Herbert Hoover

A Public Life

David Burner


My Copies


Characters

Great Britain, on the other hand, grew reluctant about the work of the CRB. Lord Kitchener—hero of the Boer War and the face on the famous recruiting poster—and Winston Churchill, whom Hoover would always intensely dislike, led a military faction that regarded feeding Belgians as "a positive military disaster," since it released the Germans from that obligation. Churchill called the stubborn Hoover a "son of a bitch."

  • about Herbert Hoover, Committee for the Relief of Belgium, Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, Winston Churchill
    • p. 82 (Easton Press, 1996)

    Kitchener, according to Whitlock, offered Hoover the post of Minster of Munitions in 1916 (probably it was the post of technical director of production under the minister), contingent on his becoming a British citizen. Page conveyed the offer of British citizenship. Hoover refused.

  • about Herbert Hoover, Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener
    • p. 82 (Easton Press, 1996)

    Tact is not one of his many qualities.

  • by David Lloyd George
  • about Herbert Hoover
    • p. 83 (Easton Press, 1996)

    Hoover believed that one good way to accomplish things was to go directly to the ultimate authority and state frankly what was needed.

  • about Herbert Hoover
    • p. 83 (Easton Press, 1996)

    In a communication to the State Department that October [1915], Bates charged Hoover with violating the century-old Logan Act that forbade any American to deal directly with belligerents. In a sense, the charge was valid; the CRB flew its own flag and made contracts with belligerents somewhat comparable to treaties.

  • about Herbert Hoover, Lindon Bates, Committee for the Relief of Belgium
    • p. 89 (Easton Press, 1996)

    On January 22, 1929, Hoover left for a Florida vacation at the home of J. C. Penney. Before an open fire at the island house on Biscayne Bay, a pensive Hoover remarked to the editor of the Christian Science Monitor: "I have no dread of the ordinary work of the presidency. What I do fear is the result of the exaggerated idea the people have conceived of me. They have a conviction that I am a sort of superman, that no problem is beyond my capacity ... If some unprecedented calamity should come upon the nation ... I would be sacrificed to the unreasoning disappointment of a people who expected too much."

  • by Herbert Hoover, David Burner
  • about James Cash Penney, Willis J. Abbot
    • pp. 210-211 (Easton Press, 1996)

    Where voluntarism, or the states, would not put adequate controls on economic waste or social injustice—here as in child labor and elsewhere—Hoover generally favored federal legislation.

  • about Herbert Hoover
    • p. 223 (Easton Press, 1996)