to discuss color as an instrument of emotional expression and of plastic design," Phillips wrote to Weston. In 1935 Weston competed for a Treasury Relief Art Project mural commission to paint murals depicting the government's efforts to speed the end of the Great Depression. For two-and-a-half years Weston worked 11 hours a day creating 840 square feet of 22 panels on canvas that were hung in the General Services Administration building in Washington, D.C., in 1938. At a time of intensive mural-painting in the country, Phillips said Weston's murals were "magnificent--the best by far of all the government murals." Relief work and World War II Humanitarian concerns at the advent of World War II compelled Weston to give up painting. "For the first time in my life, something seemed more important to me than painting," wrote Weston. First, in the Adirondacks, he organized a branch and 11 chapters of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. Then after Pearl Harbor, with memories of the starvation he had seen during the war in the Middle East, he moved to Washington, D.C., to advocate full-time for humanitarian food relief. He outlined a plan that he called the Reconstruction Service Committee, for which he obtained the support of Eleanor Roosevelt, and which eventually evolved into the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. "[Weston] more than anyone else -- as Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt has written me -- was responsible for the original conception and carrying through of UNRRA," wrote Lewis Mumford. UNRRA saved millions of lives after the war. To support UNRRA's governmental work, Weston founded Food for Freedom, a coalition of civic, religious, labor, and farm organizations representing more than 60 million Americans that advocated for food aid for refugees in Europe and Asia. He became an expert on food policy and the politics of farm policy in the U.S. Weston wrote a manuscript about his experiences, "Battle of Bread," that is now housed in the Library of Congress. After seven years and wishing to return to painting, Weston seized on the idea of painting the United Nations headquarters that were under construction in New York City. He worked on the painting series, "Building the United Nations," from 1949–52, further refining his hyper-realistic style. The painting series now belongs to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Post World War II life Arts advocacy In 1953, the Westons started renting a small railroad