THIS is the story of a young hero of to-day—of a leader who has, we may well hope, as many rich, useful years before him as those that make the tale we are about to tell.

History is not often willing to call a man happy—or a hero—while life lies ahead of him. Time can change everything. Time alone can prove everything. We must wait for the judgment of time, it is said.

We feel very sure, however, of the worth of the work of Herbert Clark Hoover, the man who gave up a business that meant the directorship of more than 125,000 workers in order that he might give his time and his powers to the task of feeding ten million helpless people in war-ravaged Belgium and northern France.

“If England could have availed herself of such talent for organization as H. C. Hoover has displayed in feeding the Belgians, we should be a good year nearer the end of the war than we are to-day,” said a prominent member of the British Parliament.

“There is a man who knows how to get things done!” we are hearing said on every side. “If America should feel the pinch of war and famine, Mr. Hoover could meet the problem of putting us on rations, and there would be no food riots.”

Who is this man who knows how to do things? In what school did he learn how to meet emergencies and how to manage men?

They tell us he was a Quaker lad, born on an Iowa farm, who in his early boyhood moved to a farm in the far West. Was it because of this early transplanting—this change to new scenes, new problems, new interests—that he learned to see things in a big way and to get a grip on what really matters in Iowa, in Oregon, in the world?

“The first thing you think about Hoover,” said a man who knew him in college, “is that he is a free soul and feels himself free. Most people are more or less hedged in by their own little affairs. His interests have no walls to shut him away from other people and their interests. He is a man who is in vital touch with what concerns other men.”

But we come once more to the question: how did he come by the vital touch which gives him this power over men and makes him in a very real sense a citizen of the world? You remember the exclamation of envious Cassius when he was protesting to Brutus against the growing influence of CÆsar:

Cassius was, of course, speaking in grudging scorn; but we often find ourselves thinking quite simply and sincerely that we would like to know what goes to the making of true power.

Sometimes we like to pretend that we can explain the making of a great man. We say, for example, of Lincoln: he early learned what it meant to meet hardship, so he was strong to endure; by hard times and hard work he learned the value of things, the things that really count; he knew what sorrow was, and the faith that is greater than grief, so he had a heart that could feel with the sorrows of others and could help them to win faithfulness through suffering. Because a truly sympathetic heart beats with the joys as well as the griefs of others, he cared for the little things that go to make up the big thing we call living, and his warm human touch made him a friend of simple people, with an understanding of all. Thus it was that he knew people in a real way and life in a true way, and so was able to be the leader of a nation in a time that tried the souls of the bravest. So we say, and fancy that we have explained Lincoln. But have we? Many other boys knew toil and want and sorrow, and many learned much, perhaps, in that hard school; but there was only one Lincoln.

We can, in truth, no more explain a great man than we can explain life itself. How is it that the acorn has power to take from the earth and air and sunshine the things that make the oak-tree, the monarch of the forest? How is it that of all the oaks in the woods of the world there are no two exactly alike? How is it that among all the children in a family, in a school, in a nation, there are no two really alike?

A boy I knew once put the puzzle in this way: “You would think that twins would be more truly twins than they are. But when they seem most twinsy, they’re somehow different, after all!”

All that we can say is that each child is himself alone, and that as the days go by the things he sees and hears, the things he thinks about and loves, the things he dreams and the things he does, are somehow made a part of him just as the soil and sunshine are made into the tree.

What was it in the Iowa farm life that became a part of the Quaker boy, Herbert Hoover? He learned to look life in the face, simply and frankly. Hard work, resolute wrestling with the brown earth, made his muscles firm and his nerves steady. The passing of the days and the seasons, the coming of the rain, the dew, and the frost, and the sweep of the storm, awoke in his spirit a love of nature and a delight in nature’s laws. “All’s love, yet all’s law,” whispered the wind as it passed over the fields of bending grain. Since all was law, one might, by studying the ways of seed and soil and weather, win a larger harvest than the steadiest toil, unaided by reason and resource, could coax from the long furrows. It was clear that thinking and planning brought a liberal increase to the yield of each acre. The might of man was not in muscle but in mind.

Then came the move to Oregon. How the Golden West opened up a whole vista of new ideas! How many kinds of interesting people there were in the world! He longed to go to college where one could get a bird’s-eye view of the whole field of what life had to offer before settling down to work in his own particular little garden-patch.

“I don’t want to go to a Quaker school, or a college founded by any other special sect,” he said. “I want to go where I will have a chance to see and judge everything fairly, without prejudice for or against any one line of thought.”

