BERT HOOVER STARED AT HIS plate and poked his fork at the two round, padded cakes that looked to have been fried and dusted with cornmeal. Glancing up dubiously at the servant who had just delivered his dinner, he questioned why he was keeping two cooks and six attendants if the result was a cuisine one might expect to be served in a flophouse.
“Meatless Monday,” explained his wife Lou, sitting across from him.
Reminded that it was that dour time of the week again, he waved the servant off to the kitchen. Weary from having put in another twelve-hour day, he sighed and tested the constituency of the new concoction, not oblivious to the irony. He had come up with the idea for Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays, putting alliteration to work in the propaganda effort to win the war. Sometimes, he feared his life would be summed up in one word:
Food.
Or, perhaps, the lack of it. It seemed that no good deed went unpunished during these difficult times. He had performed so admirably in the Belgium hunger relief effort that President Wilson had called him home to head the new Food Administration agency. His was now the thankless job of trying to convince Americans to eat less so that more grains, milk, and meat could be sent overseas to the troops and the ravaged Europeans. Across the country, people were calling him the Food Czar, and the unpopular skimping and sacrifice was being dubbed “hooverizing.” Half the world would remember him for keeping them from starving. But the other half—young Americans included—would no doubt forever associate his name with deprivation.
“What do you think, dear?” Lou asked gamely.
He looked around the dining room of the cold Rhode Island Avenue Victorian house that he had rented from Senator Harlan to serve as both a family home and his office. “I think it could use another fireplace.”
“I mean the recipe. I came up with it myself.”
He suffered a bite, rolling the dry dollop around in his mouth until he managed to swallow it. Transported back to those halcyon days in China, when he had acquired an appreciation for spicy, exotic flavors, he shrugged and muttered, “Tastes like peanut butter.”
“I call it cottage cheese sausage,” Lou said. “The peanut butter provides protein. I had it dissolved in soda and worked into the cheese. We added thyme, sage and chopped onion.”
He pushed his plate away. “Maybe we should seal it into cans and drop it by air into the German trenches. Hope it explodes in their stomachs.”
Lou ignored his sarcasm. “I’ve also come up with some other ideas. What if we encouraged housewives to carry cash at all times to purchase groceries when they are at they store? That way, they could save on gasoline.”
“You mean women don’t do that now?”
“Of course not. They have their purchases delivered.”
“Heaven forbid an upstanding lady should be caught walking down the street carrying a parcel. The society pages would be outraged.”
“I’ve saved my best for last.” Lou stood, retreated to the kitchen, and returned wearing a drab tunic over her dress. “Look, it’s cotton. Women can wear it over their better dresses so they don’t have to launder so much. It will save on bills. We should call it the Hoover Apron.”
His falsetto voice spiked. “Absolutely not! I don’t want my name attached to every damn creation designed to incite ridicule!”
Lou glared at him. “You’re not the only one who’s had a long day. While you bounce around the city saving the world, I have to run the Girl Scouts of America and, by the way, raise two boys.”
He noticed the empty chairs around the table. “Where are they?”
“They have debate practice this evening at Sidwell. It would nice if their father stopped by the school a least once this semester to encourage them.”
“Where will they eat dinner?”
“They’ve recently taken an interest in invitations to eat away from home.”
He couldn’t blame them, given the menu. He raised his linen napkin from his lap and angrily tossed it onto the table. “Forgive me for being so neglectful, but I’ve been preoccupied putting out the fires you started with that Stanford mansion fiasco. I’ve got reporters calling me and asking why we need twenty-one rooms and why my wife is taking my sons to an ice cream parlor for sodas while I’ve been harping on people to cut back on everything.”
“The house was not my fault! You’ve been promising me for twenty years that we’d settle in Palo Alto. Go ahead and start plans on the construction. That’s what you told me.”
“That was before the war.”
“I dismissed the architect this morning, so you can stop worrying.”
They sat stewing in silence, until Lou nodded away the servant who came in to see if they wished the servings removed. She gestured for the servant to shut the door behind her. Alone now with her husband, she confided, “I hate this city. I cannot wait until we can finally escape to California.”
“You have your club. What is gnawing at you now?”
She walked over to a hutch and picked up from its counter a copy of that morning’s Washington Star. She placed its front page in front of him. “The jury convicted Debs.”
He shoved the paper aside, having already read the details of the trial of Eugene Debs, the Socialist union leader who had been arrested under the new Sedition Act. “The man is a rabble-rouser. He called for young men all across the country to resist the draft.”
“When did speaking one’s mind become a crime in the United States?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, avoiding her judging glare. “It’s war, Lou. We can’t have an agitator like that poisoning the uneducated minds in the factories. Next thing you know, the anti-capitalist disease will spread and thousands will be on the streets protesting.”
“They’re already on the streets. Until they get thrown in jail.”
“Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War.”
She was unmoved by his argument citing precedent. “Bert, you think I don’t read? You think I don’t know that Lincoln ignored the Constitution to stifle his political opposition?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“What are we fighting for in France if we arrest people here who merely speak their opinion that the war is wrong? That mob in Montana was allowed to lynch that anti-war speaker from a railroad trestle. And the House won’t even seat Victor Berger, even though the people of Wisconsin elected him to represent them. And the government won’t accede to the will of the citizenry, just because he opposes the war?”
“The First Amendment must bend to dire circumstances.”
Turning conciliatory for fear of raising his blood pressure, Lou sat in the chair next to her husband and took his hand. “Bert, our Quaker ancestors are watching us.”
“Don’t start that again.”
“They came here because they were persecuted for refusing to fight for the English king. The government in England called them seditious, too. And here we are, sitting by as accomplices to these outrages while good men suffer for standing by their conscience.”
“We’ve done more than most.”
“But we haven’t done enough.”
“My dear, forgive me. But there are forces at work in the world that you don’t understand. The Bolsheviks won’t be satisfied with turning Russia into a godless nation. They are already over here spewing their venom in the trade unions. If the labor strikes become more violent, well …”
“Go ahead, say it.”
“Our way of life will be over. All of this, these fineries, will be gone.”
Hurt by his implication that she had become spoiled, Lou stood up and began collecting his plate and utensils.
“Leave that for the servants,” he ordered.
She turned on him with an indicting glare. “If our way of life is going to change, I’d better get used to it.”
He closed his eyes for a moment’s respite from their quarreling. “I almost forgot. Two more will be joining us for the dinner party on Saturday night.”
“Who?”
“The Assistant Secretary of the Navy and his wife.”
A sour expression crossed Lou’s face at the thought of that notorious political climber Franklin Roosevelt sitting at her table. “Does the man ever take a night off from his glad-handing and snorting around for patronage?”
“What did Roosevelt ever do to you?”
She fussed with the linens. “It’s just … some of the ladies down at the club have been talking.”
“About what?”
“The man’s poor wife found some letters last week.”
“Eleanor?”
“That cad has been carrying on an affair with Mrs. Roosevelt’s social secretary for four years.”
“Will she divorce him?”
“They say she offered Franklin his freedom. But the harlot he sleeps with is a Catholic. She’s apparently too high and mighty to marry a divorced man.”
He shook his head in commiseration, thankful at least that he did not have that problem. “We must not deal in rumor-mongering. We will show all due hospitality to the Assistant Secretary, whatever his sins may be.”
Lou clanged her husband’s plate onto the cleaning platter. “Yes, but he may find a dose of saltpeter in his giblet gravy.”