ABSTRACT
American Friends Service Committee proposed that the United States assume a mandate for all or for a part of Turkey, particularly for the Armenian republics. This was only patchwork, the Committee realized, but it gave some comfort and some hope to millions of refugees. The problem of temporary relief and of the first steps toward rehabilitation in the Near East was aggravated in September, 1922, when the entire non-Moslem section of Smyrna, occupied by the Turks, burned to the ground. The crisis in Europe itself demanded the attention of Washington and of the responsible for overseas relief work. In the United States itself depressed prices of the vast grain surplus was an important factor in prevailing hard times, which in turn tended to discourage giving. Of all American overseas relief programs in the aftermath of the war, the largest and the most complex in character was that inaugurated for Soviet Russia in the summer of 1921.
