THE WAR: THE MAN AND HIS FIRST SERVICE
From the first day of the World War Herbert Hoover has been a world
figure. But much of what he has done and how he has done it is still
only hazily known, for all the general public familiarity with his name
as head of the Belgian relief work, American food administrator, and,
finally, director-general of the American and Allied relief work in
Europe after the armistice. The public knows of him as the initiator and
head of great organizations with heart in them, which were successfully
managed on sound business principles. But it does not yet know the
special character of Hoover's own personal participation in them, his
original and resourceful contributions to their success, and the
formidable obstacles which he had constantly to overcome in making this
success possible. There was little that "just happened" which
contributed to this success; that which did just happen usually happened
wrong. Things came off because ideals were realized by practical method,
decision, and driving power. I should like to be able to give the people
of America a revealing glimpse, by outline and incident, of all this.
And I should like, too, to be able to make clear the pure Americanism of
this man; to disclose the basis of belief in the soundness of the
American heart and the practical possibilities of American democracy on
which Hoover banked in determining his methods and daring his decisions.
This belief was the easier to hold inasmuch as he has himself the
soundness of character, the fundamental conviction of democracy, and the
true philanthropy that he attributes to the average American. He is his
own American model.
To call Herbert Hoover "English" as a cheap form of derogation, is to
reveal a surprising paucity of invention in criticism. It is also unfair
to about as American an American as can be found. The translation of
Agricola, an account of which closed our last chapter, stretched over
the long time that it did, not alone because Mr. and Mrs. Hoover could
give only their spare hours to it, but also because they could turn to
it only while they were in London where the needed reference books were
available. And their presence in London was so discontinuous that their
translating work was much more marked by interruption than continuity.
The constant returns to America where there were the New York and San
Francisco offices to be looked after personally, and the many trips to
the mining properties scattered over the world, limited Hoover's London
days to a comparatively small number in each year. A London office was,
to be sure, necessary between 1902 and 1914 because of the advantage to
a world miner of being close to affairs in the world's center of mining
interests. And it was also necessary during Belgian relief days because
of its unequaled accessibility, by persons or cable, from all the vital
points in the complex international structure of the relief
organization. But in all this period of London connection, except in the
Belgian relief period, Hoover was a familiar figure in mining circles
in both New York and San Francisco, and although rarely able to cast his
vote in America he maintained a lively interest in American major
governmental affairs.
Hoover kept up, too, an active interest in the development of his _alma
mater_, Stanford University, and especially in its geology and mining
engineering department. In 1908 he was asked to join its faculty, and
delivered a course of lectures on the principles of mining, which
attracted such favorable comment that he repeated it shortly after in
condensed form in Columbia University. On the basis of his experience as
a university student of mining, and as a successful mine expert and
operator, and as an employer of many other university graduates from
universities and technical schools Hoover has formed definite
conclusions as to what the distinctive character of professional
university training for prospective mining engineers should be. It
differs from a widely held view.
He believes that the collegiate training should be less practical than
fundamental. The attempts, more common a decade ago than now perhaps,
to convert schools of mining and departments of mining geology into
shops and artificial mines, do not meet with favor in his eyes.
Vocational, or professional, training in universities should leave most
of the actual practice to be gained in actual experience and work after
graduation. If the student is well-grounded in the fundamental science
of mining and metallurgy, in geology and chemistry and physics and
mechanics, he can quickly pick up the routine methods of practice. And
he can do more. He can understand their _raison d'etre_, and he can
modify and adapt them to the varying conditions under which they must be
applied. He can, in addition, if he has any originality of mind at all,
devise new methods, discover new facts of mining geology--the interior
of the earth is by no means a read book as yet--and add not only his
normal quota of additional wealth to the world, as a routine worker, but
an increment of as yet unrealized possibilities, as an original
investigator. In Hoover's own choice of assistants he has selected among
men fresh from the universities or technical schools those who have had
thoroughly scientific, as contrasted with much technical, or so-called
practical, training.
