was well in the economic and social spheres