“The way of the Friends is a liberal enough way for a son of mine, or for any God-fearing person,” was his guardian’s reply. “Thee must not expect thy people to send thee to a place of worldly fashions and ideas.”

“It looks as if I should have to send myself, then,” said the young man, with a smile in his clear eyes, but with his chin looking even more determined than was its usual firm habit.

When Leland Stanford Junior University opened its doors in 1891, Herbert C. Hoover was one of those applying for admission. The first student to register for the engineering course, he was the distinguished nucleus of the Department of Geology and Mining. The first problem young Hoover had to solve at college, however, was the way of meeting his living expenses.

“What chances are there for a chap to earn money here?” he asked.

“The only job that seems to be lying about loose is that of serving in the dining-rooms,” he was told. “Student waiters are always in demand.”

The young Quaker looked as if he had been offered an unripe persimmon. “I suppose it’s true that ‘they also serve who only stand and wait,’” he drawled whimsically, “but somehow I can’t quite see myself in the part. And anyway,” he added reflectively, “I don’t know that I need depend on a job that is ‘lying about loose.’ I shouldn’t wonder if I’d have to look out for an opening that hasn’t been offered to every passer-by and become shop-worn.”

He had not been many days at the university before he discovered a need and an opportunity. There was no college laundry. “I think that the person who undertakes to organize the clean-linen business in this academic settlement will ‘also serve,’ and he won’t have to ‘wait’ for his reward!” he said to himself.

The really successful man of business is one who can at the same time create a demand and provide the means of meeting it. The college community awoke one morning to the realization that it needed above everything else efficient laundry-service. And it seemed that an alert young student of mining engineering was managing the business. Before long it was clear, not only that the college was by way of being systematically and satisfactorily served in this respect, but that, what was even more important, a man with a veritable genius for organization had appeared on the campus. It soon became natural to “let Hoover manage” the various student undertakings; and to this day “the way Hoover did things” is one of the most firmly established traditions of Leland Stanford.

Graduating from the university in the pioneer class of 1895, he served his apprenticeship at the practical work of mining engineering in Nevada County, California, by sending ore-laden cars from the opening of the mine to the reducing works. He earned two dollars a day at this job, and also the opportunity to prove himself equal to greater responsibility. The foreman nodded approvingly and said, “There’s a young chap that college couldn’t spoil! He has a degree plus common sense, and so is ready to learn something from the experience that comes his way. And he’s always on the job—right to the minute. Any one can see he’s one that’s bound for the top!”

It seemed as if Fate were determined from the first that the young man should qualify as a citizen of the world as well as a master of mines. We next find him in that dreary waste of New South Wales known as Broken Hill. In a sun-smitten desert, whose buried wealth of zinc and gold is given grudgingly only to those who have grit to endure weary, parched days and pitiless, lonely nights, he met the ordeal, and proved himself still a man in No Man’s Land. He looked the desert phantoms in the face, and behold! they faded like a mirage. Only the chance of doing a full-sized man’s work remained.

The Broken Hill contract completed, he found new problems as a mining expert and manager of men in China. But he did not go to this new field alone. While at college he had found in one of his fellow-workers a kindred spirit, who was interested in the real things that were meat and drink to him. Miss Lou Henry was a live California girl, with warm human charm and a hobby for the marvels of geology. It was not strange that these two found it easy to fall into step, and that after a while they decided to fare forth on the adventure of living together.

It was an adventure with something more than the thrill of novel experience and the tonic of meeting new problems that awaited them in the Celestial Empire. For a long time a very strong feeling against foreigners and the changed life they were introducing into China had been smoldering among many of the people. There was a large party who believed that change was dangerous. They did not want railroads built and mines worked. The snorting locomotive, belching fire and smoke, seemed to them the herald of the hideous new order of things that the struggling peoples of the West were trying to bring into their mellow, peaceful civilization. The digging down into the ground was particularly alarming. Surely, that could not fail to disturb the dragon who slept within the earth and whose mighty length was coiled about the very foundations of the world. There would be earthquakes and other terrible signs of his anger.

The Boxer Society, whose name meant “the fist of righteous harmony,” and whose slogan was “Down with all foreigners,” became very powerful. “Let us be true to the old customs and keep China in the safe old way!” was the cry of the Boxers. The “righteous harmony” meant “China first,” and “China for the Chinese”; the “fist” meant “Death to Intruders!” There was a general uprising in 1900, and many foreigners and Chinese Christians were massacred. Mr. Hoover, who was at Tientsin in charge of important mining interests, found himself at the storm-center. It was his task to help save his faithful workers, yellow men as well as white, from the infuriated mob.