His interest in universities and university administration and methods
has always been intense. It has been reciprocated, if his honorary
degrees from a dozen American colleges and universities can be assumed
to be evidence of this. In 1912 he was made a trustee of Stanford and
from the beginning of this trusteeship until now he has taken an active
part in the university management, giving it the full benefit of his
constructive service. His most recent activity in this connection has
concerned itself with the needed increase and standardization of faculty
salaries so that for each grade of faculty position there is assured at
least a living minimum of salary. He was the originating figure and
principal donor of the Stanford Union, a general club-house for students
and faculty, which adds materially to the comfort of home-wandering
alumni and to the democratic life of the University. In all the great
University plant there was no place for a common social meeting-ground
for faculty, alumni, and undergraduates. The Union provided it. If
Stanford did much for Hoover in the days when he was one of its
students, he has loyally repaid his obligation.
But all of these accounts of Hoover's various activities still leave
unanswered many questions concerning the more intimate personal
characteristics of the man to whom the World War came in August, 1914,
with its special call for service. He was then just forty years old,
known to mining engineers everywhere and to the alumni and faculty and
friends of Stanford University and to a limited group of business
acquaintances and personal friends, but with a name then unknown to the
world at large. Today no name is more widely known. Today millions of
Europeans call him blessed; millions of Americans call him great. My own
belief is that he and his work did more to save Europe from complete
anarchy after the war than any other influence exerted on its people
from the outside, and that without it there was no other sufficient
influence either outside or inside which would have prevented this
anarchy.
Hoover's kinds of work are many, but his recreations are few. His chief
form of exercise--if it is exercise--is motoring. He does not play
outdoor games; no golf, tennis, but little walking. He has no system of
kicking his legs about in bed or going through calisthenics on rising.
And yet he keeps in very good physical condition, at least he keeps in
sufficiently good condition to do several men's days' work every day. He
has a theory about this which he practices, and which he occasionally
explains briefly to those who remonstrate with him about his neglect of
exercise. "You have to take exercise," he says, "because you overeat. I
do not overeat, and therefore I do not need exercise." It sounds very
simple and conclusive; and it seems to work--in his case.
He likes social life, but not society life. He enjoys company but he
wants it to mean something. He has little small talk but plenty of
significant talk. He saves time by cutting out frills, both business and
social. His directness of mental approach to any subject is expressed in
his whole manner: his immediate attack in conversation on the essence
of the matter, his few words, his quick decisions. He can make these
decisions quickly because he has clear policies to guide him. I recall
being asked by him to come to breakfast one morning at Stanford after he
had been elected trustee, to talk over the matter of faculty standards.
His first question to the two or three of us who were there was: What is
the figure below which a professor of a given grade (assistant,
associate, or full professor) cannot maintain himself here on a basis
which will not lower his efficiency in his work or his dignity in the
community? We finally agreed on certain figures. "Well," said Hoover,
"that must be the minimum salary of the grade."
He knows what he wants to do, and goes straight forward toward doing it;
but if difficulty too great intervenes--it really has to be very
great--he withdraws for a fresh start and tries another path. I always
think of him as outside of a circle in the center of which is his goal.
He strikes the circle at one spot; if he can get through, well and good.
If not he draws away, moves a little around the circumference and
strikes again. This resourcefulness and fertility of method are
conspicuous characteristics of him. To that degree he is "diplomatic."
But if there is only one way he fights to the extreme along that way.
And those of us who have lived through the difficult, the almost
impossible, days of Belgian relief, food administration, and general
European after-the-war relief, with him, have come to an almost
superstitious belief in his capacity to do anything possible to human
power.
He has a great gift of lucid exposition. His successful argument with
Lloyd George, who began a conference with him on the Belgian relief work
strongly opposed to it on grounds of its alleged military disadvantages
to the Allies, and closed it by the abrupt statement: "I am convinced;
you have my permission," is a conspicuous example, among many, of his
way of winning adherence to his plans, on a basis of good grounds and
lucid and effective presentation of them. He has no voice for speaking
to great audiences, no flowers of rhetoric or familiar platitudes for
professional oratory, but there is no more effective living speaker to
small groups or conferences around the council table. He is clear and
convincing in speech because he is clear and precise in thinking. He is
fertile in plan and constructive in method because he has creative
imagination.
