Herbert Hoover: The Man and His Work

by Vernon L. Kellogg

I am constantly asked: What were Hoover's personal duties and work in the relief days? It is a question one cannot answer in two words. His was all the responsibility, his the major planning, the resourceful devising of ways out of difficulty, the generalship. But the details were his also. He kept not only in closest touch with every least as well as greatest phase of the work, but took a personal active part in seeing everything through. Constant conferences with the Allied foreign offices and treasuries, and personal inspection of the young men sent over from America as helpers; swift movements between England and France and Belgium and Germany and America, and trips in the little motor launch about the harbor at Rotterdam examining the warehouses and food ships and floating elevators and canal boats; these were some of his contrasting activities through day following day in all the months and years of the relief.

Hoover had to make his headquarters in London at the Commission's central office. Here he could keep constantly in touch by

cable and post with the offices in New York, Rotterdam, and Brussels. The Brussels office was allowed to send and receive German-censored mail three times a week by way of Holland, and we could do a limited amount of censored telegraphing to Rotterdam over the German and Dutch wires and thence to London by English-censored cable. But Hoover came regularly every few weeks to Brussels, taking his chances with mines and careless submarines. These were no slight chances. A Dutch line was allowed by England and Germany to run a boat, presumably unmolested, two or three times a week between Flushing and Thamesmouth. These jumpy little boats, which carried passengers only—the hold was filled with closed empty barrels lashed together to act as a float when trouble came—were the only means of bringing our young American relief workers to Belgium and of Hoover's frequent crossings. After seven of the ten boats belonging to the line had been lost or seriously damaged by mines the thrifty Dutch company suspended operation. We had then to cross secretly by English dispatch boats, protected

by destroyers and specially hunted by German submarines.

On the occasion of one of Hoover's crossings two German destroyers lying outside of Flushing harbor ordered the little Dutch boat to accompany them to Zeebrugge for examination. This happened occasionally and was always exciting for the passengers, especially for the diplomatic couriers, who promptly dropped overboard their letter pouches, specially supplied with lead weights and holes to let in the water and thus insure prompt sinking. As the boat and convoying destroyers drew near to Zeebrugge, shells or bombs began to drop on the water around them. Hoover thought at first they were coming from English destroyers aiming at the Germans. But he could see no English boats. Suddenly an explosion came from the water's surface near the boat and the man standing next to him fell with his face smashed by a bomb fragment. Hoover seized him and dragged him around the deck-house to the other side of the boat. Another bomb burst on that side. He then heard the whir of an airplane and looking up saw several English

bombing planes. Their intention was excellent, but their aim uncertain. The anti-aircraft guns of the German destroyers soon drove them away, and the convoy came into Zeebrugge harbor where the Dutch boat and passengers were inspected with German thoroughness. On Hoover's identity being revealed by his papers, he was treated with proper courtesy and after several of the passengers had been taken off the boat it was allowed to go on its way to Tilbury.

Hoover enjoyed an extraordinary position in relation to the passport and border regulations of all the countries in and out of which he had to pass in his movements connected with the relief. He was given a freedom in this respect enjoyed by no other man. He moved almost without hindrance and undetained by formalities freely in and out of England, France, Holland, occupied Belgium and France, and Germany itself, with person and traveling bags unexamined. It was a concrete expression of confidence in his integrity and perfect correctness of behavior, that can only be fully understood by those who had to make any movements

at all across frontiers in the tense days of the war.

Governor General von Bissing once said to me in Brussels, apropos of certain charges that had been brought to him by his intelligence staff of a questionable behavior on the part of one of our men in Belgium—charges easily proved to be unfounded: "I have entire confidence in Mr. Hoover despite my full knowledge of his intimate acquaintance and association with the British and French Government officials and my conviction that his heart is with our enemies." As a matter of fact Hoover always went to an unnecessary extreme in the way of ridding himself of every scrap of writing each time he approached the Holland-Belgium frontier. He preached absolute honesty, and gave a continuous personal example of that honesty to all the C. R. B. men inside the steel ring.