FOUR

The Great Humanitarian

Europe had not experienced a major war since the age of Napoléon. Freedom of speech and worship, the right of individuals to choose their own calling, and material prosperity were making leaping strides. Only two nations, Russia and Turkey, required passports for entry. The epoch had inspired a passion for justice, and hope for a more peaceful world appeared on the verge of realization. Herbert Hoover later remembered the era before the war as one of social and educational reform, scientific innovation, and a rising standard of living. In America, about 80 percent of the population had achieved middle-class status. Hoover himself had stood near the pinnacle of attaining the greatest fortune of any engineer in history.

Now back on American soil, Hoover waded tentatively into public service by volunteering to help his adopted state of California lure European exhibitors to the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition. He returned to Europe, lining up the British, French, and German governments to participate in the fair. Yet his efforts faltered when the outbreak of the Great War made the exposition inconsequential for European nations. Destiny had placed him at precisely a time and place that would dictate more than a detour in his life. It marked an irreversible change in direction.¹

The war swept in with sonic speed. On June 28, Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, assassinated the archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Hapsburg monarchy. The Austrian Empire seized the occasion to settle old grudges with the rebellious upstart Serbs. Ethnically, the Serbs were Slavs, and Russia, a Slavic nation, considered itself their protector. Germany aligned with Austria, a country of Germanic people, while France sided with Russia. Nationalism inflamed both alliances as they expected to flex their military muscle, crush their enemies in a brief conflict, and emerge supreme in Europe. When Germany, flanking France’s defenses, invaded France through neutral Belgium, Britain, linked by treaty to preserve Belgium’s sovereignty, joined the conflict. Each side expected the other to fold, yet they were evenly matched. Within weeks, Europe was embroiled in a colossal conflict that would slay 7.5 million soldiers, maim and kill 20 million civilians, and inflict death and destruction from the English Channel to the steppes of Russia. On August 4, 1914, the day Britain declared war on Germany, the British foreign minister, Edward, Viscount Grey, predicted, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

Hoover compared the war to “a fog upon the human race.” “The world made the sad discovery that deeper in European nations than the arts of peace and human progress were age-old hates, rivalries, imperialisms,” he wrote. And Europe was to drag the world down with it. The Great War became the pivotal point in Herbert Hoover’s life.²

On Monday, August 3, a week before his fortieth birthday, Hoover received an urgent call from the American consul in London, Robert Skinner, who pleaded for him to come to his office. Americans were choking the consulate for every inch of space. Having fled the war-torn continent, thousands of tourists, teachers, and temporary workers were begging Skinner to find passage for them to return to their homeland. Ships were tied up in port. No nation, including Britain, would accept American checks, currency, or any type of credit, without which the fleeing U.S. citizens could not obtain food or lodging. Americans were caught in a mousetrap of international intrigue. Skinner knew Hoover had not only money and influence among important Britons, but imagination and empathy as well.

Hoover rushed to Skinner’s office and found the stranded Americans in a state of pandemonium. One man proposed that the group petition the U.S. government to compel the belligerent armies to cease fighting until all Americans were back on their native soil. Dismissing this as gallows humor, Hoover turned to practical matters. Quickly, he loaned gold and British pounds from his resources and those of wealthy friends and engineering associates, much of it with no collateral except a promise to repay.

Skinner soon received a call from American ambassador Walter Hines Page. The U.S. embassy, like the consulate, was spilling over with frightened Americans seeking a ship home, and, temporarily, shelter. Hoover assembled groups of volunteers, chiefly engineers, who set up tables in the spacious ballrooms of the Savoy Hotel. Working under the auspices of the American Citizens’ Committee, they doled out British pounds to frantic U.S. exiles, booked passage home, and found temporary lodging. Hoover expanded operations to several smaller British ports. Lou created the Women’s Committee, which replicated her husband’s work among single women and those with children and no male companion. Both Hoovers calmed the nerves of the frantic escapees from the continent suddenly aflame. Lou conducted tours of museums and British castles to take troubled minds off the uncertainty that had descended upon them.³

Hoover had to improvise. One elderly woman insisted she would not board a vessel unless Hoover personally signed a guarantee that her ship would not be sunk by a German submarine. He signed, quipping that if the lady survived the crossing she would be grateful, and if she were sent to the bottom there would be no one left to complain. A wealthy woman went on a hunger strike because Hoover could not book her first class. He took her down to the cafeteria to discuss her complaint, where the aromas of cooking food soon tempted her to end her fast. During six weeks, the American Citizens’ Committee doled out about $1.5 million to some 120,000 refugees, 30,000 of them teachers, on the honor system. All but about $300 was repaid. The U.S. government dispatched a battleship loaded with gold to aid the stragglers, but by that time most of them were already bound for America. Hoover had built a bridge across the Atlantic.⁴

Rapidly sucked into the vortex of war, Hoover attempted to unscramble his expansive mining operations from the consequences of the conflict, remaining in London long enough to sort out the complications and opportunities that were bound to arise. He presided over a vast worldwide mining empire that specialized in base metals that could be molded into cannons, shells, rifles, and all modes of transportation on land and sea and in the air. All of Hoover’s mining properties stood to appreciate in value; in fact, some already had. Potentially, he might become the richest mining engineer in history if he managed his properties shrewdly.⁵

The tiny nation of Belgium—which had bravely resisted the German invasion only to be overrun and occupied—now found itself ground between the British blockade to the west and the German army to the east. The most densely populated nation in Europe, Belgium, highly industrialized and urban, had imported 70 percent of its food before the war. Now only a few weeks separated Belgium from devastating famine. A committee of Belgian engineers was attempting to scrape together food for the nation but had been thwarted by Allied red tape and German inflexibility. Ambassador Page, impressed with Hoover’s compassion and organizational abilities, encouraged the committee to invite the American engineer for a meeting.