The first of his war calls to service came just as he was preparing to
return to America from London where he had brought his family from
California to spend the school vacation of 1914. Their return passage
was engaged for the middle of August. But the war came on, and with it
his first relief undertaking. It was only the trivial matter--trivial in
comparison with his later undertakings--of helping seventy thousand
American travelers, stranded at the outbreak of the war, to get home.
These people, rich and poor alike, found themselves penniless and
helpless because of the sudden moratorium. Letters of credit, travelers'
checks, drafts, all were mere printed paper. They needed real money,
hotel rooms, steamer passages, and advice. And there was nobody in
London, not even the benevolent and most willing but in this respect
powerless American ambassador who could help them. At least there
seemed none until Hoover transferred the "relief" which had
automatically congested about his private offices in the "city" during
the first two days to larger headquarters in the Hotel Savoy. He
gathered together all his available money and that of American friends
and opened a unique bank which had no depositors and took in no money,
but continuously gave it out against personal checks signed by unknown
but American-looking people on unknown banks in Walla Walla and Fresno
and Grand Rapids and Dubuque and Emporia and New Bedford. And he found
rooms in hotels and passage on steamers, first-class, second-class or
steerage, as happened to be possible. Now on all these checks and
promises to pay, just $250 failed to be realized by the man who took a
risk on American honesty to the extent of several hundred thousand
dollars.
Some of the incidents of this "relief" were pathetic, and some were
comic. One day the banker and his staff, which was composed of his wife
and their friends, were startled by the apparition in the front office
of a group of American plains Indians, Blackfeet and Sioux, all in the
most Fenimore Cooperish of full Indian dress, feathers and skins,
war-paint and tomahawks. They had been part of a Wild West show and
menagerie caught by the war's outbreak in Austria, and had, after
incredible experiences, made their way out, dropping animals and baggage
as they progressed, until they had with them only what they had on,
which in order to save the most valuable part of their portable
furniture, was their most elaborate costumes. They had got to London,
but to do it they had used up the last penny and the last thing they
could sell or pawn except their clothes, which they had to wear to cover
their red skins. Hoover's American bank saw these original Americans
off, with joyful whoopings of gratitude, for Wyoming.
But the work was not limited to lending the barely necessary funds to
those who wished to borrow. He raised a charitable fund among these same
friends for caring for the really destitute ones until other relief
could come. This came in the shape of the American Government's "ship of
gold," the battle-ship _Tennessee_, sent over to the rescue. Hoover was
then asked by Ambassador Page and the Army officers in charge of the
London consignment of this gold to persuade his volunteer committee to
continue their labors during its distribution. With this money available
all who were able to produce proof of American citizenship could be
given whatever was necessary to enable them to reach their own country.
And then came the next insistent call for help. And in listening to it,
and, with swift decision, undertaking to respond to it, Herbert Hoover
launched himself, without in any degree realizing it, on a career of
public service and corresponding abnegation of private business and
self-interest, that was to last all through the war and through the
armistice period, and is today still going on. In all this period of war
and after-war service he has received no salary from government or
relief organizations but, on the contrary, has given up a large income
as expert mining engineer and director of mining companies. In addition,
he has paid out a large sum for personal expenses incurred in
connection with the work.
The call was for the relief of Belgium. I know the story of Hoover in
his relation to the relief of Belgium very well because I became one of
his helpers in it soon after the war began and remained in it until the
end. But it is a hard story to tell; there is too much of it. My special
duties were of a kind to keep me constantly in touch with "the Chief,"
and I was able to realize, as only a few others were, the load of
nerve-racking responsibility and herculean labor carried by him behind
the more open scene of the public money-gathering, food-buying and
transporting, and daily feeding of the ten million imprisoned people of
occupied Belgium and France. In the relief of these helpless peoples
Hoover put, perhaps for the first time, certainly for the first time on
any such enormous scale and with such outstanding success, philanthropy
on a basis of what dear old Horace Fletcher, shut up with us in Belgium
during the Occupation, would permit to be referred to by no other phrase
than the somewhat hackneyed one of "engineering efficiency," unless we
would use a new word for it which he coined. In fact he used the new
word "Hooverizing" as a synonym for efficiency with a heart in it, two
years before it became familiar in America with another meaning. And I
prefer his meaning of the word to that of the food-saving meaning with
which we became familiar in Food Administration days.