The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-09-28
The Soul of Mr.. Hoover
and the &c. r. B."
BY N. p. d.


from Montaigne that went the rounds,
proving there were tanks in the sixteenth
century. Perhaps everything is in Mon
taigne-that is not in the Bible and
Shakespeare. 1t now looks as il he were
the original culprit, the first neutral. In
book called The Soul of &c. r. b." by
Nine. Saint-Rene Taillandier, the authors
celebrated countryman is quoted: II could
readily find myself at home among those
who have a mind to light one taper 10 the
Virgin and another to the Dragon"
Perhaps it should be said the words are
not quoted approvingly. There is nothing
neutral about this French woman. Her
book is not correctly titled. 1t is her own
soul and passionate beliefs and emotions
that she reveals more than the soul of Mr..
Hoover and his associates in the relief
work in Europe. We do not know, of
course, but we imagine that Mr.. Hoover
might not recognize his own soul after
it has come through the fine filtration of
this intelligent French woman's sensitive
mind. After reading this book, Mr.. Hoo
yer, being a modest man, will doubtless
wish his role had been in the front line
trenches, facing the terrible Hindenburg.
Nothing that the author says, however,
in appreciation of Mr.. Hoover and the
Committee on Belgian Relief speaks more
eloquently than little story she tells:
Of the Mayors, old men, Of course, of the
first ninety liberated towns, who when they
learned where Hoover was to be all started
to go to meet him to thank him for what
he had done. They came from every d.
rection, some on foot and some in carts,
over roads still rutted by the passing of
the guns. A humorous incident of the
meeting was the following:
"'Now confess said Morton to one of
the Mayors, laughing, that when you first
heard that the Americans were coming
you expected to see us wearing beads
around our necks and feathers on our
heads
"'Oh.' answered the old man, it was
the women who did not know any better"
The first seventy-ffve pages of the book
contain description of Gan Evening with
the &C. r. b." in an American salon in
Paris, where the talk, chiefly one mans
(Harder), is of the Germans and Ameri-
can neutrality and the war generally. Be
fore Americas entrance into the war, the
neutral relief workers had an excellent OPP
portunity of studying the Germans, since
some German was always assigned TO at.
tach himself to G. r. B. man and stick
to him like brother. Vernon Kellogg in
his Headquarters Nights has described
this forced companionship, and the author
in her preface says she has drawn or
what Mr.. Kellogg and the other members
of the commission have written-that it is
in fact their book. But it is to be doubted
if Harder, for example, could recognize
his talk any more than Mr.. Hoover his
soul. The woman plays the role of Cy-
20 rano.
One thing Harder, who was in Germany
when war was declared, is made to say is
that the war was joyously approved by
the German people, who were "like bees
who had been waiting until it was time TO
swarm"
'In Berlin saw the joyous side of war
the joy was universal; every Ger
man seemed to be fulfilling his destiny.
There was no need for them to read
Treitschke or Bernhard. The pride of
war was everywhere"
But from their brutal metaphysics the
Germans, of course, proceeded naturally
to brutal deeds"
So this book is no bare recital of how
-four was distributed to the starving Bel
gians. 1t is an Interpretation of the spirit
that was behind the work of the commits
sion and that was in the allied cause gen
orally. The author is as generous in her,
appreciation of the work of Mr., Hoover
and his associates as she is sympathetic
and eloquent in her expression. As NOV