Hoover’s heart was rent by the Belgian dilemma. The committee pleaded with him to chair a voluntary organization to save the besieged population, yet he was uncertain he, or anyone else, could resolve it. He knew little about nutrition, international diplomacy, and transportation, or where to find, on a consistent basis, the money and food to supply millions of hungry Belgians. He was more than an engineer, he knew, but he was not an authority in food relief.⁶

Hoover asked for time to think, and he retired to the Red House to ponder his future—and Belgium’s fate. The task was unprecedented in scope and audacity. A private organization was to undertake the feeding of an entire nation for the indeterminate duration of a war, built up without an existing infrastructure, lacking personnel, commodities, or transportation. Hoover would need to obtain huge supplies of food during wartime, transport it to the Belgian borders, and distribute it from there to the Belgians with life-sustaining consistency. Just as complex, he would have to find money to purchase the food and scarce ships to transport it, and create a staff out of thin air to implement the complete scheme. He had never done anything comparable, nor had anyone else. It would be the largest private relief operation in history. It would mean relaxing the British blockade at one end and delivering food within German-occupied territory at the other. It would be a formidable feat to persuade warring nations, whose objectives were polar opposites, that saving Belgium lay in their interests.⁷

Almost immediately, problems had descended on Hoover that would require infinite patience, perseverance, imagination, and fortitude to overcome. Back in California, there was an impending change in the presidency of Stanford, and he knew he was under serious consideration. To accept the challenge in Belgium would mean forfeiting that opportunity. Chairing the committee would force him to be separated from his family for protracted periods, traversing war zones and risking his life. He felt the burden of Atlas, with the world upon his shoulders. Pacing the floor of his upstairs bedroom for several days, he contemplated his future. His Quaker conscience weighed on him. Posed against the physical and mental stress was the stark reality that millions of innocent civilians would starve if he refused the challenge to help them. Preying on his mind were the ghosts of famished children, the real victims of war. “We may count food in calories,” he said in retrospect, “but we have no way to measure human misery.” Looking beyond the present generation, Hoover explained, “We no longer have the right to think in terms of our own generation.”⁸

Hoover decided that attempting to feed Belgium was something he simply could not refuse. He faced the prospect not with enthusiasm or exhilaration, but with grim determination that he dared not fail. Finally emerging from his personal purgatory, he descended the stairs of the Red House for breakfast with his Stanford friend Will Irwin, now a famous war correspondent, and said, “Well, let the fortune go to hell.”⁹

Even before announcing his acceptance of the committee chair, Hoover cabled the Chicago commodities exchange and bought options on ten thousand bushels of wheat for delivery to Belgium. Cereals constituted a major portion of the Belgian diet, and though Hoover lacked the money, the ships, and the manpower to begin the project, he had tied down the first shipment of wheat before prices spiked.

In creating the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), Hoover was entering terra incognita, setting a precedent as a “Napoleon of Mercy.” At the time there was no large international organization with staff and contingency funds in place, no umbrella group such as the United Nations with an existing infrastructure to call upon contributions from its members. Neither did the United States possess such a contingency appropriation. “In more recent times the world has grown accustomed to American action to save lives and restore the fractured economies of far-off lands,” George H. Nash writes. “Indeed, today, such involvement is almost universally taken for granted. One reason for this expectation, one reason for its acceptance—although few know it today—is the institution created by Herbert Hoover.”¹⁰ The CRB was to become the model for CARE and UNICEF. Hoover incubated these concepts, starting purely with his own ideas, with little time to plan and implement his scheme. He was on a treadmill of obtaining money, food, and transportation and ensuring the food’s delivery to hungry mouths. At intervals, relief ran only days ahead of the Grim Reaper. The experiment might well have failed. At times it nearly did.

The Commission for Relief in Belgium, with Hoover as chairman, was headquartered in London, with auxiliary headquarters at Rotterdam, Brussels, and New York. Hoover crossed the Channel frequently, avoiding mines and German submarines. When visiting the Germans he stayed at their military headquarters at Charleville in occupied northern France. Hoover was provided with a passport, issued by no nation, under his own signature, which permitted him to traverse international borders without being stopped or searched. He owned a German document stamped: “This man is not to be stopped anywhere under any circumstances.”¹¹ He was absolutely discreet in refusing to divulge military information to either side, though privately, his sympathies lay with the Allies. Hoover protected himself with a veil of silence and earned the grudging respect of both belligerents.¹²

Food purchased in America was shipped across the Atlantic on the CRB’s own fleet of about seventy-five vessels, each sporting gigantic red-and-white banners and flying the flag of the CRB. Inscribed on each ship’s sides was the identifier “CRB” to ensure its immunity from attack by German submarines, although occasionally the CRB did lose transports to U-boats. Hoover acquired food that packed the maximum nutrition and could be shipped in bulk, at the lowest cost, and was imperishable. All vessels were inspected at a British port for contraband, and then docked at Rotterdam, the nearest neutral port, where the cargoes were unloaded. The provisions were transshipped from Rotterdam to Belgium through an intricate network of canals and sometimes by rail. Within Belgium, the Comité Nationale, comprised of Belgian leaders, handled internal distribution, under the loose supervision of a skeleton staff of American volunteers. Food preparation and the serving of meals at local levels were carried out by forty thousand Belgian women, exclusively volunteers. Those who could afford to pay purchased the food at slightly above cost, with profits used to give free food to the destitute. Meals were fed at canteens, or kitchens, rather than sent to homes, in order to apportion rations. Supplies of bacon, lard, rice, peas, and beans were distributed to even the most remote communes.¹³ With scientifically designed diets and no citizen turned away, the people of Belgium were probably better fed than some of the poor in New York, Paris, or London.