There was a time when it looked as if the rising tide of rebellion would sweep away all that opposed it before reinforcements from the Western nations could arrive. And when the troops did pour into Peking and Tientsin to rescue the besieged foreigners, another lawless period succeeded. Mr. Hoover found it almost as hard to protect property and innocent Chinese from soldiers, thirsty for loot, as it had been to hold the desperate Boxers at bay. The victorious troops as well as the vanquished fanatics seemed to

The master of mines had a chance to prove himself now a master of men. He succeeded in safeguarding the interests of his company, and somehow he managed, too, to keep his faith in people in spite of the war madness. He never doubted that the wave of unreason and cruelty would pass, like the blackness of a storm. Reason and humanity would prevail, and kindly Nature would make each battle-scarred field of struggle and bloodshed smile again with flowers.

The adventure of living led the Hoovers to Australia, to Africa, to any and all places where there were mines to be worked. As manager of some very important mining interests Mr. Hoover’s judgment was sought wherever the struggle to win the treasures of the rocks presented special problems. He had now gained wealth and influence, but he was too big a man to rest back on what he had accomplished and content himself with making money.

“I have all the money I need,” he said. “I want to do some real work; it’s only doing things that counts.”

You know, of course, the joy of doing something quite apart from anything you have to do, just because you have taken up with the idea for its own sake. Then you run to meet any amount of effort, and work becomes play. Mr. Hoover and his wife now took up a task together with all the zest that one puts into a fascinating game. Can you imagine getting fun out of translating a great Latin book about mines and minerals?

“For some time I have looked forward to putting old Agricola into English,” explained Mr. Hoover; “we are having a real holiday working it up.”

“Who in the world was Agricola, and what does he matter to you?” demanded his friend, in amazement.

“Agricola, my dear fellow, was the Latinized name of a German mining engineer who lived in the early part of the sixteenth century—a time when it was not only the fashion to turn one’s name into Latin, but to write all books of any importance in that language. He matters a good deal to any one who happens to be especially interested in the science of mining. This volume we are at work on is the cornerstone of that science.”

“How, then, does it happen that it has never been translated before?” asked the friend.

“Well,” replied Mr. Hoover, with some hesitation, “you see it wasn’t a particularly easy job. Agricola’s Latin had its limitations, but his knowledge of minerals and mining problems was prodigious. Only a mining expert could possibly get at what he was trying to say, and most mining experts have something more paying to do than to undertake a thing of this kind.”

“I see,” retorted his friend, with a smile; “you are doing this because you have nothing more paying to do!”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Hoover, quietly, “there is nothing that is more paying than the thing that is your work—because you particularly want to do it.”

Mr. Hoover would say without any hesitation that the work which he volunteered to do when the storm of the great war broke on Europe in August, 1914, was “paying” in the same way. This citizen of the world was at his London headquarters, from which, as consulting engineer, he was directing vast mining interests, when the panic of fear seized the crowds of American tourists who had gone abroad as to a favorite pleasure-park and had found it suddenly transformed into a battle-field. Hundreds of people were as frightened and helpless as children caught in a burning building. All at once they found themselves in a strange, threatening world, without means of escape.

“Nobody seemed to know what was to be done with us, and nobody seemed to care,” explained a Vassar girl. “Their mobilizing was the only thing that mattered to them. There were no trains and steamers for us, and no money for our checks and letters of credit. Then Mr. Hoover came to the rescue. He saw that something was done, and it was done effectively. It took generalship, I can tell you, to handle that stampede—to get people from the Continent into England, to arrange for the advancement of funds to meet their needs, and to provide means of getting them back to America. They say he is a wonderful engineer, but I don’t think he ever carried through any more remarkable engineering feat than that was!”

The matter of giving temporary relief and providing transportation for some six or seven thousand anxious Americans was a simple undertaking, however, compared to Mr. Hoover’s next task.

In the autumn of 1914 the cry of a whole nation in distress startled the world. The people of Belgium were starving. The terror and destruction of war had swept over a helpless little country leaving want and misery everywhere. There was need of instant and efficient aid. Of course only a neutral would be permitted to serve, and equally of course, only a man used to handling great enterprises—a captain of industry and a master of men—would be able to serve in such a crisis. It did not take a prophet or seer to see in Herbert Clark Hoover, that master of vast engineering projects who had given himself so generously to helping his fellow-Americans in distress, a man fitted to meet the needs of the time. And Mr. Walter H. Page, American Ambassador to England, appealed to Mr. Hoover, American in London, citizen of the world and lover of humanity, to act as chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium.

