Lord Eustace Percy

However icy Hoover was, no one questioned that he was prodigiously effective. Lord Eustace Percy in the British Foreign Office regarded the American as "the bluntest man in Europe," but acknowledged that he was "able, without apparent effort, to handle a situation involving more irreconcilable elements than any other situation in this war [WWI]." On one occasion, a high-placed British official told him, "Men have gone to the Tower for less than you have done," but then acceded to demands that shortly before he had said were "out of the question."

• Herbert Hoover
  • p. 29 (Times Books, 2009)