One of Hoover’s chief incentives for aiding Belgium was his lifelong commitment to the welfare of children. To accommodate their specific nutritional needs, canteens were established to provide an additional noon meal for children and pregnant women, as well as the elderly. Before war’s end, the canteens were serving some 2.5 million persons. The child mortality rate dipped below the ratio for normal times, and child health improved overall. The CRB also established a special Babies’ Milk Fund to provide milk to children younger than three years. By late June 1917, there was at least one clinic and milk depot in each of the 621 Belgian communes, furnishing medicines, nursing bottles, and infant clothing.¹⁴ Early in 1915, the CRB created a national organization for Belgian war orphans. These included children of deceased soldiers, children of civilians who had lost their lives through causes connected with the war, and children of prisoners of war. The charity gave money to families for care of relatives or, when necessary, placed the children with foster parents. The association provided an education for older war orphans that would train them for a profession after the war.¹⁵

Hoover’s empathy for children never faltered. He witnessed many grim episodes during the war, but the only sight that moved him to tears was the suffering of the war’s youngest victims. He vowed never again to tour breadlines or soup kitchens that would expose him to such anguish—a decision that, during the Great Depression, caused many Americans to draw the erroneous conclusion that their president was too hard-hearted to face the destitute.¹⁶

The organizational structure of the CRB was based on centralized decisions, with decentralized implementation. Working informally, Hoover dispensed with diagrams and organizational charts, took casual notes of conversations, and stored most information in his memory. He chatted with associates over lunch but seldom convened full-scale staff meetings. He selected able, idealistic assistants, including some twenty-five American Rhodes scholars, and gave them a great deal of latitude to accomplish their missions, emphasizing individual initiative and ingenuity. One man, given the task of managing an entire port, asked what his job was. Hoover told him to keep the food moving and did not elaborate. He remembered telling one assistant, “Make your own decision. You are on the ground. I’m not. You wouldn’t be there if you couldn’t run the job.”¹⁷

Hoover served without pay—an example followed by most of his coworkers—and paid for his own food, transportation, and lodging. He asked no one in the organization to sacrifice more than he did. Many of his elite volunteers were fellow engineers, and a high esprit de corps formed among them. They developed an intense loyalty to Hoover, and many served in his later work in the U.S. Food Administration, the American Relief Administration, and the feeding of the Soviet Union.¹⁸

Hoover found diplomacy his most frustrating job. With no diplomatic standing and representing no nation, he dealt directly with kings, prime ministers, foreign ministers, generals, and admirals, arguing how the undertaking was in the self-interest of both sides, who had diametrically opposing war aims. “Very soberly and sincerely I believe no one else could have done what he has done for Belgium,” journalist Edward Eyre Hunt wrote. “I believe no one else could have dealt, as he has done, as a private citizen, without title and without pretensions, with Kitchener, Lloyd George, the Kaiser, von Bethmann-Hollweg, von Bissing, Briand, Poincaré, and King Albert.”¹⁹ Initially, both Germany and Britain balked at the idea of feeding Belgium by carving a passage through their lines, considering Hoover at worst a spy for the other side and at best a half-baked idiot or a naïve do-gooder. The Germans argued that they could not abstain from torpedoing relief ships, lest they contain contraband. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty for Britain until forced to resign in disgrace after Gallipoli, was the most obstinate of the Britons. Declaring Hoover a spy, Churchill had foreign minister Sir Edward Grey investigate him. Grey found the charges groundless and, after long hearings, praised Hoover for his work. Nonetheless, Churchill, who called Hoover “an S.O.B.,” denied the CRB chairman the right to penetrate the blockade with supply ships. Hoover appealed over his head to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, who granted consent.²⁰

When timing was crucial, Hoover took the direct route rather than the more circuitous course. “If a thing was really necessary we did it first and asked permission afterwards,” he said. Often, he bought food in advance of securing funds. His audacity stunned those who did not know him. The impudent Hoover once told a British cabinet minister that he must have clearance papers immediately to ship food to Belgium. The minister replied the request was impertinent and impossible. “There is no time in the first place, and if there was there are no good wagons to be spared by the railways, no dock hands, and no steamers.” Hoover quietly interjected, “I have managed to get all of these things.” The minister signed the papers, commenting, “There have been—there are even now—men in the Tower of London for less than you have done.”²¹

At other times, when he needed an issue resolved promptly, Hoover often went directly to the person at or near the top, rather than working his way up the diplomatic ladder. David Lloyd George, chancellor of the exchequer at the beginning of the war, initially found some of Hoover’s requests brazen. When he rejected a crucial request by the CRB chairman, Hoover interrupted the eminent Briton. “For the next fifteen minutes he spoke without a break,” Lloyd George said, “just about the clearest expository 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 practicality of granting his request. So I did the only thing possible under the circumstances, told him that I had never understood the question before, thanked him for helping me to understand it, and saw to it that things were arranged as he wanted them.”²²

Ambassador Page was so impressed by Hoover’s determination and persuasive powers that he wrote President Wilson a glowing report about the chairman’s work. “The surplus food being near exhaustion in the United States and Canada, he now has begun on Argentina where the crop is just coming in,” Page revealed. “I introduced him to the Argentine minister the other day and the minister said to me afterwards, ‘Somehow I feel like doing what the man asked me to do.’”²³

Hoover’s job required heart and grit. He navigated among the governments of warring nations, maintaining his poise and equanimity, yet pushing with unrelenting determination to obtain concessions that proved vital. He preferred to deal man-to-man with each official, treating all with meticulous respect while holding his own ground. Regardless of rank, he dealt with each on a level of equality. He had the audacity to challenge tough-minded men with cold logic tempered by warm human empathy. He was patient and possessed the tenacity to wear them down.

