In theory, Hoover disliked government intrusion into the marketplace, but he grew increasingly willing to intercede as the war progressed, although he firmly opposed socialization of any industry. In the battle over regulation versus free markets, Hoover stood somewhere near the middle, representing neither the extreme right nor the extreme left. While he had fought valiantly for priority for food ships in the bureaucratic skirmishes over scarce shipping, near the end of the war, as he envisioned the possibility of terminating the carnage rapidly, he grew more inclined to give priority to troop ships. Over the course of the war, he moved incrementally in the direction of temporary regulation, to be relaxed with victory, yet he remained essentially a pragmatist throughout the conflict.58
Wilson did not turn often to Hoover for political advice, though he usually listened carefully when advice was offered. When Hoover suggested that something be done to prevent war profiteering, as many businessmen stood to become rich off war demand, Wilson recommended the measure to Congress, which adopted the excess profits tax. Worried about the lack of crucial labor at harvesttime, Hoover joined farm groups to inspire legislation to exempt agricultural workers from the draft, giving them the same status as munitions workers. Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Wilson queried Hoover about a proposal brought to him by the British and the French, who wanted to invite the Japanese to invade Siberia to arrest Bolshevik eastward expansion. Hoover pointed out that the Russians and the Japanese, who had fought a war in 1904–5, were bitter rivals and that such intervention, likely to be ineffective anyway, would sow hatred toward the Western powers. Moreover, Hoover warned, if the Japanese, themselves an expansionist power, prevailed, they were likely to dig in and remain entrenched permanently. Despite Hoover’s advice, Wilson sided with the Western Allies and dispatched a small contingent of American troops for the ostensible purpose of ejecting the Japanese, should they sink roots.
On the whole, Wilson liked and trusted Hoover. Although a lifelong Republican, Hoover backed Wilson’s call for election of a Democratic Congress in 1918, which the president hoped would support him at peace negotiations to follow the war’s end. Wilson already envisioned the mechanism of a world organization to enforce the peace, with which Hoover sympathized, though without the inflexibility of the Presbyterian president. The appeal backfired. Though Democrats carried both chambers, Congress would, indeed, torpedo the peacemaking. Hoover lost standing among isolationist Republicans, yet became the darling of some internationalists in both parties.59
In early 1918, the Russian Revolution fell into the hands of Bolsheviks, whose leaders pulled Russia from the war. During the spring, the Germans heaved the full weight of their armies in a risky offensive against the western front. The food front also faced challenges. Parlaying transportation, competing with shipping needed for troops, squeezing out the last remaining ounce of conservation, Hoover kept the wheat, bacon, rice, and sugar flowing to the tables and trenches of Europe. The Allies had requested 750,000 tons of wheat to tide them over through the winter months; Hoover sent 850,000 tons. With the abundant harvest of 1918, he won a close race with starvation, yet the outcome remained tenuous. Allied generals now expected victory, but not until 1919 or 1920. Hoover was forced to plan on the contingency that the war might continue for a year or more and stockpile supplies in Europe. Measured by peacetime standards, the United States was greatly overproducing. No one could predict how long American farmers could continue to meet the burden of European demands. On the other hand, if an armistice occurred abruptly, farmers would be stuck with an enormous surplus, much of it perishable. To protect American farmers, who had played such a vital role in pushing the Germans into a corner, Hoover concocted a scheme to feed the enemy and neutral nations after the war, which would simultaneously save the continent from famine and dispose of the American surplus.60
Meanwhile, the war machine of the Western powers inexorably ground down the Germans, whose morale was collapsing. Allied momentum was spurred by the fresh, yet untested American army, which swarmed into battle, their vigor and numbers overwhelming the weary, disheartened Germans. By mid-September 1918, with Allied commanders predicting that final victory would not occur until the following year, Hoover issued orders for mandatory conservation in all public eating places. Restaurants and clubs must serve bread containing at least 20 percent flour substitutes and could not place sugar bowls on tables or use more than two pounds of sugar per every ninety meals. Yet the pace of events outraced the Allies’ understanding of them. Even as Hoover employed new plans to tighten belts, the Germans were breaking down. On September 26, four days following Hoover’s conservation order, the American and Allied armies launched their steamroller offensive in the Meuse-Argonne sector, including 1.2 million American troops. On October 6, Germany yielded to the inevitability of their defeat and offered an armistice on the basis of Wilson’s relatively generous terms for peace, the Fourteen Points. Wilson asked his war council, including Hoover, to submit stipulations he should include in the terms for negotiation. Hoover inserted a provision mandating the feeding of the ex-enemy and occupied nations during and after the peacemaking. Wilson included it in his set of conditions.
