Relief
Relief names 4 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Relief WAR winners to be assisted
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WAR winners to be assisted, but disabled soldiers had to be taken care of, and when the United States entered the war, much of the kind of relief that went to Europe had to be dispensed also in this country. The Commission for Relief in Belgium was organized in October, 1914, and carried out its distribution of supplies through the Comité Nationale de Secours et d'Alimentation. The personnel was American until the declaration of war by the United States, but thereafter the work in Belgium was intrusted to Spanish and Dutch citizens appointed by their governments. Through the work of this commission something like 7,000,000 people were regularly provided with food. Warehouses were established in Holland and Belgium, and these received American and Argentine supplies from the port of entry at Rotterdam. Up to June 1, 1917, a total of nearly $300,000,000 was spent by the commission. As the war went on the number of relief organizations greatly increased, and some of them came to wear a doubtful character. There were, however, wever, 80 such organizations working in New York City that were vouched for by the Charity Organization Society, and the chief among them made it their object to distribute necessities, such as food and clothing. Every known device was employed in the campaigns to raise foods, bazaars, concerts, street collecting, and the like. These became so numerous that division of responsibility and proper accounting became manifestly impossible, but the public continued to give, and though millions of dollars went into the wrong hands, the stream of supplies going to Europe continued to grow. Among the other organizations that devoted their energies to the work of relief were the Allied War Charities, which through nearly 80 subsidiary organizations, covered the whole nation; the American Fund for French Wounded, the Secours National Fund for the relief of French women and children, the Serbian Relief Committee, the American ambulance, which organized ambulance sections for work behind the battle line; Jewish Relief, the British War Relief Association, the American Committee for Training in Suitable Trades the Maimed Soldiers of France, the Vacation War Relief Committee, the Polish Victims' Relief Fund, the Lafayette Fund, the American Girls' Aid for the Collection of Clothing for the Victims of the World War in France, the Duryea War Relief, the French Comfort Packets' Committee for the United States and Allies, the Stage Women's War Relief, the Committee of Mercy, Le Bien Etre du Blessé, the New York Committee for the Fatherless Children of France, the Dollar Christmas Fund for Destitute Belgian Children, the French Tuberculosis War Victims' Fund, the American Committee of the Scottish Women's Hospital for Home and Foreign Service, the National Allied Relief Committee, the Balkan Refugees and Sufferers, Polish Refugees, War Babies' Cradle, the Polish Children's Relief Fund, the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, the New York Surgical Dressings Committee, and many others. New organizations continued to be formed while the war lasted, and none of them appeared to find difficulty in raising funds. See RED CROSS, KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS, JEWISH WELFARE BOARD, ETC.
Relief WAR. When the war broke out in Europe in
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WAR. When the war broke out in Europe in 1914 very little time was allowed to pass before organizations were brought into being for the purpose of assisting the people in Europe who were the chief sufferers in the zones affected. Sympathy was particularly aroused on behalf of the Belgians who were recognized as having no part in the opening of hostilities, and who bore the chief brunt of the first German attacks. The other peoples whose lands formed the terrain over which the first battles were waged, northern France, Poland, Serbia, and other countries, likewise were included in the appeal for aid to the citizens of the United addressed States. Moreover, the desolated lands of Hungary and east Germany were the objects of much sympathy, particularly among people having kin in the countries of the Central Powers, before the United States entered the war, but relief in that direction was largely blocked, for the British navy held the seas and made communication with the Central Powers difficult. But measures for war relief were developed on a very large scale. A Commission for Relief in Belgium was one of the first organizations formed, but the Red Cross, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Allied War Charities, and similar organizations were soon active both in campaigns for subscriptions and in the distribution of war relief over wide areas. The enormous variety of suffering that followed in the train of the war called for heroic measures and as the months passed and it was borne in on the world that the war was to be a long one, the organizations devoted to the work of war relief extended their activities in every direction. Not only had the families left behind by the bread-
Relief a fine or composition paid by the heir of a tenant
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a fine or composition paid by the heir of a tenant, holding by knight's service or other tenure, to the lord on the death of the ancestor for the privilege of succeeding to the estate, which by strict feudal law had lapsed or fallen to the lord on the death of the tenant. In physical geography, the undulations or surface elevations of a country. In painting, the appearance of projection and solidity in represented objects, so as to cause them to appear precisely as they are found in nature. In sculpture, architecture, etc., the prominence of a sculptured figure from the plane surface to which it is attached. According to the degree of prominence, it is known as altorelievo, or high relief, mezzo- or demirelief, and bas-relief, or low relief.
Relief WAR pilgrimages
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WAR pilgrimages, and is an even more impor tant feature of Buddhism.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 described relief as a swarm of private, ad hoc committees — 80 vouched-for bodies in New York City alone — and admitted that "millions of dollars went into the wrong hands." That improvised model gave way to institutions: the American Relief Administration under Herbert Hoover, who had run the Commission for Relief in Belgium described here and was elected president in 1928; then UNRRA in 1943, the UN refugee agency in 1950, and the Marshall Plan. In the United States the word itself shifted meaning in the 1930s, when New Deal agencies made "relief" mean government payments to the unemployed, before "welfare" replaced it; today charities are policed by tax law and watchdog ratings rather than vouched for by a local charity society. The other senses listed have fared differently: feudal relief on inheritance was long dead even in 1921, sculptural relief is described as it still is, and relief in physical geography is now mapped by satellite radar and digital elevation models rather than by survey.
Written for this edition, 2026.