As Hoover’s accomplishments grew, so did his reputation. His diplomatic skill and audacity induced Ambassador Page to recommend him to Wilson for a position in the State Department.²⁴ The CRB chairman was so respected in Britain that a representative of the government asked him to become a British citizen and accept appointment as minister of munitions, promising that a title of nobility would follow. “I’ll do what I can for you with pleasure,” Hoover responded, “but I’ll be damned if I’ll give up my American citizenship, not on your life!”²⁵

While neither the Germans nor the British trusted each other, they both trusted Herbert Hoover.²⁶ “Think of a man who could go from one war front to the other in the midst of the greatest war and greatest suspicion in history without question of any sort,” Ray Lyman Wilbur said. “His own signature was his passport.”²⁷ Hoover conferred with German generals at their secret headquarters at Charleville and never leaked the location. At Berlin, he met with Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg and visited the foreign minister, the underminister of state, the minister of the interior, and the president of the Reichsbank. Hoover found the German military men straightlaced and dead serious. German generals were decisive and kept their word. On the other hand, they were almost inhumanly methodical and humorless. They were easier to deal with than British civilians, however, who were subject to the caprices of politics and sometimes wavered, though British public opinion supported the work of the CRB.²⁸

Hoover’s most hazardous diplomatic crisis occurred when General Traugott von Sauberzweig, the German military governor of Brussels, informed Hoover peremptorily that his country had decided to withdraw permission for the CRB to operate in Belgium. Then, in an epiphany of personal anguish, the general confessed his despair over public criticism of him for ordering the execution of Edith Cavell, an English nurse in Belgium, on grounds that she had spied for the enemy. Sauberzweig exclaimed that he had been “painted as a monster all over the world because of that Cavell woman.” Hoover responded that he would be considered a much greater monster if he ordered the starvation of millions of innocent civilians. Shaken, the general reconsidered, then wrote out a permit allowing the CRB to continue its work.²⁹

Throughout the war, some Britons, especially military leaders, argued that the Germans, as the occupying army, were responsible for feeding Belgium. Hoover countered that the Germans would never deprive their own army—the more food they gave to the Belgians, the less they would have for themselves, and the sooner their army would collapse. They would let the Belgians starve first. Hoover pointed out that the British had gone to war ostensibly because Germany had violated Belgian neutrality. “It would be a cynical ending if the civil population of Belgium had become extinct in the process of rescue,” he told Lord Grey.³⁰ To permit Belgium to starve would be to shame Britain in the eyes of the United States.

Hoover took a similar approach when negotiating with German officials, pointing out the importance of the goodwill of the United States, the most powerful of neutral nations. America could tip the balance in an interminable deadlock, drawing upon its unlimited manpower and natural resources. Alienating America might tempt its government to join the Allies, the Germans feared. The Germans knew the Americans would not enter the war on their side, but they hoped to keep the United States neutral. A neutral America was, in effect, an ally of Germany. Although most American trade was with Britain, the Germans feared American manpower more because a war of attrition would demoralize their troops and wear them down. In the long run, Hoover’s humanitarian arguments carried less weight than American public opinion and the military might behind it.³¹

In March 1915, Hoover was compelled to assume responsibility for feeding a portion of northern France, whose 2.5 million urban, industrialized people lived within a region about the size of Massachusetts. The Germans had invaded and seized the territory upon their penetration of France in 1914. The invaders were halted and compelled to retreat by the Battle of the Marne, but they held a portion of the area until 1918. Feeding northern France represented a different type of problem from feeding Belgium. The region had been denuded of able-bodied men, who had joined the military, and the remnants consisted primarily of women and children. Further, unlike Belgium, which had been defeated, France remained an active and formidable combatant. The general framework of CRB administration was preserved. American volunteers collaborated with a native French committee to distribute the food at a local level. The chief CRB official, Vernon Kellogg, a Stanford professor fluent in German and learned in German history and culture, resided at the German headquarters at Charleville, where he was closely monitored by the military. Although there was initial suspicion on the part of soldiers, most of them eventually supported the work of the CRB and sometimes even helped to distribute food.³²

Hoover’s mission of mercy was unpopular among a minority. In particular, Lindon W. Bates, the director of the New York office of the CRB, lost his son aboard a ship torpedoed by a German submarine as the young man was crossing the Atlantic to work as a CRB volunteer. Bates expressed his anguish by blaming Hoover, accusing him of violating the Logan Act of 1799, which prohibited negotiation with foreign powers by individual Americans lacking diplomatic credentials. Bates leaked confidential CRB documents and circulated derogatory rumors about Hoover to isolationist senators and congressmen. He found a sympathizer in Henry Cabot Lodge, the powerful Massachusetts senator who hated the president and saw Hoover as a minion of Wilson, though Hoover was, in fact, a fellow Republican. Lodge launched an investigation, and a federal court considered indicting Hoover. Fearing publicity from such an episode could wreck fund-raising for Belgium in America, Hoover rushed home to defend himself. He summoned a press conference at which he received promises of supportive articles and editorials. Ambassador Page and Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane lined up an appointment with President Wilson for the embattled Hoover. Wilson, who detested Lodge, promised his support and appointed a committee of prominent businessmen who helped lend credibility to the CRB’s effort. Hoover next called upon Theodore Roosevelt at Oyster Bay, where the men enjoyed a warm meeting. Roosevelt said that Lodge worried excessively over anything that might involve the U.S. abroad, and agreed he would restrain the senator. The gist of Hoover’s argument was that he was not negotiating diplomatic agreements equivalent to treaties that would bind the United States. He did not presume to represent the United States; his actions were no more limited by statute than were those of the Red Cross. He represented a private, charitable organization performing humanitarian work. Further, the State Department had been thoroughly informed of his work all along and approved of it. Lodge was soon isolated in a sea of Hoover supporters that included the president, the cabinet, the press, public opinion, and Theodore Roosevelt, the most popular Republican. Lodge continued to grouse, but he dropped the matter formally, and Bates retired from the CRB to rest his jangled nerves.³³

