The First World War brought profound changes in the system of general human values, generated by the numerous direct and collateral victims of the conflagration. These changes have led to a reshaping of the state social assistance problem with the democratization of the governing regimes. Thus, gradually, the concept of social assistance through benevolence, existing in the modern period, was changed with that of social assistance as an obligation of the state, characteristic of the contemporary period. In this article we analyze, based on the case of Bessarabia, this evolution starting from the break of the war, when this territory was part of Russian Empire, and during the interwar period, when this territory was part of Romania, after its legislative body, Sfatul Țării, declared on 27 March 1918 the union with the Mother Country.