Save the Children was founded in 1919, as a response to conditions in Europe immediately following the First World War. During the war, the Allied powers had enforced a blockade that had brought Germany and her allies to their knees and continued this after the signing of the armistice in order to force them to accept the Allies' terms for peace. A month after the signing of the armistice, an election was held in the UK. The conservative coalition's successful campaign was based around popular sentiment that wanted to "hang the Kaiser" and "squeeze Germany until the pips squeak."

Meanwhile the populations of the central powers, especially in the cities of Berlin and Vienna, were devastated by the blockade. Food shortages, which meant that many families had nothing to eat but cabbage and turnips, especially affected children. There were reports that children of six years old were so malnourished that they looked like two-year-olds. This inevitably left them vulnerable to disease like tuberculosis and rickets. The economic after effects of the war also took a bitter toll on a demoralised population.

"Conditions were indeed terrible. Children were actually dying in the street. I saw in the Allgemeine Krankenhaus 38 women who were suffering spontaneous fracture of the hips, their bones having lost all solidity. The children's bones were like rubber. Tuberculosis was terribly rife. Clothing was utterly lacking. Children were wrapped in paper, and in the hospitals there was nothing but paper bandages."
Dr Hector Munro
(Save the Children) 1919

Not all people in the UK took a vengeful view of their former enemies. Throughout the war a group led by Dorothy Buxton had been reading and translating the European press for the Cambridge Magazine. These ‘Notes from the Foreign Press’ attempted to provide balance to the propaganda driven UK newspapers.

At the beginning of 1919, Dorothy and her associates set up the Fight the Famine Council in order to campaign for justice and compassion for the defeated nations. This organisation's campaigning soon fell foul of the Defence of the Realm Act for publishing and distributing the leaflets A Starving Baby and Our Blockade has Caused This without the permission of the government. Dorothy Buxton's sister, Eglantyne Jebb was arrested and tried before the Mayor's Court for distributing copies of A Starving Baby in Trafalgar Square. She was fined £5.

By this time, The Fight the Famine Council had decided that practical measures as well as campaigning were needed to alleviate the suffering caused by the blockade and the aftermath of war. The Save the Children Fund, as Dorothy named it, was publicly launched at London's Royal Albert Hall in May 1919. It began a fundraising campaign to raise money to send to children in Europe in the areas devastated by the war.

"[This] gathering may very well be the start of a real national movement."
Dorothy Buxton 1919

The new organisation was successful in gathering donations very quickly. Individual donations ranged from 2 shillings and sixpence from a small boy's money box to a cheque for £10 000 pinned to a Save the Children Fund leaflet.

Initially Save the Children allocated money to organisations working with children in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, the Balkans, Hungary and for Armenian Refugees in Turkey. It was not anticipated that it would be a permanent organisation and its first workers were taken on six-week contracts. But in the immediate post war period, Save the Children had to deal with emergency after emergency.

"...Thousands of people...tired, sick and hungry. I had to carry my youngest brother. One day I saw that he was not moving nor crying for bread any more. I showed him to my mother and she saw that he was dead. We were glad that he was dead because we had nothing to feed him on."
Armenian refugee child 1921

It was able to sustain its fundraising effort because its organisers were prepared to use a range of media to raise money. This meant paying for page length advertisements in national newspapers, and paying a film cameraman to go and film famine and disaster work in operation.

By this time Dorothy Buxton had become less involved with Save the Children in order to concentrate on political campaigning, but the charismatic Eglantyne Jebb, as honorary secretary, was becoming a force to be reckoned with. She was a persuasive and committed leader, with many ideas about the welfare of children that were well ahead of her time. Very quickly, Save the Children gained a reputation as a highly effective relief agency, able to distribute food, clothing and money swiftly and at low cost. By 1921, when the world learnt of extensive famine in Russia, Save the Children was able to organise an operation to feed up to 650,000 people there at a cost of just a shilling [five pence] per person per week.