After his initial meeting with Wilson in 1915, Hoover kept in touch with the president via Colonel Edward House, his diminutive confidant. When House traveled to Europe during the war he often dined with Hoover at the Red House and used the CRB chairman as a sounding board for ideas he and Wilson had conceived to negotiate an end to the war. During House’s 1915 visit, Hoover told House bluntly that he considered their scheme naïve, arguing that both sides were embittered, demanded nothing less than total victory, and desired world domination and territorial acquisitions. House returned to Europe the following year and informed Hoover that he and the president had hammered out a second peace plan. They would publicize specific peace objectives advocated by the United States, fair to all sides. America would align with the group that accepted its plan. Hoover reiterated that the second scheme was equally naïve. The blockade and bombing of civilians had driven home the war to civilians and the mutual enmity defied compromise. Hoover, although he devoutly desired peace, pointed out that the pledge lacked credibility with the Germans. The American press and the Wilson administration itself had clearly indicated their preference for an Allied victory, and the Germans would not fall for the ruse.³⁴

Wilson nonetheless continued to employ Hoover as a source of information throughout the war, praising him for his “extraordinary work” in Belgium.³⁵ Hoover’s performance also won the admiration of other observers. “Mr. Hoover is a perfect wonder,” said Senator Frederic C. Walcott, “one of the most remarkable men I have ever met,” terming him “a perfect genius for organization.” Another associate of Hoover’s concluded, “The situation in Belgium to-day is so extraordinary that if Hoover lost heart or died, in a few days the Belgians who are dependent on him would feel the pinch.”³⁶

The CRB was on an endless quest to raise money. The commission’s charter held its members primarily responsible for debts beyond money raised, and initially the money fountain seemed to trickle rather than gush.³⁷ Private charity provided an initial bridge to solvency. Fund-raising drives were initiated in every state in America, in all British colonies throughout the world, in most Latin American nations, and in Japan. The most generous private donations were given by the British Empire. The CRB drummed up backing through newspaper and magazine support, dispatched public speakers, and sponsored charity dinners. Lou Hoover, a more eloquent public speaker than her husband, played a major role in fund-raising in America.³⁸

Hoover campaigned diligently to attract large contributions from old associates. A New York engineering society donated $500,000, originally earmarked for constructing a new headquarters, to the CRB instead. Hoover’s mining friends in Australia sent $70,000. In 1915, many private American citizens gave donations amounting to thousands of dollars, yet per capita they gave less than Canada, Australia, or New Zealand prior to U.S. entry into the war. The 220,000 Belgians living in England donated $250,000 monthly. In October 1916, Hoover obtained the assistance of Pope Benedict XV, who issued a statement supporting the raising of money for the starving children of Belgium and authorized the Catholic clergy in America to solicit funds for their aid. It was not so much the amount of money contributed by the world’s people as their moral support that enabled the private relief drive to succeed. Without the pressure of world opinion, the subsidies from the Allied governments would not have been forthcoming. In addition to money, railroads and steamship lines delivered cargoes at or near cost, and groups of farmers, communities, even entire states delivered donations in kind, which included clothing and medicine as well as food, sometimes by the boxcar.³⁹

It soon became evident that the CRB could not provision Belgium and northern France indefinitely purely on private donations. Hoover appealed to Lloyd George, who was noncommittal. After discussing the funding crisis with Asquith and Lord Eustace Percy, however, Lloyd George overruled the militarists and granted a $4.8 million monthly subsidy. Hoover next obtained an appointment with the French premier, who was also noncommittal. That evening, Hoover chatted with Maurice Homberg, president of a leading French bank, who asked the American for an estimate of the sum needed to supply northern France. Hoover told him it would take around $8 million. The following morning he received two checks totaling $7 million, and thereafter, money arrived regularly. Though officially anonymous, because the French were subsidizing their people under German occupation, both sides clearly understood the source. When the needs accelerated, both the British and the French upped the ante. Through public subsidies, private gifts, and the sale of food to employed, solvent Belgians, Hoover patched together enough to tide the CRB over through each crisis, though with a slim margin of error. After America entered the war in 1918, the U.S. government took over the responsibility of financing the CRB and thereafter the organization operated on sound footing.⁴⁰

