The United States quickly developed a special relationship with Belgium during World War I. Only a few months after the war began in August 1914, and nearly three years before the United States officially entered it, the federal government established the Committee for Relief in Belgium, which ultimately supplied food for starving residents during the entire four-year German occupation of that country. In 1918, during the last months of the war, American soldiers fought with the British in Flanders Fields in Belgium. This propaganda poster celebrates the connection in 1917, showing the figures of Belgium and Columbia clasping hands against the billowing flags of their two nations.