The <em>Wall Street Journal</em> has posted online and published in its March 12 print edition the following letter from David North, chairperson of the international editorial board of the <em>World Socialist Web Site</em>.
A few months before the end of the First World War, when the White Russians were fighting to overturn the incipient communist regime in Moscow, President Woodrow Wilson authorized the deployment of 13,000 American troops to help them. Herbert Hoover, who led U.S. relief efforts in Europe, told Wilson it was a mistake: it would be better to allow Bolshevism to collapse on its own.
The American Relief Administration saved millions of lives in the Soviet Union from famine. A century later, it is still a shining example of the hope the United States offers to the world.