As events in Europe worsened, the United States moved inexorably toward war. Hoover returned to New York at the end of 1916 and managed the CRB from his office there. Unfortunately, America’s grip on peace was rooted in quicksand. In January 1917, Germany declared a war zone around Britain that included unrestricted submarine warfare. On February 3, President Wilson severed relations and expelled the German ambassador. Realizing it was only a matter of time before the United States joined the Allies, Germany launched a massive offensive against Paris before the weight of American power could prove decisive. Earlier, Hoover had cautioned against entry into the conflict, but he shed his inhibitions as CRB vessels were sunk. In early March, he conferred with Wilson at the White House. A week earlier a telegram from German foreign minister Arthur Zimmermann had been intercepted and decoded. It promised Mexico territory in the American Southwest if the Mexicans joined a successful war against the United States. On March 15, a revolution in Russia overthrew Czar Nicholas II and briefly installed a democratic government, providing a temporary impression that the war pitted democracy against autocracy. For his part, Hoover expected that a more convulsive, extreme leftist revolution would follow. With war imminent, he returned to Europe to consummate contingency plans already in place. When America entered the war, he would continue to direct CRB operations at Rotterdam. From there, the responsibility would pass to the remaining major neutrals, the Spanish and the Dutch, who would direct the CRB within Belgium and in northern France. Before Hoover departed, Wilson assigned him two secret tasks. Hoover was to determine what resources would be required by Britain and France to win the war; second, he was to survey the war economies of the Allies to determine whether therein lay any lessons for America. On April 6, America declared war. His missions, overt and covert, virtually completed, Hoover headed back to his homeland.⁴¹

After the war, audits of the CRB’s books showed not only a lack of personal profit for anyone involved, but also an incredibly low margin of overhead, less than one half of 1 percent, made possible by the donated time and resources that epitomized the mission. Today, many charities take pride if they can hold overhead to 20 percent.⁴² When it closed its books as an active organization, the CRB had on hand a surplus of undistributed food, which it sold in Europe. This, combined with its low overhead, enabled the charity to finish with a surplus of about $35 million. Hoover had decided as early as 1916 that any money left over should be devoted to Belgian education, which had been virtually destroyed by the war. More than $18 million was donated directly to the universities of Brussels, Ghent, Liège, and Louvain and to other educational institutions. During the 1920s, an additional $1.6 million was given for the rebuilding of the University of Louvain. Most of the remainder was used for an educational exchange program that enabled Belgian scholars to study in America and vice versa.⁴³

“When this war is over,” Hoover told a group of students in 1915, “the one thing that will stand out will not be the number of dead and wounded, but the record of those efforts which went to save life.”⁴⁴ Before the war he had been barely known outside his profession, yet his service in the CRB had made him a figure of international stature. Now, upon America’s declaration of war, President Wilson immediately cabled Hoover to consult with him about the U.S. food supply. Based on his experience, Hoover seemed the best-qualified man to deal with the complex production, conservation, and distribution of food to Allied and neutral nations. Wilson and Hoover shared the belief that with the generous resources of America at their command, the Allies could wear down the Central Powers. The war would be won in part on the home front, and the troops and civilians who were best fed would have higher morale than their adversaries. Hoover arrived in New York Harbor on May 3, traveling that evening to Washington to consult with Wilson. Hoover’s Stanford friend Ray Lyman Wilbur, now president of Stanford, awaited him onshore. “Word was sent to me that he would come on a certain boat,” Wilbur remembered. “I can well remember the grey morning when his liner came in to the dock in New York City. The ship ahead of his and the one just behind had been torpedoed.”⁴⁵

Hoover spoke with the president for about an hour and did most of the talking. He had lobbied for the position and had strong support from Colonel House and Interior Secretary Franklin Lane. Yet his nomination encountered resistance. Agriculture Secretary David Houston worried about Hoover poaching on his turf. Agricultural spokesman Henry Wallace opposed Hoover, as did Henry Cabot Lodge, who objected to federal control of agriculture on the grounds that it would concentrate power in the hands of President Wilson. The most vehement opposition arose from farmers, who considered Hoover a businessman and wanted a farmer or a farm-state representative in the position who would put farm interests first.

Hoover had mapped out his plans while crossing the Atlantic. He wanted a single-headed organization, not a committee, which might quibble endlessly and conclude indecisively. He insisted that he be permitted to serve without pay and that he continue to direct Belgian relief. When the president proposed labeling him the “food czar,” Hoover said he preferred the unpretentious title of “food administrator,” which was less likely to offend Congress. Wilson, a former college president, was accustomed to working through committees, but Hoover helped persuade him that in wartime the committee approach lacked decisiveness and dispersed responsibility. Later, Wilson reorganized his advisers into a war cabinet, including each cabinet member and leader of a major agency with war-related responsibilities who discussed contentious issues. Wilson made the final decision on the spot. As food administrator, Hoover reported directly to the president and sat on the war cabinet.⁴⁶

Initially, Hoover was to serve in an advisory capacity, although he was compelled to take action while the authorizing bill, the Lever bill, waddled feebly through Congress. Despite the urgency, the national legislature debated the measure for three months, while problems piled up and crises festered. During the debate, the solons were diverted into issues such as Prohibition, proposed as a device to save grain but considered by some a moral issue. Hoover testified before numerous congressional committees, impressing members with his knowledge of world food conditions. He usually spoke without notes or a prepared statement. When Senator Thomas Gore of Oklahoma questioned Hoover about the price of beans per bushel, Hoover replied that he had always bought them by the ton. As a food management expert he explained that his philosophy included a balancing of interests. Farmers and businessmen must be allowed profits or the incentive system would break down, yet he would prevent gouging to exploit the war emergency. He must supply the American and Allied soldiers, and civilians of all countries. He must protect the nation from inflation, he explained, which often accompanied wars. Inflation led to high prices, which in turn inspired demands for higher wages and led to disruptive strikes, which could jeopardize the war effort. Finally, on August 10, 1917, the bill was enacted.⁴⁷

Hoover believed that if sacrifice was shared rather than concentrated on a single economic class, most Americans would accept it on patriotic grounds. He wanted to demonstrate the efficacy of the democratic system in wartime, to prove it could outproduce and outlast German autocracy. He had no desire to Prussianize America, either via onerous regulations or by creating a top-heavy bureaucracy. “It was a colossal educational project,” Wilbur, his closest lieutenant, explained, “where a whole people had to be convinced and stimulated to act at each meal as to help with the war.” Exhortation became one of the Food Administration’s chief weapons, as deadly as artillery to the Germans.