The armistice was formally declared on November 11, 1918, and a peace conference was set to meet at the Versailles palace, near Paris, at which the victors would dictate the terms. Hoover cautioned Wilson to remain in America, above the fray, and employ his stature as leverage, yet the president announced he would attend personally, confident of his persuasive talents. Hoover accompanied Wilson to Paris as his food adviser. With the war over, the plagues of famine and pestilence swept down like a cloud of locusts. In 1918, a catastrophic world influenza pandemic killed more people than the Great War, including Americans. More than half of the employees of the Food Administration were stricken. Bert and Lou were bypassed, but Herbert Jr. contracted the contagion, which left him partially deaf for the remainder of his life.61
The Food Administration had proven to be one of the great successes of the home front and further embellished Hoover’s reputation. He was so efficient that during the final nineteen months of the war, neither Allied soldiers nor civilians were forced to go short on rations for a single day. Despite Hoover’s antipathy for big government, the Food Administration had reached into every household in every community, inspiring cooperation between farmers, processors, shippers, businessmen, and volunteers. This vast apparatus was liquidated completely within four months of the armistice of November 11. When it closed shop in 1919, the Food Administration returned to the Treasury not only its full congressional appropriation of $150 million, but an additional $60 million in profits. Total administrative expenses were less than $8 million. The agency helped place some 28 million additional acres under cultivation. There had been no major scandals, inflation was moderate, and prices for consumers were reasonable. Throughout the war, Hoover had to balance many objectives, but the interests of Americans were paramount in his mind. He had been willing to expand government power under stress, but he wielded power as frugally as he spent dollars, and when the emergency expired, he quickly shrank the bureaucracy he had built. Throughout, he was a pragmatic idealist, something like the president he served, though perhaps less expansive in his idealism and more practical in his expectations.62
The home front had prospered, yet all segments did not prosper equally. Farmers wanted higher prices, but Hoover believed, aside from necessary incentives, that no portion of the population should profit excessively because of the war. After all, the excess profits tax had been partly his brainchild. Yet Hoover controlled only one sector of the economy—agriculture and its appurtenances—and his reach was limited. The real, and legitimate, complaint of farmers was that when the war ended abruptly, they were stuck with a huge surplus, which inspired an agricultural depression during the otherwise prosperous 1920s, especially because farmers continued to produce at wartime levels once wartime demand had declined. Hoover did the
best he could. Combining his characteristic altruism with his equally characteristic hard-nosed business practices, he sold large portions of the American farm surplus, almost exclusively on credit, to the Allies, the defeated powers, and the prostrate, starving nations of Central and Eastern Europe, and later, to the famine-stricken infant Soviet Union. Once again, as he had for Belgium and then the Allies, Hoover employed his power to preserve millions of lives and found vital markets for many farmers.
In 1918, while he remained in Europe, the Belgian government attempted to persuade Hoover to accept an award or decoration, but he steadfastly refused honors from Belgium and other foreign nations. The only order he desired, he said, was to be considered a friend of the Belgian people. Inspired, some Belgians suggested to their king a new award to be issued specifically, and solely, for Herbert Hoover. King Albert designed a simple medal designating Hoover as “Friend of the Belgian Nation.” He was also given a Belgian passport stamped “Perpetual.” The only other foreign award he accepted was the French Legion of Honor. Nonetheless, avenues, schools, and buildings were named for him throughout Europe and the United States. Many believed that Hoover, more than any other man, deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.
FIVE
Samaritan to a Continent
A great civilization had committed suicide. Four years of war had devastated a continent. From France through Belgium and the German frontier, from Poland deep into Russia, and throughout the Balkans, cities and towns lay in ruin, bridges and railroads had been destroyed, and fertile farmland had been trampled by armies. Unemployment was pervasive. Famine and disease stretched to every part of the continent, while women and children prowled the streets, scrounging for food. A political power vacuum hovered over the desiccated empires of Austria, Turkey, and Russia. The Soviets sought to expand their newly incubated ideological and territorial empire, often by fomenting revolutions amid the turmoil, where famine fed anarchy. The Allies, seeking to bludgeon the prostrate Central Powers into signing an unpalatable treaty, clamped down a food blockade that cut off not only their enemies, but also numerous neutral or liberated countries, punishing women and children as well as defeated warriors. Europe would never again be the powerhouse of military might, economic dominance, cultural inspiration, and aristocratic privilege that it had been prior to the Great War.1
On November 7, days before the armistice, President Wilson issued an executive order authorizing Herbert Hoover to convert the Food Administration into an international relief organization. Dispatched to Paris to take charge of feeding postwar Europe and to participate in the Versailles peace conference, Hoover left Edgar Rickard, his assistant administrator, in New York to dismantle the American aspects of the Food Administration while he expanded his responsibilities from the North Sea to the Urals in a prodigious undertaking to feed and restore Europe.2
The armistice of November 1918 ended the war with Germany, but it did not set the terms for peace. Within weeks of the cease-fire the victorious Allied leaders assembled at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris for the series of conferences that produced the Treaty of Versailles. Although the representatives of many real or prospective nations crowded the lobbies, the dominant power was held by the Big Four, consisting of President Wilson, British prime minister David Lloyd George, French president Georges Clemenceau, and Italian prime minister Vittorio Orlando.
