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In
the winter of 1945-46, immediately following the end
of World War II, famine pervaded Europe and was spreading
through Africa, India, and the Far East. Within weeks
of his inauguration in April 1945, Truman summoned Herbert
Hoover to the White House to tap into his years of experience
in food relief administration. Then, in early 1946,
as the world food situation worsened, Hoover again conferred
with the President who asked him to serve as Honorary
Chairman of the Famine Emergency Committee.
Already
there were food riots in Hamburg. In the Italian towns
of Messina and Lucca, food supplies were looted and the
severe shortages brought murder and death. In the granary
countries like Hungary and Rumania, people were eating
acorns and dying of starvation; and in four Chinese provinces,
peasants subsisted on nothing but grass.
Hoover's
chairmanship would prove to be no mere figurehead role.
As the President's envoy, he embarked on a tour of Europe,
Egypt, India, China and Japan to investigate global food
conditions and to search for sources to replenish the
world's supply. This trip for the Committee -- there would
be a tour of Latin America barely six weeks later -- covered
30,000 miles and the facts gathered from it provided Hoover
with a base for coordinating the food supply for 22 nations.
At the time he assumed his post, the former President
was 72.
In
his Memoirs, Truman writes of that first meeting
with Hoover in 1945, noting that the former President
seemed pleased to be able to "make a personal contribution
to the settlement of the aftermath of the war." Although,
in fact, dubious at first, Hoover would eventually be
more than pleased. He would be filled with a depth of
gratitude that stemmed from the satisfaction of once again
playing an active role in world affairs after years as
a political pariah. Until the day of his meeting with
Truman, he had not set foot in the White House since Roosevelt's
first inauguration.
The
initial regard the two Presidents had for one another
matured into a friendship that would last the rest of
their lives. The story of that friendship, how it developed,
and the consequences of it, form the themes of a two-part
article, the first of which appears in this issue. "Hoover
and Truman: Friends" was written by Donald R. McCoy University
Distinguished Professor of History at the University of
Kansas. Professor McCoy adapted his article from a talk
he gave at a meeting on World War I held last December
in Kansas City, Missouri. The meeting was jointly sponsored
by the Herbert
Hoover Presidential Library Association and the Liberty
Memorial Association.
During
the winter of 1962-1963, two old gentlemen exchanged
deeply moving letters. Herbert Hoover wrote Harry Truman
that "yours has been a friendship which has reached
deeper into my life than you know ... When the attack
on Pearl Harbor came, I at once supported the President
and offered to serve in any useful capacity ... However,
there was no response ... When you came to the White
House within a month you opened the door to me to the
only profession I knew, public service, and you undid
some disgraceful action that had been taken in the prior
years. For all this and your friendship, I am deeply
grateful." Truman replied, "You'll never know how much
I appreciated your letter ... In fact I was overcome,
because you state the situation much better than I could.
I'll quote you, 'For all this and your friendship, I
am deeply grateful.'"
Theirs
was an unusual friendship, one often cited by scholars
and journalists. In May of 1945 when it began, they
had little in common. One, Truman, was a very partisan
Democrat and the other, Hoover, was a very partisan
Republican. One had been raised in a warm family relationship
and the other had grown up almost kicked from pillar
to post. One was provincial and often strapped for funds
well after he was forty and the other was cosmopolitan
and wealthy before he was forty. They would gain much
in common only slowly, and I should add rockily, for
the early stages of their acquaintance was based substantially
on mutual self-interest.
Having
said this, one might ask what of significance did they
have in common when Harry Truman invited Herbert Hoover
to consult with him in May 1945? There was the fact
that Truman was the incumbent President and Hoover a
former President, but the importance of this and their
reverence for the office would grow only as the years
passed. Another was that Truman thought Franklin D.
Roosevelt had gone too far fiscally and with personal
government, and Hoover believed that Roosevelt had been
a disaster as President. Yet there was much ground separating
their views of Truman's predecessor and Hoover's successor.
A case could be made that Truman and Hoover were both
courteous men. Indeed they were, but both were also
suspicious of, and could detest, those who disagreed
with them. Only time would tell how far Truman and Hoover
could tolerate the predictable disagreements that would
arise between them.
I
suggest that they had something else in common in 1945
that was the bedrock of their friendship. Let's call
this factor their common Wilsonianism. Hoover had come
of age politically during Woodrow Wilson's second term
as President from 1917 to 1921. As Food Administrator,
he had served as a member of Wilson's war cabinet; he
had endorsed Wilson's campaign for the election of a
Democratic Congress in 1918; he had accompanied the
President to Versailles to make peace in 1919; he had
played an important role in implementing Wilson's foreign
policy in Europe then; and some had boomed him as Wilson's
successor as the Democratic presidential nominee in
1920.
Add
to this the criticisms of Hoover for trying to intrude
Wilsonian concepts into the Warren Harding and Calvin
Coolidge administrations in which he served as Secretary
of Commerce. After all, Hoover did believe with Wilson
in applying moral condemnation and sanctions against
autocratic and repressive regimes; in peaceful internationalism;
in assisting people in emergency situations, preferably
through voluntary action; in keeping Federal powers
at a minimum level consistent with a regulatory state;
and in waging all-out war when absolutely necessary.
Truman
shared these beliefs, although he was tempted to go
beyond applying moral sanctions and beyond the regulatory
state. Truman held these beliefs largely because as
a Democrat his ideas had been shaped by the Wilsonian
credo of his young adulthood. Moreover he had risked
his life and favorably tested his manhood in France
during World War I fighting for Wilsonian policies.