“Who is this Mr. Hoover, and will he be really able to man and manage the relief-ship?” was demanded on every side, in America as well as in Europe.

“If anybody can save Belgium, he can,” vouched Mr. Page. “There never was such a genius for organization. He can grasp the most complex problems, wheels within wheels, and get all the cogs running in perfect harmony. Besides, he will have the courage to act promptly as well as effectively when once he has determined on the right course to pursue. He is not afraid of precedent and red tape. A man who has developed and directed large mining interests all over the world and who has been consulting engineer for over fifty mining companies, he cares more about doing a good job than making money. He’s giving himself now heart and soul to this relief work, and we may be sure, if the thing is humanly possible, that he will find a way.”

Can you picture to yourself the plight of Belgium after the cruel war-machine had mowed down all industries and trade and had swept the fields bare of crops and farm animals? Think of a country, about the size of the State of Maryland, so closely dotted with towns and villages that there were more than eight million people living there—as many people as there are in all our great western States on the Pacific side of the Rocky Mountains. This smallest country of Europe was the most densely settled and the most prosperous. The Belgians were a nation of skilled workers. Many were makers of cloth and lace. The linen, woolen, and delicate cotton fabrics woven in Belgium were as famous as Brussels carpets and Brussels lace. Since it was a land particularly rich in coal, manufacturing of all sorts was very profitable. There were important metal-works; nail, wire, and brass factories; and workshops of gold and silver articles. The glass and pottery works were also important. Little Belgium was a veritable hive of busy workers, whose products were sent all over the world.

Of course, you can see that an industrial country like this would have to import much of its food. The small farms and market-gardens could not at best supply the needs of the people for more than three or four months of the year. Just as our big cities must depend on importing provisions from the country, so Belgium depended on buying food-stuffs from agricultural communities in exchange for her manufactured articles.

Now can you realize what happened when the war came? There was no longer any chance for the people to make and sell their goods. All the mills and metal-works were stopped. The conquerors seized all the mines and metals. Everything that could serve Germany in any way was shipped to that country. The railroads, of course, were in the hands of the Germans, and so each town and village was cut off from communication with the rest of the world. The harvests that had escaped destruction by the trampling armies were seized to feed the troops. Even the scattered farm-houses were robbed of their little stores of grain and vegetables.

The task with which Mr. Hoover had to cope was that of buying food for ten million people (in Belgium and northern France), shipping it across seas made dangerous by mines and submarines of the warring nations, and distributing it throughout an entire country without any of the normal means of transportation. Let us see how he went to work. First he secured the help of other energetic, able young Americans who only wanted to be put to work. Chief among these volunteers were the Rhodes scholars at

Oxford, picked men who had been given special opportunities and who realized that true education means ability to serve. Without confusion or delay the relief army was organized and the campaign for the war sufferers under way.

It was a business without precedents, a sea that had never been charted, this work of the Relief Commission. At a time when England was vitally and entirely concerned with her war problems and when all railroads and steamships were supposed to be at the command of the government, Mr. Hoover quietly arranged for the transportation of supplies to meet the immediate needs of Belgium. Going on the principle that “when a thing is really necessary it is better to do it first and ask permission afterward,” Mr. Hoover saw his cargoes safely stowed and the hatches battened down before he went to secure his clearance papers.

“We must be permitted to leave at once,” he declared urgently. “If I do not get four cargoes of food to Belgium by the end of the week, thousands are going to die of starvation, and many more may be shot in food riots.”

“Out of the question!” replied the cabinet minister, positively. “There is no time, in the first place, and if there were, there are no good wagons to be spared by the railways, no dock hands, and no steamers. Besides, the Channel is closed to merchant ships for a week to allow the passage of army transports.”

“I have managed to get all these things,” Hoover interposed, “and am now through with them all except the steamers. This wire tells me that these are loaded and ready to sail, and I have come to you to arrange for their clearance.”

The distinguished official looked at Hoover aghast. “There have been men sent to the Tower for less than you have done, young man!” he exclaimed. “If it was for anything but Belgium Relief,—if it was anybody but you,—I should hate to think of what might happen. As it is—I suppose I must congratulate you on a jolly clever coup. I’ll see about the clearance papers at once.”