Hoover was prominent among the numerous aides and advisers attached to the Big Four. His chief responsibility, however, was not orchestrating a utopian peace, but feeding, nourishing, and rebuilding a devastated continent. From November 1918 through September 1919, he wore many hats, serving as U.S. food administrator, head of the Grain Corporation and the Sugar Equalization Board, and director of Belgian relief. He was the de facto leader of the Supreme Economic Council, which reported directly to the Big Four. Hoover’s numerous titles involved overlapping responsibilities. The strongest advocate of relief for the devastated continent, he wanted centralized control under American auspices because the United States provided nearly all of the food and personnel, including American soldiers borrowed from and paid for by the Quartermaster Corps, on loan from General John J. Pershing, a major backer of Hoover’s objectives. Hoover wanted to dispose of the American farm surplus by selling it to the starving Europeans, on credit if necessary, until the excess from the 1918 harvest was exhausted.3
While Wilson sought a just peace with Germany, Clemenceau fought for the harshest sanctions and opposed any action that might indirectly aid the defeated enemy, including the feeding of nations that might trade with Germany. Thus, as the negotiations continued at Versailles, the main task of the American relief mission was to pry open the food blockade, chiefly maintained by the British navy, that denied nourishment to men, women, and children, most of them noncombatants, including virtually every nation except those aligned with the Allies. The Allied leaders, excluding Wilson, reasoned that Germany and Austria could be starved into signing a Carthaginian peace. Hoover considered such a strategy irresponsible, imprudent, and morally bankrupt. To those who argued that the Germans deserved to die, Hoover remarked, “No matter how we feel at the present moment, we must write now into history such acts as will stand to our credit in the minds of our grandchildren.”4 A punitive peace would be virtually impossible to enforce and would embitter the next generation, sowing the seeds of a future war, providing a strong incentive for the defeated nations to seek vengeance and, when their turn on top came, to be meager with mercy. Moreover, the policy of intentionally enervating the defeated, neutral, and liberated nations deterred economic recovery among the victors as well as the vanquished. The economy of nations, especially the patchwork of new nations carved out at Versailles to accommodate ethnic minorities, resembled a crossword puzzle that required prudent stitching together.5
Hoover, better than most, understood the economic interdependence of Europe and America—the two lands must prosper or fail together. Yet men with long views were in short supply at Versailles. In December 1918, Wilson requested a $100 million appropriation for food relief; Congress approved it on February 24. Creating the American Relief Administration (ARA) as the chief agency of American distribution of aid, Wilson added another responsibility to Hoover’s portfolio of food and aid agencies by appointing him administrator of the ARA. However, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, partly because he detested both Wilson and Hoover, had attached an amendment denying credit for the purchase of food for the former enemy powers. Germany and the vastly truncated Austrian state, both virtually penniless, were among the most food-deprived countries in Europe and verged on political anarchy animated by imminent famine. Germany had already experienced an uprising in Berlin and a Communist revolution in Bavaria following the armistice, while a Communist revolution failed in Vienna. Despite Lodge’s amendment, Hoover vowed to defeat revolution and fill empty stomachs at a single blow.6
Since Lodge had blocked sales on credit to Germany and Austria, the Germans were forced to buy provisions partly with their gold reserve. Hoover, remaining within the letter of the law, arranged for other sales to the ex-enemies by a circuitous route. Congress appropriated funds for Britain, which in turn loaned the money to Germany and Austria. With famine and revolution running rampant in the continent’s heartland, Hoover’s men posted signs stating that any major public disturbances would result in the halt of food aid. During the armistice, the two major defeated powers received 42 percent of all food aid.7
Hoover’s problems, however, were diplomatic, economic, and logistical. With the emergence of new states in the aftermath of the collapse of the Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires, the infrastructure within these new nations was often a scrambled muddle, which made transportation and communications challenging. Through Hoover’s efforts, food seeped into the anguished areas even before the Allies relaxed the food blockade in March 1919, usually paid for from a small reserve fund made available to Wilson and residual revenue remaining in the till of the
Grain Corporation, which had ended the war with a profit. Hoover also shipped food to the Near East, where the remnants of the dismembered Ottoman Empire were faltering. Selecting an experienced staff from the Food Administration, the CRB, and the army and the navy, Hoover installed food experts in Paris to examine the nutritional needs of each nation, paying scrupulous attention to children. Wilson, through Pershing, assigned army officers from the Quartermaster Corps to warehouse and distribute food. Their salaries were paid by the military, keeping overhead low. Even while the blockade remained in effect, Hoover dispatched relief on vessels protected by the American navy.8
While he fought diplomatic battles in Europe, Hoover also represented the rights of American farmers, whose warehouses bulged with surpluses of wheat, cotton, corn, pork, and dairy products. Claiming they were no longer bound to previous agreements, the British and French reneged on their wartime contracts with the United States, turning instead to cheaper markets in British colonies and in Latin America. Hoover feared that an economic collapse among American farmers would trigger the failure of rural banks, widening into a larger national economic downturn. He protested that the Allies had a moral responsibility to their own ally. If they backed out, American farmers would be ruined. The next time Europeans went to war, he warned, America might be less likely to send their young men abroad to save them.
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