He truly believed in them, and during the 1920s Truman
thought that their validity had been proven by the errors,
as he judged them, of the Harding and Coolidge administrations.
Although Truman and Hoover would disagree on much after
World War I and even during the years after their first
meeting, their shared Wilsonianism, commitment to public
service, and appreciation of the difficulties of being
President gave them common ground.
What
brought the two men together in the first place? Hoover
had correctly perceived that Truman was more conservative
than Roosevelt and that this might give him a chance
for new public service. In the spring of 1945, Hoover
was championing, as he had so outstandingly during World
War I, the relief of war-stricken peoples, and he was
pressing the United States Army to carry out that job
in liberated countries. Thwarted in this, he aggressively
sought, through intermediaries, an audience with Truman.
At
the same time, the new President was reaching out to
leading Republicans for their advice and good will.
With this in mind, Truman sought meetings with three
former Presidential nominees: Hoover, Alfred M. Landon,
and Thomas E. Dewey. It was a shrewd move. Although
it is difficult to judge its effect on Dewey, his public
criticisms of Truman were relatively mild, even during
his second run for the Presidency in 1948. The strategy
was effective with Landon, for although his relations
with Truman were few, they were cordial and as often
as not supportive on key issues. The greatest result
was with Hoover. I mention this because if one believes
Truman's accounts of the initiation of relations with
Hoover, here was a kindly President trying to bring
a former President usefully back into the political
mainstream; if one believes Hoover's accounts, here
was an able former President offering his much needed
help to a greenhorn President. Clearly, it was a situation
in which two astute statesmen wanted to talk with each
other for their own individual purposes.
Their
meeting of May 28, 1945 opened the door to a remarkable
relationship, one that would ultimately ripen into genuine
friendship. The positive aspects of this relationship
during the Truman Administration are clear and I shall
give the high points. The May 28 meeting was, Truman
wrote in his diary, "pleasant and constructive." Hoover
was less positive about it, writing that despite the
"good will ... nothing more would come of it so far
as I or my views are concerned."
The
former President was wrong. Although the administration
did not take Hoover's advice about offering Japan liberal
terms for ending World War II quickly, Truman's growing
suspicions of the Soviet Union were reinforced by Hoover's
comments. More immediately important, Truman accepted
Hoover's views for those countries stricken by war,
and the Army was ordered to supply emergency relief
for western Europe during the critical months ahead
in 1945. This emergency relief program would be one
of the foundations for the massive post-war American
foreign aid program and Truman would enlist Hoover to
play an important role in this program.
It
became obvious during the winter of 1945-1946 that food
shortages threatened people over much of the world as
well as the recovery of political and economic stability.
In February 1946 President Truman asked his fellow Americans
to cut their food consumption so that the United States
might have the surplus foodstuffs needed to help stave
off famine abroad. Hoover immediately endorsed this
appeal. Soon Truman and the administration sought his
advice in dealing with the problem. This led to the
establishment of the Famine Emergency Committee, with
Hoover serving as honorary chairman, to organize a program
of voluntary food conservation in America. Originally
aimed at helping western Europe, the program at Hoover's
urging soon included much of the world. In order to
dramatize and give more substance to the program, in
March the former President, at Truman's request, began
a fact-finding mission. During the next three months,
Hoover traveled 50,000 miles and visited 38 countries
to discover the extent of the problem and to advise
leaders in those and other nations how to deal with
the perilous situation.
The
results were only partly successful, given the immensity
of the problem, but its worst aspects were dealt with
in Europe and some small assistance was given to other
areas of the world. Without Truman's and Hoover's cooperation,
though, far less would have been accomplished. Truman
put it well in his letter of thanks to Hoover: "Without
your efforts, and the willing cooperation of all our
people ... the suffering abroad would have been much
greater during those dread months ... when so many nations
had exhausted their own food supplies."
In
January 1947 Truman again called upon Hoover for similar
service, this time in connection with food shortages
in Germany and Austria. Once again Hoover was instrumental
in combating the needs posed by threatened famine and
social instability in these Allied occupied areas. His
work also gave him the opportunity to broaden the scope
of his advice on foreign policy. He had, since May 1945,
taken various opportunities to urge President Truman
to be tough in dealing with an increasingly truculent
Soviet Union. Now Hoover had the chance to urge the
rapid conclusion of peace with Germany and its unification
-- at least of the American, British, and French occupation
zones -- so that Germany could play an effective part
in the economic reconstruction of Europe and thus help
counter Communist threats there. If Hoover was only
one of many urging Truman to be tough with the Soviets,
he was in a minority on the question of Germany, but
his voice would count on both issues, and with Truman's
gratitude.
As
a result of Hoover's outstanding public service and
his more statesmanlike comments since 1941, the ogre
of Depression days was becoming more accepted on the
American political scene. Two evidences of this appeared
during the spring of 1947.
Then
Congress, with Truman's approval, repaired the New Deal
slight to the former President of changing the name
of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River to Boulder Dam
by again naming it Hoover Dam. The other proof was Hoover's
invitation to speak to Washington's prestigious Gridiron
Club. In his talk there he sympathized with President
Truman for getting more advice than consent from the
Republican 80th Congress, and he lauded Truman's "high
service to our country," saying that he stood "firm
with his feet rooted in the American soil." Truman's
response, in a penned note, was to call Hoover "a great
man."
By
1947, through his efforts on the food program, Hoover
had made an important contribution to world political
stability. However, his most notable post-presidential
work for Truman was to come. On a personal level, their
friendship, still at the tentative stage, would deepen
after Truman left the White House in 1953 and continue
until Hoover's death in 1984.
by
DONALD R. McCOY
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