Comité National de Secours et d'Alimentation

[1] In particular, the British Royal Navy began a four-year "Blockade of Europe" which, although aimed at Germany, also cut food supplies from neutral countries to German-occupied Belgium.

[3] It was supported by voluntary contributions from a small group of notable financiers and businessmen, including Ernest Solvay, Dannie Heineman and Émile Francqui.

[7] From the start, the Committee was organized into two sections: one responsible for providing and selling food and the other for charitable aid such as clothing.

[3] As an American, and therefore a citizen of a neutral country, Heineman used his contacts abroad to find overseas sources of food which might be shipped to Belgium to resupply the populace.

[6] Francqui used his personal acquaintance with Herbert Hoover, future President of the United States, to create an external body to assist the management of the CNSA.

[1] By providing a network of food distribution, the CNSA and CRB managed to avoid a major famine in Belgium during the occupation.

[11] Historians have also described the organisation of the CNSA, with its central committee and local networks, and its activities such as providing unemployment benefits to Belgian workers in 1917, as echoing those of an official government in peacetime while also serving as a symbol of national unity.