Hoover also wanted to instill practical lessons about the type of government that worked with people, not against them. If he could infuse Americans with self-discipline and a sense of unity as well as the willingness to sacrifice in a common cause, the purpose for fighting the war would be realized. He had witnessed regimented systems requiring an army of enforcers flounder in Britain, France, and Germany, where the temperature of enthusiasm on the home front dipped to arctic levels. Instead, he would make persuasion and minimal regulation the lynchpin of his administrative style. His premise was that most Americans were patriotic and would react more enthusiastically if they were led rather than driven. Altruistic motives were intertwined with realistic and self-serving ones in the Food Administration’s promotional literature. Winning the war quickly would prevent America’s allies from being engulfed and prevent the flames of conflict from leaping the Atlantic.⁴⁸

Following Hoover’s example, the infrastructure of the Food Administration was comprised largely of volunteers, many of whom had worked with Hoover at Stanford, in the mining industry, or in the CRB. For the nucleus of the staff, he hired the sons of two presidents, Dr. Harry Garfield, president of Williams College, and Robert A. Taft, later a U.S. senator. Hoover also employed Lewis Strauss, who was later nominated to head the Atomic Energy Commission. A poor young man from a Jewish family, Strauss volunteered to work for Hoover after being rejected by the military. Beginning as an office boy, Strauss quickly became indispensable in the organization and was promoted to be Hoover’s personal secretary. The men bonded and became lifelong friends.

Hoover never openly chastised a subordinate, although he did so privately. In public, he took responsibility for errors and shunned credit, helping to develop ties of trust in both directions. The Food Administration leader wanted to tap the patriotism and generosity of spirit he found in these young men, just as he had found it in his cohorts within the CRB. Like their boss, those who could afford to do so worked without pay, allowing the organization to operate on slender appropriations. His assistants took their task seriously, and their morale was high. To further motivate his staff, he showed them a cablegram from Lord Rhondda, the British food controller, stating that “it now lies with America to decide whether or not the Allies in Europe shall have enough bread to hold out until the United States is able to throw its force into the field.” Time was the enemy. The Food Administration was confronted by a narrow window of opportunity for success.⁴⁹

The Great War was America’s first modern war, the first to require the mobilization of the entire population, both civilian and military, and the first major war fought abroad. Some 100 million Americans would have to throw their weight behind the war effort with a more refined degree of organization than had ever been necessary. Although a sophisticated man, Hoover had sought throughout his life to make complicated tasks simple, to define objectives, and to pursue them in a straightforward manner. As the head of the Food Administration, he directed a streamlined organization. “My idea is that we must centralize ideas but decentralize execution,” he had told a Senate committee. He was democratic in philosophy but decisive in action. The Food Administration was a no-frills organization, which Hoover termed “the only war agency which wore no bells and costume jewelry.” Further, he wanted to provide every American on the home front the sense that they were making a meaningful contribution.⁵⁰

As he had at the CRB, Hoover rarely held staff meetings, and he eschewed charts and graphs. His propensity for simplicity and a direct line of authority was based on his experience in Europe, where he had watched food czars come and go in quick succession in Germany, England, and France. He utilized the same approach that had worked well in Belgium, relying on a few simple rules for the public rather than bludgeoning them with regulations. He relied on able generalists, not specialists in areas related to food. He assigned an assistant a responsibility and let him alone to achieve the desired results. His management method maximized individual initiative without micromanagement. Most assistants appreciated his trust in them and rose to the occasion.⁵¹

The structure of the Food Administration was relatively simple. Hoover made major decisions and delegated implementation. A Conservation Division under Ray Lyman Wilbur and an Education Division under Ben S. Allen were also headquartered in Washington. Below the superstructure, the infrastructure included a state administrator appointed by the governor of each state, and county and municipal administrators. All of these public servants at the local level and most at the national level were unpaid volunteers. Some 750,000 volunteers served at the grass roots. The Food Administration employed women to a greater extent than any other federal agency in history and gave them a meaningful role in the battle for food, making “every housewife a warrior.” The major victories would be won in American kitchens, he advised; frugality could help feed Allied soldiers and civilians as well as America’s own military and its civilian population. “Ninety percent of American food production passes through the hands of our women,” he explained. “In no other field do small things, when multiplied by our 100 million people, count for so much.”⁵²

Hoover converted conservation into a crusade to determine who could save the most. He challenged Americans as they had never before been challenged. “The question of who wins this war,” he said, “is the question of who can endure the longest, and the problem of endurance, in a large degree, is a problem of food and ships to carry it in.” The appeal to patriotism not only saved enormous quantities of food for export; it lifted morale on the home front. Hoover believed that by winning the war by minimizing coercion, he could vindicate the principle of democracy, although he conceded that the war required a greater intrusion into civilian society than normal conditions. His decision to focus on conservation, rather than rationing, was based on practical as well as idealistic grounds. Rationing would have been a bureaucratic nightmare that would create red tape, prove enormously expensive, and be cumbrous to phase out when the war ended. It would be ineffective because a large proportion of the American people lived on or near farms and could divert crops to their own use. Moreover, such a program would have multiplied black markets.⁵³

