Does anyone know of the role the CRB played in India during the British Raj era? <<< An official of the British Foreign Office once described the Commission for Relief in Belgium as a piratical state organized for benevolence. This description, however extravagant in certain particulars, has the virtue of suggesting the attributes of an organization without precedent in international relations. It is a fact that the Commission performed functions and enjoyed prerogatives which usually appertain to state rather than to private institutions. It had, for example, its own flag; it made contracts and informal treaties with belligerent governments; its ships were granted privileges accorded to no other flag; its representatives in regions of military occupation enjoyed powers and immunities of great significance. The Commission itself was neutral as between the opposing lines, but in the pursuit of its duties it waged frequent controversy with both belligerents, and it received aid and essential co-operation from both. Its contacts, however, were by no means restricted to the European scene of war; they extended westward to North and South America, southward to the tip of Africa, and eastward to India and Australasia. By virtue of these privileges, duties, and connections, the C.R.B. was in one sense an international public body under the patronage of diplomatic officers of the neutral states of the United States, Spain, and the Netherlands. Actually it was a private organization, without incorporation or well-defined legal status, to which the governments engaged in war on the western front entrusted responsibilities which no government or public body could discharge. The chairman of the Commission, Herbert Hoover, and those associated with him in its direction, were private citizens of the United States; they looked first to their countrymen for moral and material support; they received the valued counsel and co-operation of American diplomatic representatives in belligerent states; and the American people generally looked upon the C.R.B. as an American enterprise. The American Government, however, was in no sense responsible for the acts of the Commission, nor were the Spanish and Dutch Governments, nor the Governments of Belgium and France, of Great Britain and the British Dominions, whose citizens participated in varying degrees in the Commission's work. >>> Snipped from the Preface to the PUBLIC RELATIONS OF THE COMMISSION FOR RELIEF IN BELGIUM DOCUMENTS By GEORGE I. GAY Commission for Relief in Belgium with the collaboration of H. H. FISHER Stanford University IN TWO VOLUMES STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA 1929 Online at http://www.gwpda.org/wwi-www/CRB/CRB1-TC.htm --- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar