Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-03-02
PRESIDENT APPRECIATES
HISTORY.MAKINC FORCES
Hoover May Be More Fortunate Than
Others in Winning Recognition
Now for Accomplishments.

no less than war, as the resultant Of
forces-forces making for peace pre-
vailing over forces making for war.
Peace is not static thing" he said
in his Armistice day speech.
Has Innate Benevolence.
To this mental habit of thinking
about war and peace in terms Of forces
We may add some of Mr.. Hoover's per-
sonal qualities and experiences:
An innate benevolence which causes
helpfulness to be the greatest of his
quiet pleasures; Quaker tradition and
training which make responsibility TO
others a duty; a talent for organiza-
ton and q familiarity with 1t which
have caused him to have had greater
experience in organized benevolence
than any other living man Gin the form
Of his commission for relief in Belgium,
his postwar American relief admins
Stration and children's relief in Europe,
together with other similar commits
sions), and finally, a greater familiarity
than any other person has ever had
with the worst of wars horrors-its
effects upon women and children.
The sum of these qualities. added TO
the mental habit of thinking in terms
Of forces, accounts for that one Of Mr..
Hoover's activities during the last year
be the outstanding achievement Of his
first year in office. while I use phrases
like this, I ask the reader to bear In
mind always that no person. writing
within any year. can possibly guess
what will seem most important rs years
later.) The aim of the Conference for
the Limitation of Armament, now in
session at London, is to check one Of
the forces that make for war-namely,
competition in naval construction, and
to foster and promote one Of the forces
and cooperation among nations. The
London Conference is, to use an en-
cheering smile, in the crucible. The
outcome we cannot know. A past fact
of Mr.. Hoover's first year IL that he
devoted more time and thought to
this enterprise than to any other one.
Shrinks From Comparisons.
I shrink from comparisons implying
relative Importance. AS to another event
of the first year, I merely assert with
confidence that no one either now or
in the future will ever realize fully as
to this development, how much Presi-
dent Hoover accomplished. I am speak
ing of his minimizing and largely fore
stalling the business consequences Of
last November's Stock Exchange panic.
The averters and preventers in his
tory never by any chance get the credit
due them. The statesmen who kept
their peoples at peace are forgotten;
It is the Napoleons who drag their peo-
Piles through war that history celebrates.
Had there been in Europe In 1914 q
statesman who prevented the Great War,
hardly any American today would know
his name. No one OF some seventeen
million mothers in the world would
think of him and be grateful to him aS
q man who kept their son alive. Imagis
nation rarely grasps the might-have-
been. The Great War made famous 3
score of Fochs and Haigs; the averting
of that war would have made no one
famous.
And so Mr.. Hoover is most unlikely to
get the credit for what he averted last
November-the distress We are not exc
periencing today. 1t was the greatest
Stock Exchange debacle in American
history, and think in all history-the
only comparison I ever saw suggested
was the South Sea bubble in the eight
zenith century. To know what logically
should have followed last November'S
panic, turn to old newspapers and fol-
low the sequelS of slighter panicS In the
past. The 1907 panic, far less drastic
than the recent one, came about the
same time of the year, in the Fall. Turn
to old newspaper files of December. 1907,
and January and February, 1908, and
read of the soup houseS-does the
younger generation even know what q
soup house Is? They might have known
right now, readily. Or turn to the
sequels of the panic of 1898 and read Of
the soup houses then, and the succession
OF failures of business houses, like q
series of falling cards.
Hoover Is Given Credit.
That Mr.. Hoover was largely respon-
sible for saving us from that I have
heard no one doubt. After the disaster
is averted it Is universal human nature
to fail to grasp fully what the disaster
would nave meant; and 1t is occasional
human nature to say that maybe It
would not have happened, anyhow.
Some-who become optimists after the
danger has passed. familiar trait of
human nature-Sonle say the existence
OF the Federal Reserve System ayerted
the logical sequels Of the panic; that
since the Federal Reserve system came
into existence We cannot have business
Expressions like those that followed the
panlcs OF 1907 and 1893. But the per-
sons who say this are the same persons
who said. preceding November, that the
existence OF the Federal Reserve Sys-
tenn made Stock Exchange panics forever
impossible. The Federal Reserve Sys-
tenn was in existence in 192l-but it did
not prevent us from having serious BUSH
ness trouble and acute unemployment
as sequel to the comparatively mild
debacle of that year.
President Hoover averted a tragically
uncomfortable Winter. He did 1t easily
In the sense that 1t is the sort of thinS
he does most easily. Throughout the
week or 10 days in which he was put:
ting the machinery of rescue at work he
mad manner of seriousness and con-
centration, and yet there was absence
OF strain-it was the spectacle of A man
VINO is master of the task In hand and
does 1t smoothly.
=. IL was easier. of course, for him than
IL could be for any other man. Not
only did he have perfect understanding
OF the economic forces involved: his
eight years as Secretary of Comrnerce
nao given MIN familiarity with the
keymen OF every line of American in.
dustry in every section of the country.
familiarity with the important biisf.
ness personnel of the Nation as com.
plete as the head of a single business
house has with his branch nanarers
Not only did Mr.. Hoover know who the
keymen are, it is part of his genius for
organization to know almost intuitiyelv
what each man can do best, what each
man IS happiest in doing. (And, incl
dentally, 1t Is one of Mr.. Hoover's per-
manent sources of personal pleasure to
give man the precise function that
nature equipped him for, and at which.
therefore. the man is happy.) To pick
the right men, to summon them to
Washington, and to initiate their CO.
operation-that was the sort OF thing
Mr.. Hoover does almost without con-
scious effort. 1t Is an example Of ais
formula for accomplishment throuHh
commissions, analogous to his similar
use OF commissions in his relief work in
Belgium during the war and In Europe
during the postwar threat Of starva-