The efforts of the Food Administration were launched amid severe handicaps. Droughts in 1916 and 1917 produced below-average harvests at the very time the Allies needed more. From a statistical perspective, the United States was left with nothing to export. Although it would be possible to compensate by increased production by 1918, in the short run, the only way to obtain a surplus to export was by conservation. To persuade Americans that conservation in small amounts by individuals would reach totals that could help the Allies outlast the Central Powers in a war of attrition, Wilbur, Allen, and Hoover himself launched nationwide speaking and publicity campaigns. Food Administration speakers, most conspicuously Wilbur, fanned out across the country, appearing even in small communities. Wilbur coined catchy slogans such as “Food Will Win the War,” “Fighting with Food,” and “Not Business as Usual, but Business Absolutely Unusual.” In some talks he reduced war contributions to simple mathematics, such as the number of slices of bread consumed. He dramatized the role individuals and families could play and was explicit about what each person could do: buy Liberty bonds, cease eating bacon and white flour, curtail consumption of sugar, raise home gardens, can fruits and vegetables, and avoid squandering morsels. Whether at home or at restaurants, Americans were instructed to eat one helping, clean their plates, and ask for no more. About 20 million Americans signed pledge cards to abide by the guidelines and were given a sticker for their window indicating their vow to conserve.⁵⁴

The promotional campaign employed every form of media and technology, advertising via radio, newsreels, feature films, and celebrity endorsements. From May 1917 to April 1919 the Food Administration released 1,870 press releases. Films were shown in theaters and high schools, as well as to social and civic organizations. Articles were placed in newspapers, and the Education Division dealt with specialized publications such as women’s magazines, trade and labor journals, and farm weeklies. Campaigns to sign pledge cards were conducted by the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, and the Camp Fire Girls. The agency even publicized the names of cheaters, seeking to shame them. Clergy were asked to deliver sermons emphasizing the serious nature of conservation efforts. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s later effort to launch the National Recovery Administration, the Food Administration employed every avenue in order to reach American citizens and inspire a bandwagon effect. Prominent artists painted Food Administration signs, billboards were plastered, and neon signs lit the night. Some 50,000 signs were placed on railroad coaches, plus another 120,000 in streetcars. Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets and tracts were distributed to public libraries. Poets joined the crusade by rewriting popular nursery rhymes for children to chant. One observer noted, “No other agency of the government touched the home as regularly.” Although the Food Administration was criticized by certain groups, especially farmers who wanted higher profits, the conservation campaign worked more efficiently than the rationing regulations of the European powers. Food alone did not win the war, but it helped.⁵⁵

Lou Hoover played a major role in the conservation effort, delivering countless speeches to women’s groups and civic organizations. She used her position as a leader of the Girl Scouts to involve the Scouts in conservation, and she established a large residence hall that provided accommodations for single young women drawn to Washington for war work. Lou also made her own household a model of conservation, or “Hooverizing,” a word coined to describe her husband’s admonitions to conserve. The Hoovers went well beyond the letter of the rules, eating simple fare, which was also served to guests, including government officials. Meat, sugar, and fats were minimized or excluded entirely from every meal. White bread, cakes, and pastries were not served, and wheat was replaced by buckwheat or corn cakes and corn bread made from coarse yellow meal. Vegetable oils substituted for lard and butter. No sweets were served, and all members of the family meticulously cleaned their plates and asked for no more. When the family exhausted the winter’s coal supply, Lou refused to buy more. Instead, the entire family donned sweaters and light jackets and maintained a heatless home.⁵⁶

The most essential ingredients of the diet of the Allied nations and their military men were fats, wheat, and sugar. Fats, which play an important role in human health and stamina, were obtained primarily from pork. The price of hogs, which fatten on corn, was driven by the price of corn. If selling corn directly to the public became more profitable than selling it to hog producers, shortages in pork would develop. To stabilize the markets and ensure a steady supply of both, the Food Administration negotiated agreements to establish a ratio between the price of corn and the price of hogs, which ensured reasonable profits to corn farmers and producers of pork. Hoover played no role in pegging the prices, which were determined by committees of experts, including farmers. The prices had to provide incentives yet be fair to all groups, including consumers. By a combination of price incentives and conservation, the Food Administration greatly increased the export of lard, bacon, and ham to the Allies.⁵⁷

Hoover’s task of calibrating a nutritional regime to sustain troops and civilians was complicated by the differences in the diets of Americans and Europeans. While Americans consumed more meat, Europeans’ diets were comprised of a higher percentage of bread. More than half the French diet, and slightly less in Britain, consisted of wheat. Congress authorized the government to interject itself into the economy by fixing prices of essential commodities. Hoover preferred the normal law of supply and demand but considered price setting a lesser evil than shortages during wartime. Headed by Hoover’s friend Julius Barnes, the Grain Corporation, which operated as a separate arm of the Food Administration, guaranteed wheat farmers $2 per bushel for their 1918 crop in order to stimulate production. The Grain Corporation helped control prices in another, more intrusive manner: it was authorized to purchase the entire wheat crop and sell it to processors at a fixed price. Sugar, a similar essential commodity, obtained chiefly from Cuba, the West Indies, the Philippines, and the southern United States, was handled in a similar manner. The Sugar Equalization Board had a government-mandated monopoly to purchase the entire sugar crop for Americans and the Allies. Antitrust laws were temporarily suspended for the duration of the war. Hoover clamped down on food processors and limited the market of wholesalers for every product for which the Food Administration set a price, attempting to prevent exorbitant prices for consumers. Violators of Food Administration policies, which were loosely enforced by committees representing trade associations, were required to pay a fine in the form of a modest donation to the Red Cross. Egregious offenders could have their licenses revoked, putting them out of business, but this rarely occurred.

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.