"More Than the Gift": The Fatherless Children of France, Franco-American Epistolary Relationships, and the Birth of Person-to-Person Mass Philanthropy during and after the Great War

Abstract:The Great War took a tragic toll on the French family, leaving hundreds of thousands of children as war orphans. To supplement the French state's meager assistance to these children, French intellectuals created the Orphelinat des armées [Army Orphanage] in 1914. Its financial and moral success, however, was due to British, American, and French women who created in 1915 the Orphelinat's American arm, the Fatherless Children of France (FCOF). These internationalist women modernized mass philanthropy by treating the French recipients of relief as individuals and knowable; they mobilized emotions to pioneer mass child sponsorship, transforming charity into sentimental friendships sealed through epistolary relationships. Long after the war ended, the Fraternité Franco-américaine (FFA), the successor organization to the FCOF, both continued to aid war orphans and popularized the practice of international pen-pal relationships to pursue international friendship, understanding, and peace.