For almost a year Herbert Clark Hoover has been President of the U. S. He has gotten the “feel” of his job. Upon him, a sensitive man, has pounded the customary criticism of politics. He has been roundly flayed as well as praised for appointing one commission after another to investigate controversial questions. He has been flayed because his stand on Prohibition was too Dry or too Wet, because he would not deal strongly enough with Congress on tariff rates, because he dealt too strongly with Congress on farm legislation. Avoiding public speeches, living be hind a mask of impersonality, he has revealed little or nothing of himself and his reactions to his high office.
Last week, like other Presidents before him, he wrote and released a personal let ter to an old friend. It was an exposition of his Presidential philosophy, a broad de fense of his policies, his credo of politics. The friend was Dr. William Oxley Thompson, 75, for a quarter of a century president of Ohio State University, now its President Emeritus. Dr. Thompson, once Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, had sent President Hoover a belated New Year’s message in which he deplored, in mellow, age-ripened words, the present “mob-mindedness” of public life, the self-interest of those who press in upon the President. Wondering how any President could keep his sanity, he exhorted President Hoover to have the patience of Lincoln, to “be true to the ideals of the masses.”
President Hoover promptly responded:
“. . . malice is sometimes the road to newspaper headlines. There will always be partisans desirous that the President should fail. . . . Every man has a few mental hair shirts and Presidents differ only by their larger wardrobe—for certain individuals, newspapers, associations and institutions officiate as haberdashers with a high generosity. . . .
“No real believer in Democracy questions the sureness of public judgment—if the public is given the truth. . . . We can sometimes speed up [truth’s] production before the ill-informed awakes to his opportunities. Facts are bad for his digestion. . . . But the truth is hard to discover. It must be distilled through the common judgment of skilled men. . . . It takes time and patience. In the meantime a vast clamor of half-truths and untruths will always fill the air and intoxicate people’s emotions.
“The President himself cannot pretend to have the time for detailed investigation. But the fine minds of the citizens are available for the search. So you will know why when you hear of more and more temporary committees, commissions, conferences, researches—that they are not for Executive action but are one of the sound processes for the search, production and distribution of the truth. . . . The people will take care of progress if the Government can put the signs on the road. . . .
“My resolutions for the New Year include a continued effort to keep pure the wells of wisdom. . . I have faith that the people want the truth determined, even if it takes time and patience.”
¶ Because Mrs. Hoover was abed with a cold, because Mrs. Stimson was on her way to London, because there is no Mrs. Mellon, it fell to tall, golden-haired, blue-eyed Mrs. Patrick Jay Hurley, wife of the Secretary of War, youngest Cabinet lady, to accompany President Hoover to the Mayflower Hotel last week to dine with Vice President Curtis and his hostess-sister, Mrs. Edward Everett Gann. After dinner the President and Mrs. Hurley went to a reception at the Congressional Wom en’s Club, leaving Mr. Curtis and Mrs. Gann behind. Mrs. Gann did not attend with the Vice President because the club had failed to follow custom by electing her president. After the reception President Hoover cut red tape, escorted Mrs. Hurley home.
¶ Before God-speeding them off to the London Naval Parley, President Hoover breakfasted five of the seven U. S. dele gates (see p. 12).
¶ Last week President Hoover nominated: Senator Frederick Moseley Sackett of Kentucky for Ambassador to Germany: Gilchrist Baker Stockton, Florida Hoovercrat, oldtime Belgian and Austrian relief worker, Minister to Austria; Abraham C. Ratshesky, philanthropic Boston banker, onetime Assistant Massachusetts Food Administrator, Minister to Czechoslovakia; William E. Lee, Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, an Interstate Commerce Commissioner.
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