Hoover's kinds of work are many, but his recreations are few. His chief form of exercise—if it is exercise—is motoring. He does not play outdoor games; no golf, tennis, but little walking. He has no system of kicking his legs about in bed or going through calisthenics on rising. And yet he keeps in very good physical condition, at least he keeps in sufficiently good condition to do several men's days' work every day. He has a theory about this which he practices, and which he occasionally explains briefly to those who remonstrate with him about his neglect of exercise. "You have to take exercise," he says, "because you overeat. I do not overeat, and therefore I do not need exercise." It sounds very simple and conclusive; and it seems to work—in his case.
He likes social life, but not society life. He enjoys company but he wants it to mean something. He has little small talk but plenty of significant talk. He saves time by cutting out frills, both business and social. His directness of mental approach to any subject is expressed in his whole manner: his immediate attack in
conversation on the essence of the matter, his few words, his quick decisions. He can make these decisions quickly because he has clear policies to guide him. I recall being asked by him to come to breakfast one morning at Stanford after he had been elected trustee, to talk over the matter of faculty standards. His first question to the two or three of us who were there was: What is the figure below which a professor of a given grade (assistant, associate, or full professor) cannot maintain himself here on a basis which will not lower his efficiency in his work or his dignity in the community? We finally agreed on certain figures. "Well," said Hoover, "that must be the minimum salary of the grade."
He knows what he wants to do, and goes straight forward toward doing it; but if difficulty too great intervenes—it really has to be very great—he withdraws for a fresh start and tries another path. I always think of him as outside of a circle in the center of which is his goal. He strikes the circle at one spot; if he can get through, well and good. If not he draws away, moves a little around the circum
ference and strikes again. This resourcefulness and fertility of method are conspicuous characteristics of him. To that degree he is "diplomatic." But if there is only one way he fights to the extreme along that way. And those of us who have lived through the difficult, the almost impossible, days of Belgian relief, food administration, and general European after-the-war relief, with him, have come to an almost superstitious belief in his capacity to do anything possible to human power.
He has a great gift of lucid exposition. His successful argument with Lloyd George, who began a conference with him on the Belgian relief work strongly opposed to it on grounds of its alleged military disadvantages to the Allies, and closed it by the abrupt statement: "I am convinced; you have my permission," is a conspicuous example, among many, of his way of winning adherence to his plans, on a basis of good grounds and lucid and effective presentation of them. He has no voice for speaking to great audiences, no flowers of rhetoric or familiar platitudes for professional oratory, but there is no more effective living
speaker to small groups or conferences around the council table. He is clear and convincing in speech because he is clear and precise in thinking. He is fertile in plan and constructive in method because he has creative imagination.
The first of his war calls to service came just as he was preparing to return to America from London where he had brought his family from California to spend the school vacation of 1914. Their return passage was engaged for the middle of August. But the war came on, and with it his first relief undertaking. It was only the trivial matter—trivial in comparison with his later undertakings—of helping seventy thousand American travelers, stranded at the outbreak of the war, to get home. These people, rich and poor alike, found themselves penniless and helpless because of the sudden moratorium. Letters of credit, travelers' checks, drafts, all were mere printed paper. They needed real money, hotel rooms, steamer passages, and advice. And there was nobody in London, not even the benevolent and most willing but in this respect powerless American ambassador who
could help them. At least there seemed none until Hoover transferred the "relief" which had automatically congested about his private offices in the "city" during the first two days to larger headquarters in the Hotel Savoy. He gathered together all his available money and that of American friends and opened a unique bank which had no depositors and took in no money, but continuously gave it out against personal checks signed by unknown but American-looking people on unknown banks in Walla Walla and Fresno and Grand Rapids and Dubuque and Emporia and New Bedford. And he found rooms in hotels and passage on steamers, first-class, second-class or steerage, as happened to be possible. Now on all these checks and promises to pay, just $250 failed to be realized by the man who took a risk on American honesty to the extent of several hundred thousand dollars.
Some of the incidents of this "relief" were pathetic, and some were comic. One day the banker and his staff, which was composed of his wife and their friends, were startled by the apparition in the front office of a