They found an early German translation, which, however, helped them little. The translator had apparently known little of mining and not too much of Latin. They went to Saxony, to the home of Agricola, hoping to get clues to the difficult things in the book by seeing the region and mines which had been under his eyes while writing it, and finding traditions of the mining methods of his time. But it was as if a sponge had been passed over Agricola and his days. Fire had swept over the towns he had known and all the ancient records were gone. The towns, rebuilt, and the mines of which he had written were there, but of him and of the ancient methods he wrote about there was hardly record or even tradition. They went to Freiberg, where has long existed the greatest German school of mines, the greatest mining school in the world, indeed, until the American schools were developed—prob
ably the Germans would not admit even this qualification—and there they found no more to help them than in Agricola's own towns. In fact, the Freiberg professors seemed rather irritated by the advent of these searchers for ancient mining history, for, as the savants explained, the Freiberg methods and machines were all the most modern in the world; there were "no left-overs, no worn-out rubbish of those inefficient ages" around Germany's great school of mines.
So the Hoovers were little rewarded by their pilgrimage to Germany for help in their attempt to resuscitate the Saxon Agricola. But they kept on mining in the big tome and finally, in the fifth year of their devoted spare-time labors they had before them a completed translation.
CHAPTER VII
THE WAR: THE MAN AND HIS FIRST SERVICE
From the first day of the World War Herbert Hoover has been a world figure. But much of what he has done and how he has done it is still only hazily known, for all the general public familiarity with his name as head of the Belgian relief work, American food administrator, and, finally, director-general of the American and Allied relief work in Europe after the armistice. The public knows of him as the initiator and head of great organizations with heart in them, which were successfully managed on sound business principles. But it does not yet know the special character of Hoover's own personal participation in them, his original and resourceful contributions to their success, and the formidable obstacles which he had constantly to overcome in making this success possible. There was little that
"just happened" which contributed to this success; that which did just happen usually happened wrong. Things came off because ideals were realized by practical method, decision, and driving power. I should like to be able to give the people of America a revealing glimpse, by outline and incident, of all this. And I should like, too, to be able to make clear the pure Americanism of this man; to disclose the basis of belief in the soundness of the American heart and the practical possibilities of American democracy on which Hoover banked in determining his methods and daring his decisions. This belief was the easier to hold inasmuch as he has himself the soundness of character, the fundamental conviction of democracy, and the true philanthropy that he attributes to the average American. He is his own American model.
To call Herbert Hoover "English" as a cheap form of derogation, is to reveal a surprising paucity of invention in criticism. It is also unfair to about as American an American as can be found. The translation of Agricola, an account of which closed our last chap