First and last, the chief obstacles with which the Relief Commission had to deal were due to the suspicions of the two great antagonists, England and Germany, each of whom was bent on preventing the other from securing the slightest advantage from the least chance or mischance. Now it was the British Foreign Office which sent a long communication, fairly swathed in red tape, suggesting changes in relief methods, which, if carried out, would have held up the food of seven million people for two days. In this stress Mr. Hoover dispensed with the services of a clerk and wrote the following letter, which served to lighten a dark day at the Foreign Office, in his own hand:

In April, 1915, a German submarine, in its zeal to nip England, torpedoed one of the Commission’s food-ships, and somewhat later an aËroplane tried to drop bombs on another. Mr. Hoover at once paid a flying visit to Berlin. He was assured that Germany regretted the incident and that it would not happen again.

“Thanks,” said Hoover. “Perhaps your Excellency has heard about the man who was bitten by a bad-tempered dog? He went to the owner to have the dog muzzled.

“‘But the dog won’t bite you,’ insisted the owner.

“‘You know he won’t bite me, and I know he won’t bite me,’ said the injured man, doubtfully, ‘but the question is, does the dog know?’”

“Herr Hoover,” said the high official, “pardon me if I leave you for a moment. I am going at once to ‘let the dog know.’”

Another incident which throws light on the character and influence of our citizen of the world was related by Mr. Lloyd-George, the first man of England, to a group of friends at the Liberal Club. Here is the story in the great Welshman’s own words:

“‘Mr. Hoover,’ I said, ‘I find I am quite unable to grant your request in the matter of Belgian exchange, and I have asked you to come here that I might explain why.’ Without waiting for me to go on, my boyish-looking caller began speaking. For fifteen minutes he spoke without a break—just about the clearest utterance I have ever heard on any subject. He used not a word too much, nor yet a word too few. By the time he had finished I had come to realize not only the importance of his contentions, but, what was more to the point, the practicability of granting his request. So I did the only thing possible under the circumstances—told him I had never understood the question before, thanked him for helping me to understand it, and saw that things were arranged as he wanted them.”

As Mr. Lloyd-George was impressed by the quiet efficiency of his “boyish-looking caller,” so the whole world was impressed by the masterly system with which the great work was carried forward. Wheat was bought by the ship-load in Argentina, transported to Belgium, where it was milled and made into bread, and then sold for less than the price in London. The details of distribution were so handled as to remove all chance for waste and dishonesty; and finally, the cost of the work itself—the total expense of the Relief Commission—was less than one-half of one per cent. of the money expended.

Many of the Belgians were, of course, able to pay for their food. They had property or securities on which money could be raised. The destitute people were the peasants and wage-earners whose only dependence for daily bread—their daily labor—had been taken from them by the war.

In the winter of 1917 Mr. Hoover came to America to tell about conditions in Belgium and the work of the Relief Commission. Looking his fellow-citizens quietly in the face he said: “America has received virtually all the credit for the help given, and we do not deserve it. Out of $250,000,000 that have been spent, only $9,000,000 have come from the United States, the rich nation blest with peace—who owes, moreover, much of her present prosperity to the misfortunes of the unhappy Belgians, for the greater part of the money expended for relief supplies has come to this country.”

There is not a child in Belgium who does not know how Mr. Brand Whitlock, the American Ambassador, and other American “Great-hearts,” have stood by them in their terrible need, just as they know that the wonderful “Christmas Ship,” laden with gifts from children to children, came from America. They have come to look on the Stars and Stripes as the symbol of all that is good and kind. In his book, “War Bread,” Mr. Edward E. Hunt, who was one of the members of the Relief Commission, prints several letters from Belgian children. Here is one signed “Marie Meersman.”

All Americans who once realize that by far the greater part of the money spent for Belgium has come from the nations on whom the burdens of war are pressing most heavily must want America to do much more.

Do you know the story of the kind-hearted passer-by who was so moved by the misfortune of a workman, hurt in an accident, that he exclaimed aloud, in an agonized tone, “Poor fellow! Poor, poor fellow!” Another bystander, however, reached in his pocket and drew out some money. “Here,” he said, turning to the first speaker, “I am sorry five dollars’ worth. How sorry are you?”

That is the question that Mr. Hoover has put to America: “What value do you put on your thankfulness for peace and prosperity and your sympathy for a suffering people less fortunate than yourselves?”

As we look at Mr. Hoover, however, we say, “In giving him to the work, America has at least given of her best.” And we like to think that he is truly American because his interests and sympathies are as broad as humanity, because all mankind is his business, because in deed and in truth he is “a citizen of the world.”

THE END