Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-03-02
BY MARK SULLIVAN.

\ make a good deal of our more
fundamental history. Those
forces. indeed, take no account what
ever of dates, nor of the calendar.
They work below the surface, and so
the current newspapers sometimes do
not recognize them. Only after years,
after the forces and their consequences
have emerged to the surface and
worked their invisible will does the his
torian take up his careful, leiSurely
pen. Then, and as a rule only then,
can we learn with confidence what was
really important and what was trivial
and transient.
For example: On December II, 1908,
Theodore Roosevelt was President. He
had come into the Office because of the
assassination of President Mckinley
little over two years before, and, after
period of conservative caution, was
Just getting into the stride Of his own
personality and ideas. Ten days before,
on December 7, 1908, Roosevelt had de-
livered his message to a new Congress,
the first elected during his presidency.
The message had been awaited with
unusual curiosity, to see what striking
policies would be laid down; altogether,
the newspapers and periodicals that
month were much excited with the dis
cussion of Roosevelt and politics.
Wrights' Achievement Overlooked.
Being thus engaged, and for other
reasons, the newspapers and such pc
riodicals as the Literary Digest and the
Review of Reviews failed to notice an
event that took place not. far from the
little town of Manteo, N. Can event
in which only two men participated:
two brothers, bicycle mechanics from
Dayton, Ohio, named Wright, who, on
December II, 1903, rose into the air
on a self-propelled, heavier-than-air
machine, the first such flight ever
made by anybody. That event was not
recorded by the newspapers, excepting
a very few, probably not over or 10
in the entire country, most of which
treated the news slightingly, with an
air of doubling (which, in fact, they
did, as we'll as everybody else except
the Wrights themselves and the tiny
group of fisher folk who actually saw
them fly. Neither that first fight nor
any of the subsequent flights for some
years was recorded by the newspapers
generally; it was not until about May,
1908, that the newspapers became fully
compliShed and roared the Information
to the public In huge headlines.
Meantime, at the end of Roosevelt's
first year and at each succeeding ami
versary, and at the end of his first
term, the newspapers and periodicals
wrote solemn and discursively detailed
judgments about the state of the coun-
try during the Roosevelt presidency.
Yet there can be little doubt that when
some future epitomist, as economical
with words as Mr.. Coolidge, sets down
for preservation in stone upon Q
mountain the eight, or more or less
eight most important events in Amer
lean history he viii name as the most
important thing that happened in the
Roosevelt administration the achieve
ment of human flight, with which
Roosevelt had nothing to do.
Hoover May BE More Fortunate.
President Hoover may have better
fortune than Roosevelt; Mr.. Hoover
name may be more closely associated
In future chronicles with the really
fundamental developments of his time,
for an outstanding aspect of Mr.. Hoover
and his presidency Is that he, more than
any other American President-and
quite possibly more than any other
statesman in any country-underStand
and has kinship with the forces that
really make history in the larger sense.
To know, to have the facts, Is pri-
mary instinct of Mr.. Hoover'S mind; TO
recognize, from the facts, the forces of
which the facts are either cause or ef-
feet is his habitual intellectual process.
II there is to be any such thing as a
Hoover era, the beginning of it can be
marked by one definite and easily recog-
nized pillar: There came into Office a
year ago March 4, 1920 the first and
only President who by education and
life work was an engineer Ca partial
exception is Washington, who was a
Surveyor, the only President whose
career had been more largely in science,
economics, business and organized be-
nevolence than in politics, law, oratory
or military achievement. The latter
four have been the types of experience
from which most OF our Presidents have
come.
Because Mr.. Hoover's training in
| cluded a larger proportion of contact
with the tangible factors of civilization,
1t follows that he Is more likely than
the older type of President and states
man to think in terms of natural forces.
When a statesman of the older type, or
politician of any type, says destiny
| of nations" his aim, as rule, goes no
further than to excite in his hearers an
agreeable glow of patriotism or gran
dose emotion of one sort or another.
When a statesman of the Hoover type
! envisages in his own mind some con-
crete status which will be the outcome
of forces now under way. To recognize
such forces as they work and to esti-
mate the outcome of the aggregate of
them is as natural to a mind trained
largely in science as to weigh the forces
in an engineering situation and esti-
mate their resultant.
Span Of Life Increased.
One aspect of the destiny of our own
Nation will be the resultant of certain
social and scientific trends now under
way. For example, one group of such
forces already has, during the last 80
years, increased the average Americans
normal expectation of life by about six
years. The forces that have contributed
to this beneflcent result include adj
vanceS in science, such as the discovery
OF specific cures or preventiveS of some
diseases; advances in sanitation, such
as watchfulness over water supply and
inspection of milk; advances in the pre-
vention of accident, shortening of hours
OF labor and better conditions of labor,
especially for women and children; bet
ter housing
President Hoover, by his habit Of
mind and preoccupation with the hui
manitarian side of national life, thinks
the beneficence of such forces, already
great, can be made greater yet: that
these and other wholesome forces can
De stimulated and co-ordinated, and
that forces working in the contrary
direction can be minimized.
Hence his Commission on Social
Trends.
About this one of Mr. Hoover's COM
missions, not much is heard as yet. It
Is the sort Of enterprise, quite unparal-
leled in the past, that takes time to
come to fruit. When it does it may
nave results such as may cause this to
seem, a quarter century from now, the
most important aspect Of American his